Christianity

You know something dire is happening in the world if Dolly Parton’s feathers are ruffled. Dolly, an American sweetheart known for her blonde, bouffant hair, downhome, sweet and simple honesty (and a couple other big things), has released some songs from her upcoming rock album, Rockstar. And golly Dolly, are they ever feisty. The fact that Dolly is releasing a rock ’n’ roll album at all points to a serious cultural reckoning. Dolly, now seventy-seven years old, is more known for such innocent hits as “Love Is like a Butterfly” and “Coat of Many Colors” than for having a black-leather edge associated with sex and drugs. Yet such are the times we live in.    At the ACM Awards a couple weeks ago, Dolly debuted “World on Fire” from Rockstar.

When Mel Gibson’s ultra-violent, ultra-religious Passion of the Christ made $612 million worldwide, it was not earning its money from teenagers looking for a night out. Despite its R rating, churchgoers were being bused to theaters by the millions, thanks to the heavy support it received from evangelical Christian groups. Everyone from Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell to Pat Robertson and Chuck Colson came out in support of the film, although the Pope’s supposed endorsement — "it is as it was" — was denied by the Vatican. Yet faith-based films have quietly been big business in Hollywood for decades now.

Delia Owens’s novel was probably destined to be a bestseller. How many books manage to combine a distinctive sense of natural “place” — the marshes surrounding the North Carolina town of Barkley Cove — with themes of survival, romance, and murder? And with a bestseller comes a film adaptation; hence the recently released Where the Crawdads Sing, which is playing in theaters now. When the town’s golden boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) is found dead at the base of a rickety wooden tower, blame immediately falls on the enigmatic Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones, likely best known for her recent starring turn in Normal People), who lives alone in a rickety house deep within the marsh.

Father Stu opened in theaters this Holy Week. It’s a movie about a real-life man who led a depraved and reckless life, found God, became a priest, suffered greatly and died from an incurable disease. And did so — more importantly — with patience and good nature that inspired multitudes of those around him. The film’s message is essentially that suffering has value, and as we sit in the richest nation in history drowning in the highest levels of depression ever recorded, such a reminder could not come at a better time. It’s a curious thing that so many people are dissatisfied with life when the standard of living has never been higher.

I’ve been reliably informed that Hamilton is now cringe. Constance Grady of Vox explains, drawing on a scene from the recent reboot of Gossip Girl: “You know, I saw Hamilton… before it went on Broadway,” brags one of the teens, hoping to impress his cool new girlfriend Zoya. “You into that play?” Zoya, the wokest of the group and the one with the most sophisticated literary taste, sighs deeply and rolls her eyes. “No doubt it’s a work of art,” she allows. “But …” Zoya doesn’t finish her sentence.

Dense Poems and Socratic Light: The Poetry of John Martin Finlay, edited by David Middleton, Wiseblood Books, 2020 To say that the poet John Martin Finlay has been forgotten is not quite right. He was never “remembered” — read by a significant number of people — in the first place. But his best work is as good as the best work of many of the poets of his time, and Wiseblood Books is hoping to set things right with a two-volume collection of his poetry and prose. Born in southern Alabama on a peanut and dairy farm in 1941, Finlay went to university in Alabama and Louisiana, where he graduated with a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1980 and converted to Catholicism that same year.