When someone asks you to name your favorite film, what are they actually asking?

When you answer, what do you mean when you say “favorite” film?

This is an important question for, you know, film lovers Of. A. Certain. Age.

Yes, I am talking about the Baby Boomers who grew up going to actual movie theaters, in the age long before streaming services and entire channels dedicated to offering kazillions of flicks with only a few clicks (and payments to the right cable packages).

We even went to movie festivals to watch great movies, or movies that our professors told us were great. In the 1990s, I was stunned to discover that college students were no longer interested in movie festivals. Who wanted to watch a boring old movie like “Casablanca”? Whimper. Sigh.

I mean, dang, My Generation didn’t even have videocassettes until we were adults. Oh the humanity! (Note that, in the YouTube age, you can see a film clip explaining that phrase with one click.) Some of us are so old that we still purchase digital copies (even discs) of movies we want to watch many times. Yes, I still watch my favorite movies over and over.

So, when someone asked you to name your “favorite” movie, old folks like me were talking about a motion picture experienced with other people in a movie theater, more than once. Now, we may be talking about a movie that you have purchased, with real money, over and over, in each new form of video technology. (Yes, I once owned a Betamax recorder-player. It was the superior videotape format. So there.)

Now, for the question of the day: What is your favorite movie of all time?

Note that I did not ask you to name the “best” movie of all time, in your opinion. And I did not ask you to name the movie that, at one point in your life, you said was your “favorite” because praising this or that flick would impress your peers and, thus, send a signal that you were the right kind of person.

Now, there are truly great movies that are also popular — movies worthy of consideration as a “favorite” film, as well as being one of the “best” movies, ever.

This brings me to a First Things essay by George Weigel: “The Best Film Ever?” The film is questions is “A Man For All Seasons.” The overture will be an epic flashback to the film lovers (and professors) from The Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers who took their opinions seriously.

Nineteen sixty-six was great for movies, and six decades later, the five nominated for Best Picture at the thirty-ninth Academy Awards the following year are all still worth watching: Alfie; A Man for All Seasons; The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming; The Sand Pebbles; and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That 1967 Oscar ceremony seems to have taken place on a distant and different planet, though, light-years removed from the vulgar wokery that dominates Oscar night these days. Then, the show was elegant, well-paced, and wonderfully emceed by Bob Hope, dressed in white tie. The most memorable moment came during Audrey Hepburn’s presentation of the Best Picture Oscar, the dramatic finale of Hollywood’s annual celebration of cinema as art. After a brief exchange of compliments with Hope, Miss Hepburn recited the names and producers of the nominated films, took the envelope, read the card therein, looked briefly up to heaven—and then, with a smile of satisfaction, as if her prayers had been answered, announced that the winner was A Man for All Seasons.

Let’s keep reading.

Bolt’s screenplay keeps the action moving, highlighting the story’s pivotal moments while losing nothing of consequence from the play’s script. Everyone in the cast is terrific, beginning with Paul Scofield’s Thomas More and continuing through Wendy Hiller’s Alice More, Robert Shaw’s Henry VIII (the young Renaissance hero, not the porcine lecher of later years), Orson Welles’s Cardinal Wolsey (embodiment of a Church crippled by its alliance with state power), Nigel Davenport’s rough-and-tumble Duke of Norfolk, Leo McKern’s cynically amoral Thomas Cromwell, and John Hurt’s Richard Rich, corrupted by intellectual arrogance and overweening ambition. Vanessa Redgrave’s lascivious, eighty-second cameo as Anne Boleyn hints at the sorry end awaiting the woman for whom King Henry broke with the Church of Rome.

Ted Moore’s cinematography is both gorgeous and true to history; I once looked out the window in More’s cell in the Tower of London and was struck by how cannily Zinnemann and his cinematographer used that view of the Thames embankment to convey the changing seasons during Sir Thomas’s lengthy imprisonment. Georges Delerue’s score is well-matched to the flow of the film and gives it an authentic Renaissance flavor.

If there is anything awry in A Man for All Seasons, I didn’t notice it.

I have watched this great flick more than six times — but I confess that I have not watched it in about a decade.

Why? To be blunt, it is a very “heavy meal” of a movie. Also, it’s getting hard to find any folks outside my own home who would want to watch it with me. It’s serious. It’s excellent. It’s profound.

There was a time when I called it my “favorite” movie.

It was a safe choice and I was never pretentious enough to call “Citizen Kane” my favorite. I would call that Orson Welles movie the most stunning that I have ever seen, considering when and how it was filmed. I mean, the digital copies of that classic that we have today are amazing. Here’s my favorite, via the Criterion Collection.

Meanwhile, I would certainly have “A Man For All Seasons” in the list of the top five or so movies that have made an impact on my life.

All together now: “But, for Wales?”

In the comments pages, I would like readers to state their “favorite” movies. If you wish, name a selection for the “best” movie nod, as well.

You can also offer your opinion on the “best” movie, in terms of excellence, that is also a relentlessly “popular” movie. They do exist — like “Casablanca” and, in another generation,“Jaws.” In the past decade-plus, I would cite “Interstellar.” Turn it up.

Now, I know that you are thinking: OK, Mattingly, what is your favorite film?

I grew up in a hot, flat, polluted, ugly, mosquito-friendly refinery town in a swamp on the Texas Gulf Coast. I yearned for cool air and beauty.

My favorite movie is “Local Hero.” As the late Roger Ebert wrote:

What makes this material really work is the low-key approach of the writer-director, Bill Forsyth, who also made the charming “Gregory's Girl” and has the patience to let his characters gradually reveal themselves to the camera. He never hurries, and as a result, “Local Hero” never drags: Nothing is more absorbing than human personalities, developed with love and humor. Some of the payoffs in this film are sly and subtle, and others generate big laughs.

Forsyth’s big scenes are his little ones, including a heartfelt, whiskey-soaked talk between the American and the innkeeper, and a scene where the visitors walk on the beach and talk about the meaning of life. By the time Burt Lancaster reappears at the end of the film, to personally handle the negotiations with old Ben, “Local Hero” could hardly have anything but a happy ending. But it’s a fairly close call.

Yes, there is now a Criterion Collection edition of “Local Hero.”

If you watch it, I think you will know why it’s my favorite movie — of my times.

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Greetings from Alaska’s fabled “inside passage” north of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Here is some travel advice: If your travel schedule sends you through Las Vegas for several days, on the way to Alaska, pack sandals. It’s worth using up that tiny bit of space in a jammed suitcase.

Now, here is the strangest Rational Sheep news of the week. There will be no “Crossroads” podcast this week because host Todd Wilken, I just learned, is on a (#drumroll) cruise between Whittier, Alaska, and Vancouver. Meanwhile, I am on a cruise between the same two ports, only headed the other direction.

Our boats will, literally, pass each other at some point. Will we end up in the same port town on the same day and get to share smoked Salmon? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I do hope to share a short alternative podcast in place of “Crossroads,” since I will be on a Catholic network today discussing the life and faith of Dolly Parton. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I recently set aside a fascinating The York Times piece about a screens-culture trend that will grow more and more important in the years ahead, unless there is a legal miracle in a copyright lawsuit of some kind. The double-decker headline:

Sick of A.I. Slop? So Are Tech Giants.

Spotify, LinkedIn and others are trying to dig out of a digital sewage heap full of low-quality content made with artificial intelligence.

Yes, consider this a “think piece” sequel to my earlier post, “Good luck limiting AI slop in YouTube land.”

That’s the post that included this hellish vision — an “Ed Sheeran” “song” called “Rest In Peace, Charlie Kirk” — shipped to me via algorithms while I was doing some follow-up Kirk research. Wait, it gets worse. Remember this?

This is not to be confused with the “official music video” of “ superstar Adelle singing “Rest In Peace.” Oh, and consumers can choose to click a YouTube clip with Sheeran and Adelle performing a duet version of “Rest In Peace Charlie Kirk” — no comma this time. …

If you want a “Titanic” anthem vibe, you may tune in Celine Dion performing “Forever in Our Hearts, Charlie.” This is not to be confused with a second “tribute” by Dion called “Charlie, This Goodbye Hurts,” which is not to be confused (I’m repeating myself) with another called “Goodbye.”

I’ll skip the video in which “Barron Trump” and “Erika Kirk” perform an emotional duet to honor Charlie Kirk.

Why is this an important topic? Well, there are billions of dollars at stake. And fake material often forces real content away from real readers and viewers. Here is one more byte of that earlier post:

The basic idea is this: Fake AI content is posted on AI created “channels,” which are then inflated with zillions of fake clicks by “viewers” that are actually AI programs, that can even be tweaked to create fake viewer comments. All of that AI activity then punches digital buttons that point streams of real digital advertising dollars into the bank accounts of the people using these AI programs.

Oh, can the people at YouTube create AI programs that are smart enough to draw red lines between real content on their platform and the new AI slop?

YouTube is only one platform, of course, that is trying to survive the slop tsunami.

Let’s move closer to home.

Imagine the slop implications of websites that are open for comments from the general public. Here is some crucial background:

Spotify, a music streamer, said it removed 75 million bulk uploads, duplicate songs and other “spammy” tracks last year — a sizable chunk of its total portfolio. LinkedIn said in July that “A.I. slop is a top priority for all of us” and developed a button for users to report it. …

Across the internet, tech companies are undertaking a generative waste detox, overwhelmed in many cases by the same slop first made possible by their own A.I. tools. Mobile messaging apps, restaurant review sites, scholarly archives and dating services are all rooting out or downplaying junk generated by A.I. — many relying on the same technology to pull off the purge.

Let’s keep reading. The key for me: At what point will this bleed into websites linked to education, faith and family?

People are tiring of A.I.’s effect on the environment and its pressure on jobs and mental health. A.I. slop is just another “festering wound,” said Aidan Walker, a content creator and researcher studying online trends for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a global affairs think tank. …,

Unchecked, the synthetic swamp online could “crowd out human creativity, corrode cultural value and destabilize public discourse,” European researchers wrote last year.

The Times noted that one popular slop channel earned $4.25 million a year before YouTube shut it down. Meanwhile, it is estimated that A.I. was used with nearly 50% of X posts with 50-plus words. Reminder! Set you X feed to show you accounts that you choose to FOLLOW, while avoiding the “For You” option.

With religious websites, I think patrons will be seeing more evidence of fake material and harassment, as opposed to efforts to produce fake materials for profits. But who knows? We could see nonprofit groups facing a smaller, but still nasty, version of what is happening to major platforms.

Note that Big Tech experts are fighting slop with their own proprietary software. Churches, parachurch groups, counseling support groups and denominations don’t have the money to purchase these upgraded digital weapons.

My question for readers: What are you seeing online? If you are a church leader or publisher of any kind, what worries you the most about this trend?

Let me hear from you in the comments section.

We live in a creation that is both glorious and fallen. We’re talking about both options in online life. Slop, of course, is directly linked to the Fall.

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When her husband Carl Dean died, Dolly Parton released her own tribute with the single, “If You Hadn’t Been There.” The key lines were poignant: “The ups and downs / We've always shared / And I wouldn't be here / If you hadn't been there.”

In this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, I argued that if the mainstream press wanted to understand this very public, but still mysterious, superstar, they needed to study the fine details in her songwriting and in her philanthropy. In other words, pay less attention to her glitzy media image and focus on her heart, mind and, yes, soul.

Click for "Crossroads" podcast

The tribute to her blue-collar, no frills, construction worker husband was highly symbolic. Now, it appears that Parton will make her own final statement about her life and work with a special song that will be released on her 100th birthday. ABC News reported.

An unreleased song titled “My Place in History” remains locked inside a chestnut box at Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, the theme park confirmed. … Parton wrote and recorded the song in 2015, the year the resort opened, with instructions that the box remain sealed until Jan. 19, 2046, which would have marked her 100th birthday.

What will the song say?

I do not know, of course, but I would argue that Parton has already offered the world crucial insights in her art and in the many ways to worked to help “her people” in the mountains of Appalachia and beyond. In a tribute for the Free Press, Hannah Long shared this metaphor that I have, for years, heard used by folks I know in our Southern Highlands:

To Appalachians like me, this is something like the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Dolly was an icon, a figurehead, a spiritual grandmother. … Her theme park, Dollywood, is a huge tourism draw for the impoverished communities of eastern Tennessee — and Dolly Parton fans from all over the world. Picture Disney World with more Jesus.

Indeed. Just the other day, I offered a Rational Sheep post about some pro-level Disney observers who visited Dollywood and pondered the many ways it was different from the Kingdom of Mouse.

For example, while there is a lot of Dolly at Dollywood (#DUH), the park isn’t really about selling her media products — while Disney parks are shopping malls for all things Disney pushed in screens culture. Dollywood offers a squeaky clean tribute to the families, faith and culture of the Smoky Mountains. It’s a dreamy vision of a real place — the land that, for decades, has considered Dolly its queen.

You will, at Dollywood, see traces of Dolly the “9 to 5” Hollywood pop star and symbol of female empowerment. But you won’t find that in the chapel she had built on the grounds (imagine a church at Disney World) or in the bluegrass, folk and Gospel music in which Dollywood has been baptized.

In the podcast — which centered on hours of CNN coverage and some crucial doctrines from The New York Times — I urged listeners to find an often overlooked trilogy of albums that Parton released at the turn of the century and dig deep into the lyrics. When many of her fans voiced concerns that she had forgotten her roots, Dolly rallied a team of killer bluegrass players and released “The Grass is Blue,” “Little Sparrow” and “Horns and Halos” (click links to hear all this music).

On the crucial first disc in that set, she ended with a heart cry that is almost hard to listen to at the moment. In a way, she had already written an anthem for the day of her passing — “I Am Ready.”

Turn this up. Here is a sample:

I am ready
Oh, my children
When Jesus knocks at my door
I’ll be there come morning
Don’t weep for me
I’ll be with my Lord

There’s my Bible on the table
Read it to me once more
I can hear God’s heavenly angels
Singing me on through heaven’s door

Hallelujah Lord
I am ready
No more sorrow
Hallelujah, yes
I am ready, I am ready
I am ready to go

In the final disc of the trilogy, she threw down this gauntlet in the title track for “Horns and Halos.”

Tempted and tried with each step we take
We stumble and slide and make our mistakes
Ask God to forgive us for all of our sins
Then we take off our horns and wear halos again

Halos and horns, sinners and saints
Hearts that are torn between what’s wrong and ain’t
Just because it feels right does not make it so
So we struggle through life in horns and halos

That’s Dolly Parton.

Now, I would argue that a solid obit for this remarkable singer, musician, songwriter, business woman and philanthropist needed to include, as quotations, some of what she said in the work she took most seriously — her songs.

The songs point to many of the stands she took that troubled conservatives, primarily calls for dignity for all kinds of saints and sinners, as well as the (#triggerwarning) biblical faith drawn from her daily season of prayer and Bible study, first thing in the morning. She often said that it was this time of prayer and reading that led to her best songwriting.

No, I don’t know what the Bible study was when she wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” — on the same day. But someone needs to look for the major themes in her 3,000 songs.

Could we trust AI to do that? How about the New York Times?

Let’s look at one crucial passage at the end of the main Times feature: “Dolly Parton, Superstar Whose Songs Spoke to Millions, Dies at 80.” Here is a crucial thesis statement:

… Perhaps even more remarkable than the profusion of accolades and awards was Ms. Parton’s unstinting generosity of spirit — her commitment, born of deep religious convictions and an immense heart, to seeing the humanity in all people.

