"By a certain light, this is the first time that the British director’s vision will be seen properly."

"The restoration contains censored moments once thought lost, like frenzied, naked nuns writhing sexually on a giant crucifix or a Mother Superior (Vanessa Redgrave) making love to a phallic bone fragment.... The uproar makes sense in context. 'When people saw the film, because Ken’s imagery is so visceral, they were shocked by it,'  said the critic Mark Kermode, who befriended Russell in the 1990s and was instrumental in finding the lost footage and reintegrating it into the director’s cut.... Yet Russell, who died in 2011 at 84, was adapting a respected 1952 nonfiction book, 'The Devils of Loudun' by Aldous Huxley, and a stage version by John Whiting that followed in 1961. The plot centers on a Roman Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier (Reed), who unabashedly pursues sexual relationships with women, but also presides over the walled city of Loudun as a sort of secular stronghold where Catholics and Protestants live together peaceably."

From "In 1971, This Film Was a Scandal. In 2026, It’s a Respected Period Piece. 'Ken Russell’s The Devils' was deemed shocking for scenes with orgiastic nuns and a debauched priest. But its serious aims are clear in a new restoration" (NYT).

I can't remember how I was ever able to see this film, but I did see it, I believe in the 70s, and for many years I'd always include it on my very short list of favorite films — along with "Aguirre the Wrath of God" and "My Dinner With Andre." Clearly, I had a taste for a certain sort of male character! I have no idea how this film would strike me today. But I think it would resonate with present-day themes: a strong political man ruined over his sexual acting out and women who lose their rationality when overexcited by sex and politics.

As Kermode puts it: "It is really a brilliantly serious, heartfelt story about brainwashing, about the politicization of religion, about the use of hysteria."

Speaking of naked writhing and early 70s films the critics panned, I got through "Zabriskie Point" the other day. Not good. Seems to say if only you can be young, beautiful, and naked — and kick up a big cloud of white dust while having intercourse in a barren landscape — you can save the world. I was worried about the dust — borax?!— and the damage to the landscape — Death Valley  and I couldn't even believe those 2 crazy lovers could enjoy their gritty play. We're supposed to think they do because the camera pulls back and shows the landscape full of naked couples simulating sex. Who are they? Where did they come from? Answer: This is art. They're an idea.

"Mr. Vance, who just published a book about his conversion to Catholicism, has for weeks been road-testing unfounded, innuendo-based salvos against Mr. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian."

"At the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas last month, the vice president suggested that Mr. Talarico’s past statements supporting transgender children were evidence of inappropriate behavior. 'A guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history,' Mr. Vance said. People in the crowd gasped and murmured. Some clapped. Mr. Vance has defended those comments. 'I think typically people who say stuff like that tend to have some pretty unusual search histories,' he said a day later. Mr. Talarico, who has said he has a longtime girlfriend, has largely ignored the vice president’s insinuations...."

From "Vance’s Talarico Attacks Show His Penchant for Personal Broadsides/At a rally in Texas, the vice president suggested the Democratic Senate nominee is gay, a comment criticized as homophobic" (NYT).

"To understand the religious dynamics of the Texas race, it’s important to absorb the true depths of the 'God gap' in American politics."

Writes David French, in "The ‘God Gap’ Is Narrowing in Texas" (NYT).

That gap isn’t just about white evangelicals (although it certainly is partly about them), and it’s one of the Democrats’ chief obstacles to obtaining a durable political majority. Any discussion of the God gap does have to begin with white evangelicals. Their numbers are vast (far more than twice as large as Black Protestants, the most loyal religious Democratic voters), and they vote in lock step. In 2024, white evangelicals voted for Trump by a 65-point margin, 82 percent to 17 percent. Trump lost all other voters by 18 points, 58 percent to 40 percent....

"These are very, very special times. And this is a very special place. You live in a very special place. Congratulations everybody."

Those were the very very very special words of our President, Donald J. Trump, speaking at Mount Rushmore, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the 4th of July.

