Do It Again
The rhetoric of manipulation, sanctified sameness, and when I grow up I want to be an ent.
This past weekend, I gave a talk at a yearly conference I’ve helped put together for four years now. It’s on the topic of worship. My title was “Sanctified Sameness.” My argument was simple because I’m pretty simple. I built it off of reflections from Chesterton in his “Ethics of Elfland” chapter from Orthodoxy. In the talk, I confessed that from as far back as I can remember, my Sunday worship has essentially been unchanged. I have walked into virtually the same service, heard the same call to worship, the same confession of sins, received the same assurance, heard the same Word preached, communed at the same table, and received the same benediction, week after week after week. I’m closing in on 40 years of the same ol’ thing when it comes to the church. In most other circumstances, this sameness is a sign that something has gone wrong. I argued in the context of worship that it is a sign that something has gone profoundly right.
I had been preparing that talk for weeks, so perhaps it won’t be surprising that I see these themes in our reading this week.
This week we are reading Book 3, Chapters 7–11. If you are a Fellowship member, the Dinner Table Discussion Guide is available here. I will also be releasing a lecture later this week. If you’ve been following along, drop into the subscriber chat or leave me a comment. I’d love to hear what’s standing out to you.
Chapter 10 is titled “The Voice of Saruman.” Compared to the action of the surrounding chapters, it is a relatively quiet section of the story.
The company arrives at Isengard, which has been destroyed. They stand before the tower of Orthanc, and Saruman speaks to them from a balcony. Saruman’s defenses have been destroyed. But he has one more weapon to use.
Tolkien describes Saruman’s voice almost as a spell. Those who hear it find themselves agreeing before they have thought about what has been said. His words sound reasonable. Measured. Wise. Even kind. He speaks as though he is the injured party. As though his listeners are the ones who have been unreasonable. He makes offers that sound plausible, even reasonable.
I’ve been teaching rhetoric in various settings for several years now. When you are part of the homeschooling and co-op community, you inevitably wear many hats. When you teach a class, you come to know a familiar subject in a new way. I’ve joked before that if there is a subject you want to grow in your knowledge and skill of, volunteer to teach it for your homeschool co-op. That’s what I’ve done with rhetoric. So this section strikes me as particularly interesting.
In Saruman, Tolkien gives us a literary portrait of manipulative eloquence. Saruman does not argue. He seduces. His words are crafted not to reveal truth but to rearrange the listener’s perception of reality. He is not trying to say something true. He is trying to make you feel something that he can then manipulate for his purpose.
I remember a student coming to a realization in class, “Is everything rhetoric?” To the extent everything carries a message intending to pull you towards some version of what is true, then yes, everything is rhetoric. This is what I tried to describe in my conference talk as liturgy, borrowing from James K.A. Smith. Mediums carry a message, and all mediums are inherently liturgical. Developing the ears to hear and the eyes to see them is a necessary pursuit in discernment.
Imbedded in the rhetoric of our culture is a Saruman-like voice. It is the voice that tells you, relentlessly and from every direction, that value means novelty. That new is better. That if something hasn’t changed, it must be dead. That if your worship, your marriage, your vocation, or your leisure feels the same as it did last year, then something has gone wrong and needs to be refreshed, reimagined, or updated.
We have been catechized by this voice, by a marketplace mentality that has slipped into our thinking so quietly we barely notice. It begins to sound reasonable, wise, and common sense because our imagination has been shaped to accept it as plausible. That is what makes it dangerous. Wormtongue didn’t tell Théoden outright lies. Saruman doesn’t either. They tell you things that are almost true but ultimately disordered.
