Holy Men

Twin Peaks, Dark Shadows, and Peyton Place all feature men of the cloth. Dark Shadows features Reverend Trask and his historical incarnations in prominent roles. Peyton Place features Reverend Bedford in a prominent role. Twin Peaks' Reverend Brocklehurst on the other hand is featured in only two scenes in the series, however key: Laura Palmer's funeral and Dougie Milford's wedding. Unlike its 1960's soap opera inspirations, outside of Brockelhurst, Major and Mrs. Briggs, Ronnette Pulaski, the Haywards, Annie Blackburn, the woman with the injured head in the Fat Trout Trailer Park who wears a golden cross from the Deer Meadow dream sequence, and the Angel from Fire Walk With Me, Twin Peaks is devoid of openly Christian characters, and rather presents the Christianity of Peyton Place and Dark Shadows in the plot of the series itself, the Cooper-as-Antichrist Passion Play.

A clue as to the Christian nature of Twin Peaks lies in the most frequently used title card. Like the titles to Peyton Place which centers one of two of the towns church steeples in its frame, Twin Peaks centers the cross-like telephone pole (made of wood, which is referenced frequently in the series in connection with the wood of the crucifix) between it's titles. Telephone poles are also features in Agent Cooper's Deer Meadow dream sequence in Fire Walk With Me.