"And we rededicate ourselves to being a nation as big, bold, noble, and as great as these American giants. And that's not easy to do, but we're going to do it. These men could only have been made in the USA. Their faces are engraved on these bluffs, not only because of what they did, but to remind us forever who we are. These heroes exemplify what is timeless, enduring, and eternal about the American character. And in the end, it has always been that character, our distinct and unique identity. It is a truly unique identity and it'll never change.... Liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it.... The identity of a nation is the destiny of a nation. And America has a destiny like no other because we are a people like no other. For whatever reason, that's just the way it is.

Why do people read this illustration to represent Trump depicted as Jesus rather than Trump with the miraculous power of the laying on of hands?

 

Trump shared this image, then took it down when he was attacked. The image was said to represent him as Jesus. He denied that he had seen it that way. He said the image showed him as "a doctor making people better and I do make people a lot better." Many observers hooted "Doctor!" What kind of doctor wears a robe and applies small orbs of light to the patient's forehead!?

But what is Jesus-y about handheld balls of light? What is Jesus-y about an American flag, the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, a bald eagle, fighter jets, soldiers ascending upward, and a medical worker with a stethoscope?

You can see what you want here, and maybe if you're genuinely concerned about blasphemy you'll want to err on the side of not jumbling up worldly images with things that might be sacred. But is there any serious Christian iconography there? I see nothing other than the white tunic and red mantle. What about the healing itself? But healing with the laying on of hands is not something limited to Jesus. Whether it is effective or not, it has been a widespread practice through human history, and it is a way to express the idea of profound healing.

There is healing through the laying on of hands in the Old Testament and, in the New Testament, it is not limited to Jesus. And in Western history, there was also the "royal touch" — "a form of laying on of hands, whereby French and English monarchs touched their subjects... with the intent to cure them of various diseases and conditions."

American Presidents are frequently portrayed as healers — spiritual healers — and the use of exalted imagery is common, not some freakish new thing special to Trump. It might be a bad idea — because it's trashy art, because politics and religion should be kept strictly separated, or because propaganda is deceptive and distracting — whatever. That image may be bullshit, but the outrage over it is also bullshit. When I think of all the times Barack Obama was portrayed as a Christ figure! Ridiculous. Grow up. 

And here are The Thompson Twins:

Oh, lay your hands on me/(Lay your hands) woo-hoo/(Ooh, lay your hands) oh, lay your hands on me/(Lay your hands) oh, oh-oh-oh....

Which U.S. Presidents have been called "The Antichrist"?

I wondered, on seeing the Wired article "Staunch Trump Supporters Are Now Asking if He’s the Antichrist/The Iran war and a series of social media posts, including one depicting Trump as Jesus Christ, have some conservative commentators and fans suspecting the president may be the antichrist."

Of course, it's a long tradition in American discourse. If I can trust Grok, it goes back at least to FDR. 

Grok cites a 2011 Slate article: "How Many Presidents Have Been Accused of Being the Antichrist?/Hint: It’s not just Obama."

I remember why the topic came up in 2011. I blogged about it in "Obama does a great job reacting to a heckler who calls him the Antichrist" ("Obama has the presence of mind to say — responding to the heckled 'Jesus Christ is God, Barack Obama is the Antichrist!' — 'I agree. Jesus Christ is the Lord. I believe in that'").

There's also Ronald Reagan.

"I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do."

Said Pope Leo, quoted in the NYT.

"Leo’s comments came after Mr. Trump’s lengthy attack on the pope on Sunday night, in which the president accused the pontiff of being 'weak on crime' and 'catering to the Radical Left.' Mr. Trump also said Leo, the first American pope, should 'focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.'"

Trump wants the Pope to stay in his lane, but does Trump stay in his lane? I see I already have the tag "Trump and religion," so I'm going to say no.

MORE: From Leo: "The things I say are not meant as attacks on anyone. I do not look at my role as being political, a politician. I don’t want to get into a debate with him. I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing."

I'm not getting in your lane. You're getting in my lane.

Speaking of tags, I have a longstanding "religion and politics" tag. The line between the two has never been clear, and people are not clear about how clear they want the line to be. It's a very old problem, and it won't be solved with facile stay-in-your-lane taunts.

AND: Here's what Trump put up at Truth Social:

The real victim is Jasmine Crockett.

