Christianity and the Triumph of Humor: From Dante to David Javerbaum (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) [1 ed.] 9780367185107, 9780429196690, 0367185105

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Christianity and the Triumph of Humor

This book traces the development of religious comedy and leverages that history to justify today’s uses of religious humor in all of its manifestations, including irreverent jokes. It argues that regulating humor is futile and counterproductive, illustrating this point with a host of comedic examples. Humor is a powerful rhetorical tool for those who advocate and for those who satirize religious ideals. The book presents a compelling argument about the centrality of humor to the story of Western Christianity’s cultural and artistic development since the Middle Ages, taking a multi-disciplinary approach that combines literary criticism, religious studies, philosophy, theology, and social science. After laying out the conceptual framework in Part 1, Part 2 analyzes key works of religious comedy across the ages from Dante to the present, and it samples the breadth of contemporary religious humor from Brad Stine to Robin Williams, and from Monty Python to South Park. Using critical, historical, and conceptual lenses, the book exposes and overturns past attempts by church authorities, scholars, and commentators to limit and control laughter based on religious, ideological, or moral criteria. This is a unique look into the role of humor and comedy around religion. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Humor Studies, and the Sociology of Religion. Bernard Schweizer is a Professor of English in the Department of English, Philosophy, and Languages at Long Island University, United States. He specializes in humor studies, heresy studies, travel studies and gender studies and has written multiple articles and books in these areas, including Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (2010).

Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies

The Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. This open-ended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Recognition and Religion Contemporary and Historical Perspectives Edited by Maijastina Kahlos, Heikki J. Koskinen, and Ritva Palmén Gaming and the Divine A New Systematic Theology of Video Games Frank G. Bosman Theologising Brexit A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique Anthony G. Reddie Vision, Mental Imagery and the Christian Life Insights from Science and Scripture Zoltán Dörnyei Christianity and the Triumph of Humor From Dante to David Javerbaum Bernard Schweizer For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ religion/series/RCRITREL

Christianity and the Triumph of Humor From Dante to David Javerbaum Bernard Schweizer

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Bernard Schweizer The right of Bernard Schweizer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-18510-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-19669-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage LLC

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvi List of figuresviii List of tablesix Abbreviationx

Introduction: the way, the truth, and the laugh

1

PART 1

Ideological and theological coordinates of humor9 1 Ideology and laughter: against the liberal paradigm of humor

11

2 Theology and laughter: against the confessional paradigm of humor

28

PART 2

Christian religious comedy: historical developments and the contemporary scene45 3 A chronicle of triumph: religious humor from Dante to David Javerbaum

47

4 Varieties of humorous irreverence: contemporary religious comedy from Brad Stine to South Park128 Conclusion

Epilogue: beyond Christianity: humor in other religious traditions

164 178

Key terms and definitions202 Bibliography216 Appendixes225 Index238

Acknowledgments

The foundations for this project were laid thanks to a one-year sabbatical, granted to me by Long Island University in 2015. I’m grateful for my institution’s generous support of this endeavor, and I appreciate my colleagues at LIU who sponsored my application. This book has been four years in the making, and I was fortunate to be guided and inspired along the way by a number of fellow scholars from the humor studies community. Among these critics and mentors, none was more influential than Jessica Milner Davis, whose extensive, tough, and constructive input allowed me to write a much better book. Thank you, Jessica! Great thanks are further due to my fellow board members from the International Society for Heresy Studies who have provided guidance and feedback on the project as it took shape. Notably, Gregory Erickson’s mental flexibility and subtle judgment were deeply enabling, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s capacious mind and sense of humor energized me, and James Morrow’s brilliant novel Blameless in Abaddon made me want to write this book in the first place. Another great debt of gratitude is due to my colleague and good friend, Karl-Heinz Ott, whose ingenuity and rigorous statistical treatment of extensive social science datasets provided me with crucial instruments to amplify and empirically support my arguments about humor appreciation. In our collaboration, he produced most of the data tables and figures. In the later stages of the writing process, I  had the honor of becoming acquainted with Nadine Strossen, who provided much good sense and fresh insight into the free speech implications of my argument. Nadine also brought to my attention the work that ultimately became the artistic capstone of this book, i.e. David Javerbaum’s irreverent romp through the Judeo-Christian tradition titled The Last Testament: A Memoir by God. I also thank my friend Roland Kübler, a long-time fellow traveler and coconspirator in seeing anything as potentially funny. I first heard the words “Life of Brian” issue from Roland’s mouth, and it was in his sweltering Shanghai apartment in 2005 that I  enjoyed my initial viewing of Monty Python’s comical masterpiece. Roland also read and commented on my section about humor in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Acknowledgments vii Another good friend of mine, Luciano Mueller, deserves grateful mention here as a brilliant debater with an encyclopedic range of interests, as well as a fellow theater-goer, in whose company I enjoyed such classics of religious comedy like Book of Mormon and Act of God. Finally, I give thanks to the biggest source of inspiration and happiness in my life: my lovely wife, Liang, and our wonderful daughter, Lyra. Their unflagging encouragement and pride in my work helped me keep the flame alive and wanting to press on, no matter whether we were in China, America, Bali, or Switzerland. My gratitude for all that Liang has done for me and my career is as deep as my love for her is endless.

Figures

1.1 A humorous take on the effectiveness of political satire 13 1.2 Satirical cartoon targeting a liberal viewpoint 24 2.1 Stacked columns reflecting the number of votes in all six answer options for 18 humorous text selections (2015 study) 41 4.1 Christian comedian Brad Stine 132 4.2 God with conspicuous bloodstains, accompanied by his “sidekick” Jeffery 149 4.3 Rowan Atkinson as a vicar 154 6.1 Laughing arhats (Buddhist saints) at Tiantai monastery, Zhejiang Province, China 180 6.2 The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso 184 6.3 Worshippers at a statue of Ganesh, outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand186

Tables

1.1 Average funniness scores for entire joke corpus divided by sub-population and separated by ideological orientation (2016 survey) 1.2 The humor quadrant, consisting of two soft and two hard humor modalities, as well as two liminal and two entrenchment modes 2.1 Five passages that received the highest percentage of “N/A” votes, both from believers and unbelievers 2.2 The nine jokes most frequently voted “offensive” by members of different study populations, separated by individual joke and demographic group 3.1 Progression of Christian religious comedy since Dante, indicated by the range of different religious targets addressed by each separate literary humorist 3.2 Correlation between authors and the principal humor modes activated by them 5.1 Progression of Christian religious comedy since Dante, indicated by the range of separate religious targets addressed by each literary humorist 5.2 Distribution of religious targets that contemporary performers aim their comedy at 5.3 Correlation between literary authors and the principal humor modes activated by them BM.1 Demographics of the 2015 study BM.2 Raw data of the 2015 survey BM.3 Demographics of the 2016 survey BM.4 Raw data of the 2016 survey

17 21 34 42 125 126 167 169 170 227 228 230 231

Abbreviation

KL  Kindle Location

Introduction The way, the truth, and the laugh

Religion continues to be regarded as a deeply serious matter that has little do to with genuine laughter. – Richard Cote

It is good to be reminded that laughter was considered conducive to piety. – Max Harris

When Mark Twain wrote “against the assault of laughter nothing can stand” (Mysterious 132), he was thinking of religion as one of the principal targets which “laughter can blow . . . to rags and atoms at a blast” (132). Following this logic, one could conclude that laughter is a potent antidote against the powers of dogma, conformity, and (blind) faith. If humor and religion are indeed engaged in a zero-sum game, then the more amusement there is, the less holiness can exist in the same space, and vice versa. This idea dates back to Plato and Aristotle, both of whom not only had ethical misgivings about laughter but saw it as an affront to the sacred. In the Christian context, numerous theologians and church authorities over the centuries have similarly denounced mirth and levity as morally questionable and potentially impious. Clement, Jerome, Basil, Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Hugh of Saint Victor, and many others have warned sternly against the corrupting, sinful, and outright demonic aspects of laughter (Cote 25). Saint Chrysostom’s dictum that “Christ never laughed” was meant approvingly. Based on this ethos, the view took hold that “Weeping alone unites with God, while laughter leads a person away from God, alienates Christians from their Creator” (Kuschel 47). Passages in the Hebrew Bible confirm this negative assessment of mirth. For instance, we can read in Ecclesiastes (2:2), “I said of laughter it is mad, and of mirth what good doeth it?” This has led to the suspicion that religiosity may be inherently inimical to laughter. One scholar, Vassilis Saroglou, has published articles claiming as much: “From a psychological, and especially from a personality psychology perspective, religion associates negatively with personality traits, cognitive

2  Introduction structures and social consequences typical to humor: incongruity, ambiguity, possibility of nonsense, low dogmatism and low authoritarianism, playfulness, spontaneity, attraction to novelty and risk” (205). Based on this logic, the more religious people are, the worse their sense of humor. Yet, on closer inspection, such views appear overblown and too easily falsifiable, especially given the real differences that exist between various religious traditions’ attitudes to humor. At most, Saroglou’s identification of religiousness with anti-comical traits would seem to apply to religious extremism (Morreall 48). As Conrad Hyers has argued, fundamentalism of any kind is a fun killer: “Ideologies, whether social, political, or economic, have a high level of missionary and often military zeal but a low level of comic awareness” (Hyers 114). But while the notion is quite widespread that religiosity diminishes the sense of humor, the opposite view, namely that humor and religion are in fact symbiotic, also enjoys currency. The philosopher Peter Berger saw an inherently spiritual dimension in laughter (see Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience); Charles Campbell, a professor at the Duke School of Divinity, thinks of Christ as a jester and of Christianity as a form of holy foolishness (see Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly); and Max Harris has demonstrated that close ties existed between devotion and hilarity during the Middle Ages. In his book Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools, Harris drily remarks “it is good to be reminded that laughter was considered conducive to piety” (148). My approach to the subject of laughter and religion is not to favor one side or the other among these two stances but rather to show how the two sides of the coin are related to one another. My point of departure is the realization that religion attracts humor in all of its forms. There is something about priests and monastics that has prompted people since time immemorial (including religious believers) to joke at their expense; there is something about inflexible claims of dogma that feeds into the hands of humorists; and there is something about God and supernatural agents that begs the question, provoking skepticism and irreverent speculations. I’m not just referring to joking about religion. Indeed, while humor often niggles subversively at the foundations and manifestations of religion, it can also inhabit a space that is internal to religion, coexisting with a pious outlook. In the Christian context, the presence of humor manifests itself clearly in the works of late-medieval Christian authors like Boccaccio and Chaucer, and it expresses itself in religious folk traditions like the Feast of Fools, held annually in central Europe during Christmas and New Year. Having said this, it would be naïve to think that humor can be smoothly integrated into religious proceedings. Often, the eruption of laughter gives rise to the suspicion that something unseemly and perhaps even downright subversive is afoot. A good deal of evidence supports this impression. Why would medieval religious authorities go to the trouble of condemning and outlawing the Feast of Fools and other pro-comical religious folk traditions

