Thus, it’s with pleasure that Big Hollywood presents this exclusive clip from “Courageous,” the latest film by director Alex Kendrick, available now on DVD and Blu-ray. Have a look at some of the bloopers, flubs, and just plain fun had on set during the film’s lighter moments:

“Courageous” is available at Amazon.com.

And while it’s pure speculation on my part, based on his juvenile behavior, it appears as if Maher is a disgruntled Catholic trying desperately to convince himself God doesn’t exist; so regardless of how bright he perceives himself to be, Maher lacks the insight to realize that he’s revealing something he’d probably prefer the rest of America not to notice.

For someone as mentally deficient as Maher believes I am, even as far back as the first grade I recognized that there was no direct correlation between parochial school and the personhood of God. Yet for all Maher’s clever innuendo and sarcastic banter, it must go deeper than that, because this man apparently isn’t astute enough to separate Catholicism from God.

Maher was raised by an Irish Catholic father and a mother (Julie, nee Berman) that he was unaware was Jewish until he was a teenager (which right there reeks of family dysfunction). Seems somewhere around the age of 13, when hormone-infused Bill, had he been raised a Jew, might have been practicing his Hebrew to prepare for an upcoming Bar Mitzvah, Maher’s Catholic dad realized birth control was a good idea after all.

Based on Maher’s animosity toward all religion and toward Christianity in particular, one would guess Dad’s gripe with Rome might have impacted his son.

Since then, William Jr., whose parental religious roots are firmly implanted in a Judeo-Christian heritage, has made it a career to get back at God. Try as he might to prove otherwise, Maher’s contempt for Christianity could very well be rooted in his father’s reaction to the Roman Catholic Church’s undying commitment to the rhythm method.

Since the day Maher’s Dad decided pull out of the Catholic Church, any aspirations young Maher had of one day being an altar boy were left lying like a crumpled cassock on the parish Sacristy floor.

Instead, Willy and Julie’s son changed course and chose to fashion what started as a family disagreement over church doctrine into a successful career portraying believers in God as neanderthal nut jobs with nary a brain cell nor a lick of sense.

From age 13 on, English major and 2009 Richard Dawkins Atheist Alliance International award recipient Maher has spent loads of time demeaning what he and an English Lit degree have identified as the Church’s unscientific teachings on homosexuality, abortion and birth control.

Over the years the comedian has transformed into a liberal/apatheist icon who lacks apathy only when it comes to pocketing millions of dollars earned mocking a God he relegates to the same category as unicorns, the tooth fairy, and JLo’s long-lost plan to cook dinner for only one man.

Apatheism is defined as a “disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s.” Which means Maher is a pretty lame apatheist, because all he does is focus on religion.

What Maher fails to recognize is that his acerbic comments directed toward God make him look like the proverbial spurned middle-school kid with a crush on the head cheerleader. Who knows, maybe besides the birth control brouhaha, somewhere along the line an overbearing nun denied the future comedian a bathroom pass and he never recovered.

What we do know is that Maher behaves like a confused, madly-in-unrequited-love teenager who spends all his energy defacing God’s locker and calling God and His people floozies as payback for some imagined hurt.

Now, almost 50 years later, one would think that for someone who spends his life pointing out the hypocrisy of organized religion and who believes that when it comes to God, “doubt is the only appropriate response for human beings,” Maher would recognize that, in a roundabout way, making a living off something you don’t believe in is similar to attending Mass while practicing off-beat forms of birth control.

So, with that in mind, when Maher mocks Christians, saying “Who needs government when you have Jesus,” or when he produces and stars in a irreverent movie like “Religulous,” his contempt and derision expose a man who, although he sees himself as brilliant, isn’t quite smart enough to recognize the hypocrisy, not to mention the irony, of making a career out of preaching that one person shouldn’t push their religious beliefs on anybody else.

No, the great conflict I speak of is the schism between those of us who believe ‘The Walking Dead’ is great television and those of us who haven’t felt this level of disappointment in something they desperately wanted to support since John McCain got the nomination.

The premiere of the second season has scored boffo ratings, and Big Hollywood’s own Christian Toto has recently eloquently stated the pro-’Walking Dead’ case here. Many people love the show.  Can all these people be wrong?  Yes, and it gives me no pleasure to say so.

The fact is that ‘TWD’ is annoying, liberalish, and frustrating. It was last year as well, as I pointed out at length here at Big Hollywood (‘The Walking Dead: Populated With Racist Southerners, Dumb Characters‘). Testifying to the level of interest was the fact that it received over 400 comments, mostly questioning my taste, intellect and parental marital status.

People love zombie stories – I love zombie stories – and no one wants ‘TWD’ to fail. But the problem is that in the second season it seems to be going down the same dead end road as in the first season – except faster.

The problems with ‘TWD’ come in two flavors. The least annoying – yet still annoying – are the liberal Hollywood assumptions that permeate the stories. The second is the fact that the characters act like such utter idiots that it actually suspends the suspension of disbelief – for example, a “shocking” sequence at the end of the premiere (Caution: Light Spoilers Ahead!) actually caused me to burst into laughter.

One set of annoying liberal assumptions is about religion. Last season, we saw how the brutal wife-beater was – wait for it – one of those crazy born-again types. Naturally, his wife’s version of Christianity in the premiere is a twisted, weird form of it unfamiliar to anyone who actually knows and hangs out with born-again Christians. Her religion only manifests itself when the writers want to creep out the audience with gothic freakiness – and not the good kind. Note that though the story takes place in Georgia, this weirdo appears to be the only one with any kind of pre-existing interest in religion.

The hero, a sheriff’s deputy who, for reasons that remain unclear to me, still insists on wearing his full deputy uniform, complete with shiny badges on his chest and Smokey Bear hat (More about distracting tactical failures below), also prays at one key point. He admits he’s “not much of a believer,” then proceeds to deliver a monologue directed at a crucifix. It’s not an offensive scene, just a predictable and kind of dull one. And let’s just say his prayer is not answered.

Then there’s the stuff about guns. The dozen or so survivors in the little band seem to have plenty of guns.  It’s just that the hero and his cop buddy have decided no one else gets to have any. The rationale is that the others are “untrained.”  Let’s leave aside the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of Southern folks who don’t know how to shoot – though this band seems nearly entirely urban except for one redneck guy.