Perhaps the Times could have been a bit more specific than “deep religious convictions”? You think?

After all, the official family statement about her death would have been easy to quote. Bryan Seaver, son of Cassie Parton, said that, “Sadness lies with us, not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light, and is in the arms of Jesus. Surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the heavens.”

For the Times team, the crucial point to make was that Parton outgrew her Christian past and, ultimately, this is what mattered. She escaped those mountains.

Parton not only sang the traditional Southern gospel music her mother taught her; she also wrote and sang “Travelin’ Thru,” an Oscar-nominated song from “Transamerica,” the 2005 movie about a transgender woman seeking to connect with her son. In 2017, Ms. Parton collaborated with Miley Cyrus, her goddaughter, to record “Rainbowland,” a tribute to gay pride and liberation.

“You have to accept everything and everybody,” she said in “Songteller,” talking about the lessons to be learned about open-mindedness and inclusion from “Coat of Many Colors.”

Time and again in her career, Ms. Parton reflected on her impoverished upbringing and how she followed her dreams to escape it. “I wanted to be free,” she told Rolling Stone in 1977. “I had my songs to sing, I had an ambition, and it burned inside me.”

Hey, what about that classic song, “Coat of Many Colors”? I would argue that it is the essential Dolly song for those who want to understand what made her tick.

For the Times, this is a song that is ultimately about (#WaitForIt) bullying.

In “Coat of Many Colors,” maybe her most beloved original, Ms. Parton plumbed childhood feelings of pride and humiliation. In this case, the coat in question — quilted from rags and originally a source of delight and the expression of a mother’s love — becomes an object of ridicule when Dolly’s classmates poke fun at her for wearing it to school. …

But what is the actual biblical symbol that is the backbone of this story-song? Maybe that’s worth a mention?

Readers: In press reports did you hear this passage from the lyrics, focusing on Parton’s mother and the faith she was trying to teach?

As she sewed, she told a story
From the Bible she had read
About a coat of many colors
Joseph wore and then she said
Perhaps this coat will bring you
Good luck and happiness
And I just couldn’t wait to wear it
And momma blessed it with a kiss

My coat of many colors
That my momma made for me
Made only from rags
But I wore it so proudly
Although we had no money
I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors
My momma made for me

In the end, Dolly said that she told that Bible story to the bullies, but they just could not hear it. They just didn’t “get” what gave her hope.

But they didn't understand it
And I tried to make them see
That one is only poor
Only if they choose to be
Now I know we had no money
But I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors
My momma made for me
Made just for me

Memory eternal, Dolly Parton.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.

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Greetings from borrowed WiFi in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport (at the moment). Yes, I have one of those software programs that is supposed to protect me from online predators (but not, I assume, the U.S. and Chinese governments).

I recently sat down for a long, long, conversation with a podcaster and church-life expert who was a student during the 1990s when I taught mass communication and journalism at Milligan College (now University). The title for this podcast: “Why You No Longer Know What’s True.”

Now, let me stress that host Tony Marr told me that there would be NO PROBLEM with my ugly old-man in a 2004 Florida hurricane floppy shorts. He would just tweak the camera angle. But no, so I just warn you that, while Marr is a great podcast pro, the shorts are on the screen, a lot.

Now, this Pulpit & Porch chat covers all kinds of ground and is quite long. But, believe it or not, there is material that was edited for length.

So, while dashing from airport gate to airport gate (they keep changing the number), I will offer you a printed version of one piece of the podcast that was cut, one drawn from my tribute essay in a book celebrating the career of the late Haddon Robinson, author of the classic book “Biblical Preaching.” The Rev. Billy Graham often referred to Robinson as the 20th century’s greatest American teacher of preaching.

This is the opening chunk of that chapter (click here for the whole thing).

Yes, the podcast is long. But I think Rational Sheep supporters will enjoy it. Now you have a bonus anecdote. Just ignore the Baby Boomer grandfather shorts.

Also, the opening bloc quote is from “Biblical Preaching.”

Dr. Haddon Robinson: A Tribute (1999)

The expositor must also be aware of the currents swirling across his own times, for each generation develops out of its own history and culture and speaks its own language. A minister may stand before a congregation and deliver exegetically accurate sermons, scholarly and organized, but dead and powerless because they ignore the life-wrenching problems and questions of his hearers. Such sermons, spoken in a stained-glass voice using a code language never heard in the marketplace, dabble in great biblical concepts, but the audience feels that God belonged to the long ago and far away. Expositors must not only answer the questions our fathers asked; they must wrestle with the questions our children ask.” (1)

The Baptist preacher had a mysterious look on his face as he gestured to me across a crowded hall at Denver Seminary. He was using that discreet “come here” index-finger waggle folks use when they’re trying to get a specific person’s attention without getting anyone else’s attention. He spoke in a low voice, like an embarrassed teen in a drug store asking the person behind the counter to sell him a copy of Playboy.

“Look, Mr. Mattingly,” he asked. “What did YOU think of Thelma & Louise?”

I need to set the scene. You see, this is a parable about how clergy end up on a different wavelength than the people who sit in their pews or who live in neighborhoods surrounding their churches. And it sheds light on one of the toughest tasks that Dr. Haddon Robinson has faced while teaching men and women how to preach.

It was the fall of 1991, a few months after I left my work as a religion reporter at the Rocky Mountain News to work with Dr. Robinson on a project attempting to integrate studies in popular culture and mass media into the seminary’s core curriculum. On this particular day, I was the speaker in a luncheon for clergy, alumni and others interested in the seminary and, in particular, its post-graduate studies.

I told them what I had been telling my students: that they live and minister in a culture built on language and symbols created by mass media. Modern media are so invasive and pervasive that church leaders simply cannot afford to ignore them.

Clergy can respond to this reality in one of two ways: No. 1: They can be so threatened by it that they remain silent. No. 2: They can learn to think like missionaries and use popular culture as a source of insights and information for ministry.

Popular culture is a warped mirror of our lives, but a mirror nonetheless. To use approach No. 1 is to be purely negative. Approach No. 2 mixes criticism of mass media’s contents and social role with a sobering realization of the power that media have in modern life. It is realistic, critical and, ultimately, constructive.

At one time or another, most of the people at that luncheon had heard Dr. Robinson say that they needed to exegete their culture as well as exegete the Word of God. That was bad enough. Now here was a journalist standing at a seminary podium telling them that they needed to try to pay critical attention to magazines and movies and television and talk shows and then take what they learned with them into the pulpit.

Many of the preachers were not amused and the discussion after my lecture was lively, to say the least. One pastor bluntly said that he couldn’t get up in his pulpit and talk about movies, because that would mean admitting that he had SEEN them. Another added: “If I do that, I have a couple of deacons and big givers who will kill me.”

We broke for lunch and that was when the Baptist preachers began pulling me aside. One after another, three different pastors found a way to raise the same question: What did I think of Thelma & Louise, referring to director Ridley Scott’s explosive feminist manifesto that had been making headlines all summer. Eventually, actresses Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis ended up on the June 24, 1991, cover of Time, with the confrontational headline, “Why Thelma & Louise Strikes A Nerve.”

I gave the preachers an honest answer. I hadn’t seen the movie. But I did have an entire file folder full of essays and reviews about the film. I was aware it had served as the latest spark igniting the gasoline of our culture’s ongoing debates over sex roles. I was planning to wait and see if the movie would have a lasting impact. Then I would rent it on videocassette and, with pen and notepad in hand, sit down in a responsible and controlled environment – perhaps with seminary colleagues – and take careful notes.

But clearly, I needed to turn this question around. I didn’t have a pulpit. They did. They were pastors, with the responsibility of guiding pilgrims in the modern world. They were experienced preachers. Plus, it was these preachers – not me – who had on this occasion ventured into the risky environment of a multiplex sanctuary.

By the time the third Baptist cornered me, I was ready to ask the questions that needed to be answered: What did HE think of Thelma & Louise? Why had HE chosen to go see it?

Well, yes, he saw the Time cover. And, yes, he had heard about the movie from his wife, who heard some of her friends talking about it. And then he overheard a conversation in the church office. He knew that some women in the church had seen the movie and were still talking about it. His instincts told him this was something worth pursuing.

So far, so good, I said. What nerve did he think the movie struck?

Now he was on uncertain ground. Clearly, he said, it had something to do with female anger.

OK, I asked, what were Thelma and Louise angry about?

Well, he said, husbands and lovers had abused them, or abandoned them, or both. Other men tricked them, or attacked them, or failed to make or honor commitments. Even good men who were sympathetic managed, in subtle ways, to keep a safe distance. Thelma and Louise felt stranded. Then they got mad. Then they tried to get even.

This is very interesting, I said. Why did he think this message appealed to more than a few women in his conservative Christian flock? Why were they forming packs, or slipping off solo, to sit in the dark and watch this movie? And, come to think of it, did he have any angry women in his church?

Now he was very uncomfortable. Sure, he said, some women in his church were angry for some of the same reasons. His congregation contained its share of divorces and some had been messy. There was emotional abuse and one or two cases of physical abuse. A few husbands had vanished and there were times when he wished some other men would take a hike, too. Behind the scenes, many wives complained that their husbands were workaholics and emotionally distant. Some of them felt like single moms.

Yes, he said, there were angry and grieving women in his church.

Are some of them, I asked, the women who were going to see Thelma & Louise?

He nodded – yes.

Well, to me this sounded like this might be worth a sermon.

Yes it did, the pastor said. But he knew that there was no way he could preach it. For one thing, he wasn’t sure he could afford to preach about such an emotional, volatile topic. He also knew that many in his congregation would be upset if he quoted an R-rated movie, let alone suggested that it raised questions relevant to the church. Even some who had seen Thelma & Louise, and identified with it, might be upset if their pastor said that the film asked valid questions, but offered dangerous answers.

It would just be too risky. He could go and see the movie, but he couldn’t admit that he had done so. The insights and feelings inspired by the movie couldn’t be applied, at least directly, to the lives of his people. He was caught in a painful dilemma, a wrenching separation of church and life. Trouble was, this signal was coming from a sector of life that his church had declared out of bounds.

I asked one final question. So, his people went to the mall and the movie multiplex to find sermons on these kinds of life-wrenching issues?

Once again he nodded – yes.

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The typical Rational Sheep post gets between 1,500 and 2,000 clicks, with about 45% or more of the people who receive the text by email choosing to open it.

The project’s second most popular post ever, which focused on media coverage of widow Erika Kirk, has just over 9,000 clicks, but was opened by only 46% of readers who have subscribed.

However, something strange happened six months ago.

I remember that it was a busy day and I decided to write another update about a major topic on this website — how changes in technology, mixed with tensions between Red and Blue America, are shaping changes in the world of entertainment (and news). In other words, it was another chapter in the business-model dramas described in these crucial (#IMHO) posts, “Age of the Crashing Hollywood Empires” and “What is Job 1, when you run a pop-super franchise?”

I called this quick post “New Hollywood is in panic mode.”

As of a day or so ago, that post has nearly 14,000 views and the number is still, slowly, rising. Nevertheless, only 46.72% of the 2,700 or so Rational Sheep subscribers at that time have ever opened their email copy. Ah! But 15 readers (via email or somewhere in social media) decided to restack it to their own followers. So far, 69 people have left a comment and many of those missives are highly negative, which is unusual.

I warned readers that the post contained YouTube videos by two online influencers who can, let’s say, use colorful language while goading viewers and, thus, producing comments and clicks. One was a Nerdrotic feature called “Starfleet Academy is AWFUL — Star Trek is dead” and the one I discussed the most was “The Beginning Of The End,” by The Critical Drinker, a man who has never used a flyswatter in his commentary when a baseball bat will do.

Guess what? I am not going to quote any my own comments in that sort-of-viral post for this simple reason: I am going to rerun the entire piece (as I rush into iffy airport-WiFi land).

Why do this? To be blunt, I still am trying to understand what happened with that post. My assumption, based on what I know about online life, is that the key statistic is the number of people who restacked the post, as opposed to simply clicking a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Yes, 15 restacks is not a lot. But it’s way more than normal for the work of this minor-leagues scribe.

My assumption is that the post was restacked, or criticized in a new post, in material linked to one or more of the legions of “Star Trek” commentary pages that can be found all over the online universe, and beyond. That would, for example, explain why many comments came from people who were mad about one or two things in the post, but missed the larger point that I was writing about.

For example, when (or if) you read what follows, ask this question: Did tmatt actually say that there was zero political or cultural commentary in the early “Star Trek” products or in the classic “M*A*S*H” series? (The answer is, “No.”)

So, here is the big question that I hope readers will (after restacking this update) address in the commentary section: “WHAT THE HECKFIRE HAPPENED?” Or, in lowercase tones, “What, dear readers, do you think made this post the most-clicked thing published (so far, I can hope) at Rational Sheep?”

Be kind, but let me hear from you. Now, into the Internet Tardis we go (I am, of course, an old, old “Doctor Who” fan.

New Hollywood is in panic mode

(Language warning) And the Critical Drinker has a lot to say about it

Back in the early 1970s, when I was in college, there were two kinds of people in my circle of friends who gathered at our chosen dormitory cafeteria for dinner on weeknights.

There were “M*A*S*H” people and there were “Star Trek” people.

We were in the early days of cable TV syndication and those two shows were the first giants. As college kids in the days of limited screens, we would sit in a designated “TV room” just off the dorm lobby and enjoy these “reruns” as a communal experience, before or after dinner.

I liked both of these giants, but I was a big-time fan of the Father John Francis Patrick Mulcahy character, the chaplain for the fictional 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit. That classic CBS drama-comedy series pretty much set the standard for television screenwriting, back then.

“Star Trek” was a different situation. The sci-fi series had gathered a healthy cult following, but the numbers were not big enough to give it a long shelf life. It was cancelled, but rescued by cable TV, syndication and, eventually, videocassettes. A new future dawned on screens big and small.

I liked the campy original series, and “Next Generation” even more, which means that I am now old enough to be numbered among the toxic online fans that current “Star Trek” executives blame for everything. We are the old folks who keep rejecting the rainbow-coalition ambitions of the people who want to create edgy new takes on life in that sci-fi universe.

How bad are the ratings? The numbers have been so bad that the Ben Travers review featured at MSN.com was angry enough to proclaim that the new “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” series “isn’t nearly bold enough” to capture the minds of the diverse young modern audience that is hiding in the dark shadows of middle America. This new streaming series tried too hard to please the old viewers, you see, and didn’t launch boldly into a truly inclusive future.

… [W]hat’s unpalatable about the new “Star Trek” series is that it mainly cares about the franchise’s past, not the audience’s, and that imbalance makes for a bland, cautious adventure. “Starfleet Academy” is a genre hybrid: half science-fiction, half teen-drama. But only one of those halves is developed well enough to please its viewers, and it’s not the half that’s new to “Star Trek.”

Co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau seem like a balanced pairing on paper, with the former overseeing Star Trek’s TV franchise since “Discovery” and the latter in charge of The CW’s 2019 “Nancy Drew” reboot. Joined by writer/creator Gaia Violo (“Absentia”), the team may have taken on too much from the jump, juggling a cliché-ridden origin story for its two leads and rushing through the introduction of its primary setting.”