Introduction 3 if they were not convinced that comedy was detrimental to the spirit of reverence? The theologians of the University of Paris as well as the members of the Council of Basel who in 1431 and 1444, respectively, banned practices associated with the Feast of Fools (under threat of severe punishment) were apparently prompted to take such drastic measures by the understanding that laughter has no place in sanctified proceedings and that mirth is indeed an antidote to devotion. The same goes for Pope Clement’s decree in 1776 banning the practice of Easter Laughter (risus paschalis) in Germany.1 Although motivated by a devotional spirit, such eruptions of laughter within holy proceedings were anathema to the Church authorities, who suppressed these folksy practices whenever they could. The tug of war between official Christian forces arraigned against laughter and the popular (and literary) impulse to fuse religion with mirth was eventually decided in favor of laughter  – hence the reference to the “triumph of humor” in the book’s title. This triumph was neither predictable nor inevitable. Chapter 3 of this book tells the story of how it came about, giving special emphasis to the function of free expression and unfettered thought to make possible the progressive expansion of a dynamic humor culture in the West. If today we see Pope Francis flashing an open-mouthed laugh from magazine covers, or when we clap along with the catchy tune of “Hasa Diga Eebowai” (“Fuck you, God”) during a performance of The Book of Mormon, we do so because laughter and mirth have become quite thoroughly naturalized in Christian culture, including expressions that are clearly irreverent. My book shows how we got here, chronicling a long process that started with the Renaissance, was accelerated in the Enlightenment, and fully came into its own during the 20th century. Theology was late to catch on to the realization that laughter is more than just an irritant in the body of religion. One of the seminal figures to turn the scales in favor of a more accepting theological stance toward laughter was the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard. The father of existentialism – a philosophy predicated upon the inherent absurdity of existence  – offered a surprising insight, namely, that there is something intrinsically comical about Christianity itself! In Kierkegaard’s view, incongruity  – one of the most powerful mechanisms of laughter – is written into the very fabric of religion: mere mortals trying to connect with the infinite; the body eternally at war with the demands of spirituality; divine perfection rubbing up against human fallibility, how ironic! Kierkegaard saw this irony as fundamental to the human condition, and he acknowledged the human impulse, and perhaps even the need, to laugh in the face of such incongruities. More specifically, Kierkegaard thought that Christianity constituted the pinnacle of incongruity. When he wrote that “All humor [is] developed from Christianity itself” (Journals and Papers 2:229), he was referring to the figure of Christ as both human and divine, mortal and immortal. To Kierkegaard, this was a powerful paradox that merited being considered under the rubric of divine humor.

4  Introduction The US theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was rather more circumspect in his reassessment of laughter one hundred years later. Niebuhr wrote in 1944 that “Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer.” Though unorthodox with regard to the Church’s long-standing anti-laughter bias, Niebuhr stopped short of a radical realignment, admitting that “Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith” (49). This does not exclude laughter but assigns it a secondary, complementary role in the world of faith. To Niebuhr, laughter belonged in the antechamber of holy places, not in the inner sanctum itself. Harvey Cox, one of the founders of the modern “theology of laughter,” opened the door for Christian humor even further in the second half of the 20th century. In his book The Feast of Fools (1969), he defended the physical, bodily aspect of laughter, which for most of Christianity’s history had drawn the most determined opposition from ecclesiastical and theological authorities. In tune with the 1960s counterculture, Cox advocated “the redemption of the body without embarrassment” (55), which naturally included accepting the impulses of humor that set the body shaking. For Cox, denying human laughter, motivated by any sort of rationale, including religious prohibition, is a denial of people’s humanity. Cox did not stop there but pressed on into heterodox territory by associating the figure of Christ with that of a jester. Gilhus comments that “In Cox’s thinking, Christ as a clown . . . the reinstallation of the body, and the laughing Christian were all linked” (113). Cox took his cue from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, where the Apostle referred to the “foolishness of the cross,” reminding his fellow congregants to be “Fools for Christ.” In this view, foolishness signifies one’s acceptance of value inversions taught by Christ such as that humility triumphs over force, that poverty is a blessing, and that the last shall be the first. To accept such unconventional precepts and to worship a savior who was born into a lowly manger is indeed equivalent to accepting a sort of inverted or “foolish” worldview. But to make room inside Christianity for applications of benign humor is one thing. It is quite another thing to accept humor that rips holes into the fabric of religious faith, that ridicules holy personages, and that mocks God – the very effects of laughter that Mark Twain had in mind when he said that “laughter can blast it [humbug] to rags and atoms” (142) Even while benign laughter was given a religious rationale by Kierkegaard and while “clean” comedy was rehabilitated by the 20th-century theologians of laughter, there are other uses of comedy that cannot easily be reconciled within such a devout framework. I am referring to the satirical, mocking, and outright blasphemous uses of humor by the likes of Mark Twain, Anatole France, and Jaroslav Hašek, all the way to Woody Allen, George Carlin, and, of course, Monty Python. Their irreverent and dogma-dissolving uses of laughter have led many thinkers, following Mikhail Bakhtin, to conclude that there is something inherently subversive and perhaps even heretical in comedy as such. Bakhtin’s

Introduction 5 theory of carnivalesque comedy (as laid out, specifically, in his book Rabelais and His World [1968]), powerfully supported the idea that laughter is a fundamentally liberating and counter-hegemonic force: “Laughter purifies from dogmatism, from the intolerant and the petrified; it liberates from fanaticism and pedantry, from fear and intimidation” (Rabelais 123). Over time, this notion of laughter’s supposedly liberalizing potential has entered the scholarly mainstream and solidified into a shared consensus, coloring the work of Peter Berger, Barry Sanders, Alison Dagnes, Mary Douglas, Charles Campbell, Johan Cilliers, and many others. The topic of laughter’s purported subversive, anti-establishment effect is particularly relevant at the current time, though perhaps more so in a secular than in a religious sense. Indeed, the popularity of comical attacks against President Trump – evidenced from skits on Saturday Night Live to Stephen Colbert’s farcical impersonation of him on the Late Show – is indicative of the desire to harness comedy as a force of resistance and perhaps even of political subversion. At this time of heightened political partisanship and ideological rancor, we have entered what the Washington Post called the “golden age of comedy” (Izadi). The Post article went on to state that, paradoxically, “Comedy is being taken more seriously now. Top-billing standup comedians are treated as public intellectuals” (Izadi). My book cannot bypass these larger ideological ramifications of laughter, which play out in the religious as well as in the secular, political arenas. Indeed, Part 1 of this study is dedicated to fleshing out the ideological and theological ramifications of laughter to prepare the ground for a fruitful and informed engagement with the historical and cultural manifestations of religious comedy. Chapter 1 investigates and questions the hypothesis that humor is somehow fundamentally coded liberal and that it articulates a fulsome resistance to authority. A slew of counter-examples and some pointed historical theses about the political role of humor will put a crimp into the thesis – advanced most forcefully by Alison Dagnes in recent times  – that humor is somehow more compatible with a liberal than a conservative outlook. This supposed link between humor and progressive ideology is further undermined by quantitative data from my own humor appreciation research. After deconstructing the supposed causal link between liberalism and humor, I develop a more nuanced and realistic conceptual framework that identifies four distinct humor modes according to their liminal (boundary-testing) or their entrenching (boundary-reinforcing) qualities. This four-factor humor analysis can account for a wide variety of comical works, irrespective of their political content, ideological slant, or moral implication. Rather than applying Aristotelian logic to characterize products of the comical spirit as either liberating or regressive, “benign” or “harmful,” progressive or reactionary, I show how different comedians actualize any (or all) of the four humor modes, often in one and the same text or performance. By demonstrating the historical salience of all four types of humor, including the most aggressive ones, I  effectively counter simplistic calls for censorship

6  Introduction aimed at caustic and offensive jokes. In this manner, Chapter  1 lays the groundwork for a p ­ roductive, non-judgmental, and detached treatment of the way humor engages symbolical and social boundaries of all kinds, not just religious boundaries. My analysis complements the historical survey of religious humor to advance a free speech argument in favor of admitting of all kinds of humor, including blasphemous ones. Chapter 2 tackles questions surrounding the morality of humor, considering the issue from an explicitly Christian standpoint. This chapter starts with an overview of official Christian teachings on laughter since the second century CE. A sampling of some of the typical anti-laughter statements that have been handed down to us from Church authorities and theologians across the centuries shows why official Christianity has for a long time been considered averse to laughter. A  Christian “theology of laughter,” which emphasized the desirable and even salutary potentials of laughter, emerged in the 1980s to counter such negative Christian views of laughter. My overview clarifies the basic premises underlying the Christian theology of laughter, while highlighting its judgmental tendency to divide laughter into a joyful, “positive” and a caustic, “negative” kind. Although the theology of laughter admits that the Church’s historical condemnation of mirth and laughter has been misguided and even regrettable, the same theology cannot appreciate laughter in all its shadings and meanings, including irreverent, mocking, and disparaging applications of humor. Just as I question and ultimately reject the view that humor is inherently liberal, so I explore and eventually disqualify the concept that “negative” humor should be shunned. Indeed, such binary views of humor cannot stand up to skeptical inquiry. Again, the four-factor humor analysis introduced in the previous chapter will help to move the discussion away from overly simplistic ideological and moral axioms. After discussing the ideological, moral, and theological ramifications of humor in Part 1, the book switches gears in Part 2 to present the theme from a diachronic (historical) and a synchronic (contemporaneous) perspective. Chapter 3 offers a selective overview of religious comedy in literature from the late Middle Ages (Dante and Boccaccio) to the contemporary scene (Ron Currie and David Javerbaum). Here I document the encroachment of laughter upon the Christian ethos of solemnity over time, attended by the simultaneous weakening of the Christian opposition to laughter. Early Christianity set itself in opposition to the permissive culture of “paganism” with its deities of eroticism and laughter. But the spirit of fun, laughter, and hilarity could not be permanently kept in check, both on the level of ­popular comedic practices and on the level of highbrow literature. My approach shows how one taboo after another was eroded over time, as the range of humor targets expanded from poking fun at clerics, to poking fun at the church and its leaders, to making light of God, and finally to laughing at the entire theistic project. This hefty chapter aims not only at providing a ­literary survey of the “greatest hits” of religious comedy in the West, but it also shows how

