Andrew Garfield is really committed to the bit.

The versatile star played Spider-Man in two feature films, but back in 2013 he shared a curious wish for the web-slinger.

'I would like to avoid being in a tampon commercial 20 years after I'm dead.'

Why couldn’t he be gay?

The comments caught fire at the time, and more than a decade later, he hasn’t budged on the issue.

“I like the idea of a place where everyone is being honored and everyone is being included, and it was just a kind of act of saying, ‘Well, why not?’ And you’ll be telling on yourself if you have a strong opinion either way.”

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” the fourth solo adventure in the Tom Holland-led series, shattered records mere weeks ago and is now in the top five grossing films of all time.

If it ain’t broke, why in the world would Hollywood want to fix it? Or is the MCU “telling” on itself for wanting the good box office times to keep rolling?

Goodbye, Dolly

We just can’t quit Dolly Parton.

The country music superstar passed last month at the age of 80, but interest in all things Dolly is just warming up. Parton’s songs zoomed up the iTunes music charts in the days after her death. Her estate announced that she previously recorded a special new song, “My Place in History,” to be released on her 100th birthday in 2046.

This week, an ABC broadcast of her beloved 1980 film “9 to 5” scored the network its biggest ratings for a film in over three years.

Meanwhile, country superstar Jelly Roll is still juggling the fallout from his disastrous week guest-hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” …

Joseph Prezioso/Getty Images

Down with 'Uprising'?

“First reaction” stories should be relegated to fifth-rate movie blogs and Bluesky. These stories capture early film reviews from influencers who like almost everything.

If you need a reference point, the recent “Supergirl” earned solid "first reactions." Raves even. So there’s that.

Which makes the terrible “first reactions” to “The Uprising” genuinely newsworthy. Our friend Andrew Garfield anchors the film, based on actual events of a peasant uprising against King Richard II.

Director Paul Greengrass has made some great films, including “United 93” and “Captain Phillips.”

So what went wrong? The pacing, the dialogue, and the execution, apparently …

Clooney ... for her

George Clooney has seen the future, and he’s a mite worried about it.

You can’t blame him. He’s a big Hollywood star, and the rise of AI will dramatically impact his industry. Jobs will be lost. Old stars will be reborn (just ask the Val Kilmer estate that OK’d a digital Kilmer “comeback” for an upcoming film).

Clooney is keeping his sense of humor about the future and his own possible “comeback.”

"I would like to avoid being in a tampon commercial 20 years after I'm dead. I would like that. I would like to avoid that."

We feel his pain. But if AI can fix old “Facts of Life” episodes and digitally remove Clooney’s mullet, it won’t be all bad …

Marvel make-'em-ups

When you think improv, names like Larry David, Robin Williams, and Colin Mochrie come to mind.

What about Thor, Captain America, and Ant-Man?

The upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday” began production without a finished script. Seems problematic for a movie with a budget north of $400 million, no? Not according to directors Anthony and Joe Russo.

The duo, who previously gave us “Infinity War” and “Endgame,” explained away the lack of a finished script.

We’re improvisation-based, rehearsal-based directors. We like to see what the actors bring to the characters, and sometimes you don’t get the actors until a few days or a few weeks before you shoot them. And a lot of the time, that’s when the magic happens.

“Doomsday” isn’t a comedy, but that defense is hysterical …

Blind casting

Wait … was “Saturday Night Live’s” Pat not available?

Actress Sandra Hüller of “Project Hail Mary” fame is set to star in the upcoming “Arbeit und Struktur” (“Work and Structure”), a biopic of the late German writer and artist Wolfgang Herrndorf.

Yes, Hüller is female and Herrndorf, best known for his 2010 coming-of-age best-seller “Tschick,” was a man.

The actress called the role a “profound challenge.” Hard to argue with that.

GHOUL NATION: Pop culture's decade-long descent into cruelty and bloodlust

Once upon a time, displaying the bloodied head of a U.S. president could get you canceled. And it did.

This was before cancel culture was a thing, a time when Americans had a shared sense of decency and found obviously heinous acts ... heinous.

Earlier this year, 'Saturday Night Live’s' Weekend Update teased a Trump assassination joke that roiled the crowd.

No need for context or explanations. The culture at large acknowledged certain unwritten rules of behavior that should be followed. Now, those rules are fading if not gone entirely. And we can track that descent, seen across the political landscape, from a pop culture prism.

Head case

Comic Kathy Griffin thought she was being clever by holding a pretend President Donald Trump head up high, ISIS-style, for a 2017 photo shoot she shared on social media.