The series, I guess, needed more gender-fluid and/or gay Klingons.

If you want a blast of venom (language alerts, as always) about the new series, check out this piece of the episode-by-episode coverage by Nerdrotic. As you would imagine, he is not amused.

However, I mention the latest online “Star Trek” acid bath merely as a way of introducing a Critical Drinker video essay entitled “The Beginning Of The End,” focusing — no surprise here — on the financial bottom-line disasters that are pushing Hollywood into a scary new era.

What’s ahead? You will not be surprised to learn that his views resemble a kind of F-bomb laced version of what Rational Sheep readers have been reading in all of the posts I have been writing with titles such as “Age of the Crashing Hollywood Empires” and “What is Job 1, when you run a pop-super franchise?”

To understand why I think the Critical Drinker video essay is worth watching, consider this large chunk of the “Job 1” post:

I’m talking about money, as well as matters of quality or even “art” of some kind. …Now, the big questions:

Is Job 1 to please the core fans that made your product a profitable franchise in the first place? Is it to be faithful to the source material for the franchise, whether we’re talking about classic books, comics, foundation films or whatever? Should managers be faithful to the “canon” of a franchise, to its core principles and worldview? Can they build on it while being faithful to the past?

Or is Job 1 finding a way to EXPAND the franchise into a new generation, reaching the “modern audiences” that allegedly represent the future? After all, the folks in the 18-40 demographic of a decade or more ago are not the anxious young ticket buyers of today. Should you take your franchise into new forms of technology (think streamed series instead of films)? And once you have moved past your classic stories, who will write new material that matches the quality of the classics?

Once again, I am thinking about obvious brand names — Star Wars, classic Disney, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Star Trek, J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Pixar, Harry Potter, the Marvel cinematic universe, Dune, Doctor Who, etc. …

This list has to include C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia, even though those complex, multi-layered parables have been very hard to film.

Ah, Narnia! Let’s save that sobering discussion for another day.

To state my thesis again: What is the financial incentive to keep turning what were once pop franchises that printed money into bloated monstrosities that are floating in red ink these days?

After all, for generations Hollywood players rolled their cynical eyes whenever they were accused of pushing products that contained political and cultural “messages.” They would paraphrase the quote often attributed to Sam Goldwyn of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that goes something like this: “Pictures are entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union” or, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”

In other words, the old Hollywood goal was to make popular movies that sold tickets, as opposed to tinsel-sermons that upset the ordinary Americans who were sitting, one would hope, in theater seats.

Since I have made my views pretty clear, I asked my former Milligan and Palm Beach Atlantic University colleague Alex Wainer — a Batman scholar with a doctorate in film studies — for his reaction to the Critical Drinker screed. I knew that Wainer is a quiet, cautious guy who doesn’t like a lot of screaming and yelling. He normally punches valid holes in angry YouTube material.

Here is the email that he sent me:

The “beginning of the end?” Maybe midway to the end.

The Drinker is factually correct, I’m afraid. Ticket prices have gone up for years while sales have declined long before COVID. Most of us are being weaned off the moviegoing habit by, yes, COVID and prices and inconvenience, more and more seated on our messy sofas full of crumbs, popcorn kernels and stains whom no 19 year old theater employee will clean up. No, my 65-inch OLED display and affordable sound bar won’t come close to the theatrical experience but we are all making that tradeoff. …

I ask my Film Appreciation students what they’re looking forward to seeing in theaters soon — this time of year, not much, more so as summer approaches but there are still few responses. We are seeing the decline of the 50-year Blockbuster Era that began with Jaws. We will still get billion $ hits but fewer, but production costs will have to go down to make for more profitability. I’m with Christopher Nolan’s promotion of the theatrical experience but there aren’t enough like him to be a consistent draw to the multiplex.

There’s too much competition for young eyeballs of course, never so many distracting attractions on YouTube and TikTok that cost little or nothing but your brain. Television’s arrival hurt the movies and digital has been driving down filmgoing for decades.

But Hollywood itself is in creative crisis, after lecturing its audience for years, the audience learned to distrust studio content. Now, with dramatic shrinkage in size, thousands out-of-work, the same franchises keep making runs at the box office and usually falling short. This is Ross Douthat’s decadence thesis in action. The populace may not widely share enough values to justify MASS entertainment any more, in a demassified age. Andrew Klavan predicts that eventually someone will figure out what works with audiences and creative renewal will arrive, human beings being what they are, but when?

Netflix isn’t a disrupter so much as the techno-logical inevitability approaching since the first widescreen television sets arrived at the Mattingly’s house around 2003 as television and film screens began to merge.

Do fewer studio films in theaters mean opportunity for alternative (Christian) filmmakers? Or are such little productions booking the last cabins on the Titanic right before it departs?

Film as a social experience, Marvel-ous not so long ago — I will never forget the audience excitement of opening nights of several MCU films — will be fond memories for many but displaced as we sit on our sofas, either as ever more isolated individuals or one or two friends or hopefully family members, in total control of the experience — diminished to 75 inches.

Rational Sheep readers know that I think alternative studios — Angel, and others — should focus on producing low-budget “singles” (as opposed to trying to hit box-office “grand slams”) based on quality scripts, one or two mid-budget stars and the smart use of emerging technologies, in terms of editing and special effects. Like what? Like “SKETCH.”

The question, as always, is whether Christian institutions will support alternative-media efforts to create quality entertainment that can fill any of these gaps. Yes, it would help if more religious colleges and universities offered mass-communication degrees that stressed screenwriting and ways to fund digital storytelling. Right now, most are settling for several years of classes in which students learn to use soon-to-be-outdated software programs to produce public relations products.

OK, let’s try to be positive.

While the Critical Drinker rages, most of the time, I’d like to ask parents, pastors, teachers and counselors if they are seeing any alternative movies and streaming programs that are worthy of sincere praise, as opposed to all the sticky sweet “Christian” products that are clearly meant to substitute for the real thing.

The writing is the key. Want a sample from the past? Cue this witty scene from Whit Stillman’s classic “Barcelona,” in 1994. Turn it up and focus on what this character is actually saying.

Let me know what you think in the comments pages.

Also, let me make an appeal for a few more “paid option” readers to help keep Rational Sheep going. It’s been a strange month or two, with lots of new “free option” readers (which is good) but quite a few losses in this project’s small, small circle of paid subscribers (which really hurts). Truth is, I have the annual subscription fee set at the lowest level that Substack will allow, roughly the cost of two trips to Dairy Queen (to describe the issue in Texas terms).

Also, please pass some of these posts on to religious leaders that you know and trust. If something draws a reaction with new folks outside of the Rational Sheep circle, let me know. Thanks!

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Once again, it’s time to “hit the road,” although most of this trip (once again) will be spent on a boat.

Under ordinary circumstances, we do not cruise twice in the same year. In the late spring, we did a cruise that took us all the way around the British Isles, going as far north as the stunning Shetland Islands of Scotland. I am still mentally unpacking all that I learned from that trip (click for a hint).

This time, we are heading back to Alaska, visiting quite a bit of territory that we didn’t see on cruise two years ago. It’s complicated, but this trip is basically a gift linked to earlier travel. We had to take the trip this year and we didn’t turn it down, needless to say.

All of this is a substitute for the Alaska trip that we ultimately want to take.

We hope, somehow, someday, to visit some of the sacred sites in Alaska linked to the work of missionaries who originally brought Eastern Orthodoxy to North America. That kind of trip would require organizing a more complex pilgrimage route and, well, we may be too old to pull that off.

Most of the important sites are quite remote and, truth be told, the big boats do not go there. St. Herman of Alaska was a hermit, which by definition means his hut was in the middle of nowhere, on a small island. Visiting his island is a three-step project, at the very least. (1) Get to Seattle or Vancouver, British Columbia. (2) Get to a town near the island. (3) Find a boat that will take pilgrims to the island. Now, repeat that process for many of the other Orthodox sites.

At the end of this note, I will insert a column that I wrote about of amazing stop on our 2024 trip, which took place just after the start of Rational Sheep. That cruise included Sitka, a stop that is rarely on the big-boat Alaska routes. That island town, once known as “New Archangel,” was the hub for early missionaries (and, yes, a base for many of the Russian fur traders who had far baser motives).

We will be traveling for more than two weeks, including a short stop in Las Vegas, of all places (it’s complicated, but we do have a family connection there). During this time, I will follow my usual Rational Sheep travel schedule. That’s three posts a week, instead of four, and all three will be open to all subscribers. I assume that I will be able to do “Crossroads” podcasts. Paid-option readers! Please hang in there with me. I always lose a few of my small flock of paid subscribers when I travel.

Now, here is that column from the first Alaska visit: “The new kind of threat to Alaska’s historic Russian Orthodox cathedral.”

The fire began in the early hours of January 2, 1966, and spread through the business district of Sitka, Alaska — toward the historic St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral.

“Everyone in town ran to the church and started passing things out hand to hand in long chains of people,” said Father Herman Belt, the cathedral’s current dean. “They even carried out the chandelier, since you could lower it back then. They ran out with all the candle stands. They carried out the crosses. We lost one icon.”

The rescued treasures included the bishop’s throne carved by St. Innocent Veniaminov, the Siberian priest and missionary who in 1840 was sent to serve as bishop of “New Archangel,” the island village that would become Sitka. The bishop translated the Gospels and Orthodox texts into several Alaskan languages and dialects and, later, served as Metropolitan of Moscow.

The bishop’s staff of St. Innocent is in the rebuilt sanctuary, leaning next to the central doors before the altar. The cathedral — designed by St. Innocent — contains other links to six saints whose lives touched Sitka.

The original cathedral was completed in 1848, built with logs, clapboard siding and interior walls covered in sailcloth. St. Michael’s was rebuilt using concrete, steel and fire-resistant materials, using 1961 drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey.

Russian churches can handle winter. But snow isn’t the problem, in a cathedral near the Gulf of Alaska. There are leaks along joints in the domes and the wooden floors squeak because of water damage. Bedrock under Sitka ends a block away.

“We’re in the mush below that, then we’ve got the ocean, so all the rain and melt running down dumps into our basement,” Belt explained. “If we get snow here, it isn’t too bad. But we get lots of rain, with wind, coming off the water.”

Sitka averages 90 inches of rain a year, in this temperate rainforest. Seattle gets 40.

Saving this National Historic Landmark will be complicated, including pulling the copper from the domes to fix faulty flashing. The cathedral is cooperating with the Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska network and the National Parks Service. The project could cost a million dollars.

Many in the small, steady, congregation are Tlingit Indians, a tribe that has lived in Sitka since the last Ice Age. The worshippers include members of other tribes, Orthodox believers who have moved from other states and people who “walk through the doors after reading about Orthodoxy online,” Belt said.

The historic setting is both symbolic and complex.

Orthodox leaders sent missionaries in response to brutal, lurid reports about Russian traders – including convicts from Siberia – sent to find “soft gold,” the thick, waterproof fur of sea otters. St. Herman and the first monks gradually became allies with the natives in struggles with the powerful Russian American Company. When the United States purchased Alaska, the Orthodox began petitioning Washington, D.C., continuing appeals on behalf of local tribes.

In his book “Orthodox Alaska,” the late Father Michael Oleksa noted that monks learned that native spirituality included a Creator God and a glorious, but flawed, natural world.

Orthodox rites blessing rivers, lakes and oceans pleased the Indians. So did John 3:16, the Bible verse proclaiming: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.” That rang true for Indians who believed salmon, whales, deer and other animals were gifts from the Creator, creatures that willingly yielded their lives to provide sustenance.

Oleksa wrote: “It is this essentially cosmic spirituality, biblically based, patristically affirmed, and liturgically celebrated in the Orthodox tradition” that is threatened by secularizing trends in modern institutions, materialism and media. His big question: “What does the Alaskan Orthodox experience have to contribute to Eastern Orthodox theology in the modern world?”

Today, noted Belt, the St. Michael’s flock continues to sing hymns in the Tlingit language, while striving to preserve many traditions from early monks and their converts.

“People everywhere have their own traditions and customs,” he said. “Here in Alaska, things are really different and not in a bad way. There’s the native piety and the Russian piety and they have endured for many, many years. … It’s gorgeous. It’s from a pure heart. It’s warm and tender. … That’s something that can be treasured.”

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About 25 years ago, I wrote two “On Religion” columns examining the Church of Rome’s priest shortage — through the eyes of faithful mothers, with the help of a priest who had led a seminary. The headline: “Fathers, mothers & Catholic sons.”

I was reminded of themes from those columns during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, which discussed this New York Times feature, “The Nuns Who Took Over an Assisted Living Center.” The second part of the double-decker headline hinted at the issue that reminded me of the earlier columns: “As convents are closing all over, the sisters are facing the end of their lives together — and they have brought the party to an assisted living center in the suburbs.”

Click for "Crossroads" podcast

The Times piece included this byte of life-and-death information: “In the mid-1960s, America was home to more than 180,000 Roman Catholic nuns; now there are only about 35,000, with an average age of over 80. Congregations have had to sell or close their convents, forcing these older sisters to find new places to live.”

Yes, there used to be three sisters or nuns for every Catholic priest in this country. What caused this stunning shortage of nuns and sisters? That’s an important question that the Times piece failed to address. One potential answer: With the feminist and sexual revolutions, it is now easier for young women to pursue careers in education, medicine, sacred music, etc., without taking sacred vows.

However, read between the lines in two short passages from one of my 2002 columns on the shortage of priests.

Few Catholic boys grow up to be men of the cloth without drawing inspiration from their parish priests and receiving the blessing of their mothers.

Both halves of that equation have to work or the church suffers.

Something basic has changed. Truth is, many Catholic parents no longer celebrate the news that one of their children wants to take vows. Why is this?

This attitude shift is especially significant when combined with a major statistical change in Catholic life. In the past, when large families were the norm, it was a matter of pride to have a son enter religious life. But what if most Catholic families contain only one son?

Now, read that final sentence with this edit: What if most Catholic families only contain one daughter?

I would imagine that the nuns and sisters included in this lovely feature would know plenty of hard facts about these trends, after decades of post Vatican II life in which they encouraged — with little success — young women to enter their fading orders.

This led me to another obvious question that I wish had been answered in this lengthy Times report: Are all Catholic religious orders for women headed into the same demographic black hole?

Let’s consider that question in this context, which is the feature’s explanation of how these amazing nuns came together at a Lutheran care center called Wartburg, located on 34 acres of land in in Mount Vernon, New York. Note this important background:

Since the first wave of about 30 nuns from the Dominican Sisters of Hope, a congregation in Newburgh, N.Y., arrived in 2009, the number of sisters in the center has swelled to about 80, more than one-third of the residents.

“When the cardinal was here last year,” said David Gentner, the president of Wartburg, “he said there’s more consecrated women religious on this campus than anywhere in the archdiocese.” …

Now, as they navigate their own final chapters, they are also contemplating the end of their congregations, a process known as coming to completion. And they may be witnessing the end of sisterhood itself.

“In 10 years, children will not know what a nun is — was,” Sister Stephen said, correcting herself. “They’ll be gone.”

Let me stress that no one doubts the reality that most Catholic religious orders for women have seen their numbers decline sharply.

Still, the final statement in that quotation is inaccurate.