I'm reading "The Colbert-CBS spat is about overregulation/Keeping the equal-time rule in place is a political choice" — gift link. That's by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

I remember writing about FCC regulation when I was a law student — I graduated in 1981 — and even back then the argument was made that times have changed and the basis for regulation — the scarcity of the airwaves — was being overtaken by technology — then, cable TV. I remember using the phrase "based on a future that has not yet arrived," because cable TV was expensive and it wasn't even available everywhere. But now, it's 45 years later, and the FCC is still pressuring broadcast media avoid the most egregious sort of political imbalance.

The equal-time rule hasn’t been vigorously enforced in recent years, reflecting its obsolescence. But as with many outdated business regulations, Congress hasn’t bothered to revoke it.

"My implicit equation of attention is: Curiosity plus conflict equals attention."

Says Ezra Klein, in his podcast, which is titled "Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left?" (NYT).

Talarico is on the podcast because, as Klein puts it, he "was breaking through on TikTok, Instagram and viral videos" and "ended up on Joe Rogan’s podcast — the first significant Democrat that Rogan seemed interested in, in a very long time."

And now "Talarico is running for Senate in Texas. He’s running in a primary with Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett...." There's no other mention of Crockett in the article. Why not? Talarico was never invited to speak against her, but this podcast is clearly boosting him, which is inherently against her. I presume hardcore Democrats, focused on winning the Texas Senate seat, don't want Crockett to win the primary.

The question isn't really Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left? It's Can James Talarico Seize the Nomination from Crockett?

Ezra Klein says: "The biggest concern I hear about you in Texas is that you’re sort of a liberal’s idea of what a Christian politician should be." 

And, really, we all know the way liberals use Christianity... whether they make viral video or not. But Talarico has advanced to where he is because he put the standard argument into the form of viral video.

But the Talarico's video that's out there includes things that can be cherry-picked and used against him. Klein confronts him with clips that were used in an attack ad against him (not by Crockett, but by another candidate, Terry Virts, who has dropped out). 

Talarico Clip 1: Modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six.

Talarico Clip 2: God is nonbinary. I find this to be a deeply offensive bill.

Voice-over: James Talarico is talking about the bill that would ban biological men from playing in women’s sports. Remember this ad?

Voice-over from archival clip: Biological men compete against our girls in their sports. Kamala is for they/them.

Voice-over: The same ads will be played by Ken Paxton. The result will be: U.S. Senator Ken Paxton. James Talarico owes it to us to tell us how he’s going to answer these attack ads.

Klein asks: "So how are you going to answer those attack ads?" And Talarico stalls for time: "Man, the music was real scary." Which isn't how you're going to answer successfully.

Klein has to push him even to try to answer. He says: "You can talk about love all you want. But the idea is to say you’re out of step with Texans, and they’re not going to feel loved by someone they feel doesn’t agree with them."

And then Talarico talks not about Christianity or love, but about local control of decisionmaking and "common sense." 

"If you’re 30 years old... there’s a sense of nihilism that’s growing.... And this nihilism, [Charlie] Kirk understood...."

"Of course, I only had an hour-and-a-half conversation with Charlie, but where it seems to me to have fallen short with Turning Point USA and the MAGA movement is they don’t have a prescription to actually address the real and substantive issues — but they sure as hell identify the problem."

Said Gavin Newsom, interviewed by Ezra Klein, in "The Contradictions of Gavin Newsom" (NYT)(audio and transcript at Podscribe, here). Kirk had been a guest on Newsom's podcast, and Klein wanted to know what Newsom had learned from Kirk.

Klein pushed back: "Well, isn’t that a prescription? If I were to try to boil it down: tariffs, a closed border and Christianity?"

Instead of taking on Klein's idea that the right does offer solutions, Newsom seized on that last word —Christianity — and tumbled into personal storytelling mode:

Profound and multidimensional disrespect.

It is weird to me that these people don't see the irony of honoring "marginalized communities" by making a beautiful historical building really ugly. https://t.co/j7GEtCFsMY

— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 10, 2025

One of the comments over there: "I haven't seen a single person yet mention that this isn't real graffiti. These are carefully pasted vinyl stickers that will be taken off in a couple months when the exhibition ends. They obviously didn't permanently deface a sacred building."