Introduction 7 the progressive expansion of unfettered comical expression has provided immeasurable cultural enrichment across the centuries. Chapter 4 looks in depth at contemporary pop cultural manifestations of religious comedy in the Anglo-American world. I discuss performances ranging from Christian stand-up comedians like Brad Stine and Mark Lowry, to mild religious parodies performed by the likes of Robin Williams and Rowan Atkinson, to more provokingly irreverent satires like Life of Brian, and finally to openly sacrilegious material like the animated comedy show South Park. This overview leads to two conclusions: Supposedly “harmless” Christian comedy actually contains a good deal of material that turns out on closer inspection to be disparaging and even subversive, whereas supposedly “negative,” blasphemous, and offensive religious comedy fulfills legitimate intellectual and philosophical functions while carrying significant aesthetic merit. Indeed, some of the most offensive religious comedies (like the blasphemous YouTube series DarkMatter2525) advance sophisticated theological points and contribute to the expansion of free thought, while promoting legitimate debates about religious dogmas. Other abrasive comedies such as The Book of Mormon are inarguably vehicles of both belly laughs and of aesthetic pleasure. Again, the point of this chapter is to move beyond the simple binaristic “either/or” framework that promotes positive, “clean” forms of humor while condemning the negative, irreverent types of mirth. Approaching humor in terms of a rigid dichotomy is both inaccurate and unproductive. An Epilogue following the Conclusion serves to widen the scope of the current inquiry by considering the role of humor in other religious traditions outside of Christianity. Here I provide a concise overview of the meanings and functions of laughter in Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Such a wider perspective serves to round off the theme by providing information about humor’s place in different religious contexts and by developing a basis for comparative approaches. The Epilogue first looks at two religious traditions, Buddhism and Hinduism, that seem to accommodate humor rather well. Here, I  focus on the factors that make these religious traditions so receptive to laughter. Next, I present an overview of humor’s important role in Judaism, indicating the most persuasive reasons that have been advanced by humor scholars to explain why Jewish humor has developed its distinctive style and what has led to its unprecedented popularity, especially in US culture. Finally, I  conclude with a discussion of the role of laughter in Islam. A common view has taken hold in the West that Muslims suffer from a collective, congenital lack of humor. Islamist attacks against satirical newspapers and riots in the Muslim world against cartoons deemed blasphemous have promoted the idea that Muslims can’t take (or make) a joke. Against this backdrop, I will shed light on what Islam’s holy texts actually say about laughter and mirth. From these sources, I distill a scripturally sanctioned Islamic “rule” of humor, which I will compare with Western secular humor practices. The Epilogue concludes with a discussion

8  Introduction of blasphemy in relation to the principle of free speech, providing a strong and unqualified endorsement of humor in all its forms, notwithstanding the tendency of both reactionary religious forces and of some social justice advocates to try to turn the clock of humorous liberty back to a time of censorship and thin-skinned sensitivity.

Note 1 During Easter week, priests would prompt their congregations to laughter, both to manifest their joy at Christ’s resurrection and also to scorn the devil who had been cheated out of possessing Christ’s soul.

Part 1

Ideological and theological coordinates of humor

1 Ideology and laughter Against the liberal paradigm of humor

In contemporary American culture, comedy is a genre that often thrives on the transgression of boundaries. – Christopher M. Leighton

Part 1 of this book examines and overturns two major dichotomies that have dogged the thinking about humor: The first dichotomy holds that humor is inherently coded liberal and that it is essentially an anti-­authoritarian, disruptive phenomenon. According to this view, conservatism and ­orthodoxy are antithetical to humor. The second dualistic assessment relates to the moral distinction between “positive” and “negative” effects (or intentions) of laughter. According to this approach, laughter is either a positive expression of joy and goodwill or a lamentable manifestation of mockery, ­cynicism, and arrogance. As I will demonstrate, the reality of humor is too fluid and complex to be captured by such simplistic prescriptive norms. Therefore, a more flexible and responsive model needs to be developed to do justice to the slippery, contextual, and contingent nature of humor. ­Chapter  1 lays out a critique of the ideological paradigm of humor, concluding with the introduction of a non-binary system of classifications, my four-factor model of humor. Chapter 2 explores the moral paradigm imposed by the Christian theology of laughter, according to which laughter manifests itself in a ­“positive” or a “negative” register.

Is humor inherently liberal? Statements linking comedy with a liberal, and particularly a subversive, mindset are legion. David Banatar, for instance, has pointed out that “it is because of humour’s subversive power that many a despot has sought to prohibit humor that mocks him or his associates” (34). Wylie Sypher wrote that “Comedy is a momentary and publicly useful resistance to authority and an escape from its pressures” (241–242). Similarly, Paul McDonald noted that “When we are in a humorous mode we are also more adept at thinking critically . . . making us more likely to challenge rather than acquiesce to the

12  Ideological and theological coordinates powers-that-be” (80). Gilbert Leung maintains that “Laughter can be seen as an irruptive displacement of being and creative sovereign moment that poses a challenge not only to law as understood in the widest senses of the word, but also to any matrix of laws, mores, traditions, values, identifications, etc. that may persist in unresponsive fixity” (276). The British anthropologist Mary Douglas thinks of jokes as “an attack on control” (149), and she insists that “all jokes have this subversive effect on the dominant structure of ideas” (150). This notion that humor has an innately liberating, antidogmatic tendency often shades into a perception of humor as essentially aligned with a liberal political stance. In his book The Revolution Will Be Hilarious, Adam Krause writes that “the path to tolerance and the path to laughter are identical” (22–23), insisting that “a comedic mindset can help us develop a more free and democratic society” (12). Even more politically explicit, Alison Dagnes maintains that The philosophy of conservatism is incompatible with political humor but liberalism suits it quite nicely. Conservatism supports institutions and satire aims to knock these institutions down a peg. This doesn’t necessarily mean there is bias afoot, but it does mean there is going to be more left-leaning material than right. The very nature of satire mandates challenges to the power structure, targets across the board, and an ability to take a nuanced or relativist examination of an issue in order to make the joke, and this falls squarely into the tool belt of liberalism. (KL 5–6) In their different ways, all these sources suggest that political comedy (and beyond that humor in general) resists power and destabilizes authority, promoting instead modes of thinking that foster criticism, openness, flexibility, and emancipation – the hallmarks of liberalism. At first sight, this view appears to have a lot going for it. For one thing, the majority of contemporary US comedians are self-identified liberals (Dagnes xiv; Day 5). Moreover, those who believe that humor is at home on the liberal side of the ideological spectrum must have felt vindicated by the presidential transition from Barack Obama to Donald J. Trump. On the one hand, there was the liberal Barack Obama, a politician with a real comical gift. For eight years straight, he was headlining the annual White House Correspondents’ dinners, delivering well-timed, snappy, cleverly funny monologues that can withstand comparison with the best contemporary comedians like Jon Stewart or Larry Wilmore. This talent has earned Obama the moniker “Comedian in Chief.” On the other hand, there is the curmudgeonly Trump, a Republican who angrily berates people who make fun of him and whose attempts at delivering a comical monologue have occasionally bombed.1 But not only does the liberal president (Obama) “win” in a direct comparison with his conservative successor (Trump) when it comes to comical talent, but it is further significant that the liberal opposition to Donald Trump expresses itself prominently through channels of comedy. Even before Trump

Ideology and laughter 13 was sworn in, he had been the target of ceaseless ridicule in various media. And once in office, the mockery of his personality, policies, and attitudes multiplied to the point where much of the opposition to Trumpism seemed to have taken the route of comedy, thus giving further support to the view that humor tracks liberal. In May 2017, the New York Times reported that “Mr. Trump was the subject of 1,060 jokes from the leading late-night talkshow hosts in his first 100 days in office – far surpassing the number of jokes other recent presidents attracted in their entire first year in office. There were 936 directed at Barack Obama in 2009, and 546 toward George W. Bush in 2001. Bill Clinton had only 440 jokes in 1993” (Deb).

Humor and change – does comedy make anything happen? After Trump’s election, the widespread use of mockery and ridicule targeting him  – from Alec Baldwin’s impersonation on Saturday Night Live to Stephen Colbert’s imitations on the Late Show – was intended to damage Trump’s public image and to undermine his political standing in the world. But has this strategy really paid off? To put it another way: Did the comical “united front” against Trump have any effect in furthering the interests of the anti-Trump coalition, either by discouraging Trump from taking certain actions, by softening his stances, or by forcing him to moderate his temper? One cartoonist suggests an answer (see Figure 1.1).:

Figure 1.1  A humorous take on the effectiveness of political satire Source: Signe Wilkinson Editorial Cartoon, used with the permission of Signe Wilkinson, the Washington Post Writers Group, and the Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved.

14  Ideological and theological coordinates This drawing by Signe Wilkinson humorously undercuts the supposed efficacy of humor as a valid change agent (see Figure 1.1). But while it may still be too early to determine whether the comical attacks against Trump had any destabilizing effect on the president’s political agenda, it is also conceivable that they might have accomplished quite the opposite of their intended purpose. The real effect of the comical antiTrump coalition may be to provide a safety valve, an outlet for the pent-up frustrations and anxieties of countless liberals who are shocked and exasperated by the political course that Trump’s administration has charted. Samantha Bee, whose show Full Frontal serves as one of the touchstones of the comical resistance to Trump, said in an interview she “was glad her show could provide an outlet for liberals’ frustrations” (Grynbaum and Koblin). Indeed, The New York Times described shows like Trevor Noah’s Daily Show and Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal as “cathartic” and referred to Saturday Night Live as a “comfort food franchise” (Grynbaum and Koblin). Comfort food is not known to fuel revolutions. So, it is quite possible that the wave of anti-Trump comedy has actually sapped some of the energy that could have been directed toward disruptive civic protests, thus acting as a palliative rather than as a fulcrum of resistance, ultimately making it easier for Trump to continue implementing his political agenda undeterred.