The liberal premise is that firearms are to be reserved to an elite is obnoxious – in fact, one key sub-plot in the premiere is that they took the gun belonging to one woman away, and refused to give it back to her even after she was nearly eaten because she was unarmed. I can’t abide a zombie flick that would earn the Brady Campaign’s seal of approval.

Maybe they could solve the training “problem” by actually training the civilians, but that never seemed to occur to the self-appointed leaders. In fact, the two cops don’t seem interested in preparing the civilians at all. Instead, they spend most of their time talking about their feelings. It’s agonizing.

Here is the thing about the hero that ‘TWD’ itself does not seem to realize. He’s completely inept, and over the course of the show, his failure to perform with even the most minimal level of tactical competence has directly led to scores of survivors ending up as zombie chow.

The ‘TWD‘ producers like to talk about how their show is about the people, not the zombies. Why that’s supposed to be a good thing is unclear.  Regardless, part of the payoff should be watching people we like and root for, not ones who are so lame that the entire series seems to consist of them doing stupid things in the first five minutes and then trying to unscrew them for the next hour.

The zombie apocalypse premise is interesting because it makes you think “What would I do?” ‘Dawn of the Dead’ was a great example. We watch as they go into the sporting goods store and gather ammo. We see the characters choose to hide out in a mall. We see them clear the zombies out and then fortify it. We see how they set up a secret hiding place, just in case. These are good ideas. That’s why ‘Dawn’ was a cool movie.

Here? Well, it’s a fiasco. I’m not asking for the tactical precision of a well-trained infantry platoon, but everything these characters do devolves into a complete cluster-flunk, and it’s distracting as hell.

In the season premiere, they think there might be a military redoubt and decide to drive 100 miles or so south from Atlanta to Ft. Benning. Now, after attending the Officer Candidate School, Airborne School and the Infantry Officer Advanced Course there, the notion of anyone choosing to go to Ft. Benning is pretty hard to fathom, but the way they choose to do it is simply ridiculous.

Do they take light, four-wheel drive vehicles of the type that are all over the place in Georgia? No – instead of taking vehicles with mobility and fuel economy, they take a Winnebago with a track record of breaking down. Why? Who knows. Probably because it helps the plot.

They have a guy with a motorcycle. Does he recon the route? Nope. By the time they notice a jumble of wreaked cars, they are in among them. Then they drive deeper into the pileup not knowing if there’s a way out. Oh, and they bring the Winnebago into the jam, and it soon breaks down.

So then they pile out of their vehicles and proceed to talk. And talk. They talk a lot in ‘TWD.’ Mostly about feelings.  Hell, the only good thing about a zombie apocalypse would be that it would wring out this society’s insipid embrace of constant discussions of people’s stupid feelings.

Do they post security in all directions?  Nah. They put a guy on the RV who manages not to see a herd of about 200 ghouls until they are 50 meters away. By that time, all the survivors are scattered around the wrecks, walking about without a care in the world. Nice organization, Deputy. You just want to reach into the big screen and slap him.

Later, a search party composed of most of the survivors goes out, noting that they are taking everyone so they “can cover more ground.” Then, they proceed to walk in single file down a path.

The distracting part of ‘TWD’ is not that the characters do dumb things. People do dumb things. But that’s all they do – dumb things. It’s tiresome. It feels like it’s like a whole TV series that consists of nothing but the kind of dumb where the slasher victim’s hot best friend gets out of the shower in a towel to investigate a strange noise. Except there’s no hot girl in a towel, only these dumb dummies.

And don’t get me started on how, for a show about zombies, there are barely any zombies.

It seems like even with a new showrunner following Frank Darabont’s departure, ‘TWD’ is going to continue stumbling down the same path. It’s a shame; the idea is cool and the series could be awesome. But the execution is lacking, and if it keeps up, one Sunday night soon, crashing early is going to seem like the more rewarding choice. Pity.

But let’s not allow this conflict to tear us apart. No, in the end, those conservatives who find ‘The Walking Dead’ lively, quality entertainment and those who feel like hucking their shoes at the screen must find common ground. And that common ground should be a commitment to terminate this zombie administration.

But her almost ethereal calm onscreen also hides a deep Christian faith, and that inspired her to go all the way as the director as well as star of the new film “Higher Ground.” While she’s following in the footsteps of icons like Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, and Robert DeNiro to make that creative leap, “Higher Ground” is a quietly personal film – a fictionalized take on the memoir “This Dark World” by Carolyn Bridges, about a woman’s struggle to balance her faith with her awareness of the nascent feminist movement of the early ‘70s – can she insist on having a voice in the small rural church she attends, or does she have to stay silent just because the men traditionally tell the women they need to be silent?

“Higher Ground” was a Sundance favorite in January, landing distribution with Sony Pictures Classics and started playing in New York and LA last week, with cities nationwide to come. Farmiga sat down recently with Big Hollywood to discuss the film and her profoundly personal reasons for directing it.

“I’m getting surprised reactions a lot because of the subject matter,” says Farmiga, an elegant presence who speaks with frequent reflective pauses. “A big reference film for me and one of my top five favorites is ‘The Apostle’ by Robert Duvall — a story about someone trying hard to master the spiritual life and it necessitates making arduous and at times very painful journeys within our selves and our all too human souls.”

Farmiga felt drawn to “This Dark World” because of its similar tale of spiritual struggle, after being introduced to it by the film’s original screenwriter, Tim Metcalfe. Metcalfe was originally supposed to direct the film as well, but couldn’t find the financing to move forward until Farmiga — who was already signed to star — was convinced to take the helm.

After flying out to Iowa to meet Briggs, who’s now a creative writing professor at a college, Farmiga was convinced that the film should focus not on the loss of faith but of a woman’s journey to reach a deeper, more vibrant sense of belief than she could find among her longtime congregation.

“Looking back on her life, she realized that it was a story about the loss of impoverished faith, and she was searching for an authentic faith that was true to her personal relationship with God,” explains Farmiga. “It requires making a leap into the world of uncertainty.”