I mentioned in class this week how the general atmosphere during this stretch of the story — from Rohan under Wormtongue’s influence to the suspicion that greets the Fellowship in Lórien and even the ancient hostility of Fangorn — reflects what happens when words have been corrupted. When voices can’t be trusted, places become hostile. The air itself changes. Saruman’s influence has been radiating outward for years, and by the time we reach these chapters, Middle-earth is thick with suspicion. That is what manipulative rhetoric does. It doesn’t just deceive our minds. It poisons the air, infects the atmosphere, and cultivates a twisted imagination.
If Saruman exemplifies one kind of rhetoric, what others have helpfully labeled a rhetoric of domination, then Gandalf is an example of another.
When Gandalf speaks at Orthanc, the spell breaks. But notice how. He does not out-perform Saruman. He speaks plainly. He speaks the truth. His words bear a kind of authority and power, but we rightly recognize it in a way different than Saruman. Truth, spoken by someone who has not severed his words from reality, has an authority that performance cannot counterfeit.
Notice the contrast. Saruman’s power is in his voice — in its sound, its cadence, its emotional manipulation. Gandalf’s authority is substantial. It rests on something deeper than the veneer and pretense present in Saruman’s voice. Saruman sounds wise. Gandalf is wise. Saruman really is “sound and fury signifying nothing.” In the end, the sound without substance breaks itself against the real thing.
I think about this in terms of what I tried to articulate in my talk about worship. The voice of the marketplace, like Saruman’s voice, says that if you don’t differentiate, you die. Always be on the lookout for updated versions, newer tech, and better AI models.
In my conference talk, I used the analogy of language. Every language has a grammar. You don’t outgrow that grammar. You internalize it. You practice it so many times that it becomes invisible and second nature. Once it is internalized, it doesn’t constrain your expression but rather enables and frees it.
The repeated liturgical pattern of worship is the grammar of the gospel. The call, confession, assurance, Word, table, and sending tell their own story and is a powerful form of rhetoric. And when that grammar has been internalized over years and decades, it becomes the deep structure through which all of life is interpreted. It also serves as a substantial bulwark against the transient, ephemeral, though enticing, liturgy of the world.
Rival liturgies will bombard you, rival voices will attempt to shape your imagination. In response, we may be tempted to think we need to exert the same rhetoric but in the opposite direction. The answer is way more subversive than that. We actually need a completely different paradigm altogether. I argued that that paradigm is sanctified sameness.
In these chapters, we interact with one of my favorite creatures of Middle-earth.
Saruman’s voice is clever and manipulative. Gandalf’s is plain, with the authority of truth. Treebeard’s is slow, ancient, and deliberate. Entish takes so long because it refuses to say anything that is not fully meant. Every word contains the weight of centuries. How could you use a hasty word like “ hill” to describe a formation that has stood longer than memory?
In my talk, I quoted Chesterton. Chesterton observed that the modern mind looks at the sun rising every morning and thinks: mechanism, law, dead repetition. But Chesterton suggested another possibility. What if the sun rises every morning not because some impersonal law compels it, but because a living God delights in it? What if God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun? What if the repetition is not the mark of a lifeless machine but the mark of a God so full of life that he never tires of what he has made?
Chesterton wrote: “… grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.”
Treebeard exemplifies this kind of strength. He has been tending the same forest since before anyone in the story was born. He rises every morning and does the same work. Not because he lacks imagination but because his purpose is long, and his faithfulness runs deeper than the roots of the trees he tends.
The Entmoot is the opposite of the consumer, marketplace mentality that has infected even our churches. It is excruciatingly slow. It does not cater to Merry and Pippin’s impatience. The hobbits want a decision now. Treebeard says, essentially, that is not how we do things. The Ents’ deliberation is itself a kind of liturgy. It is a submission to a rhythm older and wiser than ours.
Because we are catechized in all things to operate according to immediacy, it’s hard to imagine a more useless meeting. But when the Ents finally act, their action carries a weightiness and authority it wouldn’t have otherwise. The march on Isengard is the ultimate test of two very different ways of being in the world. Saruman has surrounded himself with metal and wheels because he has “a mind of metal and wheels”. He has torn up the trees to fuel his industry. He has optimized and innovated and produced. The Ents destroy it in an afternoon. It turns out that ancient, slow, deliberate doesn’t mean irrelevant or inactive.