Humor and authority The argument that politically subversive comedy may have a quietistic rather than activist-disruptive effect has been made in other contexts, and it is not a notion to be easily dismissed. For instance, Patrick Merziger’s work has turned up evidence that the Nazis actually encouraged people to make jokes about the government, hoping that it would defuse misgivings about the Nazi policies. At first, Germans seemed to be unsure of the risk they would run by telling Nazi jokes, and they tended to exchange them stealthily, hence the term “Flüsterwitz,” i.e. “whispered joke.” But it soon became apparent that the Nazi leadership not only did not persecute such jokes but actually encouraged them: “The ‘whispered jokes’ were welcomed by the regime, they were treated with goodwill and amusement, and they were understood as a token of affection from the people” (278). Merziger insists that “In contrast to this picture of a very dark and serious time [from 1933 to 1945], there were more laughs in National Socialism than ever” (281). The joke culture was approved even at the highest levels of the Nazi propaganda machine: “Institutions central to the public face of the National Socialists, including Joseph Goebbels himself, continually stressed the idea of the ‘whispered joke’ as posing no problem and that it could be permitted in daily life” (279). So, here we have a violent, authoritarian, right-wing regime that approved of people’s humor even in cases where the jokes were

Ideology and laughter 15 directed at themselves. In this situation, the Nazis either thought of humor as a wholly innocuous indulgence, i.e. incapable of inflicting real damage on the existing power structure; or, alternatively, they saw comedy as functioning like a safety valve, an outlet for feelings of anxiety and frustrations, thereby deflecting more subversive energies from manifesting themselves in specific acts of protest or civil disobedience. Whatever the case, Merziger’s research reveals that the Nazis apparently did not think of humor as dangerously subversive or critically liberal. We are accustomed to think that those in power react allergically to manifestations of humor. The 2014 movie The Interview, starring Seth Rogan and James Franco, ridiculed North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un. The Dear Leader reacted with vitriol and barely concealed rage to this work, calling for the wholesale destruction of the United States in retaliation against the comedy. During the heyday of belief in humor’s disruptive potential, Foreign Policy reported enthusiastically in 2013 about “Laughtivism,” or the “strategic use of humor” (Popovic and Joksic) in conflictual situations, notably the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. According to the authors, “laughter is a potent weapon” against corrupt state power and economic hegemony. Certainly, laughter can have this chastising, subversive, and humiliating function, just as Mark Twain believed it did when he famously stated that “against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” The only problem with this line of thinking is that it can be taken to signify that all laughter has an anti-authoritarian function, as indicated by Popovic and Joksic: “Pro-democracy demonstrators around the world are discovering that humor is one of the most powerful weapons in the fight against authoritarianism.” It may well be that humor’s supposedly subversive effect mainly exists in the minds of those enjoying and supporting anti-establishment humor. But the inverse may also be true: i.e. that humor could be used as a tool to secure social and political conformism. The function of humor under communism can serve as an object lesson in this regard. While Merziger’s research uncovered the function of humor in the Nazi era, Christie Davies has investigated humor’s role under Soviet communism. As far as Russian jokes about communism go, Davies’s research indicates that “even the members of the KGB enjoyed them” (Humor and Protest 305). Davies further elaborated on this observation: “It is doubtful whether for present purposes it is helpful to see the political jokes primarily as a weapon (Larsen 1980), as resistance (Zlobin 1996), or as a protective device for the recalcitrant (Waterlow 2013, 224); after all, even those who exercised power enjoyed the jokes (Deriabin and Gibney 1960; Myagkov 1976)” (“Political ridicule” 16). Davies thinks it is possible that in oppressive conditions “jokes are a safety valve that help oppressive regimes to survive and that it is counter-productive to try to suppress them” (Humor and Protest 300). Ultimately, Davies rejects the notion that jokes are politically

16  Ideological and theological coordinates instrumental: “It is extremely unlikely that, taken in aggregate, jokes have any significant effect one way or the other, particularly when compared with other stronger social forces. . . . Jokes are a thermometer, not a thermostat” (Humor and Protest 300). As an index of what is happening in a given society under an oppressive or incompetent regime, jokes may have a symptomatic function (acting as a thermometer), indicating how close to boiling point popular mood is. Other than that, “jokes are so feeble a social force that they can neither seriously undermine nor by acting as a safety valve prop up a political order” (“Political Ridicule” 14). In this view, humor is neither a driver of opposition nor a soothing agent to defuse protest but simply an indicator of the public mood or the mood of a certain sector of the public. This brief consideration of the role of jokes in Nazi Germany and under Russian Communism is apt to raise doubts about humor’s inherent liberal or subversive functions. This line of inquiry can be extended by adopting an explicitly empirical approach. Indeed, why not ask actual liberals and conservatives how they feel about a number of jokes on a survey and then analyze the data using objective statistical tools? This is precisely what I have done in collaboration with a fellow researcher.2 In 2016, I conducted a humor appreciation survey to study the relationship between humor and religious belief. The survey was mainly aimed at determining if (and how) different religious cultures shape their followers’ senses of humor, but it also allowed us to draw some conclusions regarding the connection between political leanings and humor.

Humor and ideology – social science results This survey with close to 800 participants contained a blend of 24 jokes, both mild and offensive, on a range of religious and non-religious subjects.3 Among the demographic questions that the participants answered toward the end of the survey was a question about their ideological self-definition. The available options were “very conservative,” “somewhat conservative,” “somewhat liberal,” and “very liberal.” Correlating the ideological self-identification with the participants’ humor responses should provide a pretty good sense of whether or not humor has an ideological preference. I  had rather expected to find that self-identified liberals would rate the jokes, many of which were very bold, significantly funnier than their conservative counterparts. However, no such correlation could be found. Table 1.1 below represents the average humor rating of the 24 jokes on the survey, separated by religious sub-population and further split into liberal and conservative constituencies. The humor response is calculated by taking the average ­rating for all 24 jokes, scored on a funniness scale from 1 to 9, with separate calculations for jokes the participants rated as “offensive” and those they rated as “not offensive.”4

Ideology and laughter 17 Table 1.1 Average funniness scores for entire joke corpus divided by sub-population and separated by ideological orientation. The funniness ratings are reported for jokes marked as “not offensive” and as “ offensive.” [2016 survey] Religion

NOT offensive

Offensive

Conservative

Liberal

Conservative

Liberal

Agnostic Atheist Christian Hindu Muslim Non-practicing Control

4.9 5.2 4.8 5.9 5.7 4.6 5.2

5.0 5.0 4.9 6.2 5.3 5.3 4.9

2.0 2.3 1.8 4.7 2.4 2.8 2.4

2.0 2.3 2.7 5.0 3.4 1.9 2.6

Average

5.05

5.07

2.46

2.83

As indicated in Table 1.1, the overall funniness rating (“Average”) was only minimally affected by the conservative or liberal self-identification. Among jokes that participants did not rate as offensive (i.e. the majority of jokes), the overall funniness average of conservative and liberal participants in the aggregate is practically identical. All jokes rated as “offensive” received significantly lower funniness ratings by all participants compared to the jokes not rated as offensive. And although among the jokes deemed offensive by participants, liberals showed a somewhat greater degree of amusement (2.83 vs. 2.46), this difference is small.5 For all intents and purposes, ideology was not a driver of differences in humor appreciation between the liberal and conservative participants of our survey. If ideology were a major determinant of humor responses, and if there was something inherently liberal about humor, then we would expect to see a gap opening up between liberals and conservatives when it comes to responding to a wide variety of jokes. But while funniness ratings do not significantly differ between the two groups, another factor, perceived offensiveness, is a strong driver of humor appreciation differences. The jokes that participants rated as “offensive” were scored significantly lower (by 2.5 steps on the 9-point funniness scale) regardless of the participants’ ideological leanings. Religious affiliation, too, acts as a stronger separator of humor appreciation differences than political leanings. Our study indicates that Hindus were overall reporting higher funniness ratings at statistically significant levels, while Christians posted overall the lowest humor appreciation scores, regardless of whether the Christians were conservative or liberal in their political orientation (for full discussion, see “Does Religion Shape People’s Sense of Humor,” by Ott and Schweizer). And while the humor response differences between liberals and conservatives were mostly negligible, it is

18  Ideological and theological coordinates interesting to note that the conservatives in the control population did in fact report higher funniness ratings than the liberal members of the same group. Among jokes rated as “offensive” (i.e. insulting, blasphemous jokes), liberals rated them as slightly funnier in most sub-populations, although among the non-practicing group (i.e. participants who indicated they were only culturally associated with a religion) conservatives surprisingly rated the offensive jokes as funnier than their liberal peers. Overall, then, the humor appreciation responses do not split along the liberal vs. conservative line, but they do split along the separation of offensive versus inoffensive jokes, and they also separate by religious affiliation.

Humor and conservatism What this tells us is that the commentators who are skeptical about humor’s supposedly liberal essence appear to be right. As a generalization, the thesis that conservatism acts as a check on humor has to be rejected. Of course, it will always be possible to point to conservative individuals with a bad sense of humor, just as it is possible to identify humorless progressive individuals, but as a congenital mode of conditioning a person to be either more or less humorous, political ideology seems not to play a significant role. Bearing this in mind, Alison Dagnes’s assertion that “the philosophy of conservatism is incompatible with political humor but liberalism suits it quite nicely” (5–6 KL) appears to be a stretch, even under the proviso that she is focusing on political humor. Of course, political humor is simply a subcategory of humor in general and therefore not strictly separable from the mental, cognitive, and ideological ramifications associated with humor. The fact that no conservative comedians of great repute have recently emerged in the United States says more about the structure of the media landscape than about humor’s inherent ideological preference. According to Sean McElwee, “History shows that conservative-leaning comedy isn’t inherently unviable.” McElwee cites “structural, demographic, and financial issues” as causes for the dearth of good conservative political satire: structural because today’s most noteworthy satirists were nurtured in big urban comedy scenes, and large cities are always leaning liberal; financial because the entertainment industry as a whole is liberal leaning, offering fewer outlets for conservative comedians; and demographic because satirical shows mainly speak to younger audiences, which have been trending liberal for a while now. McElwee’s argument goes that if you are a conservative comedian today, the cards are indeed stacked against you, which is not the same as saying that as a conservative you lack the aptitude to be funny in a satirical way. The most we can say with a degree of certainty is that empirically speaking, conservative satire is in a slump at the moment, and has indeed been for a while. The preponderance of liberal comedy in today’s world does not provide proof that liberalism per se has brought about this preponderance. Rather, a set of social and demographic circumstances, notably a more urban, more

Ideology and laughter 19 highly educated, and younger audience, has been the likely the driver for the popularity of sophisticated political satire among liberals, which in turn has incentivized more liberal comedians to seek a career in the humor industry.