At the film’s outset, Corinne, an innocent, wide-eyed teenager, falls in love with a slightly older boy who dreams of becoming a rock star. They marry after she gets pregnant but continue traveling with his band, partying with marijuana and alcohol, until an abrupt accident forces their bus off the road and causes it to crash into a lake, nearly drowning the young family.

But when they survive, they immediately attribute their salvation to God and embrace Christianity wholeheartedly. Yet, as the years go by, Corinne realizes that her inquisitive spirit and desire to have a voice in the world is at odds with the strict rules of the particular parish they joined and her husband’s way of thinking.

As it follows her struggle to find the right balance and relationship with God for her life, the film never mocks or demonizes those who remain in her church. It simply shows that everyone has their own personal relationship, or lack thereof, with God, even if it means splitting up the relationships in their earthly lives.

“I think there are two kinds of films — the anti-religion film, and the pro-religion film,” explains Farmiga. “The films that proselytize are made for that community or to convert others to that community, and then there are those that mock the community and are threatening to the community. That’s not the film I was making.”

Nonetheless, Farmiga has received plenty of feedback from pastors who have attended early screenings and have generally warmed to her respectful take on faith. She has also been pleasantly surprised by the reaction her film received at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, where it was one of several films that explored faith.

“What are the questions I’m asking? The ones that touch me,” Farmiga concludes. “There was a strong conviction in me to direct this. I wanted to ask what does it mean to be holy? That’s what I think the audience is asking: What does God mean to me?

“In my experience, the crossroads of doubt and faith are very common and I wanted to make a movie that didn’t judge it. It’s not a bad thing — a reflective person thinks deeply and questions often.”

Why Christian symbols? We’re awfully easy pickings. If you’re a rich Hollywood star, offending us takes about as much courage as bringing a case of beer to a frat party.

Why not Islamic images? Where’s that comedic edge and ballsy envelope pushing we’re always being told about when it comes to our Artistic Class? Christians are tired of this self-important posing. Islamists will take your head off. I would think that Islamist intolerance (and racism and sexism and homophobia and fundamentalism) would be a bigger target than than Christian eye rolls.

Well, if nohing else, at least Gervais was good enough to bring the pretension:

 I thought the caption … could be “Stand up for what you believe”.

Doesn’t he mean for “what you don’t believe”?

Actually, he doesn’t. That’s why I call him Gervais an “evangelical atheist.” He’s one of those obnoxious non-believers always pushing his non-belief on you. He’s like a Mooonie without the charm, flowers or airport.

Back to the pretension:

Should art have a social conscience?

I’m a comedian. Some people probably object to me using the term artist about such a lowly profession. And some people think I shouldn’t even be pondering such highfalutin questions, let alone answering them.

So for a change I’ll try to be economical with my opinions and simply try to provoke yours.

First of all, what is a social conscience?

Help us all, Gervais is actually turning into the insufferable, self-important David Brent.

MotorGaga

The Lady in question, known at birth as Stefani Germanotta, has progressed beyond wanting recognition or even fame; now she craves Importance, that vain pursuit which has derailed many a talented artist (and you can quibble about putting that label on her, I’m just being polite). And on Born This Way, this attitude goes beyond didactic lyrics; Gaga puts on the airs of a prophet/oracle/Messiah for the courageous, self-endangering causes of same-sex marriage and female empowerment, doing her best to conflate sexual identity with Christianity–not just any religion, but Christianity specifically.

The album has more references to Jesus than the latest Wovenhand record, the inevitable clash of her Catholic-school upbringing and her professed bisexuality. On the aggressive yet perversely endearing “Judas,” she sings, “I wanna love you, but something’s pulling me away from you / Jesus is my virtue, Judas is the demon I cling to.” Throughout the song, “Judas” has been the “Dear Abby” pseudonym for an abusive lover (perfectly appropriate to compare a bad relationship to the betrayal of the Christ), so first she’s Jesus (a “holy fool”) being betrayed by Judas, then Jesus is an external entity from which Judas is pulling her away… I’m instantly regretting the decision to analyze these lyrics.

The “holy fool” phrase returns on the angsty “Electric Chapel,” which laughably mashes together church bells and “Money for Nothing” guitar riffs. Digging up the long-rotted corpse of the “love as religious experience” metaphor, she entreats her holy fool lover to use her like a priest–”confess to me… pray for your sins… we’ll find a way to make a pure love work in a dirty way.” And, like “Judas,” Gaga continues equating failed relationships and the Crucifixion in “Bloody Mary,” presenting herself as both the execution-happy Catholic queen and, again, a Christ figure, dancing with “hands above my head, like Jesus said.” Sadly, “Bloody Mary” is also the most dialed-down and catchy song on the album, so its obtuse, contradictory lyrics are an even greater letdown.

Aside from these attempts at casting herself as some sort of prophetess, the remainder of Gaga’s religious references express her frustration with the oppressive, patriarchal, heteronormative hatemongering which Jesus represents. On “Scheiße,” she wishes she were able to cut through all the BS of religion and society and be herself–to “dance on a single prayer” and be a strong feminist who doesn’t need anyone or anything. “Americano,” the album’s most openly political song (yes, even more than “Government Hooker“), laments the fact that she can’t marry another woman, so she breaks into a mariachi-inspired beat that blends techno with a historically ethnic musical genre about as eloquently as “Cotton-Eye Joe.” Inspired by Proposition 8’s reversal in California, the chorus sums up the left-wing response to that democratic vote quite well: “I don’t speak your Americano / I don’t speak your Jesus Christo.” Talk about petulance.

The album’s title track destroys any last, desperate hope that maybe Gaga has even a cursory understanding of the theology she rejects. Resting on the inane platitude “God makes no mistakes,” she proceeds to assert that you are morally justified in whatever you do by the very fact that you exist, even pausing at one point to run through a laundry-list of politically correct correct sexual identity labels: “No matter gay, straight or bi / Lesbian, transgendered life / I’m on the right track, baby / I was born to survive.”

Without getting into original sin, if you think that you were “born” into your adult identity, you’ve got some explaining to do. Was John Wayne Gacy born a murderous pedophile and therefore guiltless? Was Roman Polanski born a rapist and therefore guiltless? If sexual identity is predetermined and totally unaffected by your personal decisions, what other personal attributes aren’t predetermined, and how can we tell? What keeps us from admitting de Sade was correct in saying “What is, is right”? But I digress; this is a music review, after all.

