Episode 338 - Privilege (1967)

The vehement secularism all around us is no secret. I have seen its pointed perseverance in at least three settings recently, and most powerfully at my 50th Harvard College class reunion. In all three settings, 'God' was sedulously left out of the discourse, and, it felt to me, conscientiously. Nothing new in that, to be sure; but it made me reflect on the Christian Church, at least in its traditional manifestation, and what is it that "triggers" the sharp antagonism. But I came up with a slightly different answer. Had recently read John Weaver's book Evangelicals and the Arts in Fiction from McFarland Books, that wonderful publishing house which specializes in sincerest monographs on subjects such as the history of wax-museum horror films or 1940s Mummy movies. Weaver's book is counter-intuitive in the extreme, and contributes an insight that I have read nowhere else. So maybe we can learn from contemporary secularism, albeit from a different direction. The cast concludes with one of the most unusual Christian pop songs ever recorded, and filmed, from Peter Watkins' 1967 "anti-Establishment" movie Privilege, starring Paul Jones, the lead singer of Manfred Mann (i.e., "Doo Wah Diddy"). In brief, you can learn something about yourself by studying what others dislike about you. LUV U.