Humor and boundaries Instead of pretending to know what humor is, notably what it is ideologically or morally, I prefer to ask where humor can be found, i.e. under what conditions it flourishes best. In response to that broader question, one common denominator that everybody should be able to agree on is that principally humorous laughter is attracted to boundaries of all sorts. In the words of Ingvild Gilhus, “laughter explores the world’s dividing lines” (4). Humor thrives in the borderlands of taste, civility, piety, and decorum, hence the persistent tendency of jokes to address risqué, obscene, blasphemous, and taboo matters. The repressed in particular – that Freudian source of jokes – is defined as that which lies beyond the pale of “normality” and outside of common rationality. Of course, it is not the existence of real or symbolical boundaries in and of itself that is funny; rather, what is amusing is humor’s tendency to manipulate and creatively disturb border regions. As far as religion is concerned, it is clear that boundaries are everywhere. The very words orthodoxy, dogma, denomination, religious order, ordinal, and ordination imply boundaries of various kinds. Dogmas mark off territories of belief from one another, and humor can trespass between these separate regions, overturning the artificial line between one article of faith and another or between fantasy and reality. Authority of any kind sets up boundaries of the permitted and approved, and humor breezes past those limits, revealing them as limits and exposing to cognitive inspection their underlying rationale. In situations of direct oppression when restrictions are particularly tightly wound, the laughter of the oppressed emerges at the leading edge of the repressive boundary, causing ripples and gaps in the dictatorial armature. Hence the dictum that “comedy is a genre that often thrives on the transgression of boundaries” (Leighton). The attraction of humor to all kinds of symbolic and actual boundaries is also the reason why incongruity and exaggeration are such powerful mechanisms of comedy: both techniques are predicated upon the existence of boundaries  – exaggeration because it leaps over the boundary of what is “normal” (in conception and discourse) and incongruity because it re-draws or dissolves the boundaries we thought existed between mental images and normative reality. Occasionally, humor can shift the boundary, but more commonly, it simply exposes the existence of a boundary, playing creatively with it, and showing possible alternatives to its current incarnation. The technical term to refer to such an involvement with boundaries is liminality. Liminal rhetoric playfully reevaluates and critically questions and inspects

20  Ideological and theological coordinates borders, whether they are set by authorities, opinion makers, traditions, creeds, or psychological needs. However, humor can also have the opposite of a liminal effect, when is serves to bolster hierarchical power and strengthen boundaries of exclusion. This is the social function David Feltmate has in mind when he writes that “humor [can] be used to exclude others. In other words, humor reinforces and makes explicit moral boundaries” (KL 478). Looking at this dynamic from a sociological perspective, Giselinde Kuipers observed that “humour is strongly related to social boundaries” (Kuipers 219). In this view, humor serves as a social marker of class and other divisions “first, because appreciation of humor is related to knowledge and moral boundaries that are often group-specific; second, because humor requires and creates identifications and social bonds” (Kuipers 237). Following this rationale, humor is attracted to the seam of power differentials, and instead of subversively weakening existing borders, it can fortify them, reinforcing exclusion and in-group loyalty. Any kind of overtly racist, classist, misogynist joking fulfills that function. I  call this type of humor entrenchment humor, as the laughter evoked by such joking serves to entrench rather than weaken perceived social and symbolical boundaries. But while Kuipers and Feltmate are primarily emphasizing the entrenching functions of humor, and while others such as Leighton, Sanders, and Krause focus on the idea of laughter as a boundary-weakening tool of liminality, I give equal attention to both aspects of the phenomenon, especially in connection with laughter’s function in religious contexts.

The four-factor humor model In general, the rhetoric of liminality tends to yield a humor that is playful, ironic, and subversive, based largely on the theories of incongruity and play as the principal triggers of laughter. By contrast, the rhetoric of entrenchment tends to be drawn to a type of humor that corresponds to the superiority and relief theories of laughter (see the section “Key Terms and Definitions” for an outline of the major humor theories). Both kinds of humor (i.e., the liminal and the entrenching) can be amusing and satisfying, or, conversely, they can both be perceived as offensive or unfunny, and neither justifies a need for regulation or censorship. Ideologically, it appears that liminal humor has progressive tendencies while entrenching humor has reactionary tendencies. But this abstract ideological typology is not predictive. Liberals can use entrenchment rhetoric just as conservatives can, and either group can resort to the rhetoric of liminality, using irony and incongruity to raise laughter. Again, instead of talking about humor as inherently liberal (or anti-conservative), it is more productive to shift the frame of reference, looking at specific instances of humor and their boundary-challenging or boundary-reinforcing dynamic.

Ideology and laughter 21 Table 1.2 The humor quadrant, consisting of two soft and two hard humor modalities, as well as two liminal and two entrenchment modes Predominant humor theory involved: – Incongruity – Play

– Superiority – Relief

SOFT (benign, amiable, playful approach)

HARD (caustic, critical, aggressive approach)

LIMINAL HUMOR 1 (playing with words & ideas, role play, clowning)  Jest ENTRENCHMENT HUMOR 1 (self-deprecation, teasing, exaggeration)  Parody

LIMINAL HUMOR 2 (witty, subversive, critical, oppositional)  Satire ENTRENCHMENT HUMOR 2 (misogynist, racist, nationalist, partisan)  Mockery

Theoretical ideological tendency: “transgressive”

“reactionary”

Plotting this four-factor model of humor in the form of a table helps to clarify the relationships between key concepts used throughout this book (see Table  1.2). I  avoid the terms “positive” and “negative” humor to demarcate my approach from that of the theology of laughter. Indeed, as we shall see in the next chapter, laughter theologians approve of only one kind of laughter, i.e. the benign, “clean,” “positive” kind (which I  style “soft”) while collectively condemning what they see as the more corrosive, malicious, “negative” forms of laughter (what I style “hard” humor). My approach differs fundamentally from such judgmental ideas. As we can see, both liminal and entrenchment types of humor have applications that can be described as “soft” or “hard.” In accordance with the slippery, unstable, and indeterminate nature of comical discourse, the same comedian and the same comical material can activate different modalities of humor, even within the same text or performance. As I will demonstrate in Part 2, not only are all types of humor practiced by people on the left and the right of the political spectrum, by pious believers as well as by mockers of religion, but one and the same routine, cartoon, story, or performance can flicker between the different modalities. This makes it immediately clear why opposing one modality  – notably the aggressively entrenching one – because it “trades in hurtful stereotypes” is impractical. It is like trying to remove the hot pepper from a chili dish after it’s been cooked. Even the “hardest” of humor modes (Entrenchment 2) is an integral part of the ­comical spectrum, albeit a spicy and sometimes almost indigestible ingredient, and to take it away would deprive the cook (or comedian) of a significant source of flavor.

22  Ideological and theological coordinates

The Humor Styles Questionnaire A different set of four “humor styles,” previously developed by humor scholars, has found wide application in empirical social science research. The Humor Styles Questionnaire, introduced by Rod Martin et al. in 2003, is designed to classify people’s sense of humor according to psychological and social interaction criteria. This is primarily a psychological research tool with similarities to a personality test, and it is of limited relevance to my own thinking. Still, there is some overlap between the two systems, and I want to be transparent about how the Humor Styles Questionnaire relates to my four humor modes. The humor styles as developed by Martin et al. can be summarized like this: 1 Affiliative humor: Benign, playful humor meant to bind people together, inviting collective laughter to ease tension and generate “esprit de corps.” 2 Self-enhancing humor: Another positive form of humor that reflects humble, positive personality traits, including the ability to laugh at oneself and to use laughter to put things into perspective. 3 Aggressive humor: The mirror inverse of affiliative humor, i.e. a critical, subversive, and even malicious kind of humor, using laughter as a weapon to undermine, exclude, and demean others. 4 Self-defeating humor: People high in this trait tend to use laughter to put themselves down. This is a heavy form of self-deprecating laughter, full of self-humiliating potential. The “affiliative humor” style can be related to both my “soft” liminal and “soft” entrenchment modalities, whereas the style of “aggressive humor” would fit well with my categories of “hard” liminal and “hard” entrenchment humor. The self-enhancing style is mostly at home in my Entrenchment 1 category, as people high in this trait like to poke mild fun at themselves or their group. As for “self-defeating humor,” it is a nearly neurotic category of masochistic humor that would correspond to the most extreme incarnation of self-deprecating Entrenchment 1 humor. Overall, the categories of the Humor Styles Questionnaire map obliquely onto my own system of two liminal and two entrenchment humor modalities. Notably, the Humor Styles Questionnaire serves a different purpose, structuring personalitypsychology and sociological research projects, whereas my own system is suitable to capture the conceptual dimensions of comical productions in performance, art, and literature.

Humor and boundaries on the left and the right As will emerge throughout the rest of this book, boundaries of a literal or figurative kind have always been powerful attractors of humor, expressed in

Ideology and laughter 23 different mediums from textual to visual manifestations. And while a legion of jokes challenging political authorities and religious doctrines puts one in mind of humor’s boundary-challenging aspects, it is also true that much humor is dedicated to entrenching existing preconceptions and c­ onfirming stereotypes. A vast body of racist, ethnic, misogynist, and nationalist jokes thrives on such reinforcement of boundaries. Blackface comedy is an aggressive form of boundary-reinforcing humor, as are any number of dumb-­Polish or stupid-blonde jokes (or their ethnic equivalents in different cultures across the globe). Is “hard” entrenchment humor always and unfailingly the province of conservative or reactionary comedians? Surely not. Ethnic or misogynist jokes are among the stock-in-trade of stand-up comedians across the political spectrum from left to right. For instance, left-leaning comedian Amy Schumer had to apologize in 2010 when people objected to this joke: “I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual.” And Daily Show’s host Trevor Noah, was accused of misogyny because of jokes like this: “A hot white woman with ass is like a unicorn. Even if you do see one, you’ll probably never get to ride it.” On the face of it, these are Entrenchment 2 jokes, and while conservative comedians like Evan Sayet or Dennis Miller are good at cracking them, so are liberal humorists. Even satire, which appears to be the comical genre most adept at deconstructing boundaries and undermining walls of power, can be co-opted to reinforce authoritarian, normative scripts. Scholars have shown that totalitarian regimes on the right and left have instrumentalized satire in the service of furthering their own interests. In Nazi Germany, several explicitly satirical periodicals such as Brennessel (Stinging Nettle) and Angriff (Attack) published satirical stories and essays during the Nazi era that pushed fascist ideology. Patrick Merziger wrote that “In Angriff satire was integrated from the very beginning” and after January 30, 1933, with the “foreseeable consolidation of dictatorship, satire appeared to assert itself as the form of comic entertainment in National Socialism. Brennessel was seen as the leading satirical publication” (282). Not only was Die Brennessel run by an NSDAP publisher, it was “the leading light of National Socialist humor” (Merziger 286). The satires published in these magazines would typically seek to strengthen military morale by lampooning cowardly soldiers (Merziger 283) or they furthered esprit de corps by poking fun at bureaucratic red tape. However, these satires (or were they “satires”?) led to an unforeseen result – numerous complaints from readers that their content was inappropriate. Apparently, these quasi state-sponsored, patriotic satires failed to engage their audiences in the intended ways. Instead of amusement, they often generated outrage, resulting in numerous reader complaints and dwindling readership. In 1935, an official Nazi press organ diagnosed with some dismay “that German society as a whole felt offended by satires” (Merziger 284), notably satires published by state-sponsored outlets like Die Brennessel. In response, the Nazi paper Das Schwarze Korps published a lead article in 1936 under the title “Mehr Humor!” (More Humor!), calling on

24  Ideological and theological coordinates Germans to drop their complaints against Nazi-friendly satires and generally to lighten up. Apparently, the Nazis considered humor to be furthering their own interests, partly through its bonding function and partly through its effect as a safety valve. That their officially sanctioned satire did not fare well with the public might be an indication that satire does not lend itself well to delivering top-down, authority-friendly messages. Although these satires were toying with boundaries of heroism and patriotism, they were not truly critical of the established power and so somehow failed as authentic satires. But just as it is not true that all humor is inherently liberal, it is equally not the case that conservatism is incompatible with liminal humor. Boundaries of liberal orthodoxy are also fair game for conservative liminal humor. The philosophy of multiculturalism, dictates of the Nanny State, or the excesses of political correctness are all legitimate targets of liminal joking from conservative humorists. Figure 1.2 is an example of a cartoon whose message could be characterized as targeting a liberal political stance.