The reaction was swift, furious, and uncompromising. Griffin had gone too far.

Few, if any, ran to her defense. She apologized and watched her D-list career shrink to the size of a thumb drive. Those were simpler times, when doing the right thing meant putting political tribalism aside when needed.

Love Trump? Loathe Trump? It wasn’t important. This was beyond the pale.

Something similar happened in 2015 involving another GOP leader. Word leaked that Will Ferrell was mulling a big-screen "comedy" about a dementia-addled President Reagan doddering around the Oval Office. The reaction was swift and furious and not just from the former president’s grown children.

Ferrell backpedaled, claiming he had never officially signed onto the project.

Even Madonna, who forged her brand from outrageous behavior, did a hasty retreat in 2017 when she shared her dream about blowing up the White House (with a certain leader inside, presumably) during a Women’s March event.

The pop superstar apologized for a good reason. Her thoughts were unbecoming of a celebrity of her stature.

That was then.

The cruel kids

Today, political culture is infinitely worse. Cold. Cruel. Violent, even.

Political pundits like Hasan Piker can cheer on the deaths of landlords, say America deserved 9/11, and praise Hamas over Israel after the Oct. 7 atrocities. Not only is he not shunned by polite society, but Democratic politicians scramble to appear beside him.

Major publications fawn all over him too. Big-city mayors can cozy up to terrorists and voters look the other way.

Ghoulish. It’s not happening in a vacuum. Pop cultural institutions are similarly ghoulish, celebrating violence while their audiences clap like seals.

Last year, DNC spokesman Jimmy Kimmel found something deeply funny about Tesla dealerships coming under vandalism attacks. The company’s owner, Elon Musk, had sided with President Trump during the 2024 election cycle and helped trim government fat from the workforce.

For that, he must be punished.

"People have been vandalizing Tesla vehicles, new Tesla vehicles. Please, don't vandalize, don’t ever vandalize Tesla vehicles."

The host said it with a sarcastic glint.

Blaze Media

Cheering chaos

Later that year, Kimmel leaned into some seriously Fake News, alleging that Charlie Kirk’s killer was part of MAGA Nation. The only credible suspect at the time was a young man who loathed Kirk’s politics, a far cry from a typical Trump supporter.

Kimmel and his writers knew that. We all did. The hosts said it, anyway, earning a week’s suspension from his ABC bully pulpit and becoming a free speech martyr to the press and the left (but we repeat ourselves).

Earlier this year, “Saturday Night Live’s” Weekend Update teased a Trump assassination joke that roiled the crowd. Faux co-anchor Michael Che noted that the president had recently taken in a Broadway-style show.

“I think that’s cool that the president is going to the theater. I mean — what’s the worst that could happen?” The show’s hard-left audience cheered.

Late-night shows were occasionally caught by surprise at how vicious their audiences had become. They learned it from watching them, of course.

Baying for blood

Consider when Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” fame told his audience about Luigi Mangione’s arrest on charges he murdered a health care CEO by shooting him from behind.

The crowd booed in response, as if they wanted the killer to remain free (to kill other CEOs, perhaps?).

“Look, I’m sorry, guys,” a stunned Stewart said in response, like Dr. Frankenstein looking in horror at his creation.

Kimmel found it hilarious that some of his young, female staffers were Luigi fangirls in not-so-obvious disguise. He should have been ashamed of the revelation and kept it quiet.

Not Kimmel.

Just days ago, multiple late-night hosts mocked President Trump for hiding in a catering truck after the Secret Service learned of a possible threat on his life.

These threats are increasingly common in Trump’s second term. One would-be assassin came within inches of murdering the commander in chief at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally two years ago.

For late-night clowns, the latest assassination threat was merely a chance to torment Trump, not acknowledge the dangerous world we live in. Even the low-rated Jimmy Fallon, who isn’t as cruel as his competitors, mocked the moment.

Hollywood collectively warned us about Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. He would be cruel, they cried, unlike any prior president.

And, yes, President Trump has thrown some pretty sharp elbows over nearly six years in office. Hollywood, sadly, has proven to be far worse, echoing a societal race to the bottom.

Gay adoption: The societal experiment nobody is supposed to question

A video recently surfaced online featuring a young American who proudly insisted that same-sex couples make better parents than the boring old bread-and-butter type.

The ferociously fabulous man then casually revealed that he has three lesbian mothers, two gay fathers, and an array of gay siblings.

For thousands of years, human societies operated on the assumption that mothers and fathers were not interchangeable.