I wondered if the Times team considered adding a few paragraphs noting that there are some orders that are growing — rapidly — while attracting waves of young novice nuns. Did the editors know about this small, but highly symbolic, trend that stands in contrast with the bleak, but important, numbers at the heart of this feature?

Also, what about the earlier comment about sisters and nuns in New York?

Well, it would have been interesting if the Times team had talked to the Sisters of Life, an order founded in 1991 by Cardinal John O’Connor of New York. This circle of sisters started with 10 or so members and has grown to more than 120. The history page of the group’s website notes:

Cardinal John O’Connor, a navy chaplain-become-archbishop of New York, paid a [1975] visit to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where thousands of people had been tortured and killed during the Second World War. As he placed his hands into the semicircular red brick ovens, he said he had a profound spiritual experience in which he felt the intermingled ashes of Christian and Jew, rabbi and priest. Pierced to the heart, he cried out: “My God! How can human beings do this to other human beings?” In that moment, he made a promise: to do everything in his power to protect human life.

Thus, the women in this order take an additional vow, promising that their ministries will strive to protect human life, from conception to natural death. They engage in pro-life work, retreats and support for women who need help.

I already knew about another famous order that, quite frankly, is struggling to handle the high number of young women who want to join. I am referring to the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia (Nashville Dominicans).

This order was founded in 1860 but has experienced rapid growth in recent decades — about 60% since 2000, reaching roughly 300+ members in recent reports. The median age is in the mid-30s, or thereabout. The sisters stress classical Catholic education, worship, catechesis and traditional communal life. If you want to know more, read this 2010 National Public Radio report: “For These Young Nuns, Habits Are The New Radical.”

There are others that are easy to find online. I asked the Grok AI platform to describe the traits that link the growing orders, as opposed to those that are dying. Here is part of that summary, and readers may want to glance at the photos on the websites of the two national networks mentioned:

Uniting traits often include fidelity to traditional Catholic teachings and the Magisterium (many affiliate with the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious rather than the more progressive Leadership Conference of Women Religious); wearing of a distinctive religious habit; strong emphasis on communal life, regular prayer (including the Divine Office/Liturgy of the Hours), and Eucharistic devotion; clear, attractive charisms with visible identity and purpose; and appeal to younger women seeking radical, authentic commitment in contrast to more modernized or declining communities. …

These groups tend to retain pre- or carefully adapted post-Vatican II practices (habits, structured community, orthodox formation) rather than extensive experimentation, which correlates with higher vocational interest among younger generations seeking structure, meaning, and countercultural witness.

I will end with one more question. The Times feature tells us many things about the nuns and sisters now living at the Wartburg center, from their love of dancing to their preferred color of wine, from their commitment to helping others to their feelings about their choices to take vows.

I kept looking for one or two important words that are missing in the Times feature — “Jesus” and “Christ.” I think this gap tells us more about newsroom culture than the faith of these elderly women.

Come to think of it, the story also failed to mention, or quote, the Catholic priest or priests who provide Sacraments for the sisters and nuns — such as celebrating Mass, hearing Confessions and performing Last Rites.

Readers will learn a lot about the “Happy Hour” traditions at Wartburg, but nothing about their traditions in worship. Is there a choir? Daily veneration of the Blessed Sacrament?

As I said, it is a beautiful piece. Here is one final quote: “Yet to spend time among the sisters at Wartburg is to see a promising vision of old age: collective, purposeful, grounded in service to others — and above all, accepting of change.”

Enjoy the podcast and please pass it along to others.

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I have been preparing, as of late, for two lectures I will give at a Catholic event a few weeks from now in the Midwest. I was prevented from going in April, due to medical issues, and thus posted this offering here on Rational Sheep: “What I would have said in Wisconsin.”

I was sad not to go, but I told organizers that my delayed visit will have the advantage of talking about screens culture, artificial intelligence and family life AFTER THE RELEASE of “Toy Story 5,” a Pixar meditation on those topics. The hit movie was released on June 19 (close to Father’s Day), and hit streaming platforms on August 18, with DVD and Blu-ray products arriving on September 22.

I have asked if, during my visit to Appleton, Wisconsin, we could have a social event for some of the participants to view “Toy Story 5” together, taking notes. I certainly want to see the movie again. For some of my early reactions, see these posts — “‘Toy Story 5’: Prophetic or safe compromise” and “Toy Story & AI toys: Disney to the rescue?” I also wrote an “On Religion” column linked to the movie, and comments by Pope Leo XIV, but we will get to that in a bit.

Meanwhile, rare is the day that goes by without some kind of headline linked to screens-culture “signals” from the demigods of Big Tech. Consider this double-decker headline from The New York Times:

OpenAI Introduces ‘ChatGPT for Teens’ as Safety Concerns Grow

The artificial intelligence start-up announced a chatbot mode that will automatically limit some conversations to better protect young users.

That’s kind of a good news-bad news signal, isn’t it? Here’s the overture:

OpenAI announced … “ChatGPT for Teens,” a new mode in which the chatbot automatically limits some conversations to better protect young users, as scrutiny grows over the harmful effects of artificial intelligence.

Many features of the new mode deal with safety, the company said in a blog post. The chatbot will limit high-risk conversations that involve self-harm, violence, eating disorders, and explicit sexual and graphic content. In some cases, ChatGPT will alert adults who have opted in to parental controls and notifications. And the mode will strengthen protections that prevent the chatbot from suggesting it has personal feelings.

Meanwhile, “Toy Story 5” is clearly one of the year’s hit movies, with Box Office Mojo noting, in a recent update, a domestic gross of $475,919,757, with international ticket sales at $639,745,000, for a grand total of $1,115,664,757.

Disney needed that. Expect one or two more stories from the gang led by Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Jessie the Cowgirl.

Before getting to my column, let me point readers to an essay from a popular byline on this Substack — Joseph Holmes of Religion Unplugged. But this headline is from the Public Discourse website: “What Toy Story 5 Gets—and Misses—about Screen Time for Kids.” Holmes noted that “Rotten Tomatoes Critics gave the film a 94 percent, making Toy Story the best-reviewed franchise in history.”

Clearly, the flick’s Big Tech villain (sort of) was timely. Here is a key block of what Holmes has to say:

… Toy Story 5’s social analysis is impressively astute. Sometimes it feels like the writers could have read Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation. The film opens with the now eight-year-old only child Bonnie struggling to make friends because all the kids she could play with all have iPads (or, as the film calls them, “Lilypads”). So her parents give her a Lilypad to help her connect with other children. In the film, Lilypad herself is alive like the other toys in the Toy Story universe. And she is motivated to help Bonnie make friends, which she thinks she can do better than Bonnie’s other toys like Buzz and Jessie because all the other kids in the neighborhood are building their friendships online as well rather than playing with toys.

This follows Haidt’s contention that most young people would prefer to be off cell phones and social media, but they can’t because if they do, they will be socially excluded. It’s a collective action problem that requires a collective solution. Early scenes show the doll Jessie looking at all the kids in their homes, not playing with their friends, but staring at screens. Throughout the movie, even when kids or families are hanging out with each other, they’re primarily looking at screens rather than each other. (This leads to one of the best darkly funny jokes in the film, in which the toys run through a house freely and nobody sees them because the whole family in every room is on their devices.)

By the end of the movie, it’s clear that the Big Idea here is not that tablets and smartphones are BAD, but that some of the people who use them are not very nice.

This is a crucial point for debate and Holmes unpacks it carefully.

… The problem is not toys or tech: it’s that Bonnie doesn’t have real friends, particularly, the right friends who are good for her. So, according to the movie, toys and tech are bad when they keep kids from having the right friends — or match them up with the wrong friends — and they’re good when they facilitate the right friends. Tech, in this sense, can actually be good because it can give you access to a wider group of friends to find the ones that are best for you.

Many of the tech struggles the film depicts actually reflect the real data. Bonnie is portrayed as particularly susceptible to screen addiction because she doesn’t already have friends or a wider in-person community. …

American conservatives have resisted smartphone-related mental health decline much better than liberals. It is largely because they’ve retained the community benefits of institutions like religion and family. Haidt puts it bluntly: “When kids are rooted in communities, they don’t get washed out to sea by the phone-based childhood.”

Ah, but there’s a catch. How do people find the RIGHT KIND of friends and people with whom to associate and even Commune (with a large “C”)?

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This is a very personal post, in part because the subject is so close to my heart, mind and faith.

I am talking about the role of sacred music in church life, as well as the lives of many believers. Yes, this topic is closely related to decades of “worship wars” conflict in many churches, the clash over music preferences between the Greatest Generation, the omnipresent Baby Boomers, Generation X, the Millennials and, now, the massive Generation Z, the “Zoomers.”

The worship wars look different in different settings and traditions, and irony is extremely common. For example, in Roman Catholicism, folk Masses are now largely linked with gray-haired Boomers, especially progressives, while many younger Catholics (and converts) prefer ancient chants and Latin.

Before I get to some personal anecdotes, allow me to offer a 2007 “On Religion” column on the megachurch Protestant side of things. The headline: “FM radio reality in church.” Remember that this column is nearly 20 years old. This is the full text.

The clock is ticking and soon Jeff Crandall will face the challenge of selecting the right music for the Christmas services at High Desert Church.

This will be tricky, because Christmas is what the 70-member staff at this megachurch calls a “federal” event. This means that these services will unite worshippers from the three radically different services that are held week after week at this booming congregation in Victorville, Calif., about 90 miles outside of Los Angeles.

“Christmas may be the only time when people want to hear traditional music, no matter what age they are,” said Crandall, the church’s 46-year-old “worship pastor” and the former drummer in a rock band called the Altar Boys. “Even kids who are totally into hard rock what to hear a few carols, which makes it easier to put together a service that pleases everybody. ... We try to do the same thing during Holy Week and Easter.”

In recent decades, many churches have been shattered by the intergenerational strife that researchers call the “worship wars.” If you want to split a national church, change its teachings about sexuality or salvation. But if you want to split a local church, you toss the hymnal, hire a drummer, unleash the teen-agers or make some other musical change that rocks the pews.

But High Desert Church is the kind of church that has turned this equation around. Its goal is to build a multi-flock ministry that unapologetically offers all rock, all the time, but with bands that appeal to different packs of young people, as well as bands for believers from an earlier g-g-g-generation or two.

Now, this nondenominational flock is poised to become the poster church for this FM-radio-dial approach to worship, after being dissected in the hallowed pages of the New York Times.

“When you start a church, you don’t decide who you’re going to reach and then pick a music style,” senior pastor Tom Mercer told America’s newspaper of record. “You pick a music style, and that determines who’s going to come.”

On one level, the music divides this church. But on another level, the music is at the heart of worship services that create zones of comfort for people who have been raised in a culture in which consumers define themselves by their musical choices.

Thus, High Desert Church offers a “Classic” service for Baby Boomers and others who came of age during the “Jesus rock” explosion in the ‘60s and ‘70s. This service offers a softer brand of acoustic rock – think Byrds or the Eagles – that is easier on the delicate and even damaged ears of older worshippers, said Crandall.

Meanwhile, other musicians focus on the “Harbor” service for people between the ages of 30 and 50. It features the kind of soaring, inspiring rock that most people would associate with U2 and classic bands from the 1980s. Then the “Seven” service cranks things up another notch, with what Crandall described as a “dark” and “moody” mix of postmodern music for the young.

The bottom line: Church leaders use different technology to create different music for different generations who choose to attend different services.

The music unites and the music divides. The challenge for church leadership, Crandall said, is to unite these flocks around a common vision when doing evangelism and missions – primarily through 18-person cell groups that focus on fellowship and prayer. Then there are those “federal” events that take place several times a year.

There are still Protestant and even Roman Catholic churches that are trying to create “blended” worship services that appeal to all ages at the same time. “Blended” is the term used to describe a mix of traditional hymns and rock music, switching back and forth between a pipe organ and those electric guitars.

Their intentions are good, said Crandall, but the results are guaranteed to offend people whose musical tastes are simply not compatible. Thus, he believes that “blended” services drive people away rather than pulling them together.

“This is reality,” he said. “Everything is about the music. When you go to the mall, you can even tell what kind of people are supposed to be shopping in the different stores just by listening to the music that is playing. Can you imagine kids wanting to shop in a store that is playing the music that their parents listen to? No way.”

Like I said, this was two decades ago. What if today’s kids hear their grandparents listening to Pink Floyd and their parents are into Foo Fighters? What FM radio music defines the new tradition or traditions?

The big question: Where do you go when your church has no worship tradition that transcends these clashing generations?

OK, here are some personal reflections. Music is, quite literally, one of the most important forces in my life and that has always been the case.

* Every now and then, someone asks why I never wear ties. I own a few ties and I think I know where they are stored. I need one every now and then when I speak in academic settings that have not embraced the Oxford shirt and khakis look. I think I wore a tie about five years ago. Maybe.

The reason I don’t wear ties is quite simple: Starting at age 10 or 12, the age when a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid would start dressing up a bit, I began wearing a choir robe in the adult choir. I was a choir member, of some kind or another, starting at age 6. Why wear a tie under a robe and stole? And besides ties never felt comfortable for me when I was singing. I sang in every school choir I could and competed in all-state competitions of various kinds. I was a choir guy. Always.

* What about my six years (undergraduate and graduate student) at Baylor University? When I arrived at Baylor, I sang way over my head in an audition and made Baylor’s classical Chorale.

Truth is, I wanted to be a music major, but learned that it was hard to do that if you had never learned to play the piano. I could sight read, in the context of music with chord structures. In choral music, I could figure things out with my quick ear and the ability to read time signatures. At age 18, I learned the Brahms Requiem in five days.

The key: I needed choral music. The Chorale met three times a week and I missed four rehearsals in six years. It was my safe zone, a place for beauty and sanity. I loved the motets of Anton Bruckner and I continue to hear them in my dreams. I was exposed to the world of Eastern Orthodox music, as well.

During concerts, the men wore tuxedos and very carefully fitted shirts and bow ties. That was fine with me.

* Strangely enough, I am also a guitar fanatic. I’m just an old folk music guy who can strum and sing, but this music is important to me. If you want help finding a great guitar (in various price ranges), I am your guy.

During my evangelical Anglican decade, I played some guitar in church. I quickly learned that the constantly evolving world of “praise music” was not for me. I loved the old hymns and folk music that, when we moved to Eastern Tennessee, I learned was often linked to Scottish and Irish roots.

In 1999, I preached in chapel for the final time during my years at Milligan College (now University) — discussing traditions and ties that bind believers through many generations. I brought my guitar and worked up some hymns with the “praise band,” focusing on old classics. I called them the Hymns From the Hills, and most of them were in the hymnals in the pews. The last song was a folk-rock, rather acoustic Byrds take on “What Wondrous Love Is This.”

Afterwards, an angry student confronted me. She said she was upset because she expected to hear “praise music” in chapel. I assumed that this meant songs that were not in the hymnal. I asked her if she had listened to the words and images found in “What Wondrous Love Is This.” The final verse:

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
and when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be,
and through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
and through eternity I’ll sing on!

I asked her if that was “praise music." She said, “You know what I mean!”

* Several years later, there was a symbolic moment in my “Exegete the Culture” seminar at Palm Beach Atlantic University. During the “worship wars” unit we discussed church tensions surrounding the use of classical music, traditional hymnody and the whole world of “praise music.”

One of the students was a featured singer in a local megachurch praise band. She told me about something that had happened during a band rehearsal days earlier as they were running through popular praise songs that might be used during the various weekend services.