Figure 1.2  Satirical cartoon targeting a liberal viewpoint Source: Image credit: ©John Atkinson, Wrong Hands. Used with permission

Ideology and laughter 25 By ridiculing the contortions of politically correct speech, notably its avoidance of negatively connoted nouns, this cartoon replaces specific, emotionally loaded terms with artificial, wordy balderdash. The incongruity between “werewolf” and “lunar initiated transfigurement activist” not only points out the clumsiness of politically correct terminology but also hints at the fact that these roundabout expressions lack conceptual traction and are imaginatively lifeless. This cartoon implies that political correctness takes both the life and the fun out of expressive speech (not to mention out of Halloween). The above anti-PC cartoon is premised upon the existence of a boundary imposed by liberal (as opposed to conservative or reactionary) ideology, and the humor critically undermines that liberal boundary. Examples of pro-conservative humor targeting liberal policies could easily be multiplied, thus further undermining the thesis that all liminal humor has a liberal slant. Although entrenchment humor can be theoretically aligned with a “reactionary” stance and liminal humor with a transgressive sensibility, both conservative and liberal practitioners of humor can get involved with liminal and entrenchment humor.

Humor, boundaries, and religion What significance does humor’s affinity for boundaries hold for our investigation into the relationship between humor and religion? Clearly, institutional religion is replete with explicit and implicit boundaries. Religions can prescribe habits, behaviors, and appearances, they spell out articles of belief, and they impose punishments for transgressions against the religious norms. Like few other idea systems, religions are defined by the existence of multiple boundaries. I am not only thinking of not touching the light switch on Sabbath, not eating pork, never cutting your hair, not having sex before marriage, etc. but also of internalizing a larger outlook like that there is only one God or that humanity is fallen, or that there is a heaven and hell, etc. Each one of these articles of faith constitutes a smaller or larger limit of what can and cannot be thought, felt, and done. No wonder, then, that religion has attracted laughter since the time of Homer, if not earlier, including skeptical, irreverent, and playful laughter. Even theologians admit this: “Not surprisingly, religion offers a delightful playing field and useful raw material for humorists” (Campbell and Cilliers 130). As Søren Kierkegaard has already argued in the middle of the 19th century, Christianity attracts humor because fundamental and cosmic incongruities are written into the fabric of its beliefs: A God become human, divinity in the form of a wailing baby, a supernatural agent undergoing slow torture, fallible humans communicating with a perfect, transcendent God, and the list goes on. In this view, the cascading incongruities intrinsic to Christianity are making any believer or article of faith potential targets of humor. The incongruities inherent in the faith can be exploited for entrenching or for liminal purposes. Lecherous monks and lustful priests behave

26  Ideological and theological coordinates incongruously with regard to the Catholic requirement of clerical sexual abstinence. Their obvious transgression of boundaries is exploited in anticlerical jokes of an entrenching sort which reinforce long-standing generalizations about monastics and their supposedly predictable moral failings. Other, higher-order religious incongruities can give rise to truly subversive humor in the liminal register. Examples of this would be jokes about the incongruity of the virgin birth, the contradictory nature of many scriptural passages, or the “character flaws” of a jealous and violent God. In such cases, humor precipitates a questioning of faith, shifting perspectives by revealing how doctrines may be based on artificially constructed boundaries. Ultimately, the most irreverent laughter is produced by jokes involving incongruities of the highest order, when the boundaries between the human and the divine realms, the sacred and the profane orders are subjected to the operations of “hard” humor. In the chapters that follow, humorous expressions will be consistently analyzed utilizing the four-factor humor model introduced here. This framework has the benefit of operating outside the bias-prone ideological paradigm that links humor with a liberal, progressive outlook or, conversely, with a reactionary, exclusionary strategy. Further, it avoids the moralizing, didactic tendency, demonstrated by many commentators on laughter who separate comedy into a beneficial, healthy, and a dangerous, sinful category. This last stance is particularly evidenced among representatives of the “theology of laughter,” a recent movement originally aimed at rehabilitating laughter from many centuries of official Christian condemnation. But, as I shall show in the following chapter, although the theologians of laughter like to think of themselves as offering an antidote to the age-old Christian suspicion against mirth, they are really not going far enough in their embrace of laughter.

Notes 1 At the annual Al Smith Memorial Dinner, on October  20, 2016, an occasion where politicians roast each other, Donald Trump started out by telling some passable jokes about the presidential contest, but as his speech wore on, his jokes at Hilary Clinton’s expense became increasingly vitriolic, and the laughter in the room turned into booing. The Washington Post, October  20, 2016. www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/20/here-are-themost-memorable-jokes-donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton-made-at-the-al-smithdinner/?utm_term=.6e4ec9ba4b84 2 This research was first published in the European Journal of Humor Research, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018, under the title “Does Religion Shape People’s Sense of Humor? A  Comparative Study of Humor Appreciation Differences between Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Atheists,” by Bernard Schweizer and Karl-Heinz Ott. 3 For information about the demographics of the study, see Appendix. 4 Only relatively few participants rated themselves as “very conservative” or “very liberal,” with some sub-populations hardly having any members in that group; we therefore combined the “very” votes with the “somewhat conservative” and

Ideology and laughter 27 “somewhat liberal” populations, respectively. Although losing some precision thereby, the larger question whether ideological orientation plays a role in a person’s humor response could still be reasonably assessed by this method. 5 Statistical significance testing was restricted to jokes not voted “offensive.” The number of data points for jokes voted “offensive” was too small in some groups to allow for reliable p-value calculations.

2 Theology and laughter Against the confessional paradigm of humor

There is a long line of grim theologians. Repeatedly there are negative comments on laughter, which is understood as expressing worldliness, sinful insouciance, and lack of faith. – Peter Berger

As we have seen in the previous chapter, the binary view of laughter as an inherently liberal, anti-conservative phenomenon appears to be on shaky ground. But what about the confessional dualism, which prioritizes clean, saintly humor while almost literally demonizing the more caustic, aggressive forms of humor? This moralistic Christian view of humor is rooted in a long-standing anti-laughter tradition going back many centuries. Numerous statements by early Church Fathers, medieval theologians, and monastic leaders across the centuries have fortified a view of laughter as disrupting piety, inviting sin, and displeasing God.

Biblical condemnations of laughter The Christian ecclesiastics and theologians who gave laughter a bad name did not have to look very far to find corroboration for their solemn stance. The Bible contains a few pithy pronouncements in opposition to mirth: Sorrow is better than laughter: For by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. (Ecclesiastes 7:3–4) I said of laughter, “It is foolishness”; and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?” (Ecclesiastes 2:2). A fool raises his voice in laughter, but the wise person, at most, smiles discreetly. (Book of Sirach 21:20)

Theology and laughter 29 Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness. (Proverbs 14:13) Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom. (James 4:9) Woe to you who laugh, for you shall weep.

(Luke 6:25)

Christian authorities condemning laughter In addition to leaning on scriptural passages denouncing laughter, the early Church Fathers were also motivated to draw a line against what they saw as pagan sensuality. In this, they were in agreement with Old Testament writers for whom “laughter had a pagan ring because the Canaanite gods and goddesses laughed and made merry” (Cote 22). In classical antiquity, worshippers paid homage to deities who were explicitly associated with mirth, such as Gelos, the personified spirit of laughter, or Baubo, the Greek goddess of humor. A rejection of the “pagan” heritage entailed a rejection of their explicit and religiously sanctioned embrace of laughter. Moreover, the Christian authorities suspicious of laughter could always point to Jesus, who never once laughed according to all the available evidence from the gospels, a fact emphasized by Saint Chrysostom in the fourth century. What follows are some of the most noteworthy pronouncements by influential Christian thought leaders with regard to laughter and mirth: Tertullian (second to third century CE): Laugh at what you will, but let the demons laugh with you. (Apology) Basil (fourth century): The Christian . . . ought not to indulge in jesting; he ought not to laugh nor even to suffer laugh-makers. (Letter 22) Saint John of Chrysostom (fourth century): That is why Christ says so much to us about mourning, and blesses those who mourn, and calls those who laugh wretched. For this is not the theatre for laughter, neither did we come together for this intent, that we may give in to immoderate mirth, but that we groan, and by this groaning inherit a kingdom. (Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew)

30  Ideological and theological coordinates Ephrem the Syrian (fourth century): Laughter is the beginning of destruction of soul; o monk, when you notice something of that, know that you have arrived at the depth of the evil. . . . Laughter expels the virtues and pushes aside the thoughts on death and meditation on the punishment. (Quoted in Gilhus 69) Saint Augustine (fourth–fifth centuries): Human beings laugh and weep, and it is a matter for weeping that they laugh! (Sermon 31). Jerome (fourth–fifth centuries): As long as we are in the vale of tears we may not laugh, but must weep. So the Lord also says, “Blessed are those who weep, for they shall laugh.” We are in the vale of tears and this age is one of tears, not of joy. (Homilies on the Psalms) Saint Benedict and the Benedictine Monastic Rule (fifth century): We absolutely condemn in all places any vulgarity and gossip and talk leading to laughter. (The Rule of Saint Benedict) Although the solemn policy expressed in such dicta has probably been as often observed in its breach as in its observance, a decisive break with the long-standing tradition of Christian suspicion toward laughter only came in the second half of the twentieth century. The legitimacy of mirth for devout Christians was the motivating idea behind a movement that sometimes called itself the “theology of laughter.” From the late 1970s onward, a number of Christian philosophers published works that not only tolerated but actively affirmed the mental, social, and religious values of laughter. Some of the major players in the contemporary theology of laughter are Conrad Hyers (The Comic Vision and the Christian Faith: A Celebration of Life and Laughter [1981]), Richard G. Cote (Holy Mirth: A Theology of Laughter [1986]), Karl-Joseph Kuschel (Laughter: A Theological Reflection [1994]), J. William Whedbee (The Bible and the Comic Vision [1998]), Gerald A. Arbuckle (Laughing With God: Humor, Culture and Transformation [2008]), and most recently James Martin, SJ (Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life [2011]), Jacqueline A. Bussie (The Laughter of the Oppressed [2007]), and Charles L. Campbell and Johan H. Cilliers (Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly). These religious thinkers focused on different aspects of the nexus between laughter and religion, with some emphasizing humor in