Notice how far the argument has traveled. The cultural case for same-sex parenting once rested largely on tolerance: Gay couples could provide loving homes, and their children should not be stigmatized. Increasingly, the claim is something altogether different — that mothers and fathers are interchangeable, perhaps even that dispensing with one sex represents an improvement.

Luxury beliefs

Right around the time the video started circulating, an interactive global map showing where same-sex adoption enjoys full legal approval and where it remains strictly forbidden caught my eye.

The map is fascinating because it presents a hilarious study in regional priorities. Virtually the entire Western world glows a self-righteous green, while moving eastward reveals solid red. Western progressive elites view that field of green as proof positive that we have ascended to the absolute peak of human enlightenment, having successfully dethroned the ancient, oppressive concept of a mother and a father.

But there's a question buried beneath all the celebration that we're increasingly discouraged from asking: Does family structure actually matter to children?

For thousands of years, human societies operated on the assumption that mothers and fathers were not interchangeable. A child ordinarily entered the world through a mother and father and, absent death, abandonment, abuse, or some other misfortune, was raised by them.

Modern Western culture increasingly treats that arrangement as merely one family configuration among many.

According to modern woke gospel, men are the sole source of domestic chaos and toxic aggression. The cultural narrative assures us almost daily that women are inherently more empathetic and nurturing. They are spiritually elevated beings. Taking that logic to its obvious endpoint, a household featuring two mothers ought to function like a conflict-free utopia of artisanal organic snacks and gentle conflict resolution.

The empirical picture, however, is considerably less settled than activists often pretend.

Widespread transformation

What makes this all the more important is that this is no longer a marginal social development. According to the Williams Institute, approximately 5 million American children are being raised by an LGBTQ parent. That figure includes single LGBTQ parents and shouldn't be confused with the much smaller number living with same-sex couples. But it gives some sense of the scale of the transformation.

Within little more than a generation, same-sex marriage went from legally nonexistent to the law of the land. Gay adoption followed. Reproductive technologies now allow children to be deliberately conceived for families in which either a mother or a father will be absent from the beginning.

We have changed not merely laws but one of society's most basic assumptions about the family: that all things being equal, a child should have a mother and a father.

Given the scale and speed of that change, asking what effects it may have on children should hardly be controversial.

Pinellas County Sheriff's Office composite

Regnerus redux

In 2012, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus published findings from the New Family Structures Study, which surveyed nearly 3,000 young adults and reported substantial differences between those who grew up continuously with their married biological parents and respondents whose mother or father had engaged in a same-sex relationship. Among the findings, 23% of respondents in Regnerus' "lesbian mother" category reported having been sexually touched by a parent or other adult, compared with roughly 2% of those raised continuously by their married biological parents.

That finding does not mean the lesbian mother or her partner committed the abuse. Indeed, one of the central controversies surrounding the study was how Regnerus constructed the category in the first place.

Critics argued that Regnerus had defined his categories too broadly. Many respondents classified as having a gay or lesbian parent had spent relatively little time living with that parent's same-sex partner, while many had experienced divorce or repeated changes in family structure. Subsequent re-analyses argued that once those factors were handled differently, many of Regnerus' headline findings lost statistical significance.

For years, that critique was treated as essentially the last word.

Then, in 2025, Cornell sociologists Cristobal Young and Erin Cumberworth subjected the Regnerus data to a much more exhaustive test. In their book "Multiverse Analysis," published by Cambridge University Press, they ran roughly 2.6 million alternative model specifications to determine how much Regnerus' results depended on debatable analytical choices.

They expected the exercise to vindicate his critics. It didn't.

Persistent effects

Young and Cumberworth found that the estimated negative association was often smaller under alternative specifications but remained remarkably persistent. Their conclusion was limited but important: There was room to debate the size of the effect and the quality of the underlying data, but within the NFSS dataset, the negative association could not simply be dismissed as an artifact of Regnerus' preferred statistical choices.

That doesn't establish that same-sex parenting caused the negative outcomes Regnerus identified. But it makes it harder to maintain that the evidence is so settled that questioning whether family structure matters amounts to bigotry.

Other research has produced similar disputes.

Methodological muddle

In 2010, Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld analyzed U.S. census data and concluded that the school progress of children living with same-sex couples could not be statistically distinguished from that of children living with married heterosexual couples.

Two years later, Douglas Allen, Catherine Pakaluk, and Joseph Price re-analyzed the same data. Rosenfeld had restricted his main sample to children biologically related to the household head who had lived at the same address for at least five years. Allen and his colleagues argued that those restrictions removed more than half the available children and made differences harder to detect.

Using the larger sample and controlling for those factors instead, they found that children living in married heterosexual households had 35% higher odds of making normal progress through school than children living with same-sex couples. The difference was statistically significant.