After practicing a soaring rock anthem, one the congregation sang with great enthusiasm, she said another young woman leaned over and whispered: “I am SOOOOOO over this song.” The song was still a hit on worship charts and less than a year old. This was an eye-opening moment for my student.

* I am now Eastern Orthodox, of course. The big issue in some — repeat “some” — Orthodox flocks is how to properly blend two forms of music that are woven into the traditions and theology of our ancient churches. One is Byzantine chant and the other is the vast, deep, complex world of Orthodox choral music.

If you want to take a deep dive into worship that combines these essential forms of Orthodox music, click here to explore the three-plus hours of the 2026 Pascha service at Holy Cross Orthodox Church near Baltimore, where my family sang and worshipped for 12 years.

The challenge, these days, is finding musicians — singers and, especially, directors — who have the skills to handle the complex world of Byzantine chant and then the equally beautiful and complex world of Orthodox choral music. Both are essential in Orthodox worship, especially the Divine Liturgy (what, in the West, would be called the Mass).

It takes a lot of rehearsal time to sing Orthodox music. In my experience, chant is much harder to sing properly than choral hymns and anthems. Some people can handle both. Some (tmatt raises his hand) cannot handle the complex, but single-line tones of Byzantine chant, which require an ear trained to handle the precise, often mysterious, intervals in Eastern music.

In my experience, the newcomers who do this best have piano skills. As I said earlier, my ability to read music is built on my ability (since childhood) to hear chords and then sing parts (I am a bass) inside the framework of choral music, both Eastern and Western. I am all but lost trying to sight-read chant. I even struggle to sing the ison pitch that moves up and down under the chant.

The bottom line: Orthodox churches need skilled chanters (and directors) and skilled choral musicians (and directors). Our tradition sings with two lungs.

This brings me to the column I wrote last week — which focuses on the nationwide trend AWAY from church choirs and, thus, from efforts to train the choir directors needed to lead them.

This column covers what is happening in Protestantism. But, trust me, this reality is affecting singers in sanctuaries everywhere.

You see, a modern church can, with only four or five skilled performers, have a “praise team” approach to worship. Ironically, an ancient church can, with only four or five skilled performers, have a “chanting team” approach to worship.

It is much, much harder to find directors who have the skills, and the divine calling, to handle choirs and other forms of music.

Where will our churches find the choir directors that they need? Here is my national column from this past week: “Once upon a time, most churches had ‘choirs’ and there were even ‘choir directors.’”

For most of the 20th century, the typical American church had a room containing rows of chairs, shelves stacked with music and cabinets full of robes and contrasting stoles for sopranos, altos, tenors and basses of various sizes.

This was a “choir room” and these singers were led by a “choir director.”

Times have changed. These days, most up-to-date churches have “praise bands,” with a few skilled vocalists, guitarists, drummers and keyboardists with stacks of synthesizers. And most church members have smartphone calendars with zero room left for a choir.

“It’s often about time, now more than ever, especially for 20- and 30-somethings. A lot of them have children, but people had children in the ‘60s,” said Mark Cabaniss, president and CEO of the Jubilate Music Group, near Nashville. “That was a different era and a different world. It’s hard to even get kids into children’s choirs, today. … They’re too busy playing soccer or T-ball or whatever.”

Cabaniss has directed choirs for 40 years, while composing and arranging music for ensembles of all kinds. He joined a choir at age 6 and began directing church choirs in college.

“You have to be very sensitive to people’s time,” he stressed, reached by Zoom. “The days of two-hour rehearsals are over. Even a 90-minute one is a tough stretch. … It’s all about time, time, time, if you’re trying to recruit people into the choir.”

While the COVID years were a disaster, the trends -- shrinking choirs, with mic’d up praise bands on stage -- had been clear for several decades.

In 1998, the National Congregations Study said the number of U.S. churches with choirs was already down to 50%, noted Will Whittaker, writing for Baptist News Global. He is the author of the book “Cultivating Intergenerational Worship.”

Churches with choirs fell to 40% by 2019 -- before the pandemic. Meanwhile, 75% of Black Protestant churches had choirs, along with 70% of Catholic parishes. That number was 47% in liberal mainline Protestant churches while only 34% of conservative evangelical congregations reported having traditional choirs.

It’s hard for choir directors to compete in the praise-band era, noted Whittaker. “Sure, an overly polished, slick sound is perhaps better achieved with a few of your best musicians, but the Lord certainly has called more than a few very talented people to serve in worship ministry.”

Instead of choirs that focus on modern anthems, or classical church music, some congregations now have “worship choirs” consisting of volunteers -- no robes, few rehearsals -- who offer background support for worship-team leaders standing in the stage spotlights.

Churches that want choir directors often find few musicians with the right skills, noted Cabaniss. Many observers ask: Which came first, the shortage of choir directors or the sharp decline in church choirs to direct?

“The lack of choirs came first, if you ask me,” he said. “So, the institutions that trained young people, college students, to be sacred choral directors started trimming that down. … Seminaries just don’t train directors like they used to.” Some have closed their music departments, he added.

In an online essay, “From Empty Chairs to New Voices: How Choirs Win Younger Singers,” Cabaniss offered advice for choir leaders. Summing that up, he said:

* Offer a sense of community that many younger adults crave, combining prayer, beauty, a sense of purpose and intergenerational connections. “Younger adults will love choir when the choir loves them back.”

* Many singers fear failure, since they cannot read music. Directors should plan short classes teaching basic skills, and choose music the faithful love to sing.

* Offer childcare during rehearsals. For many, this will be the “deciding factor.”

* Enthusiasm is crucial, especially in recruiting, he said. “Choir is about community. … It’s about worship and ministry, of course it is. But it’s also about coming together.”

Cabaniss concluded: “Here’s my soap box. I don’t want church choirs to be the dinner theaters of tomorrow. … The golden age is over for dinner theaters. Are there any dinner theaters out there? You bet there are, but not like there were in the ‘70s.

“There are church choirs out there, but not like there were in the ‘70s. … But that doesn’t mean that people no longer want to sing in church.”

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I am not a theme park guy. Period.

OK, if someone built a theme park around acoustic guitars and BBQ, I might go. I admit that I do have trouble with the whole Disney empire thing.

But here is the Big Idea for this little video think piece: I am old enough to remember when the cultural LEFT considered the Kingdom of Mouse a blight on the whole world, just another way for rich Americans to crush the beauty and stories of other cultures in order to sell schlock. You know, that evil thing called colonization.

These days, of course, it’s the RIGHT that’s mad at Disney. Why? Because they see it as a giant machine intent on crushing the values of Middle America, in part by soaking the Sexual Revolution and gender-studies DNA into everything pushed on Disney platforms.

It’s amazing the degree to which these two viewpoints can be merged into this basic idea: Disney sells Disney, while Disney evolves to fit the viewpoints of its artists.

Now, I am making this weekend piece open to all because I really want feedback, especially from people who either enjoy theme parks or used to enjoy theme parks.

The video at the top of this post is only 20 minutes long. There is no need to watch all of it to get the Big Idea.

In this video, the team from a YouTube operation called The Disney Food Blog Guide decided to visit East Tennessee to check out Dollywood, the theme-park built by the unelected queen of this region — Dolly Parton.

Now, I am not here to sell Dollywood. I have never been, but do plan to pay a visit (it’s near a really fine guitar store). I went to Disney World once. That was enough.

I am not here to sell Parton as some kind of Bible Belt angel. She’s a brilliant businesswoman (one of the most important in pop-culture history) and perhaps the most underrated American songwriter of the past 50 years. And after conquering pop music, she turned around and assembled a squad of killer bluegrass musicians to make a trilogy of stunning old-school CDs proving that she truly knows what’s what in mountain culture. Start with this: “The Grass Is Blue.” And if you have never heard her bluegrass-gospel take on “Stairway to Heaven,” click here. It’s on “Horns and Halos,” another disc in that bluegrass set.

Parton also, of course, built Dollywood as a monument to her love of the Smoky Mountains. It also salutes the family — 12 children, all born before her mother was 35 — led by Robert Lee Parton, an illiterate sharecropper and farmer that Dolly insists was one of the smartest people she has ever known. Dolly was kid No. 4.

So, what is the Big Idea of that video up there?

That’s what I want to hear from readers.

I will, however, share mine — since it is based on my own thinking about the video, more than the facts and opinions from the DFB Guide team.

Dollywood is a sweet, way-too-perfect version of a real culture. There’s more to it than Dolly glamour, for sure. But it’s a theme park.

Disney World is a sweet, over-the-top salute to the power of pop culture and the images and stories that millions of parents think they need to buy their children, often instead of taking the time to read them the real stories. And it’s a theme park.

I admit that I am prejudiced against Disney theme parks because it’s all about buying the images on glowing screens. And people fly from all over the world to purchase their children a few days in that pretend world built on TV, movies and now a streaming-cable platform. I have been known to say this: The fact that Disney World, in the sweat and swamps of central Florida, is the world’s top vacation destination is evidence that the Devil is real. When I say that, I am talking about role that millions of parents have allowed glowing screens to play in the lives of their children.

Let’s keep the politics of Disney out of this discussion.

Just watch the video and tell me what you think the Disney experts saw at Dollywood and, this is important, who is the intended audience for this park. There’s lots of talk about money and values, of various kinds. Look for clues there.

And what about Disney? If you have been to one of those parks, maybe multiple times, let me know. Feel free to call me judgemental, because I admit that I am on this topic.

By the way, I asked the Grok platform to tell me how Disney parks are doing, these days, in terms of economics. The bottom line: Attendance is down, a bit, but higher ticket costs are keeping the profits up.

Disney’s critics have their doubts about that. Grok said this:

Affordability and demographics: Rapid price increases are said to price out middle-class families, shifting the guest mix toward higher-income “Disney adults” or wealthier travelers. Some analyses note average daily attendance calculations (factoring open days and parties) can look softer even if raw annual totals edge up slightly. …

Official attendance figures have been mostly flat to modestly mixed in recent years (slight gains in some periods, slight declines in others), while guest spending and profits have risen; conservative critics emphasize anecdotal low-crowd reports, price effects, and cultural/political backlash, creating a narrative gap with company-reported stats covered by mainstream outlets.

Finally, there is this cluster of facts on the ground:

Disney does not release precise daily gate counts publicly. Aggregate annual or quarterly figures can mask seasonal patterns, capacity management, after-hours events, or shifts in visitor mix. Proxies used by fans and planners (posted wait times, crowd calendars from sites like TouringPlans) have frequently shown lower-than-expected crowds—especially in traditional peak periods like summer — leading to widespread “empty park” photos and videos even when annual totals hold steady. Revenue and profits have been more consistently positive because Disney has leaned into higher pricing (dynamic tickets, Lightning Lane/paid skip-the-line options, premium experiences) and attracted higher-spending guests. This can produce similar or slightly lower volume with better margins — the company has described domestic parks as operating near capacity in a deliberate strategy favoring yield over pure volume growth until expansions come online.

Dollywood? Well, as theme parks go, it’s a rather small franchise. But it’s making lots of money. Grok put it this way:

While many larger or chain-operated parks have seen flatter or softer attendance amid higher prices and competition, Dollywood has posted growth and records in recent years. Its combination of Dolly Parton’s brand strength, Appalachian/Smoky Mountains theming, family focus, live entertainment, and continual new attractions has sustained demand. Leadership has expressed ambitions to position it as a stronger national (or even international) destination.

OK, now it’s time to write a few words in a comment. What is the Big Idea in the video? What did YOU see and hear?

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To say the least, Indiana Fever star Sophie (“Do the Sophie”) Cunningham’s quotes about trans athletes and women’s sports ignited a firestorm in sports, politics, social media and the elite press. In this case, the sports world includes the small, struggling Women’s National Professional Basketball Association.

The furor started at ESPN, of course:

“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she says. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

Click for "Crossroads" podcast

How did this controversy end up in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast? We will get to that shortly. However, readers know that debates are officially important when the New York Times (via The Athletic) offers a headline like this: “Sophie Cunningham says it’s ‘common sense’ to keep trans athletes out of women’s sports.”

The “common sense” language came from an encounter between Cunningham and a flock of reporters, who offered her a chance to modify or walk back her controversial statement of belief. Here’s the quote, from a Yahoo!Sports report:

“I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense,” Cunningham said. “And I think I’ll always believe in that. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. I stand on what I said.”

As the storm grew, I started getting feedback from readers who wanted to know why journalists were not covering the religion angle in Cunningham’s pronouncement on this hot-button moral, cultural and political story.

The mainstream press reports contained zero, zip, nada religious content. To be honest, I had never seen any mainstream press coverage about the religious faith of Cunningham, a 6-1 sharpshooter and defensive ace who has also attracted plenty of attention with her bombshell-blonde personna and fashion smarts.

However, Yahoo!Sports picked up an interesting feature from Basketball Network, a small news outlet. The headline is certainly provocative: “‘They want to hush you’ — Sophie Cunningham on being a Christian in the WNBA.” Check out these quotes:

“It’s different,” she said. … “I’ve learned that my competition isn’t with anyone else, like God gave me all these gifts and blessings to show all these young boys and girls and sometimes my parents and older people too, like it’s okay to be like this but you got to learn how to channel it a little bit.”

And also this:

“There’s a lot more believers than you would actually expect because a lot of people don’t speak out about it. I think our league, they want to have a certain look to them, they want to have a certain style to them, and if you speak out against it, sometimes they want to hush you, but that’s not what I’m here for,” Cunningham added​.

Here is one more quote from that same feature:

“I am loud, I am confident, and I think being actually a woman of God, it’s allowed me to walk into rooms with my shoulders back and I have a different type of swag and confidence about be because I know God has me,” Cunningham stated.

The crucial information that had escaped mainstream press coverage was this — this past spring, Cunningham — who was raised Roman Catholic — openly rededicated her Christian faith, via a April 14 post on TikTok. She was baptized at Christ’s Church of the Valley, an evangelical megachurch near Phoenix, Arizona.

A Christian Post report quoted her saying:

“I got baptized when I was little, but I was feeling a tug on my heart to do it on my terms as an adult! Such a fun, amazing day. Thank you, Jesus,” she wrote.

Addressing the decision at a press conference … , Cunningham, 29, said it is “one of the better things” she has done in her life.

“I’ve always been a faithful person, but I just feel like now it’s my own decision. One of the better things I’ve done in my life is getting baptized,” said Cunningham,

The obvious question: Why has elite coverage of her stand on gender and women’s athletics avoided any references to her renewed interest in Christian faith?

Consider this language from ESPN, while addressing current debates about whether players with male DNA should be eligible to play in all forms of women’s athletics, include basketball. Look for the key word in this sentence: “… [Cunningham] also insists that none of this is some Rosetta Stone to unlocking the true nature of her political worldview.”

Yes, the hoops star had used the word “political” when insisting that she didn’t want to be pulled into left-right political debates. The question is whether, in reality, the roots of her convictions may not be political, at all.

Writing at Religion Unplugged, journalist Clemente Lisi (a friend and academic colleague) connected some important dots in a feature with this headline: “WNBA Star Sophie Cunningham’s Faith Bigger Than The Culture War.”

“I’m going to let people just do the speaking for themselves, but for me, I want to get back to basketball,” Cunningham told reporters on Aug. 6. “It’s always been about basketball.”