Theology and laughter 31 scripture, others dealing with the role of humor in ministerial work, and yet others finding deeper spiritual meanings in laughter. Collectively these theologians are united by a remarkable degree of agreement on five basic principles: 1 Christianity has a long and regretful history of denunciations of laughter. For instance, Richard Cote wrote that “From the days of the early Church until now, Christians have often been suspicious of laughter” (9). Jacqueline Bussie similarly commented that “The church, from Augustine on down through the Middle Ages, thus interprets laughter vis-à-vis Christianity, the church, and God, as a pernicious phenomenon that seeks to undermine ecclesiastical authority and doctrine” (Bussie 17). Karl-Joseph Kuschel summed up the classical Christian view vis-à-vis laughter: “The one who laughs is the one who is remote from God” (48). Similar statements are legion. 2 Humor plays a vital role in the life of the faithful, and Christians should not curb their laughter. James Martin says that “a lighthearted spirit . . . is an essential element of a healthy spiritual life and of a healthy life in general” (2). He dwells on “the positive effects of excessive levity . . . “and insists that “joy, humor, and laughter need to be recovered in the spiritual life” (11). Richard Cote counsels that “a good laugh releases physical and mental stress” (78), and he insists that “where there is laughter, there is always hope” (10). Gerald Arbuckle highlights the social benefits of laughter, noting that “Humor is the best cure for fundamentalism or any form of intolerance” (xv). 3 Laughter is a gift from God since it is equivalent to joy, and joy is a divine attribute. On this point, Karl-Joseph Kuschel wrote: “The New Testament knows God’s joy, a joy which must necessarily express itself in laughter” (75). James Martin seconds this view: “Joy, to begin with, is what we’ll experience when we are welcomed into heaven. We may even laugh for joy when we meet God. Joy, a characteristic of those close to God, is a sign of not only a confidence in God, but also . . . gratitude for God’s blessings” (15). 4 The Bible is replete with humor and God has a sense of humor. In support of this view, Richard Cote exhorts Christians to “discover God’s own incredible sense of humor” (29) so that we can “learn to experience God’s humor in our own lives” (29), including “God’s practical jokes” (61). Karl Rahner writes “God laughs. . . . He laughs the laughter of divine superiority over all the horrible confusion of

32  Ideological and theological coordinates universal history” (112). Conrad Hyers, in turn, asserts that “Many of the key biblical stories may be seen as closer to comedies than to any other type of literature. . . . Comic devices are by no means foreign to the Bible” (3). 5 There are two kinds of laughter – morally good and bad laughter, or “positive” and “negative” laughter. Because this point is central to my argument, I  give a number of sources as evidence: James Martin said, “Laughter can be positive or negative” (18), and he elaborated as follows: “There is humor that builds up and humor that tears down, a humor that exposes cant and hypocrisy and a humor that belittles the defenseless and marginalized. Good humor and bad humor. . . . ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ depends not only on a moral sense, but on how the humor ­deepens or ­ cheapens the relationship with God” (23). To Karl-Joseph Kuschel, one of the most explicit exponents of the distinction between ­permissible and impermissible laughter, “There is joyful, comfortable, playful and contented laughter, and there is ­mocking, malicious, ­ desperate and cynical laughter” (xvi). Arbuckle follows the same basic line of argument: “We need to distinguish negative and positive humor so that it can be viewed in terms of a ­continuum. At one pole of the continuum there is negative humor marked by ­bitterness, ­hostility, humiliation. . . . At the other pole of the ­continuum there is ­positive humor characterized by pleasantness, joy, happiness, and other qualities that energize the mind and heart. Negative humor is directed against others. Positive humor is about ­‘laughing with’ others” (4). Similarly, Richard Cote writes, “We know that laughter in its highest expression is a healing power.  .  .  . But we also know that laughter can be a destructive force” (14), and he elaborates on what “distinguishes C ­ hristian laughter from ordinary profane laughter” (76). Only Bussie as well as Campbell and C ­ illiers diverge from these prescriptive views, taking a more capacious stance, which I will comment on later in this chapter. The remainder of this chapter is dedicated to discussing, probing, and, where necessary, refuting these five arguments. There is not much that is objectionable or controversial about principles 1 and 2. The fact that official Christianity was for most of its 2,000-yearold history opposed to laughter is quite uncontested and historically documented. There only remains to agree with practically everybody who has looked into this matter that to proscribe laughter and to demonize mirth was one of the more unfortunate teachings to come out of the Christian tradition. As for principle 2, i.e. that laughter should not be checked at

Theology and laughter 33 the church door and that humor is intrinsic to the human experience, who could argue with that? Among the myriad benefits of humor, I would like to point out its tendency to raise overall well-being (e.g. see Paul McGhee, Humor: The Laughter Path to Resilience and Health), to impact character positively (e.g. see Müller and Ruch, “Humor and Strengths of Character”), to improve mental flexibility and to enhance the intellectual processing of ideas (e.g. see Berger, Redeeming Laughter, and John Morreall, Comedy, Tragedy, and Religion). So, arguing for more rather than less laughter seems largely an uncontroversial proposition. Where I part company with theologians of laughter is with regard to principles 3, 4, and 5. As a secular humanist, I cannot fully comprehend argument number 3, which seeks to justify laughter because it is seen as a gift from God and a reflection of divine joy and love. Secularists consider God to be a human construct, and thus laughter cannot be seen as a gift from a divine maker. This is not to say that the argument itself is illegitimate or wrong, it’s just that this argument is only relevant to believers and has, therefore, a limited applicability in the larger debate over humor and faith. More interesting and, to my mind, provocative, is the related claim that humor is prevalent in scripture and that the biblical God has a great sense of humor (principle 4). This is a debatable and potentially controversial notion which can be answered with some degree of certainty as far as textual, scriptural evidence goes. Undeniably, there is some genuine humor in the Bible, mainly based on incongruity (e.g. Abraham haggling with God [Genesis 18:23–33]), on absurdity (e.g. Jonah trying to run away from God in the Book of Jonah), on irony (e.g. Nathanael suggesting that nothing good can come out of Nazareth [John 1:46]), and on hyperbole (e.g. a camel passing through the eye of a needle [Matthew 18:25]). There is a further category of humor, i.e. verbal wit, though this is often obvious only to biblical specialists and those fluent in Hebrew because most of the verbal humor is inevitably lost in translation.1 While these techniques and instances may count as proof that some humor is present in the Bible, it is a different question altogether whether the relevant passages are commonly perceived as humorous by readers of the Bible. In other words, I doubt whether these passages will trigger a humor response in most people. In my own experience, people have to be encouraged to look for humor in the Bible before they would even notice anything funny in Scripture. Bible readers are simply not accustomed to expect humor. To test whether or not biblical passages are perceived as amusing, I included three supposedly funny quotes from scripture in a survey designed to gauge the attitudes of Christians and atheists toward religious humor.2 One of the three passages on the questionnaire covered the episode from the Old Testament (Genesis 17:17 and Genesis 18:10–15) where Sarah and Abraham laugh after God tells them they are going to have a son in their advanced age (she is 89, he is 99). The second passage is from the Gospel according to John (1:45–46): “Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the

34  Ideological and theological coordinates One Moses wrote about in the Law, the One whom the prophets foretold – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ ‘Can anything good come from Nazareth?’ Nathanael asked.” The third passage is a quote from the Sermon on the Mount (e.g. Mark 10:25) when Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” As indicated above, these passages are frequently held up by laughter theologians as examples of biblical (or divine) humor. So, how did survey participants rate these three passages from the Bible in terms of their perceived funniness? It turns out all three Bible quotes performed very badly regarding participants’ rating them on a scale from “very funny” to “not funny at all.” Among all study participants (N = 198), the passage from the Gospel according to Mark and the scene from Genesis with Abraham and Sarah finished dead last in competition with 16 other passages of mixed religious and non-religious humor; the passage from John 1:46 did only slightly better, coming in on rank 13 of 18 in terms of funniness (see Fig. 2.1). Most significantly, there was broad agreement among members of different study populations that these passages lacked humor. Both atheists and practicing Christians ranked the Abraham/Sarah quote and the comment about Nazareth almost equally low on the funniness scale, and only the part from the Sermon on the Mount about the camel passing through the eye of a needle was found slightly funnier by practicing Christians than by atheists. Another metric to judge the reception of the three biblical passages was the frequency of choosing “N/A” as a response option. When study participants felt that a given passage was not relevant to humor at all, they would select N/A as the appropriate response option. Significantly, high numbers of study participants chose N/A when responding to the three biblical passages (see Table 2.1). In an outcome that should give pause to theologians of laughter, higher percentages of practicing Christians than atheists on our survey voted that the three biblical passages were irrelevant to humor (N/A). Of course, Table 2.1 Five passages that received the highest percentage of “N/A” votes, both from believers and unbelievers. (Biblical Passage A: Genesis 17:17 & 18:10–15; Biblical Passage B: Mark 10:25; Biblical Passage C: John 1:45–46. The ­literary passages, used for comparison, are by Joseph Conrad [X], Mark Twain [Y], and Jonathan Franzen [Z]) Rank

“N/A”

Practicing Christians

Rank

“N/A”

Atheists

1

38%

Biblical Passage A

1

32%

Biblical Passage B

2

36%

Biblical Passage B

2

27%

Biblical Passage A

3

28%

Literary Passage X

3

24%

Literary Passage X

4 5

26% 20%

Biblical Passage C Literary Passage Y

4 5

19% 18%

Literary Passage Z Biblical Passage C

Theology and laughter 35 practicing Christians are the very people that theologians of laughter would like to convince of the comical potential of such scriptural passages. At the very least, theologians of laughter will have to overcome greater resistance to their claims about scriptural humor than they may have anticipated. Either the high frequency of N/A responses (both from believers and nonbelievers) has to do with the perception that there is nothing humorous about these passages, or it means that people are generally not accustomed to view any parts of the Bible as amusing. I am not arguing that it’s impossible to perceive some biblical passages as funny. Indeed, the survey showed that some people did attest funniness to the biblical passages.3 But, to conclude from the few instances of lightheartedness in the Bible that the Holy Scriptures are full of humor or that God has a great sense of humor is a bridge too far. Still, laughter theologians habitually make this very claim, as evidenced in the statement “it would be difficult to read the Bible and miss  the implicit evidence of Yahweh’s sense of humor” (Cote 49). What kind of humor does Richard Cote have in mind? In his view, God “takes special delight in coming into people’s lives in the oddest ways, at the oddest times, making the oddest demands” (49). Now, one may object that oddity is not the best measure of humor. Rather, oddity, especially when associated with the divine creator may seem alienating or annoying. Cote states that “ours is a God of the improbable, full of surprise, highly unconventional, and blissfully spontaneous” (83). Such attributes could easily lead to a different kind of conclusion, i.e. that God is arbitrary, not funny. Oddity, unpredictability, and impulsiveness when fused with unlimited power are usually associated with caprice rather than humor. Reading God’s interactions with his creation as unpredictable rather than charmingly odd gives God’s presumed sense of humor a different meaning. For instance, I  cannot find the narrative of the flood funny at all, although it is a narrative replete with unpredictable, odd, and impulsive behavior on the part of God. Equally, I cannot find God’s wager with Satan in the Book of Job and the resultant catastrophes that befall the human and natural worlds as anything but fearful examples of divine caprice and therefore not as amusing. Secular humanists are likely to view claims about God’s supposed sense of humor with a large dose of skepticism. Even Peter Berger, a Christian thinker, states drily that “anyone surfing through the Bible (Old and New Testaments alike) or the history of Christian theology in search of the comic is bound to be disappointed” (197). John Morreall, too, has analyzed claims about Yahweh’s humor in detail and come to this sobering conclusion: “The God of the Bible has no sense of humor, and while Biblical writers may have inserted bits of humor here and there, it is false that ‘Humor permeates the Holy Scriptures’ ” (301). Morreall wrote this verdict in response to an article published in 2000 in Humor: International Journal of Humor Research authored by Hershey Friedman. In his journal article titled “Humor in the Hebrew Bible,” Friedman had listed many instances of so-called divine humor in the Hebrew Bible. In his rebuttal, also published in Humor,