I think it is safe to say that the age of the internet has provided circumstances that have made it more necessary than ever before to be aware of the power of rhetoric. I don’t think I’ve fully come to terms with my own relationship with rhetoric, but it is something I am trying to grow in a responsible and virtuous way.
The temptation to adopt the rhetoric of the world is real. The way of Saruman has an appeal, especially in a highly competitive space. According to the dominant and dominating standards of our day, it is a real temptation to engage in the kind of manipulative rhetoric we find plastered all over our politics, infotainment, and social media. Clicks mean success.
In the face of these liturgies, there is a decision to be made. Will I let myself be moved and shaped by the voice of so many Sarumans? Or will I instead follow a different way, a different voice, and a different way of being in the world?
The sameness of showing up to whatever task is set before you —teaching, parenting, writing — is not a sign that nothing is happening. As Chesterton saw in every sunrise, the repetition may be the very sign that something is most alive.
This week at the dinner table, I want to leave you with two questions.
First: What voices are forming you? Not just what voices are you hearing. But which ones have you internalized? Which ones have come to influence you? Are they voices like Saruman’s? Are they reasonable, compelling, and almost true? Or are they voices like Gandalf’s? Are they plain, rooted, and faithful? Are you drawing on the wisdom of years, like the Ents? Or are you enslaved to the tyranny of the next new thing?
Second, for those reading with family: Can you tell the difference between Saruman’s voice and Gandalf’s? Both sound wise. Both sound reasonable. What makes one trustworthy and the other dangerous?
At the end of it all, recognize that rhetoric, in whatever form, is not merely something you do, but something done to you.
As always, send me a comment or a message. Tell me what you think. Until then, happy reading.
— S.F. Elliott
PS. How does this relate to Beautiful Masculinity?
The culture sells men a voice like Saruman’s. The podcast voices, the self-help gurus, the influencer wisdom is mere rhetoric severed from anything of substance. It sounds good. It performs well. But it is not rooted in anything real. The kind of masculinity we are after sounds more like Gandalf or Treebeard. It is plain. It is slow. It says the same true thing again because the truth hasn’t changed. A man whose voice serves the truth rather than himself is a man whose words can be trusted wherever he has been placed. That voice is formed not by novelty but by the sanctified sameness of showing up, week after week, to the same Word, the same table, the same people. Saruman’s voice is impressive. Gandalf’s voice is trustworthy. Shaye and I have repeated this saying a lot recently, “Play pointless games, win pointless prizes.”
PPS. Another table to gather around
If you enjoyed this reflection and want more, check out what The Fellowship offers each week. The Monday Discussion Guide gives you the tools to bring these themes to your own dinner table. The Friday lecture or chat goes deeper into the text. This week’s chapters are rich. If you’ve been reading along on your own, this is a good week to come to the table. And if you know someone who would benefit from this kind of conversation, send this their way. This week my two oldest kids are joining the Tolkien Chat. See you there!
I have LOVED the Ents this time around. Everything Treebeard says feels laced with wisdom. I also love him paired with Merry and Pippin. Feels like a purposeful contrast, and at the same time, they end up really respecting and enjoying one another. I love the message that the ancient ways, and old wisdom, can wipe out industry in an afternoon. The siege of Isengard is perfection.
Also really relate to this idea of almost true, but not quite. It feels like the Internet and AI are very Saruman these days. Bigger, better, easier, faster. Whatever you feel, the algorithm will give it to you. Life will be so much better the more you consume the right content or have success online.
But the real things have not changed. In fact, they feel more important than ever. And no one survives in Saruman’s world. No one. I love how Tolkien is saying something that is just as real today as it was in his time. Maybe even more so.