That sounds like an athlete trying to escape controversy. Maybe it is. But it also reflects something deeper. For Cunningham, whose Christian faith has long been part of her public identity, basketball has never been just about winning political arguments. It has been about purpose.

The WNBA increasingly finds itself pulled into America’s culture wars. Every major social issue eventually seems to arrive on the league’s doorstep. Whether it is race, LGBTQ issues or transgender participation in sports, players and coaches are expected to take sides.

Near the end of the feature, Lisi offered this commentary:

Faith offers an interesting perspective here because Christianity has always distinguished between conviction and conflict.

Jesus never instructed His followers to avoid difficult issues. Neither did He encourage them to seek controversy for its own sake. Paul, for example, wrote that Christians should “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Those two concepts — truth and love — are often separated in modern debates. One side emphasizes compassion; the other: The Bible insists both belong together.

That is how Cunningham framed her original comments. She rejected accusations that she hates transgender people, insisting instead that her concern centers on protecting women’s sports while extending love to everyone involved.

I will end with one other interesting piece of Cunningham material, care of Basketball Network. The headline: “‘I want someone to lead our house’ — Sophie Cunningham opens up about what she wants in a husband.”

After years of speculation about her private life, including social-media whispers that she might be a lesbian, Cunningham openly stated her goals for marriage and family, while explicitly linking them to her faith.

Why didn’t these eyebrow-raising comments draw media attention? This small-media feature noted:

Aside from her preference for dating a taller guy, she also hopes to end up with someone who will take charge of the family​

“I’m not shy about this at all,” Cunningham responded after confirming she is single and in response to the question of what the perfect man looks like for her. “I grew up in Missouri. Missouri was like the No. 3 party school. … Yeah, I went through the huge party stage. I’ve been with guys. But now that I’m actually where I’m at now today, my No. 1 thing is I want someone to push me towards Christ.”

Then there was this next quotation, offering a perspective that — if debated on cable-television talk fests — might be more controversial than Cunningham’s statements on gender and sports.

Speaking as if she was addressing a potential husband, she added:

“If you’re not about it, and you don’t talk about it, then don’t even talk to me. I have my blinders on. I still have a bunch of guy friends. I’m open to ideas and whatnot. But my No. 1 thing is I want you to lead our house, lead me, lead our future kids to serve and love a good, good God. …”

Truth is, that’s church talk. Pure and simple.

Enjoy the podcast and, please pass it along to others.

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Oh my. As of late, Rational Sheep is turning into a kind of “Cartoons ‘R Us” festival.

But for me, all things in cartoon world start with “Peanuts” and, back around 1970, reading the bestseller “The Gospel According to Peanuts” by the Rev. Robert L. Short, a Presbyterian minister. Just reading the strips themselves, it was easy to figure out that a complex, evolving Christian faith was part of the DNA in the world view of the late, very great Charles M. Schulz.

Think “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” But, hold that thought, because I will come back to it.

If you have followed Rational Sheep lately, you will have seen earlier posts about classic cartoon creations that included heavy doses of religious images and theological questions. First, there was “Doctrines that shape ‘Calvin and Hobbes’,” followed this week by “Digging into theodicy and ‘The Far Side’.”

The latter pointed readers to a post by Deacon Steven D. Greydanus, a permanent Catholic deacon (he likes to post sermons online) in Newark, N.J. That’s a train ride away from the film scene in New York City, which is how I met him. He’s a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and, for years, has produced the Decent Films website. And he posts all kinds of stuff, including meditations on the world of cartooning, at his Dailies and SUNDAYS Substack.

Anyway, Greydanus has put up another cartoon-worldviews post: “The solar eclipse of ‘Peanuts’ [When Charles Schulz spent a week on a notable solar eclipse … plus: ‘Peanuts’ meta-humor!].

The eclipse in question was on July 20, 1963, and the totality arc went through parts of Japan, the Soviet Union, Alaska, Canada, and Maine. The Maine reference took on a popular-culture angle when the omnipresent writer Stephen King, from Maine, constructed a plot for a work called “The Path of the Eclipse,” which was so sprawling that it turned into “Gerald’s Game” and “Dolores Claiborne.”

However, what matters is that Schulz, knowing that the eclipse was on its way (#DUH), prepared a weeklong Peanuts series to run leading up to the event.

Now, an eclipse is, obviously, a major and mysterious event in God’s creation. Schultz focused on the fact that people were having to explain, to their children, why it was not safe to look directly at the sun, even as it grew darker.

Yes, God created something beautiful and it was safe to look at it. Thus, Greydanus wrote this:

… [P]art of the publicity build-up to the 1963 eclipse (and any eclipse) were much-reiterated warnings about the dangers of looking directly at an eclipse. For his first eclipse strip on Monday, July 15, Schulz devoted his script to this PSA theme; he also touched on visual eclipse safety in three more strips below. I’m reminded a little of C. S. Lewis, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, repeatedly emphasizing to children how very foolish it is to shut oneself up in any wardrobe.

Here are a few Greydanus comments, along with the cartoons on which they are based:

In his strip below for Tuesday, Schulz bent this theme, as was his wont, to tongue-in-cheek theological disappointment. Surely the universe could have been better designed to facilitate the awe and wonder, not to mention the enjoyment, of creatures like us?¹

A kid’s take on theodicy? Well, who was that Somebody In Production?

Here is another chunk of the Greydanus post:

Thursday’s strip below contains a flash of meta-humor surprising in its rarity in Schulz’s work. Commenters sometimes say that it was rare for Schulz to “break the fourth wall,” but this is far from true: Schulz often had characters turn straight to the camera to deliver the punchline to the audience.³ What is very uncommon is for his characters to express meta-awareness of being in a comic strip.⁴ Perhaps even more rare is what happens here: a character speaking to another character manifesting some kind of meta-awareness of the media that is their world.⁵

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Let’s talk cartooning, again. Shall we?

When reflecting on the theological DNA of “Calvin and Hobbes” (click here for “Doctrines that shape ‘Calvin and Hobbes’”), I dug into my “guilt files” and ran into a piece focusing on similar content in another massive, hardback collection of cartoons in our family library. I am talking about “The Complete Far Side: 1980-1994.”

Oh, I just used an old GetReligion.org term — “guilt files” — without explaining what it means (even though it’s kind of self explanatory).

Here goes. I am rather obsessive when it comes to email (I’m married to a librarian). In my massive email stash, have a folder in which I put online material that I want to address — someday, somehow — here at Rational Sheep. The best stuff goes into a file in the Substack program itself. It’s the 5-star guilt files, if you will. Then there is another “guilt” file in my YouTube app, and I feel guilty, of course, about its existence. Folks, please pray for me.

Why talk about “The Far Side”? Well, allow me to point readers to the work of Deacon Steven D. Greydanus, a friend and culture/religion colleague for years. He is permanent Catholic deacon (he often posts sermon texts online), a teacher in a parochial school and a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. See his work at the Decent Films website.

Greydanus is also a cartoon-art nerd, as frequently noted in his Dailies and SUNDAYS Substack. That leads us to his witty post that, alas, has been in my Substack “guilt file” way too long. The headline: “‘The Far Side’ of God and the devil [cartooning and theology notes on the work of Gary Larson].”

Why does “The Far Side” matter? Greydanus notes the obvious:

The Far Side ran for exactly 15 years, from January 1, 1980 to January 1, 1995, with an online revival starting in 2019. It would be hard to overstate Larson’s pioneering achievement: He defined the one-panel absurdist-gag anthology genre as we know it, largely inventing the format used (to different degrees) by the likes of Dan Piraro and Wayno’s Bizarro, Wiley’s Non Sequitur, Hillary Price’s Rhymes With Orange, Scott Hilburn’s The Argyle Sweater, Dave Blazek’s Loose Parts, Dave Coverly’s Speed Bump, Dave Whammond’s Reality Check,³ and any number of others who have followed in Larson’s footsteps.⁴

Then there is this summary of the content:

Absurdity and irony are at the core of Larson’s sense of humor. His imagination revolves around a few key themes and ideas. Science and scientists, the natural world, and animals (particularly dinosaurs and cows) make up a core cluster of interests at the center of The Far Side. …

Larson has a keen sense of the iconic nature of comics,⁵ and his gags are often set in the stereotyped, pop-culture worlds of cavemen, medieval dungeons, farms, cowboys and Indians and frontier life, anthropologists and “natives,” people stranded on desert islands, and aliens and UFOs. He is also fond of the iconographies of movie monsters, fairy tales, and Santa Claus, as well as religion, the Bible, God and the devil, and heaven and hell.

Look at that final cluster of topics. Over and over, Larson offers skewed and cheerfully biting commentary on good and evil, or even Good and Evil. Consider, for example, this classic (my wise sister’s favorite) addressing (#IMHO) the dark side of free will and human nature.

On target, right?

In the post that I am referencing, Greydanus notes the many ways that humans wrestle with God’s role in the fallen, but glorious, creation in which we live and move and have our being. This inevitably leads to a crucial theological term, as defined by Britannica:

theodicy, (from Greek theos, “god”; dikē, “justice”), explanation of why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God permits evil. The term literally means “justifying God.” Although many forms of theodicy have been proposed, some Christian thinkers have rejected as impious any attempt to fathom God’s purposes or to judge God’s actions by human standards. Others, drawing a distinction between a theodicy and a more limited “defense,” have sought to show only that the existence of some evil in the world is logically compatible with God’s omnipotence and perfect goodness. Theodicies and defenses are two forms of response to what is known in theology and philosophy as the problem of evil.

One of the reasons I have been stalled, when trying to write this post, is quite simple: Greydanus’ post is packed with must-see cartoons along with his commentary on what they have to say. It’s VERY hard to cut any of that.

You also have to see the cartoons, don’t you? I mean, there is that famous one about a classical music maestro arriving in Hell and being shown into a room packed with banjo players. Greydanus notes:

This February 1982 strip is notable for offering a riff on the familiar infernal device that Dante called contrapasso, meaning “suffering the opposite.” In Dante’s Inferno, the damned suffer ironic penalties that in some way reflect or invert their sins; for Larson, the penalty inverts one’s personalities and interests, thus maximizing suffering.

That explains what is happening, but you want to see the image. Right?

Oh, and here’s my take on that contrapasso concept: A large man wearing a cowboy hat and a Dallas Cowboys jersey arrives in Hell and is ushered into a sports bar. All of the giant-screen televisions are showing soccer matches (click here). Offer your own takes in the commentary pages!

Anyway, I have chosen two Greydanus commentaries on cartoons that demonstrate Larson’s approach to theodicy-related questions in “The Far Side.”

Take it away, good deacon:

The above strip, from 1994, turned out to be the very last gag in the original run of The Far Side to directly depict God, at least in full-on “Ancient of Days” fashion, with white hair and a long white beard, in this case in the act of creation.

Creatively, it’s peak Larson: not his only riff on God and the problem of evil, nor even his only depiction of the Creator at work in the kitchen, but maybe his best. He imagines God as a chef adding various stock ingredients—plants and animals, humans of various skin tones⁶ — and then sprinkling in, as if they were a taxonomically distinct strain, some “Jerks” for a certain, let us suppose, biting or tart quality.⁷

I feel like there’s some resonance here with the prologue of the book of Job. There God enters a contest with ha-satan (“the adversary”), whom he allows (as it were, “just to make it interesting”) to smite Job with all manner of misfortune and pestilence. Believers must accept that God has his own reasons for wishing or allowing life to be “interesting” in such difficult and painful ways, and neither Larson nor the author of Job pretend to tell us what that reason is.

Who are the “jerks”? Well, this next, quite biting cartoon suggests that they are all of us — humanity as a whole.

At this point, Greydanus finally needs to use the Big Word:

This March 1990 strip imagines theodicy from the point of view of vulnerable herbivores or prey animals (notably, no elephants or hippos here!). “Herbivore,” of course, is a relative term: Among species pictured above, deer are known to raid bird nests and have even been seen eating live baby birds. Not only are pigs famously omnivores, squirrels also are opportunistic omnivores. Other species, including rabbits, zebras, giraffes, may at least gnaw bones for minerals. So God has already “made some things” to eat at least some “of you guys”!

Ah, so the animals are also part of the fall. Good to know, next time a bear is following you on a mountain trail.

That leads me to this finale, an often-repeated joke that is probably too complicated for a one-panel Larson cartoon. But, who knows? He’s an artist. Maybe he would be able to find a way to use this, which is obviously the Roman Catholic version of the joke:

A man decided to skip Mass one Sunday and head to the hills to do some bear hunting. As he rounded the corner on a perilous twist in the trail, he and a bear collided, sending him and his rifle tumbling down the mountainside. Before he knew it, his rifle went one way and he went the other, landing on a rock and breaking both his legs. That was the good news. The bad news was the ferocious bear charging at him from a distance, and he couldn't move. "Oh, Lord," the man prayed, "I'm so sorry for skipping Mass today to come out here and hunt. Please forgive me and grant me just one wish . . . Please make a Christian out of that bear that's coming at me. Please, Lord!" That very instant, the bear skidded to a halt, fell to its knees, clasped its paws together and began to pray aloud right at the man's feet. "Dear God" the bear said, "Bless this food I am about to receive."

What are your favorite theological parables in “The Far Side”? 

Oh, and if you want to find additional Greydanus commentary on Larson’s work, click this link.

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I had a parenting flashback the other day while watching some World Cup matches with several of our grandkids.

We kept seeing the same QuickBooks ad over and over and over. It came on so many times that, eventually, one of the young’uns made a comment about it.

Since everything is on the Internet, whether you want it to be there or not, you can see the ad by clicking on the YouTube file at the top of the post. Basically, it’s one of those “AI can perform miracles and change our lives!” parables that we keep seeing whenever we look at digital screens of any size.

This was live television, which is something that I don’t watch very often these days. However, this was a global sporting event and, as an old guy who likes football-soccer, I was cheering for Lionel Messi.

In this ad, lots of children — same demographic as several of our grandkids — are shown screaming in shock, and then complaining on social media, because the Tooth Fairy has been so, so busy these days that she is running behind on her rounds. Thus, they have not getting their cash when they put a tooth under that pillow.

Obviously, the Tooth Fairy needs a better AI program in order to keep up. You have probably seen this ad, but go ahead and watch it again to remind yourself of what’s going on.

About the 666th time we saw the ad, often with the sound muted, I had my flashback to when our own kids were young. Because of this memory, I decided to play a little mass-media game called “Spot the lie.”

Now, there are television advertisements that do not include lies, but not many.

Maybe “lies” isn’t the right word? But they contain some “fact,” or some piece of alleged “logic,” that doesn’t make sense if you stop and think about it — some silly version of an Alfred Hitchcock MacGuffin device that keeps you watching.

The key: You’re not supposed to think about it. You just watch and watch, world without end. Amen.

So, here is what I said (and I am sure this will shock Rational Sheep readers) when I talked back to the big glowing screen during this ad. My remarks went something like this: "Why is the Tooth Fairy so busy? This looks like New York City or some other other big urban area and hardly anyone in big cities are having kids these days. So what’s up with this?”

The almost-a-teen (on that day) laughed. One or two younger siblings kind of said, “Whaaaaat?” That started the conversation. And the conversation is the point.