Good thing they were carefully pasted. They could have been carelessly pasted. And it could have been real spray paint. It's hard to imagine any religion but Christianity inviting and celebrating this kind of humiliation. 

"The critics of Christian nationalism sometimes argue that it is a political movement using the language and symbols of religion in order to win elections."

"But the events of the past week have proved that this is a genuinely religious movement and Charlie Kirk was a genuinely religious man. The problem is that unrestrained faith and unrestrained partisanship are an incredibly combustible mixture. I am one of those who fear that the powerful emotions kicked up by the martyrdom of Kirk will lead many Republicans to conclude that their opponents are irredeemably evil and that anything that causes them suffering is permissible. It’s possible for faithful people to wander a long way from the cross."

Writes David Brooks, in "We Need to Think Straight About God and Politics" (NYT).

Charlie Kirk was a genuinely religious man... but Charlie Kirk is the one who was killed. He is no longer alive in this world and capable of acting or speaking to us. He is now as usable as political people want him to be. 

Brooks speaks of the danger that "many Republicans" will use Kirk to establish that "their opponents are irredeemably evil and that anything that causes them suffering is permissible." I suppose anything is possible, but I would think that Christians are the last to call other people "irredeemable." And it seems to be the left who have been falling prey to the ideation that their opponents are "irredeemably evil." Maybe what you fear in others is the very thing you yourself tend to do.

"Yesterday, my 17-year-old niece left for Europe to go to college. And while she was packing, her mother, Amaryllis, my daughter-in-law, noticed that she had put a Bible in her suitcase."

"And Amaryllis was curious about it. And she asked her, and Zoe said to her, 'I want to live like Charlie Kirk.' There are millions and millions of kids around the country who he inspired who now want to live like Charlie Kirk and that's a great thing for our country."

Said RFK Jr., at The Prayer Vigil for Charlie Kirk at the Kennedy Center.

Watch the entire vigil here:

"I think what the enemy intended for evil, the Lord will use for good. We will see what the Lord does through it."

Said Jeff Schwarzentraub of the BRAVE Church in Denver, quoted in "Kirk’s Christian Supporters Mourn Him as a Martyr/'Charlie died for what he believed in,' said Jackson Lahmeyer, a pastor in Oklahoma" (NYT).

I'm interested in the concept of Charlie Kirk as a "martyr."  I wrote post yesterday inviting people to contemplate Kirk as a "saint." If you're inclined to think that Kirk was too political to fit this religious conception, here he is in his own defense:

"Charlie is already in paradise with the angels"/"We take comfort in the knowledge that he is now at peace with God in heaven."

Said RFK Jr. and Donald Trump. 

Questions I asked ChatGPT:

1. Were they attesting to Charlie Kirk's sainthood?

2. If you had to argue that Charlie Kirk should be canonized what would you say?

3. Outside of the Catholic Church how is sainthood talked about?

Answers here.

ADDED: Those questions were posed to ChatGPT, not Grok, as I'd written before. Here, I've given Grok a chance.

AND: This post was written as a serious invitation to contemplate Kirk as a saint. He presented his efforts as for his faith. Asked how he would want to be remembered, if he were to die, he said: "I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing."

"It’s never been about whether or not I’m going to lose my tax-exempt status. It’s whether I’m going to lose my prophetic status."

"Let’s not be wussy about this. When we see sin, then name it. But I think it limits me, if somebody believes that I am tied to a candidate or political party."

So said Bonnie A. Perry, an Episcopal Bishop, quoted in a NYT article that's mostly about a Lutheran pastor,  Jonathan Barker, who resigned from Grace Lutheran (in Kenosha, Wisconsin) rather than give up on his plan to deliver a sermon about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, endorsing her as a Democratic Party candidate for President in the 2028 election.

The article is "He Tried to Endorse From the Pulpit. He Wound Up Without a Church. The I.R.S. says churches can now support candidates during services, but many denominations still forbid it. A Wisconsin pastor learned the hard way."

So is this about religion or tax exemptions? Bishop Perry refers to "my tax-exempt status," but it's about the ability of all the donors to her church to claim a tax exemption.

It used to be clear that endorsing a political candidate would disqualify a church from its tax-exempt status, but there was a lawsuit challenging that and the Trump administration settled the lawsuit and said that churches could endorse candidates "to their own congregations, in connection with a worship service."