“Born this Way” has been accused of ripping off Madonna’s 1989 single “Express Yourself” because of its similar chord progression, but Gaga is more directly plagiarizing the mid-to-late-90s style of Madonna and Cher–cheesy rave beats with overactive hi-hats and forceful chest-voice singing–just with more extraneous noise and louder mastering. Opener “Marry the Night” finds her evoking Cher’s “Believe,” most notably on the bridge’s elongated vocal flourishes. The chorus of “Scheiße” echoes Madonna’s “Sky Fits Heaven,” and, in a move I can’t even comprehend, penultimate track “Yoü and I” is the kind of twangy pop-rock that arose with the likes of Faith Hill and Shania Twain. All in all, this is very backwards-looking pop music.

That said, I’d be a hypocrite for dismissing Gaga’s take on ’90s pop out of hand, especially when I’m on the record praising that style coming from Swedish pop star Robyn. With, no doubt, all the money she wanted at her disposal, the production is top-notch, and despite cuts like “Government Hooker,” which spoils a good beat with an abysmal melody, the first half of the album mostly gets things right. Perhaps it’s just the fact that I’ve listened too many times while writing this piece, but it’s led to some toe-tapping, even singing along. However, after the bouncy self-esteem anthem “Bad Kids,” everything falls apart and the record gets unlistenable. “Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)” and closer “The Edge of Glory” recycle the chord progression from “Hair” (you know, that panderrific “Four Chord” loop that makes me lose any respect for you as a songwriter), and I’m about to add “Heavy Metal Lover” as one of the definitions of “filler” on Urban Dictionary.

Lady Gaga is, apparently, the most powerful celebrity in the entire world right now.  She knows how to get the average person to pay attention to her, if only to be shocked or offended, and she has a willing army of young social media followers willing to do her bidding. It appears that on Born This Way, she’s let that power go to her head. In an attempt to fuse her activism with her music, she’s turned a middling effort into something far more grating. I know I don’t have to say anything to dissuade our readers from buying Born this Way, but the album still deserves commentary. It’s extremely depressing that a 25-year-old who’s still in a “rebel-against-my-parents’-religion” phase is the moral compass for millions of young children, but no one on our side is willing to invest in musicians to model the alternative to Gaga’s postmodern nonsense. We’ve abandoned cultural engagement for so long, we deserve this mess.

It’s not just that her music is bad – though it is, an intermittently catchy collection of overproduced beats laid over nonsense lyrics that would embarrass a slow-witted high school sophomore.  It’s not just that her singing is reminiscent of the hum of a dental drill, a monotonous, atonal mind-chisel that – when combined with her inane lyrics – reminds one of the chanting of some unholy love child of Rain Man and Tiny Tim.  

And it’s not just that she’s pretentious, presenting herself as the sorta-androgynous spoke-being for a coterie of alleged nonconformists whose nonconformity is expressed via rigid conformity to GaGa’s vision of pseudo-transgressive fashions and brain-dead self-affirming slogans.

No, the biggest problem with Lady GaGa isn’t that she’s another lame pop star.  It’s that she’s so damn boring.

As an act of personal sacrifice, I listened to the sneak release of her latest song, an atrocity called “Judas.”  If you want to share my pain, be my guest, but don’t say you weren’t warned.  The Huffington Post, your number one source for all things that suck, is right on top of the earthshaking cultural event that is “Judas”:

The song and video are told from Mary Magdelene’s perspective, with lyrics such as, “When he comes to me, I am ready/ I’ll wash his feet with my hair if he needs/ Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain/ Even after three times, he betrays me/ I’ll bring him down, a king with no crown…”

Wow.  Heavy.  I guess I’m supposed to be one of those bourgeois squares whose mind is going to be blown by GagGa’s willingness to take on those terrifying Christians.  I’m here to report, however, that the only thing that blows is the song.

First, not being one of the socially retarded 18-25 years old shut-ins who make up her rabid fan base, I know that Lady GaGa is not blazing some sort of new path here but, rather, is trodding down the same dull superhighway of anti-Christian imagery that’s been going on forever.  I was around when Madonna did the same crappy song a quarter century ago, except back then it was called “Like a Prayer.” 

Poor Rebecca Black has gotta be sitting there pondering the unfairness of all the dissing she’s endured and thinking “Heck, I’m only fourteen.  I have an excuse!”  At least “Friday” has no pretensions – it’s just a terrible, terrible pop song.  But Lady GaGa thinks she’s making a statement, and the problem is that there are millions of mindless nimrods out there who probably agree – though none of them could articulate just what the statement is with any greater specificity than some lame self-empowerment mantra like “I gotta be who I am in order to be the most me I can be!”

Again, I remind you that these quarter-wits can, or soon will be able to, vote.  And many of them have or will breed. 

I’m not angry at Lady GaGa exploiting my religion to sell records – it’s not like some future musical footnote who delights her dimwitted fans by dressing in a gown made of rib-eyes is going to do to Christianity what the Romans, the Moors and the liberal wing of the Democratic party have been unable to do. 

No, I’m bored, and I’m disgusted with her fans who settle for so little.  Lady GaGa – geez, I even hate writing out that ridiculous moniker – is merely another in a long line of pompous “artists” who try to provoke…badly… and end up just being tedious.  Great, Gaga, you played off some Bible verses – what else ya got? 

You know, the Sex Pistols blew minds because they attacked a target that could and would actually fight back.  When they cranked out “God Save the Queen,” they were taking on (among other things) a society’s ridiculous embrace of the bizarre concept of royalty – and it was risky.  People in Britain liked the monarchy – Johnny and Sid and the gang weren’t just risking their record deal and airplay but they stood the real chance of getting their punk asses kicked.  You think if Bobbie Law had decided to put a little scrutiny on the Pistols’ lifestyle they couldn’t have found enough to lock the boys up for a couple of decades? 

