Herman Wouk's 1985 novel "War and Remembrance" has a most prophetic minor character buried within its 1300 pages. This character is a philosophical and definitely sweet English aristocrat named Duncan Burne-Wilke, whom we meet in the "CBI" or "China Burma India" theater of the Second World War. Burne-Wilke envisages the end of Western colonialism on account of a massive disillusionment caused by the War. But he also thinks in religious terms concerning the future of America and England. He sees ...
May 08, 2011•27 min
This is my favorite book. It's also Bill Murray's. It is called "The Razor's Edge" and was written by Somerset Maugham. It was published in 1944. It tells the story of some well-to-do Americans from Lake Forest, who all find what they're looking for in life. One of them, 'Larry Darrell', loses his life only to save it. He is the hero, and I think he could be yours. P.S. Who's "Ruysbroek"?
Apr 30, 2011•31 min
"The Green Pastures" is a 1930 American play, and 1936 Hollywood movie, that was once as famous as "Our Town". Now, for reasons of political correctness, it is rarely seen and seldom taught. Even the DVD has to carry a 'Warning' label. (Good Grief!) How dearly we have robbed ourselves of a pearl of truly great price. Marc Connelly's "The Green Pastures" deals theatrically with the transition in the Bible from Law to Grace. (It is not Marcionite!) Has God's Mercy, in relation to God's Law, ever b...
Apr 17, 2011•34 min
Bishop Bell appears as a main character in Rolf Hochhuth's 1967 play entitled "Soldiers". Bell confronts Churchill on the morality of murder from the air, especially when it involves the murder of civilians. Such a confrontation never actually took place, but the Bishop and the Prime Minister had the thoughts and stated them. The PM detested Bell. In Act Three of Hochhuth's play, Bell loses and Churchill wins. In the moral balance, Churchill lost and Bell won. "Soldiers" is a play about the mass...
Apr 08, 2011•35 min
George K.A. Bell (1883-1958) was the Bishop of Chichester during World War II. He addressed the House of Lords on February 9, 1944, questioning the Government on the use of "carpet bombing" of German cities. Bishop Bell regarded this kind of bombing, which was intended to destroy German morale and bring the war to an end, as a war crime. At the time, Bell was the only person in Britain willing to say such a thing in a 'national' forum such as the Parliament. He was attacked all across the board ...
Mar 27, 2011•34 min
Religious partisanship is normal, explicable, and terminal. It kills Christianity. It sure killed me. Or maybe it wised me up. This podcast concerns Charles Dickens' novel "Barnaby Rudge", which was published in 1841. Dickens' subject was the "No Popery" riots that took place in 1780 in London. They are also known as the "Gordon Riots". Dickens used this astonishing episode to observe the causes of theological hatred, and its consequences. Dickens was a conscious Protestant and heartfelt Christi...
Mar 19, 2011•36 min
Life in a Final Club! "The Social Network" has made it high profile all of a sudden. What it was, was fun, delightful, blessedly un-serious in a way serious world, with a taste of Evelyn Waugh. We loved it. Why was the story never told? That's a story. Podcast 39 is published in loving memory of Page Farnsworth Grubb, '71.
Mar 13, 2011•48 min
This is an impression of The Yardbirds, the first avant-garde band we ever knew. With Eric Clapton to start, then Jeff Beck, then Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, then Jimmy Page only, their music, especially the guitar breaks, lived on the edge of INSANITY. To this day, I still have Yardbirds days. They are wonderful. There was also a personal Close Encounter, with Friends. In this podcast I tell a story and try to give an impression, followed by a few, well, theological comments. Podcast 37 is dedica...
Feb 27, 2011•33 min
This podcast is about professional titles: the more reduced in circumstances an institution, the more high-flown its titles. Did you know that until about 1970 Episcopal clergy were always called 'Mr." ? (They were never called 'Father', except in one parish, max two, per city.) The later Cardinal Newman was 'Mr. Newman', and Edward Bouverie Pusey was 'Mr. Pusey'. But don't take my word for it. Read W. M. Thackerey, read E.M. Forster. See 'Showboat', the 1936 version. An interesting principle se...
Feb 13, 2011•32 min
Here's a little gazetteer of Episcopal Protestant interiors. They're nice. Delaware's is in the middle of nowhere, and Boston's finest is Unitarian. George Washington sat beneath a central pulpit in Alexandria and "Low Country" farmers did the same. And don't forget the Motor City: I mean, Duanesburg, New York. But always remember this -- even if you are actually able to visit these places, no one will ever believe you when you get back home. They simply CAN'T exist!...
Feb 08, 2011•33 min
This one is about Protestant aesthetics as expressed in architecture and design. It is 'a tale told by an idiot', however, for no one ever believes you. Only Henny Penny says the Episcopal Church was once Protestant and 'Low' -- right up to the Disco Era. Memory being what it is, this is the tale of a forgotten 200 years. The Song Remains the Same in about 200 precious survivals in England, as well as 50 or so on the East Coast of the U.S.A. There, the glass is clear; the design, simple; and the...
Feb 06, 2011•37 min
Late Saturday nights was a time for little boys to howl. "Shock Theater" came on around one! We learned every line of the 'original' "Dracula" (1931), memorized every release date of every Mummy movie from 1932 to 1945, and, most important, got married for life to: "The Bride of Frankenstein". This is the story of those late Saturday nights, which gave our mothers such trouble, since it was they who would have to ... wake us up for church.