The same census data, in other words, produced different results depending on which families researchers included and how they accounted for biological relatedness and stability.

Biological advantage

D. Paul Sullins encountered a related problem using federal health-survey data. His 2015 analysis of more than 200,000 children, including 512 living with same-sex couples, reported higher rates of serious emotional problems, ADHD, and learning disabilities among children in same-sex-parent households.

When Sullins accounted for whether children were living with their biological parents, however, much of the same-sex-parent disadvantage disappeared.

That raises another question about how these studies are constructed. Two men or two women cannot both be the biological parents of the same child. So when researchers "control" for biological relatedness, they may be removing a confounding variable — or they may be controlling for a difference that is inherent in the family structures being compared.

A 2016 Demography study by Corinne Reczek and three colleagues further illustrates the difficulty. Using federal health data on more than 167,000 children, the researchers found that children living with married same-sex parents were similar to those with married opposite-sex parents on most of the outcomes studied. They did, however, find that children with married same-sex parents were more than twice as likely to be reported as having behavioral problems after demographic and socioeconomic controls.

The study had important limitations. The same-sex sample was small, the behavioral measure relied on parental reporting, and the data could not establish causation. The National Center for Health Statistics also later disclosed classification errors affecting the identification of same-sex married couples during several of the survey years. Sullins subsequently argued that excluding those years materially changed some of the results.

Beyond statistics

None of these studies settles the question. Together, they suggest that the research is much less straightforward than the familiar claim that children do equally well in every family structure.

And family structure matters for reasons that extend beyond statistics. A mother and father offer something that two men or two women, however loving and devoted, cannot: a child's daily relationship with both sexes embodied in the two people from whom that child came.

Recognizing this doesn't require believing that every heterosexual marriage is happy, every biological parent is competent, or every alternative family is dysfunctional. Plenty of biological parents are disastrous. Plenty of adoptive parents perform heroic acts of love by giving children stable homes after circumstances have deprived them of their biological families.

But exceptions don't erase ideals.

The distinction becomes especially important when adoption is involved. Adoption has traditionally existed to find families for children who, through some misfortune, cannot be raised by their biological parents. Increasingly, the debate is framed from the opposite direction: around adults' entitlement to form whatever kind of family they desire.

The interests are not necessarily identical.

The question isn't whether gay people can love children. Nor is it whether children raised in unconventional families can grow into happy and successful adults.

The question is whether mothers and fathers provide children with something distinctive enough that society should continue to regard their union as the ideal environment for raising the next generation.

We have changed our answer to that question with extraordinary speed, and millions of children are now growing up on the other side of that change.

Surely we are still allowed to ask whether we got it right.

I used to hate Shakespeare ... until a 200-year-old book changed my mind

I got in an argument once with a guy who was dismissing white, Anglo-Saxon culture, saying it was overrated and overrepresented. He thought Americans needed to learn about other cultures, and other artists, who were just as good, if not better.

I was like: better than Beethoven? Better than Shakespeare? Better than Led Zeppelin?

In 'The Tempest,' there was no basic reality. Characters could become invisible if they felt like it. They could live for years on desert islands without food.

I said: Even if these other artists were as good, I didn’t grow up within those artistic traditions. Those artists aren’t my ancestors. That isn’t the culture I was born into!

A sense of shame

I don’t remember how the argument ended. But I remember as I walked away, feeling uneasy. I felt like a fraud.

The truth was: I knew very little about Beethoven or his music, except for his short piece “Fur Elise,” which I was forced to learn on the piano when I was 9.

I did know a lot about Led Zeppelin. They were my favorite band through my teen years. I’d read all the biographies. I’d seen all the movies. I knew all the songs. I was pretty much a superfan.

And then there was the small problem of Shakespeare, one of the greatest literary figures in the Western tradition. That problem was ... I’d never read any of his plays.

How hast thou not read any of my plays?

As a child, we had a beautiful collection of Shakespeare’s complete works prominently displayed in our living room.

I wasn’t intimidated by this collection. Or worried by it. At some later date, I would be old enough and smart enough to read them.

But that date came a little sooner than I expected. My sophomore year in high school, my English class was assigned "The Merchant of Venice."

OK, I thought. I’ve got this.

I procured the play. I opened it to the first page. I started to read, and ... I got nothing.

I was instantly lost. What were these people talking about? I couldn’t make any sense of it, whatsoever.

How dost thou not grasp my meaning?

The first issue was: I didn’t know half the words. Like, what exactly does “ado” mean? The words I did know weren’t in a logical order. I also didn’t know when the sentences stopped or started.