—–

“Anarchy In the UK” wasn’t just a publicity stunt (although it absolutely was that too; Malcolm McLaren rules) – it was reality.  In contrast, Lady GaGa is merely a little girl playing dress-up blasphemy.  The biggest “risk” she’s running is a scathing press release from the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue fulminating impotently as usual about this latest industry “outrage.”  He’s the go-to guy for entertainment sites when some pretentious twerp tries to cash in by trashing the church – he ought to demand a percentage off the back end. 

“Judas” is not just a terrible song – it’s so very much less.  It is pathetic posturing by a “nonconformist” who conforms exactly to every preconceived notion of the liberal elite about religion, about culture and about everything else.  The only way Lady GaGa could ever blow my mind is if she wore an Ayn Rand costume onstage and sang about looking for John Galt. 

As for mining the Christian imagery, well, you’d think that mother-lode would be running a bit dry by now after a few decades of every would-be transgressive tunester tossing some cross/rosary/nun iconography into his or her or s/his videos.  Yawn.

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe she really does want to provoke, to take a real risk, to make a real statement about real repression.  So I eagerly await Lady GaGa’s next big hit featuring a bunch of burka-clad women casting off the clothes that symbolize their oppression while gay Muslim men throw stones back at the savage primitives who would murder them.  She can title the song, “See, I’m Not Just a Hypocritical Poser Who Takes On Only Targets That I Know Will Never, Ever Do Anything About It.” 

Yeah, that’ll happen.

Here we continue our conversation with Daniel Smith, also known as Danielson, an independent musician and businessman based in rural New Jersey who’s done much to foster creativity and community for Christian performers through his record label, Sounds Familyre.  Smith has just released his first album in five years, Best of Gloucester County, which you can order here or from your favorite online retailer.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

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Before we get back into the interview, I’ve got some thoughts about the record itself, which I’ve listened to quite a few times before its release.  As noted in the last portion of our conversation, this has been a transitional record for Danielson in many ways.  In addition to reassembling a team of supporting players, the band is standing in the shadow of 2006’s imposing concept album Ships.  Rather than try to escalate the sound into more “epic” territory, which would quickly degenerate into self-parody, Danielson scales things back and gets about as back-to-basics as he can.  Since he’s working with a smaller sonic palette that doesn’t change much from song to song, the album has a jammier feel; it takes me back to the 2001 Danielson Famile masterwork Fetch the Compass Kids.

Though there’s still some of the heady, theological musing that made up the majority of Ships, Gloucester healthily revives the overt humor of past Danielson days.  “Lil Norge” is a bouncy ball of pure fun co-starring Swedish pop singer Jens Lekman, drawing good-hearted laughs out of culture clashes between Swedes, Norwegians, and Americans, and the aforementioned “People’s Partay” basks in its small-town idiosyncrasies with clever couplets and wordplay.  It’s a light-hearted song about learning that all you need for celebration is other people, God’s most precious creation, and discovering the joy of belonging to a loving community.

The lighter moments are complimented by heavier rock, which, while less aggressive in their production than Ships, continue the perennial Danielson vibe of cosmic rebellion.  By emphasizing purity, humility, and faithfulness, the music is more subversive than any ho-hum controversy-mongering in the pop music world.  Though there are some detours into ambling soundscapes such as “Olympic Portions” and “Hovering Above That Hill,” each song eventually finds its way to a satisfying pop-rock hook or lyric that sticks with you through your day.

Best of Gloucester County may be seen as a one-off or “lesser” Danielson work by some critics expecting another Ships, but this is a record reminding us that life isn’t just about busy peaks.  Rather than cling to immature desires for constant adventure and stimulation, our life experiences can be richest when we pay closer attention to our gauche and unfashionable immediate surroundings.  And with that rambling out of the way, let’s return to the words of our featured artist:

Instead of jumping around from contributor to contributor on each new song, the album has a primary lineup, like back in the day when it was the Famile.  How did you bring together all your supporting players?

Well, it’s been a couple years in this time of figuring out, “Well, who’s my band now?”  I just started to ask around and to meet and start rehearsals with some various players who were recommended to me or people that I’ve worked with in the past.  And we’ve had various shows on and off throughout these past couple years, where we’d go to L.A. for two shows or got to Spain, just do different short weekend trips, and we did a short tour for the Trying Hartz release a couple years ago.

So we kind of used all these shows and trips to get to know each other musically, and a band formed out of that—just playing live, being on the road together.  I just love playing with these guys, and so it was just very natural, from everything clicking and getting to know each other, when it came time to record, everybody was in place.  It was really awesome, but it did take that amount of time.  It wasn’t the kind of thing where players that I’ve never played with just show up to the studio.  We had a couple years of getting to know each other musically first.

And some of them you had already known—with Sufjan Stevens, obviously, there’s much recorded about your guys’ work together, and Josh Stamper works for Sounds Familyre, so were there a few people you were meeting for the first time?

Well, a couple years ago, my friend Brian McTear, who’s a producer in Philadelphia—I’ve worked with him quite a bit.  He helped make Ships; that’s how I met him, actually, and we’ve gotten to know each other better and better since, and he introduced me to Patrick Berkery who’s been a drummer in the Philadelphia area for years, and we just hit it off.  And then Evan, I got to meet him—he actually filled in on some Ships tours, so I’ve been working with him for a while and met through Vito and Monique from The Welcome Wagon.  He’s an amazing player and composer as well.  And then my friend Andy, I’ve known for some years now.  He’s local around here—or, rather, lives around here, but he’s actually from England.  And so, everything’s settled in place, and we’re just trying not to over-think it.

Is the whole lineup going to tour with you, or will it be modified?

I sure hope so; I mean, Sufjan won’t be making it.  But in terms of the rest of the players, we’re trying our best to make sure that it’s as close to that lineup as possible.

How did you connect with the guests on the album? It seems, between getting Jens Lekman to guest, who’s Swedish, and signing the new Sounds Familyre band I Was a King, and I believe your wife is from Sweden, it seems like you’ve got a lot of connections out there.

Well, my wife is actually from Norway.  And I Was a King is from Norway. [Interviewer kicks self repeatedly.] And the connection with Jens Lekman was—years ago, I was on tour, and we played a show in Sweden.  And a friend of mine from Secretly Canadian said, “Hey, there’s this guy named Jens Lekman who’s opening up for you; see what you think.”  And it was great; he was just up there by himself with a mini-disc player; I just loved his music, it was awesome.  So I met him briefly there and then met him again some years ago at the Pitchfork festival when we were playing through there.