Feb 02, 2011•31 min
The Circle was a movie theater in downtown Washington where two boys discovered foreign film. Boris Karloff and James Whale became superseded by Sergei Eisenstein and Francois Truffaut. Or mostly. (We were only 13 years old, for crying out loud.) This podcast tells our Tales from the Circle. Every word is true. It is Part III of The Moviegoer and is dedicated to Lloyd Fonvielle.
Jan 30, 2011•30 min
Part II of The Moviegoer, in which our ten-year-old hero discovers Edgar Allan Poe via Roger Corman in the downtown movie palaces of Loew's Capital, Loew's Palace, and R.K.O. Keith's. He comes face to face with a strange new Glynis Johns before encountering "The Vampire and the Ballerina" exactly one block from the White House.
Jan 26, 2011•30 min
This is the story of a conversion. It happened in the Fall of 1959, and I've never looked back. It happened in connection with some mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. Like the man in "The Crawling Eye", I lost my head. Still haven't found it.
Jan 23, 2011•31 min
We're not finished yet. Cozzens cuts to the core of Anglo-Catholicism yet without throwing stones. He wants to understand. And his account of a hijacked P.E. funeral in "Eyes to See" is so close to home, well, that it makes you want to scream.
Jan 19, 2011•29 min
"P.E." is for Protestant Episcopal. 35 years I've been ordained and it took Cozzens to teach me some sore lessons. For me they came late. But, "For you the living/This Mash was meant, too." "When you get to my house, Tell them 'Jimmy' sent you."
Jan 15, 2011•28 min
What's the greatest rock 'n roll band of all time? Could a group sum up everything that has gone before and thus WRAP the genre? Yes, it could. They did. Their name was "Journey". But Wait! Hear me out.
Jan 02, 2011•31 min
Dan Curtis went straight from Gothic Horror soap operas to the greatest epic ever made for television. His heart was always in his work, from "Dark Shadows" to "The Night Stalker" to... "The Winds of War". When it comes to his 29-hour genius production "War and Remembrance, Can't Touch This! Here is the story of an undepressed man.
Nov 13, 2010•32 min
Did you know meditation can make you a better Protestant? Here's why.
Oct 26, 2010•33 min
New thoughts on 'the Gothic' in movies and literature -- from Irvin S. Cobb, whose Gothic story "Fishhead" was termed a "banefully effective tale" by H. P. Lovecraft; to Ray Russell, of "Sardonicus" fame; to Roger Corman, who brought the House down around Roderick Usher. Turns out it's all about bodily disintegration in an enclosed space, and the dead hand of the past upon the hopes of the present. The Gothic becomes a fascinating study in the quest for bookings on the Last Metro....
Oct 20, 2010•34 min
Hammer Horror is a beautiful thing -- everything movies should be, or almost everything. There is also this delightful religious dimension, in which the High Priest of Karnak prays in the language of the Book of Common Prayer and Peter Cushing is 'fighting evil every bit as much' as a Church of England etymologist/bishop in "Hound of the Baskervilles". Here is my little 'National Geographic Society lecture', on one of the nicest acres of filmdom and fandom. It was recorded at Constitution Hall i...
Sep 29, 2010•37 min
Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944) was famous in his day, but is unread now. Ours is the loss! His "Judge Priest" stories are as parabolic of grace as it gets. They exude peace, love, and understanding. And what's so funny about that? Here's your chance to bone up on Irvin S. Cobb! By the way, John Ford liked Cobb so much that he made two movies out of his stories, and then put him in a third. In 1961 Ford made a personal pilgrimage to Cobb's grave at Paducah, Kentucky. Two weeks from tomorrow I hope to ...
Sep 22, 2010•32 min
The Jansenists never declined. They got wiped out good. Think "End of the Line" by the Traveling Wilburys. Pascal enters and exits, assisted by Roberto Rossellini's tv show (1971) and Jack Kerouac's bar game (1969). The 'Sun King' plays his cruel part, while Our Ladies of Port-Royal hold the line. They really hold the line! As Sainte-Beuve wrote of the Jansenists, "They were from Calvary".
Sep 16, 2010•35 min
Jansenism was a religious movement in Seventeenth-Century France that threatened Church and State. Its apologists, including Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine, thought their movement, based on its re-discovery of the teachings of St. Augustine, could save Christianity from the Protestants. Its detractors thought Jansenism WAS Protestantism, but a Fifth Column of it, burrowing away within the Catholic Church. The two positions were irreconcilable. The Jansenists lost, and lost catastrophically. What ...
Sep 09, 2010•33 min
James Gould Cozzens (1903-1978) observed life accurately. in 1957 he told 'Time' Magazine that "most people get a raw deal from life, and life is what it is". His novels "By Love Possessed" and "Guard of Honor" are among the greatest of 20th Century novels.
Aug 29, 2010•37 min
"By Love Possessed" was hailed at first as the great novel of its decade. A few months later it was traduced as a symbol of Eisenhower-era 'middle-brow' complacency. The second verdict stuck. The problem was its message: it praised acquiescence rather than transformation. It is indeed a 'novel of resignation'. Is that a good thing?
Aug 29, 2010•32 min
In this amazing weekend bonus episode, our hero must claw his way through the history of giant-crab movies. Does he survive? You be the judge!
Aug 20, 2010•34 min
From a perfect movie comes a Version of the 25th Chorus of "Mexico City Blues": Is my own, is your own, Is not Owned by Self-Owner but found by Self-Loser -- Old Ancient Teaching". This podcast is dedicated to David Browder.
Aug 18, 2010•38 min
"Man Gave Names to all the Animals" (Bob Dylan), meaning Eric Burdon and The Animals. Thoughts on true greatness, thoughts on Fun.
Aug 18, 2010•46 min
