Welcome in and Happy Wednesday to you. Classes resumed yesterday, and I’m ready to settle back in to a happy in-semester rhythm. On Monday, I performed the most basic of automotive repairs—changing a tire on my wife’s car—and my age must be showing because my body is aching all over (of course, the 15 degree weather is probably playing a role as well). But we carry on, nevertheless, with some observations on the week in religious communication.
It would be rhetorical malpractice not to note the plethora of religious rhetorics related to the inauguration of President Trump on Monday, January 20, 2025, including in the inaugural address itself.
—Baptist News Global covers Franklin Graham’s invocation.
—Whitehouse.gov provides the text of the Inaugural Address itself.
Artist, musician, film and TV creator David Lynch passed away on January 15, 2025. Lynch’s work dealt with the surreal, the sacred, and, at times, the grotesque. He experienced life with an acute awareness of real battles between good and evil playing out in the mundane, banal, and commonplace. My main experience with Lynch, “Twin Peaks” and “Twin Peaks: The Return”, is at once beautiful, frightening, sobering, and…hopeful? That word came to mind, but I’m hesitant. It ends in a place more sobering than particularly hopeful. I really like Tyler Huckabee’s piece about Lynch on RNS, well-titled “Fix your Hearts or Die: The Unflinching Moral Compass of David Lynch”:
The lazy analysis of “Twin Peaks” is that every small American town, no matter how quaint and idyllic on the outside, has evil lurking under the facade. Laura Palmer is simply the unflinching autopsy of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and Lynch is a cynic who wanted to air out the rot at the heart of the American dream…He saw good and evil as stark, clearly demarcated things. What fascinated him was not that good things could be secretly bad, but that good and bad could coexist in the same person, the same place. In “Twin Peaks,” good and evil are both cosmic entities we can scarcely understand and twin forces working within us. The secret of Laura Palmer is not that she seemed like a good person but was actually a very damaged victim of unspeakable wickedness. It’s that she is both a good person and a very damaged victim of unspeakable wickedness. The secret of Albert Rosenfield is not that he seems like a rude guy who is actually a very noble guy, but that he is both very rude and heartrendingly noble. And the secret of Twin Peaks at large is not that it seemed like a good town but that it is a good town — and also a bad one. The same is true of so many places; so many of us.
On January 22, 1905, peaceful Russian workers marching on St. Petersburg seeking reform and ethical treatment were shot by Tsarist security forces on what would become known as Bloody Sunday. They carried religious emblems and were led by Russian Orthodox Priest Georgy Gapon.
I’m no expert on this historical even at all. Read about it here. I’m fascinated by the religious origins and contributions to organized labor movements throughout the world. Gapon himself (from my admittedly superficial research this week) seems to me to be a fascinating figure who. He managed to survive Bloody Sunday. On the one hand, clearly cared deeply for the plight of exploited Russian workers. On the other, he seemed convinced that playing both sides and showing duel loyalties to both the workers and the oppressors would best serve his goals. In the end, it seems to have gotten him killed by the workers he sought to serve (or at least the Party that came to claim to act on their behalf). A story worth reading about and reflecting upon.
Today, a poem from Rudyard Kipling. I’m not sure, quite honestly, what to make of this one. Is Kipling speaking ironically to condemn xenophobia, or is he participating in it? Scholars don’t agree. To me, the naked ridiculousness of the speakers’ perspective indicates irony. See what you think.
“The Stranger” by Rudyard Kipling
The Stranger
By Rudyard Kipling
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk,
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.
The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control,
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf,
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
Those are Three Points and a Poem for January 22, 2025. I hope you are doing well and staying warm. I plan to be back later this week for more of my ongoing series, and then a week from now for another weekly round-up from the world of Religious Communication. Until then, thanks for reading, and thank you for the good that you bring into the world.
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