But my wife Elin and I just had this idea for years to have this kind of love song between a Swedish boy and a Norwegian girl, and then eventually she moves to America and meets me, and he was just so perfect. We just love his voice, and he’s got a great sense of humor, and he agreed to do it.  We’ve been talking about it for quite a few years, but it finally happened, and it just fit perfectly on this record.

Daniel and wife Elin

Can’t wait to hear it.  One other thing, with the actual distribution of this album, what’s behind the decision to go with the Sounds Familyre label rather than Secretly Canadian this time around?

Well, first of all, the Secretly Canadian guys are just fantastic and so supportive and amazing.  But I think it’s just a  new season for us; it’s always felt a little strange that we asked friends of mine to be on my label, but I wouldn’t be on it.  [laughs] But for Elin and I, there was very much this feeling that it’s time to put all our chips into the vision, because the Sound Familyre label is a vision of community and friends and art all kind of wrapped in one, and the Tri-Danielson vinyl was the very first release years ago, and it’s just time now to put all of our focus into that vision, including our own music.

I usually don’t try to do anything; that’s an important point for me.  I would say, more and more, it’s about trying less and just trusting my gut—trying to decrease the amount of time it takes to make a record and really trying to decrease the time that my brain can start coming in and start over-analyzing and questioning myself.  So really, just trying to keep things as immediate as possible.  I’ve always tried to do that, and I’ve just continued to try more and more to stay out of the way in that sense, and this record—there was a lot of waiting and this not knowing what’s next, and all of a sudden, it happened, and that’s was really exciting.

Growing up, the model for Christian musicians, and correct me if I’m wrong, appears to have been limited to what your father [Lenny Smith, who is an accomplished songwriter suitable for this series as well] was doing, writing praise and worship songs. But it’s obvious that the Danielson project in all its forms is coming from a different place.  Can you describe, for the people who are new to your music, what approach you’ve taken to writing Christ-centered music?

Well, it’s not even that deliberate.  You know, I’m a Christian, and my everyday life is based on hearing God’s voice and trying to do the few things that he wants me to do today, whatever they may be.  And through that doing, hopefully I’m learning how to love and how to be like Him—allowing the Christ in me to come through; “As I decrease, He increases.”  So in that lifestyle, whatever I’m singing about—well, you know, I hardly ever say say “Jesus” or “God” or anything like that, because I’m not preaching.  My lyrics and my words are just reflections of the day-to-day spiritual journey.  And that’s why I don’t consider it Christian music, ‘cause I don’t have an agenda; I’m not selling anything.  I’m just sharing my life and just trying to be as honest and real from that place as I can.  And, to me, that’s what an artist should do; an artist should just be true to who they are and who their being is every day.

Yeah, I guess once you introduce a utilitarian element to it, it kinda destroys the artistry, then.

I also don’t really have anything to say about what other people do, because I’m not here to judge anyone else, but I just speak from what I feel comfortable about being connected with and what I don’t feel comfortable being connected with.

And that is why the man is the real deal; the fruit of the Spirit is strong with this one.  Big Hollywood and I are very thankful for his time.  As one final note, be sure to check out the tour dates for his upcoming concerts.  You may just catch me at either the Lancaster or Pittsburgh shows.  Or both.

By graciously satisfying his readers’ insatiable curiosity in as many ways as possible, Tolkien puts himself at odds with many of today’s authors who, in an attempt to be ostentatiously arty and edgy, delight in leaving their readers with a sense of dramatic emptiness and thematic pointlessness. Just like in the film world, stories that ultimately resolve nothing and leave important plot threads hanging are in increasing vogue. Providing a paying reader with such basic dramatic tenets as resolution and closure is so last century, dont’cha know? Many books are so egregious in this regard that they leave readers saying, “Forget about happy endings, I’d be willing to settle for an ending of any kind — just tell me what happens!”

In the fantasy arena, a reader can easily wade through the swampy sludge of three books, five books, ten books, and even more, all spaced out over a period of many, many years, without ever reaching that terminus. Many fans die every year waiting for our fallen fantasists to achieve some sort of climax in their work worthy of the name.

As we have seen, Tolkien’s goal was to create “heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite.” The good professor and his voracious literary appetite didn’t live to see Terry Brooks usher in the first of what would eventually be a tidal wave of slavish-yet-shallow Lord of the Rings copycat series, nor the later crop of nihilists who have reacted against that phenomenon with their tedious reliance on the artistic, cultural, and moral dead-ends of anti-heroes and torture-porn. But my guess is that — despite the abundance of fantasy choices on bookshelves, and the common refrain among fans that there is “something for everybody” out there — none of it would have satisfied the hunger that originally drove him to write his own books in the first place.

“My work is not a novel,” he insisted, “but an heroic romance, a much older and quite different variety of literature.” The writers of modern-day fantasy soap opera — their novels chock-full of dozens of point-of-view characters all trapped in bewildering plots so lengthy and complex that, quite often, not even the authors are able to successfully keep track of them — don’t seem to have a clue about what this means. The answer, I believe, can be found in a little-quoted letter of Tolkien’s.

When a fan once called Tolkien “a believer in moral didacticism,” the author blanched and replied huffily that “I neither preach nor teach.” But writing to friends, he could let down his guard enough to admit that, “I would claim, if I did not think it presumptuous in one so ill-instructed, to have as one object the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments.” (italics mine)

Our fallen fantasists, one can’t help but notice, recoil from truth like a vampire from a crucifix. There is none of their beloved shades of gray in truth: by its very nature, the word renders or implies some sort of moral judgment on the events described, and forces the author to come down on one side or the other of the cosmic “good vs. evil” debate at play. Liberals often contort the English language into pretzels in their effort to avoid making these judgments, hence they speak of “my truth” versus “your truth” and how all truths need to be respected in an enlightened society. If, say, Sauron’s truth is different from Gandalf’s truth, then who are we to force the reader into embracing one over the other?