Another obstacle: All the characters in "The Merchant of Venice" were Italian. There was Salerio and Stephano and Solanio and Salarino. How was I supposed to keep these people straight?

Ghosts, goblins, etc.

"The Tempest," which we also read my sophomore year, was even more difficult. There were nonhumans to contend with. There were ghosts, spirits, witches, sprites. What exactly was a “sprite”?

In "The Tempest," there was no basic reality. Characters could become invisible if they felt like it. They could live for years on desert islands without food. Ships could be moved great distances via medieval teleportation. A dashing prince could be drowned in a stormy sea and then reappear in someone’s cave, alive, refreshed, and in all his regal finery.

Sophia Institute Press

Higher education

Needless to say, I had to fake my way through high school Shakespeare. In college, I avoided any class with the great bard on the syllabus.

But then I became a writer myself. Which created an ethical problem. How could I participate in the English literary tradition if I had no knowledge of its most fundamental works?

Guidance of the Lambs

Fortunately, many years later, in a used bookstore, I came across a paperback book called "Tales from Shakespeare" by Charles and Mary Lamb. Which was first published in ... 1807!

This was a very old book. And yet the edition I was holding had been published just a few years before.

That meant that "Tales from Shakespeare" had been in print for more than 200 years! It was nearly as popular as the Sweet Swan of Avon himself!

"Tales" turned out to be prose renderings — short stories — of 20 of Shakespeare’s greatest works. It was originally intended for children, to prepare them for the actual texts.

So here was a case of “explain it to me like I’m 5,” but the 1807 version!

Just for children?

Naturally, I assumed these simplified prose versions of the plays would be of no use to me as an adult.

But reading the Lambs' version of "The Tempest" right there in the bookstore, I felt immediately how authentic and compelling it was. The Lambs' version was far superior to any CliffsNotes or academic synopses I’d read. (And I’d read a lot.)

Maybe it was because Charles and Mary Lamb were such ardent fans, were British, and better understood Shakespeare’s time and place.

Whatever the reason, these “tales for children" had a kind of magic to them. Which explained why they were still being read today. It felt like Shakespeare’s original genius was somehow present in these simple retellings of his plays.

Over the years, I have consulted this book many times. These children’s versions make the plays come to life. Finally, I was getting a real sense of William Shakespeare the writer: his personality, his humor, his trippy psychedelic side.

Go forth and defend the West!

So the next time you’re defending the Western canon from some woke, bicoastal, mid-wit, make sure you’ve read Charles and Mary Lamb’s “Tales from Shakespeare.”

Once you’ve felt the true genius of Shakespeare in your heart (via the Lamb family), you will have no trouble vanquishing the enemies of the West!

‘Pendragon’ takes the long road to King Arthur — and makes it worth the journey

A reasonable viewer could spend the opening minutes of “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin” wondering whether he clicked on the wrong show.

Daily Wire promised an Arthurian epic, yet here are the doomed inhabitants of Atlantis, bull dancers, pagan priests, and a princess named Charis fleeing a civilization about to sink beneath the sea. Camelot is nowhere in sight; neither is Arthur.

Christianity belongs to the world of 'Pendragon' as naturally as its mud, blood, and steel.

That bewilderment contains the key to the series and its considerable ambition. “The Pendragon Cycle” is not another retelling of the sword in the stone. Instead, it attempts to dramatize what had to happen before Arthur could arrive: the transformation of a pagan world into one capable of producing the Christian king of legend.

Passion project

“The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin,” a seven-episode series that premiered earlier this year exclusively on DailyWire+ and arrives on Prime Video in the U.S. today, was created by Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing and draws principally from “Taliesin” and “Merlin,” the first two novels in Stephen R. Lawhead’s sprawling “Pendragon Cycle.” Boreing has dreamed of bringing Lawhead’s books to the screen for nearly three decades, and it shows. Nobody could accuse “Pendragon” of cutting corners.

Consider Atlantis. Rather than have its inhabitants speak English with exotic accents, the production hired classical scholar and Daily Wire contributor Spencer Klavan to invent an Atlantean language, complete with grammar, vocabulary, and a fanciful linguistic genealogy reaching back before the Fall.

Shot in Hungary and Italy, “Pendragon” also makes splendid use of forests, mountains, rivers, and untamed country. The CGI impresses when called upon, but some of the show’s best special effects were provided by God. Nature is beautiful, immense, and frightening, as it ought to be in a story about men trying to build a civilization from the ruins of another.