The goal of this game — created long ago by cultural analyst Os Guinness — is to talk back to the screen, instead of sitting on the couch being a vegetable. The goal is to think about the contents of the vast mass-media ocean in which we swim day after day (thank you, Marshall McLuhan), instead of acting like unthinking fish who are not aware of what they’re breathing.

This leads me to this weekend’s “think piece” a little essay that, as a parent, I wrote in 1992 for Leadership Journal. That’s when I was teaching at Denver Seminary.

Yes, 1992. Do the math. Look at the out-of-date statistics.

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Did I volunteer, someone, to jump in the Doctor Who time machine and zoom back to the 2004 Democratic National Convention? That was when Barack Obama delivered the keynote address that launched his career to new heights.

“The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States. … We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States,” he said, in a clear reference to one of the most popular charismatic worship songs of that era.

Click for "Crossroads" podcast

“We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. … We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes.”

That speech (plus Obama’s decision to sing “Amazing Grace” during a high-profile speech) launched a thousand emails from Christian conservatives to journalists covering religion and politics. The message, over and over, was that Obama wasn’t a “real Christian,” because of stances he had taken on various doctrinal, moral and political issues. Why weren’t journalists telling the truth?

The political time machine has now landed in similar journalism terrain. During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, we discussed several important news reports, including this Religion News Service feature: “‘They’re not real pastors’: As clergy run as Democrats, Republicans question their faith.” Here’s some key background:

… [F]aith-focused attacks that have intensified amid an election cycle featuring a striking number of clergy campaigning as Democrats — and, in recent months, besting their challengers. At least 12 pastors, seminarians and former clergy have run for federal office as Democrats this year, and seven have already become the Democratic nominees as of Wednesday (Aug 5). Some are even competing against each other: In Iowa, James, who is ordained within the Presbyterian Church (USA), had to beat out another pastor, United Methodist minister the Rev. Clint Twedt-Ball, to win her primary.

America’s “Seven Sisters” — the churches of oldline Protestantism — are spiraling into demographic disaster, losing between 30% to 50% of their members since 2000. Nevertheless, it’s clear that doctrinally liberal clergy are emerging as strategic faces as Democrats strive to win legislative seats in “purple” and even “red” states.

Face it: It helps, in Kansas and Texas, to have candidates who know how to carefully express their religious beliefs in language and images that appeal to centrists, and especially Black and Latino voters.

Democrats of faith, no matter what pulpit they call home, also know that journalists will defend mainline leaders against their critics, even after decades of withering press criticism of evangelicals and pro-Catechism Catholics who use religious language to rally their supporters during campaigns. The RNS feature included the term “attack” 10 times (including direct quotes) while describing the work of those who criticize progressive clergy.

Clearly, the report noted, evangelical and Pentecostal Christians are offended by the modern, nuanced doctrinal stances taken by clergy who have graduate degrees from the excellent (if shrinking) mainline Protestant seminaries.

But here is the key point of this podcast: Democrats are explicitly stating how their doctrinal beliefs are shaping their political choices and strategies. Also, rather than being “fake” pastors, or "fake” Christians, these candidates are loyal members of the ruling elites in their own denominations. As the RNS report noted:

… [C]onservatives have pointed to their opponents’ support for LGBTQ+ rights — particularly transgender rights and votes in favor of various forms of gender-affirming care — as evidence of their insufficient faith. But that framing exposes another theological rift: In recent decades, many mainline Christian denominations distanced themselves from evangelical views on gender and sexuality by formally ordaining LGBTQ+ people, officiating same-sex marriages and affirming LGBTQ+ identities.

Mainline denominations have, of course, also distanced themselves from the doctrines defended by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches. There is more to this story than “evangelical views on gender and sexuality.”

The bottom line: If doctrine is “back on the menu,” it will be interesting to see if journalists consistently connect the doctrinal dots on the issues the progressive candidates what to talk about, while playing down the doctrinal issues that will be stressed (“conservatives pounce”) by their critics.

By all means, reporters should ask religious conservatives: Are you saying that mainline Protestant leaders are not “real” Christians? Would it be more accurate to simply call them “liberal” Christians? That’s a topic worthy of coverage, especially if reporters will (Yo! Ryan Burge!) look at the clear political divide between mainliners in pews and the vast majority of those in pulpits and denominational leadership.

Anyone seeking a short, punchy, summary of what is happening in these contests should look to the authoritative pages of The New York Times, especially this story about the Presbyterian (USA) seminarian who won the Democratic Party nod to run for the U.S. Senate in deep red Texas. Check out this headline (and look for the crucial “them’s fightin’ words” stab):

In Senate Race, Talarico Challenges ‘Heretical’ Right-Wing Christianity

James Talarico, the Democratic nominee from Texas, hopes to counter what he sees as a conservative takeover of the American church.

Yes, there was a “heresy” reference, which implies that heresy is possible.

In this important chunk of the story, notice the interesting word, starting with the letter “a,” used to replace the overused term “attack.” This is long, but important:

Mr. Talarico, 36, is positioning his candidacy as an effort to break the stranglehold conservatism holds over both American politics and Christianity itself.

“I don’t see myself as challenging the Republican Party,” he said. “I see the real fight as all of us, whether we’re progressive or conservative, Democrat or Republican, uniting together to take on the very powerful people who have corrupted our politics and who are corrupting our church.”

His victory has unleashed a wave of fury from conservative Christian leaders attacking the theological underpinnings of his political positions and moral values.

Hours before his victory last Tuesday, prominent politicians, activists and pastors began assailing what they called Mr. Talarico’s “blaspheming tongue.”They blanketed podcasts, social media platforms and right-wing media outlets with video clips of him using the story of Jesus Christ’s conception to defend abortion rights, saying “God is nonbinary,” and finding spiritual truths beyond Christianity to support religious pluralism. Such positions, they argued, were an “abuse of Scripture” that disqualified him as a Christian leader.

As he moves into the general election, Mr. Talarico is pushing Christians to reclaim what he sees as core principles of their faith in American political life, including compassion for immigrants, helping the poor and loving one’s neighbor.

In other words, this is a classic case of “good” religion/doctrine against “bad” religion/doctrine. Conservative doctrine is political ideology, behind a religious mask, while liberal beliefs are courageous, faithful Christianity — period.

Digging into another pivotal U.S. Senate race, RNS offered a short report on a Democratic nominee who has a much, much higher profile in his own denomination, the United Methodist Church.

The headline: “Adam Hamilton, mega-church pastor, wins Dem Senate primary. Now comes the hard part.” The lede: “The Rev. Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the U.S., is about to test whether a pastor running as a Democrat can flip a red seat — and become Kansas’ first Democratic senator in nearly a century.”

Yes, this pastor’s church is truly a mega-church and it was already one of America’s largest United Methodist congregations before the recent split in which many conservative, some of them very large, congregations left to join the Global Methodist Church, which is largely based in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South.

Once again, the RNS report focuses on the issues that Hamilton wants to discuss, while avoiding his beliefs and actions that have drawn attacks from Methodist conservatives (think “gender neutral bathrooms).

Hamilton’s church, Resurrection, has over 24,000 members and nine locations in the Kansas City area. He announced his run for U.S. Senate in April, saying his decades in ministry prepared him to be a bridge builder in Congress.

“In a world that feels more and more divided, I’ve had the privilege of being a pastor for 36 years of a church that’s roughly equally divided between Republicans, Democrats and independents,” said Hamilton at the time. “Our people love each other precisely because of their differences.”

During his campaign, he has emphasized the need to address tariffs, limited health care access, rising costs and workforce shortages caused by immigration policies. He also said he hopes to bring “decency” to Washington.

Stay tuned. This is going to be one of the most important journalism issues shaping coverage of the battle to control the U.S. Senate.

Enjoy the podcast and please pass it along to others.

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In her hit song “Choosin’ Texas,” Ella Langley offers a classic example of what Saturday night is all about in the world of country music.

It’s safe to say that the first verse and chorus do not paint a picture of love and romance that would draw praise from, well, Focus on the Family or other groups of that kind. There’s no way to spin these lines as some kind of Contemporary Christian Country.

Check this out:

Just when I thought I got him to fall in love with Tennessee
I shoulda known better than to take him back to Abilene
I put him right back into her arms
I wasn’t a match for that kind of spark

She’s from Texas, I can tell by the way
He’s two-steppin’ ‘round the room
And judgin’ by the smile that’s written on his face
There’s nothin’ I can do
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see
A cowboy always finds a way to leave
Drinkin’ Jack all by myself
He’s choosin’ Texas, I can tell

Based on quick Internet research, that “Drinkin’ Jack” reference describes consuming enough Jack Daniel's whiskey to smother personal pain in a fog of alcohol. Once again, that isn’t the stuff of Southern Baptist youth retreats.

Is it relevant, in this song, that Tennessee is in the Bible Belt and, as people used to say when I was growing up in the Lone Star State, that Texas is the buckle on the Bible Belt? Probably not.

There is, however, no question that we’re talking about a historic smash hit on the pop charts. Here’s a recent update care of Billboard:

Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” collects a 15th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — surpassing two classic songs for yet more chart history.

The single, which first hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 in February, surpasses 14-week leaders “We Belong Together” by Mariah Carey, from 2005, and “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston, in 1992-93, for the most weeks at No. 1 ever among non-holiday titles by women with no co-billed acts.

So a country song is connecting with millions of ordinary Americans.

As the late, great (and troubled) Naomi Judd told me in 1993, people who want to understand country music need to remember this fact: In a country music concert, a performer can sing about Saturday night and Sunday morning and be telling the truth in both songs.

This brings me to the Matt Walsh video at the top of this post. He is convinced that Langley’s smash — the cherry on the top of years of soaring country-music sales — represents a healthy transition in American popular culture. He manages, for the most part, to leave “mood shift” politics out of this.

According to Walsh, when singing songs of yearning for something new, something old, something that represents a sense of personal victory or healing, country artists are offering a realistic, wholesome, view of life. For sure, this is not the loud, proud, bragging, get-it-all stance that has dominated pop-rap-whatever charts for decades.

The bottom line: Walsh says it is better to yearn than to boast.

Walsh sites this classic blast from “7 Rings” by Ariana Grande:

Yeah, breakfast at Tiffany’s and bottles of bubbles
Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble
Lashes and diamonds, ATM machines
Buy myself all of my favorite things (yeah) …

I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it
I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it
You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it
I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it (yeah)

Country music, Walsh claims, is about real life, more often than not. It’s about yearning for completeness. The pain of yearning is more real than illusions of grandeur.

So, do you buy that?

Well, he must be talking about old country music, about “traditional” country or even the Americana music that blends folk, gospel, country and blues. That’s different, I think, than most radio pop-country fluff.

I would also ask this: What would Johnny Cash say?

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It’s the question I have heard from readers more than any other in recent years, especially from folks caught in the middle of the Donald Trump era.

The question: Where can I find solid, balanced, accurate coverage of major news events and trends?

In the past, this media-bias question was framed as a liberals vs. conservatives problem or Democrats vs. Republicans. In my emails (and face-to-face talks), this is often stated this way: I’m a moral conservative and I feel like I don’t have a political party anymore. Where am I supposed to get my news? Yes. lots of my friends are former Democrats (like me) who are now third-party voters.

Truth is, Democrats have lots of big-media options for news, unless they are right-of-center Democrats. Republicans have plenty of digital places to find commentary and news, both pro-Trump options and others that are not loyal to the president.

Then there are other important options that are harder to label.

If you’ve been paying attention, for the past decade-plus, you know there are folks who used to be old-school liberals — think Bill Maher of HBO, Bari Weiss of The Free Press/CBS, podcaster-comedian Joe Rogan and Elon Musk of X, Tesla and Mars — who are now considered loose cannons and traitors by the new “progressives.”

Why? Because they ask questions they are not supposed to ask. They talk about events, documents, trends and news stories that they are supposed to ignore.

You know, things like a leaky coronavirus lab in Wuhan, DNA males in female locker rooms, bureaucrats pressuring nuns to offer birth control in their health insurance plan, Christians being massacred in Nigeria. Stuff like that. Oh, and something about a laptop full of drugs, guns, hookers and other bizarre stuff that belonged to the son/advisor of the president of the United States (during a tight election year).

Lots of folks assumed that the laptop would have received some elite media coverage if it had belonged to Donald Trump, Jr. I think that’s a safe assumption, even though I’m a #NeverTrump #NeverBiden man.

The bottom line: The First Amendment (both halves) is now one of the most controversial issues in American life. Who decides what is news? Who decides what is “information” and “misinformation”? What gets banned or ignored? That depends on which America you call home.

Right now, people want to know about the contents of the diary kept by a secular saint by the name of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

You may, or may not, have seen something about the contents of the Fauci diary on whatever YouTube, cable or broadcast channel that you choose to watch these days.

This is, you see, a big news story in half of America and, in the other half, it’s a nothing burger drummed up by knuckle-dragging yahoos who continue to persecute a brilliant man who served his country well.

Did you, by any chance, see or hear that Dr. Fauci, and his lawyers, were present during a U.S. Senate hearing about the contents of this diary and other public records? Again, that depends on your source of news. That depends on which America you call home.

Check out this chart, in The Free Press, about the television-news coverage.

As you can see, Weiss has clearly turned CBS News into a right-wing fortress.

The New York Times did cover the story, under this double-decker headline:

Fauci Invokes Fifth Amendment More Than 100 Times in Bitter Senate Hearing

Senator Rand Paul said the committee he leads would vote next week on whether to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress.

This was a rather calm version of the “conservatives pounce” reporting style. Here are some highlights:

“Did his actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?” Mr. Paul asked as the session concluded. “Are millions dead because of his experiments?” Dr. Fauci left the room stone-faced and flanked by police officers. …

“What day of the week is it today?” Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri asked, knowing Dr. Fauci would refuse to answer. “What color tie are you wearing? What color is the carpet in front of you?” Each time, Dr. Fauci gave his one-line response.

Mr. Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s typewritten diary over the weekend, and Republicans used excerpts to re-litigate many of the old controversies about the Covid response: the safety of mRNA vaccines, the lab leak theory, the lockdowns, Dr. Fauci’s mask recommendations.

It’s kind of interesting that, on second reference, Dr. Fauci is “Dr. Fauci.” Meanwhile, the senator leading the charge against him is “Mr. Paul,” even though he is also an MD, with a degree from Duke University Medical School. That’s an important detail in a story about health, medicine and science.

The bottom line, care of the Times: “The pandemic was a fast-moving crisis, and Dr. Fauci’s diary makes it clear that he and scientists like him were dealing with an unknown virus in which the science was evolving quickly.”

That language was offered as a statement of fact in a news report, not an opinion in an editorial or op-ed column.

Now, consider this Free Press commentary from former Times scribe Nellie Bowles, who is, of course, the same-sex wife/partner of Weiss. Bowles is the author of this rollicking bestseller about her Times times, “Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History.”

The headline: “I Am the Most Famous and Talked-About Person in the Country.”

Fauci knew in February 2020 that Covid’s case fatality rate was pretty low. He wrote, “This is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility,” and that the fatality rate is “more like 0.2-0.3 percent rather than 2.0 percent.” Schools were closed. Careers were lost. Suicides spiked. I had to give birth — literally go through labor! — in a face mask (try it sometime). And in the end, it was exactly what the baddies always said it was: a bad flu. The case fatality rate for the normal flu was about 0.1 percent.