Tolkien, at least, refused to torture the English language until the words lost all sense of meaning. To him the word truth said what it meant and meant what it said: to wit, there can be only one truth, with all other conflicting views being false. Furthermore, he believed that “fairy story has its own mode of reflecting ‘truth,’ different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or ‘realism,’ and in some ways more powerful.”

Mind you, Tolkien’s method of explicating truth was not evangelistic. He very deliberately left all mentions of religion out of his fiction, as well as all totems, icons, and symbols of Christianity. Instead, he chose to bring to life what he called a “monotheistic world of ‘natural theology’” wherein the lamps illuminating truth are invisible but nevertheless there. Only very rarely are we lucky enough to see that light burst through dark clouds in full splendor, revealing the sense that Life, for all of its seemingly random evils and tragedies, is threaded with a great, majestic pattern that provides both comfort and the bracing sense of underlying reason.

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“The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny. Éowyn, Éowyn, White Lady of Rohan, in this hour I do not believe that any darkness will endure!” And he stooped and kissed her brow.

And so they stood on the walls of the City of Gondor, and a great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out mingling in the air. And the Shadow departed, and the Sun was unveiled, and light leaped forth; and the waters of Anduin shone like silver, and in all the houses of the City men sang for the joy that welled up in their hearts from what source they could not tell.

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Sitting in church in late 1944, J.R.R. Tolkien had an epiphany. As he later told his son Christopher in a letter, he was listening to “a wonderful commentary on the gospel” one peppered with stories of modern miracles of healing among the faithful. “I was deeply moved,” Tolkien said, “and had that peculiar emotion we all have. . . For it I coined [in his now-famous essay "On Fairy Stories"] the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears. . . [which is] is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce.”

Eucatastrophe.

It’s a word that has been studied by Tolkien fans and scholars a great deal, but often I think in the wrong way. It is not just a feeling of preternatural joy or relief — it is a revelation of truth. As such, it is also a judgment — thunderous in its silence — on the nature of Man, God, and the Universe. Tolkien stressed that…

[Eucatastrophe] produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives. . . that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made.

Truth, in other words, with a capital T. Eucatastrophe is revealed truth on a biblical scale — it’s no wonder that Tolkien referred to The Resurrection as “the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the Greatest Fairy Story,” and credited it with creating “that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.”

That feeling of “Christian joy,” so deeply felt that it’s almost indistinguishable from sorrow, was in Tolkien’s view the closest a living human being could come to discerning an underlying reason for existence, and thus satisfying that ultimate appetite which all men have gnawing away deep within their guts, whether they admit it nor not. The film director Werner Herzog, in much the same context (a context which, I propose, was derived from his own flirtation with Catholicism in his teens) calls this same feeling ecstatic truth.

For those keeping score, this is the exact opposite of nihilism.

To be continued. . . .

“It’s nice to find that little American boys do really say ‘Gee Whiz’,” the author joked to his son Christopher when he mentioned receiving the note. But surprisingly, his prevailing mood was somber:

I find these letters which I still occasionally get. . . make me rather sad. What thousands of grains of good human corn must fall on barren stony ground, if such a very small drop of water should be so intoxicating! But I suppose one should be grateful for the grace and fortune that have allowed me to provide even the drop.

Those are words, humble and true, that evoke the New Testament, conjuring an image of lost souls looking to quench an almost spiritual thirst. At the very time he wrote them, Tolkien was already deep into the agony and the ecstasy of the creation of The Lord of the Rings, and the intersection of the literary and the spiritual was on his mind. “God bless you beloved,” he told his son by way of signing off, but then tagged on a final, lingering question, one weighing heavily on his work: “Do you think the ‘Ring’ will come off, and reach the thirsty?”

It should be clear now to even the dimmest of critical bulbs that Tolkien’s own craving for heroic romance was hardly unique. Millions of others, equally parched in the modern world, were in dire need of the potent drought he was brewing. After The Lord of the Rings finally appeared, it inspired fan letters from grown adults that matched the enthusiasm of the little boy writing from America decades earlier. In The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien we are mostly denied the original missives, but can frequently read Tolkien’s reactions to them.

To one fan, a Mrs. Carole Batten-Phelps, Tolkien said:

You speak of “a sanity and a sanctity” in the L.R. “which is a power in itself.” I was deeply moved. Nothing of the kind had been said to me before. But by a strange chance, just as I was beginning this letter, I had one from a man, who classified himself as “an unbeliever, or at best a man of belatedly and dimly dawning religious feeling. . . . but you,” he said, “create a world in which some sort of faith seems to be everywhere without a visible source, like light from an invisible lamp.”

That’s a fascinating comment, not only because it’s indisputably true, but for what it says about the genre of fantasy fiction at its very best. So many dismiss fantasy in general and Tolkien in particular as shallow children’s fairy tales, with simplistic nursery-rhyme notions of good and evil, and all of it of little relevance to the modern adult world. And yet here are grown adults, intelligent and erudite, who clearly were affected on some bedrock level by The Lord of the Rings. They speak of a sort of comfort, as if reaching a port in the storm of Life, battered and weary, and of being nourished and refreshed by a Power, “some sort of faith,” a Light “from an invisible lamp,” a “sanity and a sanctity.”

There’s been any number of analyses which attempt to discover and unearth the hidden roots of Tolkien’s genius. The author himself disliked academic dissertations, seeing them for what they usually are: examples of the writer trying to preen and peacock his intellectual superiority over the reader, not by understanding or empathizing but by dissection and vivisection. It’s the difference between a critic taking his audience into a golden field and inviting them to share his wonder at the butterflies coloring the skies with beauty and life, and a grumpy collector showing you a scrapbook filled with those same butterflies pinned and cataloged in monotonous order. Both methods address the same subject — but which truly captures their nature, and is a more accurate representation of Life and Creation?

Tolkien’s work steadfastly resists deconstruction because so much of its power isn’t physical or tangible, and hence cannot be pinned or cataloged or dipped into academic and postmodern formaldehyde. It is spiritual, ethereal, concerned not so much with plot as with Purpose. One of Tolkien’s friends, a priest, read portions of The Lord of the Rings in typescript and told the author that he distinctly felt what he called the “order of Grace” in the tale. The phrase left Tolkien quietly overjoyed.