Multifaceted Merlin

The largely unfamiliar cast helps. Tom Sharp carries Merlin through a formidable range — warrior, husband, broken exile, prophet, and bard — without turning him into a wizardly caricature. James Arden gives Taliesin a searching, otherworldly quality that makes his eventual conversion feel earned. Rose Reid anchors the strange Atlantean opening as Charis and, thanks to her people's extraordinary longevity, provides a living connection to that vanished world.

Finney Cassidy makes an appealingly restrained Aurelius, a would-be king of the Britons, while Myles Clohessy supplies the martial force as his warrior brother Uther. Brett Cooper, probably the one face Daily Wire viewers will recognize immediately, disappears effortlessly into Ganieda, Merlin’s wife.

The history underneath all this is real enough. Roman rule in Britain effectively collapsed in the early fifth century, leaving a fractured country vulnerable to invasion and internal warfare. It is somewhere in this murky post-Roman world that the distant roots of the Arthur legend are generally thought to lie.

The legend itself came later and accumulated over centuries. Brittonic tales of a heroic Arthur were expanded and transformed by Geoffrey of Monmouth, French romance writers, and eventually Thomas Malory, gathering along the way Camelot, Lancelot, the Round Table, the Grail, and the explicitly Christian moral universe we now associate with King Arthur.

'A new power at work'

Lawhead, who served as a producer on the television adaptation, works backward from that inheritance. He takes the myth and plants it in the soil of post-Roman Britain, imagining the people, conflicts, and spiritual transformations that might have prepared the ground for Arthur.

Christianity is crucial to that transformation, but Lawhead doesn’t have it simply sweep away the enchanted pagan world that preceded it. The bard remains a bard; prophecy, mystery, and supernatural power remain. What takes place is closer to a baptism of myth, in which the old stories and powers are not discarded so much as given a new orientation.

That begins with Taliesin and Charis, Merlin’s parents. Both inherit pagan worlds and find them spiritually inadequate. Taliesin encounters the Christian priest Dafyd; Charis has already watched the splendor and religion of Atlantis fail catastrophically.

The decisive contrast arrives when Morgian, Charis’ sister and a powerful pagan priestess, sacrifices a foal she and Taliesin had once saved, then offers herself to him and proposes that together they build a world more powerful than Atlantis. He refuses. “There is a new power at work in the world,” he tells her. “I’ve seen it. A God who does not ask us to sacrifice what we love, but who sacrifices what He loves for us.”

Charis eventually embraces Taliesin’s faith and is baptized. Their son therefore inherits the bardic and prophetic world of his father and the lost Atlantean world of his mother. Merlin’s struggle is not to acquire power — he already possesses plenty — but to discover what that power should serve.

His answer eventually becomes explicit: “Not by my power, Jesu, but thine.”

RELATED: Cry 'God for England'

Nina Power

Christianity unsoftened

This is unapologetically Christian television, yet it rarely feels like a stereotypical “Christian movie.” Christianity belongs to the world of “Pendragon” as naturally as its mud, blood, and steel.

That allows the series to be dark without becoming decadent. There is war, lust, treachery, mutilation, and genuine evil. But unlike HBO's “Game of Thrones,” “Pendragon” has little interest in treating sexual degradation or cruelty as proof of adult sophistication. Its Christian worldview actually permits it to be darker rather than lighter: The world is fallen and men do terrible things, which means courage, mercy, and sacrifice can also mean something.

That same idea shapes the series’ understanding of leadership. Uther is the more formidable warrior, but his brother Aurelius begins to reveal a different kind of strength. When warned against risking himself for people under Saxon attack, Aurelius replies, “I have only one thing to offer my people: everything.”

There, in miniature, is Lawhead’s conception of Christian kingship. The pagan conception of power sacrifices others. The Christian king sacrifices himself.

Trusting the material

Boreing and company don’t always make things easy for the viewer. Seven episodes carry a formidable load of characters, kingdoms, generations, and mythology, and the chronology occasionally doubles back on itself. This is a show that rewards close attention — you’re going to want to put your phone down. In an era of television designed for “second screening,” there’s something refreshingly demanding about that. “Pendragon” assumes its audience is willing to keep up.

A more cautious, commercially minded adaptation would get to the familiar beats immediately: the boy, the sword, Camelot, Guinevere, the Round Table. Boreing has enough faith in the material to let it breathe. He spends an entire season on Atlantis and Taliesin, the retreat of Rome, the making of Merlin, and the spiritual formation of the Britain Arthur will inherit. Only in the final moments do we reach the threshold of the Arthurian story most of us know.