All of these revelations will only very lightly be reported on. There’s currently a TV news blackout on the story, except on Fox News of course. …

And why do you care so much about relitigating Covid anyway? It’s in the past! Let it go. You didn’t like all those TikTok dances and making banana bread and the fact that your toddler regressed, your grandpa died alone, and you considered walking out on your spouse?

There’s an important journalism question here.

No one has challenged the authenticity of the diary, to my knowledge. Thus, I will ask: Do the contents of Fauci’s diary (complete with a brutal built-in timeline) represent facts about the work, opinions and actions of Fauci?

The answer, by the way, is “Yes.” Thus, we can now ask: Why are so many journalists ignoring the very-quotable information in this vast body of material that is directly linked to one of the most important news events of this century?

OK, let’s switch directions. Here is one more current-events question that is more open-ended.

What is happening in this video? Please answer in the comments pages.

A related question: If you saw this event covered, do the factual details about what is happening change from one channel/platform to the next? Once again, I am not talking about commentary. I am asking if the story was covered and, if so, were the basic facts about this event consistent from channel to channel.

I really hope to hear from some news consumers.

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An interesting thing happened the other day, shortly after I clicked to upload the Rational Sheep post that ran with the headline, “Doctrines that shape ‘Calvin and Hobbes’: Keep looking for books -- serious and funny -- to discuss with the kiddos in your life.”

The folks at Ave Maria Radio, a Catholic media platform based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, called to ask if I could jump on during their afternoon talk show with host Marcus Peter, who took the reins of the program after the death of founder Al Kresta (who I had known and chatted with for years). They wanted to discuss “Calvin and Hobbes,” of course, but also wanted to explore the issues I had raised about the importance of parents making efforts to share and discuss books, cartoons and other forms of media with their children.

The result was a sort of mini-podcast conversation, which (with their patience) survived my smartphone being hit with the latest of about 300 spam calls I have received in recent weeks from a high-pressure “loan company” that will remain nameless. The radio chat veered off into another topic that I had not (#DUH) thought about beforehand, but should have. Hold that thought.

Click here to listen to “Why ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ still matters,” especially if you love sharing fun media for children. Here’s a quick reminder of what that earlier post was about, linked to the fact that our grandkids, whenever they visit, immediately grab our heavyweight copies of “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson.

Our grandkids learn that there is more going on in these books, as they age and discuss their Watterson favorites with the old folks. Sooner or later, in their classical school readings, they will discover (but this will not be predestination) the symbolism in the strip’s title and the grown-up themes woven into the images and wisecracks.

We are talking about some obvious symbolism, but here is a bit of background information care of a Comic Book Resources essay entitled “Why Bill Watterson Named his Characters Calvin and Hobbes.” The overture is rather long, but — hey — we’re talking about John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes.

One more byte of background, before we move on to the second part of this weekend’s think piece package.

The Big Idea … is that it’s never too early to start talking to your children about the stories in their lives. If children grow up with their parents reading to them (as should be the norm), they rapidly get used to asking questions and then talking to grownups about why and how stories do what they do.

This is, dare I say, crucial to the future of our culture. Please see this earlier Rational Sheep post: “Stop reading? Then democracy will fade.”

While talking with Ave Maria, it hit me that I had just shipped a national “On Religion” column discussing a related topic — the need for parents and children, perhaps with the help of church leaders, to dig into the screen-culture issues explored in “Toy Story 5.”

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In a move consistent with its heritage, Brigham Young University in 1951 organized a College of Family Living. In 1981, it merged into the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences, one of the largest units at the flagship university of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Then, to salute the original vision, the School of Family Life was created in 1998 after the church hierarchy released this 1995 statement: “Family — A Proclamation to the World.” With 40-plus faculty members, it offers a variety of degrees, include a doctorate in Marriage, Family and Human Development.

Click for "Crossroads" podcast

Why bring this up? Well, this week’s “Crossroads” podcast focused on an important New York Times news feature with this dramatic double-decker headline:

Even in Utah, Land of ‘Big Love,’ Families Are Getting Smaller

Forget tradwives. When it comes to plummeting fertility rates, Utah is leading the country.

This raised, for me, a basic journalism question: While the headline referenced a racy HBO series about modern polygamy outside mainstream Mormon life — “Big Love” (2006-2011) — the story didn’t include interview material from BYU experts on the issues in the story. It did cite one or two statistics in a 2025 BYU study, “Latter-day Saint Trends in the United States: Religiousness, Well-Being, and Retention.”

At one point in our discussion, host Todd Wilken asked this rather basic question: Did the Times feature include any information about the actual doctrines on marriage and family-life at the center of Latter-day Saint faith?

The answer is “yes” but mainly “no.” The feature — written by a political reporter and another that covers demographics — does mention that trends in the church are part of what is driving “Utah’s plunging birthrate.”

That’s logical, since Latter-day Saints — with varying degrees of commitment to church life — are about half of the state’s population, according to polls. Readers will not be surprised that the Times found an articulate spokeswoman for those who are embracing changes.

Savanna Sanborn grew up in the church. As a child, she threw herself into its teachings. At 10, she wrote and stored a letter to her future husband.

“I had this intense need for perfectionism,” she said. “I really thrived within the structure of the church.”

Then her life changed. Read this part carefully:

But she began questioning the culture. At 19, she admired a young pastor, who ended up running afoul of the church because he came out as gay. She married at 20, but quickly realized she did not want the life that came next: having children and running the household.

“The pressure of completing the perfect Mormon picture started to crack me open,” she said.

Now 29, she is divorced and studying for a bachelor’s degree in math, while working. … After her experience in the church, she is wary of external forces determining the direction of her life.

The wording is interesting, since Latter-day Saints do not have “pastors,” if that term is defined as ordained clergy. Instead, their local congregations, part of larger “stakes,” are led by lay ministers who maintain secular careers. What was this the role of this gay “pastor” in congregational life?

The inaccurate use of “pastor” worried me. Maybe the reporting team for this story should have included a religion-beat pro?

However, let me stress that this anecdote was totally valid, as part of a report on this topic. However, I am convinced that this voice needed to be balanced by some hard-news, factual reporting on how this trend is, or is not, linked bo how much women and men practice of the Latter-day Saint faith.

I know, from past reporting, that there are articulate specialists at the BYU School of Family Life who pay close attention to marriage-formation and parenting trends in Latter-day Saint life. Some are studying ways that local congregations help dedicated members of the church find and evaluate possible spouses.

In a 2022 “On Religion” column on marriage trends in various churches, I talked with Brian Willoughby of the BYU School of Family Life. Here is part of what he had to say, while stressing that some religious leaders still have not grasped how technology, education and economics that are affecting trends in dating, marriage and fertility.

“The key word is ‘tension,’ “ he said. Among the Latter-day Saints, these numbers are “not falling as fast” as in other groups, “but our young people are feeling tensions between the patterns they see all around them and what they hear from their parents and religious leaders.

“We are seeing the same changes – only moving slower. The average age of people getting married is rising. Fertility rates are declining. … We can no longer assume that religious young people are some kind of different species.”

Looking at these issues from the church’s point of view, it’s important to realize that many young people and young adults are caught in a “marriage paradox,” in which their beliefs about family are clashing with messages — even in churches and their families — that they keep hearing about the need to accomplish other “life goals.” Willoughby told me:

“Marriage becomes a transition in which they fear they will lose freedom or success. … They hear everyone saying: ‘You go to these schools and get these degrees. You get job one that leads to job two. Don’t let anything get in your way or get you off track.’ With this kind of head-down approach, serious relationships can be a distraction on the path to success. … The heart isn’t as important.”

The Times feature noted that Utah’s fertility numbers, while still near the top of U.S. states, are declining, even as the state’s economy booms. This decline:

… reflects the power of the broad social dynamics pushing down fertility rates: Despite hand-wringing among conservatives, women in one of the country’s most socially conservative states are now making very different choices about childbearing.

Many women interviewed for this article said they were waiting until they had finished their educations and were financially stable.

Again, this is valid, important, information. But the podcast discussion kept returning to this question: How are decisions about marriage and family linked to the level of commitment among women and men to the practice of their faith? Were statistics different for Latter-day Saints (and members of other religious traditions) who frequented pews and those who did not?

In other words, to what degree is strong religious faith a key element in this story?

Quite some time ago, as in 2010, The Weekly Standard (RIP) published a fact-driven feature that was way ahead of its time — “America’s One-Child Policy.” I have quoted it many times, especially at GetReligion.org, because it focused on the faith-factors involved in questions about marriage and fertility. Here is the thesis statement, and I added some bold italics for emphasis:

... (In) a world where childbearing has no practical benefit, people have babies because they want to, either for self-fulfillment or as a moral imperative. “Moral imperative,” of course, is a euphemism for “religious compulsion.” There are stark differences in fertility between secular and religious people. …

[T]here are two Americas today: a secular population that wants small families (or no family at all) and a religious population that wants larger families. Religious affiliation is part of the story, but the real difference comes with church attendance. Among people who seldom or never go to church, 66 percent say that zero, one, or two children is the ideal family size, and only 25 percent view three-or-more children as ideal. Among those who go to church monthly, the three-or-more number edges up to 29 percent. But among those who attend church every week, 41 percent say three or more children is ideal, while only 47 percent think that a smaller family is preferable. When you meet couples with more than three children today, chances are they’re making a cultural and theological statement.

Obviously, the team that produced this Times feature focused on Utah because of its image as a bastion of conservative culture and, wink-wink, that whole “Mormons have lots of kids” stereotype.

At some point in the story, it would have been good to have paused long enough to ask a question or two about religious beliefs and practice. Consider the end of the story.

Utah is still the state with the largest family size in the country. But that may be changing, too: The women interviewed for this article came from families of as many as eight children, but they themselves tended to have fewer.

Chrissy Bryner grew up as one of five and always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. She was married at 19 and had her first child at 22, after graduating from Brigham Young University. Now 31, she has three children and said she and her husband might want a fourth.

But her older sister did things differently. She married after college but waited 12 years to have her first child, to establish her music career. Now, she is a thriving jazz musician who takes intense joy from parenting. She is pregnant with her second.

“I see my sister and other women I know,” Mrs. Bryner said, “and that shows me that my way is not the only way.”

Does anyone sense a “religion ghost” here?

The bottom line: If reporters are going to cover moral and religious issues in a state like Utah, at some point they need to talk to experts on the religious element that, for many people, remain at the heart of these questions.

Do a search on Google. Ask a question of two on Grok. Make some calls. Maybe even visit the Brigham Young University School of Family Life. Give it a try.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.

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It’s not about the poem. That’s the theme that I am starting to see in the more nuanced takes buried in the tsunami of online commentary about Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.”

In a way, that statement doesn’t make sense, because the filmmaker is clearly using Homer’s epic as a starting point for the story he wants to tell, the themes he wants to explore and the final message that he is offering those with eyes to see it.

But this is Nolan’s movie and, yes, Nolan’s telling of the trials and tribulations of Odysseus. The story has been edited and rearranged — quite bluntly at times — to make sure viewers know who is in charge.

At the end of my main post on Nolan’s latest adventure in time-warping — “Sitting out ‘The Odyssey,’ but paying attention” — I mentioned, after a blitz through commentary by a host of writers, that there was yet another essay that deserved attention on its own. I will get to that, but yet another essay showed up (out of dozens I have read or viewed) that also needs attention.

There are people who love this movie, of course, and people who hate it. The pieces that I appreciate the most are those by people who know and admire Nolan’s work and are somewhere in the middle. The key is that they are trying to crack the filmmaker’s latest puzzle and figure out what he is saying.

For starters, let me remind readers of two questions I raised the other day, the questions that may or may not send me to a local theater with notepad in hand (amid pressing schedule issues with travel linked to family concerns).

… I have ended up with one question that I believe is crucial: What is the source of the guilt that drives Odysseus in this movie? I mean, we’re talking about a pagan Greek hero who, in the poem, is not the most soft-hearted of fellows. Also, in the past Nolan has leaned into a kind of mysterious version of materialistic existentialism, while mentioning (hint, hint) that he grew up Catholic.

As it turned out, I ran into another question during the hours it took me to write that post. Here is that second question, which I added at the very end:

… What if “The Odyssey” is actually “Inception: Part II”? What if all those locus flowers that Odysseus consumed led to some really, really vivid dreams that bent reality?

This brings me to the first of two think pieces for today, links that I believe Rational Sheep readers and supporters will want to click. It’s an essay at Acton’s Religion & Liberty website by Jeffrey Poulet: “Christopher Nolan’s Un-Greek Odyssey.”

“Greek”? As it turns out, this essay is not about a valid question that many have asked: In an age in which it’s important to be accurate on matters of culture, including casting, why did Nolan go out of his way to avoid casting any Greeks to play major roles in his version of what may be the most important Greek classic, ever?

Valid question. Maybe Nolan was saying that his movie is not, in the end, about Greeks and Greek culture?

However, this Religion & Liberty feature is talking about Greek thought, Greek history and some of the specific ancient beliefs that are woven into “The Odyssey,” as in the poem and stories contained therein.

Near the top of his piece, Poulet unloads:

Any person, having not read The Odyssey, who walks away from Nolan’s new movie thinking he knows the story would be sorely mistaken. Learning Odysseus from Nolan is a little like learning Hamlet from Disney. Nolan’s movie, however, should not be evaluated simply on how faithfully it replicates the book, in no small part because I don’t think Nolan concerned himself with fidelity. Although he studiously replicated terrain and, to some extent, dress and timeframe, he freely updated the classic in terms of dialogue and demography. …

Even though the credits claim the movie is based on the work by Homer, it nonetheless borrows the title and characters, raising some expectation that the move will re-present the novel. Nolan gets some things rights, and many things wrong. I think the movie is better viewed as a palimpsest than an adaptation; still, I would hope that the filmmaker gets some of the big things “right.”

At which Nolan fails.

Take that.

What, pray tell, is a “palimpsest”? The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary offers this:

palimpsest noun

* an ancient document from which some or all of the original text has been removed and replaced by a new text

* (formal) something that has many different layers of meaning or detail

Let’s keep reading.

The gods, with the exception of Athena, are notably absent. Nolan completely desexualizes Odysseus’s relationships with both Calypso and Circe, in the former instance denuding the Calypso story of its central significance to the overall narrative and in the process diminishing the importance of Penelope . One consequence of this is a flattening of Odysseus’s personality, which I suppose makes some sense of Matt Damon playing Odysseus with hardly any affect. The essential elements of Homer’s Odysseus—the cunning, guile, deception, viciousness, and so forth—are largely bypassed. Instead we have an Odysseus psychically tortured and burdened by guilt, which becomes the central theme of Nolan’s rendering. The result is, ironically enough, a less human Odysseus. Homer’s Odysseus faces all the great human temptations: the desire for glory and riches (he’s a plunderer, after all), immortality (as offered by Calypso), and to know everything by yielding to the Siren’s song. None of that really plays a role in Nolan’s version.

Nolan’s reshaping of the Siren’s song is telling: rather than being tempted by the desire to know all that which the gods alone can know, to transcend human limits, Nolan has the Sirens remind Odysseus of his failings and concomitant guilt. … Rather than being tempted by omniscience, Odysseus is haunted by failure.

Or, I would say, he is haunted by his bad, truly evil, choices.

This implies, of course, that someone or something is drawing a line between good and bad, between what choices are evil and what choices were not.

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