That doesn't mean they should. They may, like Perry, wisely refrain from losing their clout, their fervor, their credibility. Who would go to church to be harangued about voting for the latest Democrat? And then on top of that, you have to worry that you might lose their tax deduction if your church strays beyond the limited concession made in settling that lawsuit.

The churches have good reason to maintain a wall of separation between "the garden of the church" and "the wilderness of the world," even if there's a loophole in the tax law.

"In a lot of ways, I was withdrawing from mainstream society. I was trying to drop back about two centuries to become an eighteenth-century man..."

"... who relied on hunting and fishing for his livelihood. But I was living in the twentieth century, and everything was constantly changing around me.... I’ve always believed that if we did what was morally and ethically right, while continuing to steadfastly believe in what we were doing, we’d end up okay in the end.... Now, I’m not a man of great intellectual depth, but it sounds to me like God Almighty has said we can pretty much rack and stack anything that swims, flies, or walks, which I consider orders from headquarters.... After studying several political parties to find out what they believe and stand for, I decided my political ideology was more in line with the Republicans. I definitely was no Democrat—that’s for sure—but I don’t really consider myself one or the other. I’m more of a Christocrat, someone who honors our founding fathers and pays them homage for being godly men at a time when wickedness was all over the world. Our founding fathers started this country and built it on God and His Word, and this country sure would be a better place to live and raise our children if we still followed their ideals and beliefs."

Highlights I selected from a book I read and blogged 11 years ago, retrieved this morning on seeing the obituary of the author. Do you recognize the voice?

"I can tell you... '16 was providential. That was the hand of God.... The pandemic and the stealing of the 2020 election was also the hand of God."

"At the time, it didn't seem that [way] but if we had gone right into a second term, it would have been like trench warfare. It would have been like the Western Front in World War I, just two sides dug in, and they kind of had Trump surrounded. God's hand worked that we would step back.… We had the time to regroup. Trump had the time to think.... You had those four years of preparation."

Said Steve Bannon.

That made me think about something Ross Douthat said in that podcast blogged 2 posts down: 

"If there is one word to define Trump’s atmosphere, it is 'pagan.'"

"The pagan values of ancient Rome celebrated power, manliness, conquest, ego, fame, competitiveness and prowess, and it is those values that have always been at the core of Trump’s being — from his real estate grandiosity to his love of pro wrestling to his king-of-the-jungle version of American greatness. The pagan ethos has always appealed to grandiose male narcissists because it gives them permission to grab whatever they want. This ethos encourages egotists to puff themselves up and boast in a way they find urgently satisfying; self-love is the only form of love they know...."

That's David Brooks, tending to your soul, in "How to Survive the Trump Years With Your Spirit Intact" (NYT)(free-access link).

I hadn't encountered that men-thinking-about-the-Roman-Empire meme in quite a while. Okay. Nice to see its return. Helps us understand what the men are doing these days.

Anyway, I wonder, is this analysis unfair to pagans?

If paganism is a grand but dehumanizing value system, I’ve found it necessary, in this increasingly pagan age, to root myself in anything that feels rehumanizing, whether it’s art or literature or learning. I’ve found it incredibly replenishing to be spending time around selfless, humble people....

Anything that feels rehumanizing?

Well, read the whole thing to be fair to Brooks, not that he's being fair to Trump... or to pagans. 

Looking into this blog's archive to see what I might have said about pagans over the years, I encountered this May 29, 2017 post, which focuses on a quote from Andrew Sullivan calling Trump "a pagan":

"Vance in Rome trying to meet the Pope? What a theatrical performance. Hypocrite. Viper."

That's the 3rd most highly rated comment at the WaPo article "Vance meets with pope as Francis’s Easter message decries ‘logic of fear’/The visit at the Vatican brought together the ailing head of the Catholic church and a high-profile convert who has criticized the pope’s social teachings."

Second most highly rated comment: "I’m surprised Vance didn’t burst into flames."

Most highly rated: "Vance is just one of many fake religious politicians. They run around boasting of their faith, but practice none of the Christian values Jesus and the bible preached."

And here's the "logic of fear" statement in the Pope's Easter message: "How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants. I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death."