There is plenty of story waiting on the other side. Lawhead’s central cycle has been complete for decades, with “Arthur,” “Pendragon,” and “Grail” still ahead of the television series. A second season has not yet been announced, though Boreing says a first draft has already been written and the cast is ready to return.

Most Arthurian stories begin with a Christian moral universe already in place. “The Pendragon Cycle” goes backward to imagine how that world came into being — how pagan myth might be gathered rather than discarded, how power might be subordinated to something higher than itself, and how a shattered country might become capable of producing a king.

Get off the sofa and go to church

Let’s get real about something far too many professing Christians have wrongly decided is OK. We’re talking about people who think obedience to Christ doesn’t require participation in the local church.

In a few Christian women’s groups I’m in online, I’ve seen so many casually mentioning how they don’t have a church, or aren’t particularly interested in looking for one, or blatantly reject the idea that it’s needed at all. Comments like:

To remove yourself from the reach of elders, correction, and communal responsibility is, bluntly put, to refuse Christ’s ordained means of grace.

I don’t have to be part of a church. I can watch a service online from my sofa, I can worship or read the Bible whenever I want, and I can gather with other Christians anywhere, anytime. I don’t need to be “pastored.”

This woman is way off base, because a lone Christian is much more easily misled than someone who’s following Christ’s command to connect with a local body of believers.

To clarify, we’re not talking about the capital C “Church” — the global body of believers throughout history. Every authentic Christian joins THAT Church the moment they turn to Christ. No, we’re talking about the LOCAL church — designed by God to offer what the global Church cannot.

Question: What is a local church?

Answer: A group of Christians who live near each other who voluntarily band together to worship God, study His Word, love and serve each other, and submit to the group’s chosen leaders, which should include biblically qualified elders who are able to teach and disciple the flock, as well as qualified deacons to help in practical ways.

All of this is scriptural, as we’ll point out below, but first a quick word about what constitutes a “local group.”

Americans, especially in larger cities, are used to driving a distance to get to a preferred church. I’m not going to argue with that, but I am going to make a plea that the closer you are to your church, the more you can invest your time and energy in it — and the more it can invest in you.

If you are now searching for a church home, I strongly encourage you to start with the congregations closest to you and work your way out from there till you find a biblically sound body you and your family can join.

Not a building

Of course, the local church is not a building. You can have church in a school auditorium, at the local park — anywhere your group is allowed to assemble.

What makes such a group a “local church” is not location, but congregation — a group of Christians in the area who choose to commit to each other, whether they own a meeting space or not.

In fact, a pretty robust argument could be made that owning a facility is an impediment, or at least a distraction, to the church’s mission to shepherd the flock and serve the community.

I love stained glass windows, whether they’re in pretty little country churches or enormous European cathedrals. But those facilities require upkeep, costing money and time that could be directed to other endeavors and needs, especially if the church building sits unused most of the week!

What the local church is for

The Bible provides an excellent roadmap for the local church’s marching orders, because Christ did not establish a disembodied, leaderless, commitment-free Christianity. When believers detach themselves from the local church, in fact, they are not protecting their faith; they are redefining it on their own terms.

So what exactly are we to do?

We are to act more like the early church! Familiarize yourself with what our first brothers and sisters in Christ were doing. You can’t go far wrong using that as a template.

But here’s a helpful checklist of how we are to interact with our local church:

1. Meet regularly

First Corinthians 14 details how to conduct an orderly worship service, including phrases like “when you assemble.” Paul’s assumption is that believers are regularly meeting together, and such meetings are referenced often throughout the New Testament.

"And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near" (Hebrews 10:24-25).

2. Worship together, pray together, learn the Word together

Just like the early church:

"And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers" (Acts 2:42).

3. Submit to church leaders (elders/pastors, deacons)

The New Testament knows nothing of a Christian who answers to no one. Christ commands believers to submit to church leadership (Hebrews 13:17) and establishes church discipline, not to shame or punish but to restore (Matthew 18:15-20).

This is one the sofa-churchers miss every time.

Elders/pastors are biblically charged with shepherding the flock (Acts 14:23) — the flock being whatever local church they are leading. But how can they shepherd someone they don’t know, who’s not there?

In Acts 6, the apostles told the believers to select men “from among you” to serve as leaders (leaders often referred to as deacons). This was only possible because the local congregation knew its men and was therefore qualified to help choose leadership.

These commands are not optional, situational, or suspended when church life becomes difficult. To remove yourself from the reach of elders, correction, and communal responsibility is, bluntly put, to refuse Christ’s ordained means of grace. You cannot claim Christ as Savior while functionally rejecting Him as Lord, and the moment a believer declares, “I don’t need the church,” she has placed herself as the final authority over her own discipleship and rejected membership in the Bride of Christ.