Lying at the center of this Order, holding it all together like divine mortar, is heroism. Tolkien himself was often moved by scenes he wrote displaying his characters’ “physical resistance to evil,” reverently calling their actions nothing less than “a major act of loyalty to God.” This loyalty, equal parts physical and spiritual, was in turn something that he believed “only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it.” The world of The Lord of the Rings is filled with great temptations of a sort that don’t lead directly to evil per se, but that lead to the abandonment of the physical resistance — the pain, the suffering — that Tolkien considered so central to his notions of true heroism.

When viewed in this fashion, heroism becomes the heritage not only of the strong and mighty and scary-smart — in fact, frequently it is they who most easily give in to the temptations of power. It should be remembered that among the greatest tragedies of Middle-earth is that even such monstrous villains as Morgoth and Sauron were once forces of great good in the world, veritable angels who ultimately allowed themselves to be corrupted into Lucifers by their anti-heroism, i.e. their disloyalty to God. Much the same can be said of Saruman and the Ringwraiths — all tempted into sowing the seeds of their own undoing.

Conversely, many of the greatest heroes of Tolkien’s legendarium are Hobbits and men who, compared to immortal Elves wielding rings of power from the safety of their forested fastnesses, are weak and low and even wretched. And yet by their “physical resistance to evil” they manage to save the world. “The ennoblement of the ignoble I find specially moving,” Tolkien once wrote. “. . . .I love the vulgar and simple as dearly as the noble, and nothing moves my heart (beyond all the passions and heartbreaks of the world) so much as ‘ennoblement’.”

His use of the word “vulgar” here is interesting. He of course did not mean dirty language or nudity, but common or simple. Middle-earth is a world that rocks to what Tolkien described as “unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten.” He was enchanted both in fiction and in life by how ordinary people, through even the most seemingly minor acts of charity, pity or goodwill, could create earth-shaking effects that redounded to the good of Good, and of humanity.

This, of course, immensely echoes Christian, and particularly Catholic, teachings. “Pity,” for instance — which Tolkien once reverently described as “a word of moral and imaginative worth” — appears in the Douay-Rheims Bible no less than fifty times. “Without the high and noble,” Tolkien believed, “the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless.” The Lord of the Rings is awash in this symbiotic interplay between nobility and vulgarity — it is in fact a large part of its overall charm.

Perhaps Tolkien had such affection for the vulgar becoming noble because he felt that he was once vulgar himself, a “grain of good human corn” who was only spared the fate of spiritually perishing on “barren stony ground” by an act of common, unsung heroism that would both haunt and inspire him for his entire life.

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Crying farewell, the Elves of Lórien with long grey poles thrust them out into the flowing stream, and the rippling waters bore them slowly away. The travelers sat still without moving or speaking. On the green bank near to the very point of the Tongue the Lady Galadriel stood alone and silent. As they passed her they turned and their eyes watched her slowly floating away from them. For so it seemed to them: Lórien was slipping backward, like a bright ship masted with enchanted trees, sailing on to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey and leafless world.

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“I am one who came up out of Egypt,” Tolkien once wrote. Few people now remember that Tolkien, one of the best-known Catholics of the twentieth century, was not born into the faith.

When he was a young boy, Tolkien’s widowed mother forsook her Baptist heritage and converted to Catholicism in the face of vociferous condemnation from her family. Outraged, they proceeded to cut the desperate, ailing woman off from all financial assistance, leaving her to linger and struggle on for a few more years, all the while steadfastly refusing to recant her religious conversion. She finally died of diabetes at the tragically young age of thirty-four, but not before impressing on her sons the depth of her new-found faith, and not before making arrangements that her two orphaned boys would be taken in by a kindly Catholic priest, sent to college via his auspices, and raised within the mental Lórien of the Catechism and Holy Sacraments.

Throughout a long life filled with many disappointments and temptations, Tolkien remained ever grateful that his mother had, to the point of death, gifted him with the “sudden and miraculous experience” of being thrust into “a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know.” By 1941, already neck-deep in the composition of The Lord of the Rings, he was able to write to his son Michael with conviction that, “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament…..There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.”

Romance, glory, honour, fidelity. On the surface, the words evoke Arthurian legends and other warrior tales of heroic deeds more than Catholic piety. But, as usual, Tolkien chose his words carefully. It was because his mother left him with a priest that he met the woman who would become his beloved wife. He would also, while under the care of that priest, attend college, discover philology, and ultimately become the man who would pen the grand tales that today loom like a monolith over the genre of fantasy fiction.

It strikes me that a lot of what our fallen fantasists do these days is as artistically disingenuous as it is morally bankrupt. They claim to be moving the genre forward into refreshingly uncharted territory, and yet virtually everything they do bears the foul-stenched hallmarks of a knowingly maledictory reaction backward to Tolkien and Howard. They consciously use anti-heroics to drain their fictional worlds of virtues like charity, pity, and goodwill, until their tales become metaphorical Death Valleys in which Tolkien’s “grains of good human corn” perish on the “barren and stony ground.” Having done this, they then claim that The Thirst of Tolkien’s fancy is just a myth perpetuated by out-of-touch conservatives wistfully pining for a time that never was.

And yet all the while, the thirsty seek.

Speaking of his characters, both the noble and the vulgar, Tolkien once humbly proposed that, “I lack what all my characters possess (let the psychoanalysts note!) Courage.” But that is not true. He had the courage to spend decades creating a mythology few seemed ready to embrace, and which many were wont to criticize. Just as heroes are ennobled by their courage and convictions, and readers by savoring the tales of their exploits, so too are writers ennobled by telling those tales so beautifully, and by satiating — one precious drop at a time — the eternal thirst that is the bane of good men.

“It remains an unfailing delight to me,” Tolkien admitted, “to find my own belief justified: that the ‘fairy-story’ is really an adult genre, and one for which a starving audience exists.” From a small, vulgar American child going “Gee Whiz!” to a spiritual woman looking for “sanity and sanctity,” from an honest unbeliever’s relishing of the faith that shines out from The Lord of the Rings “like light from an invisible lamp,” to a perceptive English priest savoring the tale’s innate “order of Grace,” all confirm Tolkien’s belief, and drown out the mewling of those unfortunates too irredeemable to realize it.

To Be Continued. . . .