You may have seen the movie that came out several years ago called O Brother, Where Art Thou?[1] the whimsical retelling of Homer's Odyssey set in Mississippi in 1937. Not a bad film, but not exactly Academy Award stuff either. The hero of the piece is a dapper, smooth-talking con man named Ulysses Everett McGill (played by George Clooney). Everett (he goes by his middle name) escapes from a chain gang and brings along the two fellow prisoners chained to him, Pete and Delmar, with the promise of recovering buried treasure from a heist. In truth, he wants to get back to his wife and their seven daughters before his wife marries another man.

One scene has the three desperados hiding out in the woods, running from the law. There they encounter a procession of white-robed faithful going down …