Further, if you’re not committed to a congregation, you don’t have a Christian leader (shepherd) keeping watch over you (sheep). That is dangerous territory for any of us and surely a big part of the reason God created us to be in churches.

4. Love each other, become a family to each other, hold each other accountable

Commitment to a sound biblical church offers much more than a healthy leader-congregant relationship. It also offers by far the best way to fulfill the numerous biblical instructions regarding one another. (And they are numerous, as I explained here.) Tim Challies says:

Many of these commands can either only be carried out or can best be carried out in local contexts. You may be able to bear my burdens from a thousand miles away, but those who are closer are much more able. And so membership answers this question: Who are the people I am especially called to love? Or who am I primarily meant to serve with the gifts God has given me? It narrows the answer from the entire global church to one specific congregation. To become a member of a church is to say that these are the people God has most explicitly called me to love, serve, and pray for. These people are my “one another.”

Yes! Your local church is where you find your “one another” and where they find you. It’s also where you find “one anothers” who are not like you. Local church gives you an opportunity to love and serve singles if you’re not single, older saints if you’re younger, families if you don’t have kids, and vice versa.

This is ground zero for one of those “greatest commands” of Jesus, to love one another.

5. Observe the Lord’s Supper together; witness baptisms of new believers

The ordinances are generally undertaken in church, and they are to be part of a believer’s life. Baptism can take place anywhere there is water and a believer willing to conduct the baptism, but bringing this under the authority of the church protects the meaning and purpose of baptism through clear teaching on the subject. Likewise with the Lord’s Supper — good teaching in the church clarifies who should and should not be participating.

6. Serve the community near the church, meeting physical and spiritual needs

There is power in numbers, when you’re trying to make an impact for Christ in your community. This doesn’t mean you don’t individually love your neighbor, share the gospel, etc., but it does mean that when you uncover a need that you as an individual can’t fill — well, that’s a need you take back to your church.

Similarly, churches are often notified or aware of needs before individuals are. Serving the community as part of your local church is a powerful witness.

Give me that old time (marketplace of) religion

Another comment to consider from one of my ladies’ online groups:

Sometimes it is hard to find a modern church that fits one’s personal beliefs and convictions. In those cases, I’d say try to find a friend group made of Christians and have a Bible study or just meet up to talk and encourage one another in Christ.

“Try to find a friend group made of Christians.” Hmmm ... if only we had institutions DESIGNED to bring Christians together in fellowship.

And assuming you find something like that (outside of church), “just meet up to talk and encourage one another” is a big bowl of weak sauce compared to the robust spiritual experience the local church offers and demands.

But I want to address her opening comment, because that’s a huge part of the problem with the sofa-churchers: they’re looking for a church that “fits their personal beliefs and convictions.”

America’s consumer mentality — and our relative abundance of churches — play a role in this mindset. Many have left a church, or not found another one, not because they can’t find something doctrinally sound, but because they’re focused entirely on their own tastes, preferences, and comforts.

Thanks in part to our robust freedom of religion, America is home to more than 300,000 Protestant congregations alone. That’s more than 6,000 churches per state, although the Bible Belt areas tend to have more than, say, godless Seattle (I was born there; I can say that).

So we Americans are quick to jump from church to church because it’s pretty easy to find a new one. And we can pick and choose features most appealing to us.

That, however, is where a lot of us go wrong. We choose a church with a consumer mindset, ticking off the features that “fit” our family. The music’s great! They have lots of middle schoolers! There’s a Saturday night service!

Beloved, that stuff is not the focus when looking for a church. We all need a church that prioritizes:

doctrinally sound biblical teaching (not just on Sunday mornings);
small groups for Bible study, prayer, community, and accountability; and
outreach to the lost (locally and on the mission field, ideally).

You found a church? Here’s what’s next:

Commit for the long haul. Approach your church with a “lifetime” rather than a “trial period” mindset.
Prioritize presence. Make regular attendance the baseline — not an optional extra for when the schedule is clear.
Listen with a soft heart. Treat the Sunday sermon as a direct message from God; read the passage before you arrive.
Go deeper than Sunday. Seek out a small home group (sometimes called a community group or life group) that studies, prays, serves, and eats together — that’s the best way to build community.
Get busy. Identify specific ways to serve this body you’ve joined.
Make your church better. Look for ways your church is serving the community, and come alongside. Or bring ideas for outreach back to your church!

Because — ultimately — you DO need a church. And there’s a church out there that needs you. So get off the sofa and go find your part of the Body.