Rector's letter for January Fowey News
Dear Friends
Happy New Year! Why not make church your new thing for 2026?
Here’s why… from a surprising place: The latest instalment of the Knives Out murder-mystery series which brings back Daniel Craig as the eccentric detective Benoit Blanc. Let me suggest this isn’t just a whodunit; it’s an examination of faith, hypocrisy and power.
A young priest, played by Josh O’Connor, is reassigned to a New York parish and what unfolds is a tense, layered exploration of the left–right divide within the Church, mirroring the polarisation of our wider culture. Yes, there’s a murder, but the true drama plays out in the moral and ideological conflicts simmering beneath the surface. Can faith cut through?
The film poses the question of where our values come when faced with the battle between ideology and integrity, influence and authenticity: Why is it so hard to understand and live by Christian principles? Why is there such a temptation to confuse conservative values with Christian ones? The plot shows how faith and failure often coexist, revealing the messy collision between idealism and reality, humility and ambition. When a priest accuses another of betraying the Christian message in pursuit of power, it resonates, not because it’s dramatic, but because it feels too familiar.
The greatest mystery in Wake Up, Dead Man isn’t who committed the crime. It’s whether faith can survive corruption. The film suggests that when Christianity is co-opted by politics, or power, when faith is twisted to serve another master, something sacred is lost. Indeed, whenever the Church trades faithfulness for power, it loses both. Yet, when the Church stays faithful to Jesus, and chooses vulnerability over dominance, something radical happens. The world leans in and takes notice. When flawed people genuinely try to follow Jesus with integrity and compassion, another, stronger, kind of power comes into the room. Even Benoit Blanc, the famously sceptical detective, undergoes his own quiet shift: moving from hostility towards religion to a wary respect for the beauty of faith lived authentically.
In a cynical age, when the Church has given the world many reasons to look away, it seems the world is still watching, and it can see the difference between power and grace, between noise and truth. Perhaps you’re watching and wondering too?
And I think that’s a good reason to make church your new thing for 2026. May be, in a world sharpened by fear and division, it’s time to start following a dead man who woke up, a man whose resurrection rewrites the rules of power, and holds the future in his hands? [with thanks to Krish Kandiah]
with every blessing for a transformed 2026,
warmly
Philip