36  Ideological and theological coordinates Morreall looked closely at the examples of sarcasm, irony, wordplay, and other categories of humor that Friedman had offered as evidence of humor’s prevalence in the Bible. Morreall finds some errors of logic in Friedman’s arguments such as Friedman’s claim that sarcastic comments made by Israelites in the Bible are comical. I think Morreall is spot on when he says that these comments are in fact “deadly serious” (295). Morreall also calls out Friedman for conflating characters in the Bible who laugh with the laughter of readers at the corresponding episodes. Thus, Morreall concludes that when laughter expresses mere contempt, it is not humorous laughter, any more than laughing on hearing that you have won the lottery is humorous laughter. For scornful laughter to be humorous laughter, there has to be something funny about the object of contempt. But God’s laughter in the Bible is just scornful laughter; nothing funny about the people God scorns is mentioned. Indeed, since God’s scornful laughter is associated with his angrily killing those he laughs at, and since such rage seems incompatible with amusement, the ferocity of God’s scorn would seem to preclude his seeing anything funny in his enemies. (301) Apparently, Morreall’s argument did not make an impression on Friedman, whose book God Laughed: Sources of Jewish Humor (2014)4 does not even mention Morreall’s rebuttal in the bibliography, although Friedman’s own initial article in Humor is listed. Rather than engaging in a dialogue, Friedman prefers to reiterate his claims about divine humor without considering the counter-arguments. In fact, Friedman further amplifies his claims about Yahweh’s terrific sense of humor in God Laughed. To me, Morreall’s position is more persuasive than Friedman’s, and it seems the same goes for many Bible readers who simply cannot read the Holy Book for humor, as indicated in the survey data presented above. The theology of laughter is on particularly thin ice when it claims that human amusement is a reflection of God’s humor. Richard Cote at least qualifies this claim by acknowledging the human mediation of divine humor (39). Since human language is all we have, so Cote’s argument goes, we can only make statements that approximate, never fully express divine humor. Other champions of God’s sense of humor are less modest. Again, Hershey and Linda Friedman claim to apprehend God’s humor immediately, as if it were revealed to them without any intervening mediation. According to the Friedmans, the best way to answer the question whether God has a sense of humor “is to examine the works that He has authored” (55). This assumption of a single author of all Hebrew scripture appears more than once in their book: “Looking at the abundance of humor in the Hebrew Scriptures, from irony to humorous images to wordplay and more, one is tempted to say that the author of these works has a terrific sense of humor” (Friedman 87). Historians of the Bible would beg to differ. It is a well-established fact

Theology and laughter 37 that different parts of the Hebrew Bible were written by different (human) authors across a timespan of centuries.5 With this in mind, it is odd to hear that the Bible is the work of one supernatural “author.” And there is much else to call into question here. For instance, the Friedmans make a logical blunder in the following assertion: “Does God have a sense of humor? With all the humor about God, in both modern and ancient times, He’d better be able to take a joke” (35). In other words, since humans have always found ways of joking about God, God must have a good sense of humor. The confessional impulse quite overwhelms both common sense (you can’t logically claim that somebody has a good sense of humor because he is a frequent target of jokes) and historical evidence (scriptures are the result of many hands, not one divine author). Thus, when it comes to discussing God’s supposed sense of humor, a number of profound disconnections open up between those with a confessional angle and those approaching the question more detachedly. And even among believers, there are differences: some think of God as an individual, an anthropomorphic entity with a human sense of humor who has personally “authored” scriptures, while others acknowledge the human mediation of divine humor, indicating that humans need to “translate” the humor of God to make it accessible. Another dissonance exists between religious writers who find plenty of comedy in scriptural passages and common readers of scripture who are not persuaded by comic readings of biblical texts. Finally, we come to the fifth principle that undergirds the Christian theology of laughter, namely that laughter exists either in an uplifting, positive or in a demeaning, negative modality, and that the latter needs to be curtailed. Karl-Joseph Kuschel put it in these terms: “A Christian theology of laughter calls for a modesty about laughter in certain instances, a deliberate refusal to laugh, a protesting objection to laughter. A Christian theology of laughter protests against a laughter . . . from above” (124). Specifically, Kuschel here objects to what I  call Entrenchment 2 humor (aka superiority laughter), but other theologians of laughter (as well as some secular commentators6) object to any “negative” laughter, including satirical and mocking protest laughter (what I call Liminal 2 humor). The time has come to clean the slate of such moralistic pronouncements regarding expressions of humor. Indeed, among the most valuable and even therapeutic functions of laughter is its proclivity to be bold and shameless. Of course, I am not disputing the existence of arrogant, mocking, aggressive, and hurtful laughter. But condemning the “negative” types of laughter is unhelpful when it comes to appreciating the defiant, critical, and unpredictable nature of much humor. Indeed, satire would be unthinkable without indecency, insolence, insubordination, and subversion. This does not make satire disreputable or mockery immoral. The “comedy of the oppressed,” as defined by Jacqueline Bussie, is often based on a sly, bitter, sarcastic kind of humor, which does not make it any less legitimate or necessary. Barry Sanders identifies this searing type of humor as “asbestos humor,” describing

38  Ideological and theological coordinates it as both hot and cleansing: “Fire also helps to illuminate the nature of laughter. Like water, fire can both destroy and purify – sometimes, purification arising, like a phoenix, only out of the ashes of destruction. But even when it does destroy, it always illuminates” (65). Some of the best humor consists of such offensive, fiery laughter, “burning” the person or institution targeted by it, whether the humor is aimed at secular or religious entities. But since laughter can be such a potent weapon, the humorist bears a responsibility when triggering it. If aggressive laughter is aimed at the weak and underprivileged, the act of aggression can be deeply unfair. In such situations, audience response is a valuable gauge to indicate to the humorist whether she has gone too far or not. Humor is a transactional phenomenon, and when a joke bombs, this is a contextual clue that the joke has transgressed a boundary that is too sensitive to be funny. This is obviously context-dependent, and the humorist’s challenge is to anticipate the reaction and read his audience accurately, so that the joke engages the proper kinds of boundaries. In today’s climate, making racist or misogynistic jokes has become problematic, and many such jokes fail to raise a laugh. This social feedback mechanism tells the comedians that their humor needs to be carefully calibrated or wrapped in a particularly thick playframe to elicit laughter. In my mind, it is far preferable to let this transactional relationship play out between humor producer and humor recipient rather than legislating a priori what kind of humor is admissible and what is not.

Morally prescriptive versus judgment-free approaches to laughter In contrast to the morally prescriptive approach to humor which classifies laughter along the lines of “positive” versus “negative” (Arbuckle), “joyful” versus “cynical” (Kuschel), “true” versus “untrue” (Critchley), “bad” versus “good” (Martin), and “healing” versus “destructive” (Cote), my own classification of humor is based on a set of neutral categories. As we have seen earlier, liminal (or boundary-testing) humor is associated with incongruity, play, and carnival, which taken together probably provide the bulk of humor stimuli. The complementary tendency, i.e. the kind of humor that promotes entrenchment (or boundary reinforcement), is predominantly related to superiority laughter and to relief, i.e. humor mechanisms that are prevalent in situations where laughter serves either as an instrument of stereotyping and exclusion or as a means of defense and protest. It is one of my central concerns to show that the often maligned “negative” kinds of humor can play important roles and constitute legitimate and even valuable forms of intellectual engagement and emotional release. For example, blasphemous humor can grapple meaningfully with the Problem of Evil, and sacrilegious jokes can illustrate flaws related to literal interpretations of the Bible. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that the distinctions between “positive” and “negative” modes of humor are more difficult

Theology and laughter 39 to draw in real situations than the proponents of the “clean comedy” school would want to admit. Indeed, supposedly harmless, “clean,” and openly pious religious comedy is sometimes shot through with strands of negative liminal and entrenchment humor as well (see chapter 4). Because humor is such a slippery, chameleonesque phenomenon, it is virtually impossible to tie it down to only affirmative, joyful, harmless expressions. As can be demonstrated, even outspokenly Christian comedians do sometimes slip into a liminal, subversive, aggressive humor register. Similarly, quite subversive religious humor by comedians like Robin Williams and Rowan Atkinson (see Chapter  4) can appear on the surface to be perfectly “clean.” Thus, rather than approaching humor as either clean or unclean, we need to accustom ourselves to seeing it as constantly in flux between more positive and negative (or between “soft” and “hard”) modes, incorporating aspects of innocence and experience, boundary challenging and boundary strengthening. The project of privileging positive, presumably devout forms of humor at the expense of negative and presumably sinful comedy is hampered from the start because there is no generally acknowledged consensus about what constitutes one or the other mode of humor. What is considered “harmless/ positive” or “offensive/negative” humor depends on the perspective and the taste of the person judging the matter, as well as on the larger context in which the humor occurs. What passes as “clean” in a comedy club may not be clean at all in a kindergarten setting. Even if one were to formulate strict guidelines according to which humor could be judged either as harmless or as offensive, positive or negative, endless debates would follow about the definitions and the boundaries of each type, thereby providing fodder for comical treatments that poke fun at the very distinction itself.

Humor responses are probabilistic Most importantly, making a categorical distinction between innocent and “sinful” humor negates the reality of people’s humor responses, which are by their nature probabilistic. In actual research settings, one will never find a uniform response to a given humor stimulus. As a result, one will never get agreement over the nature of the stimulus itself. Whether humor is judged clean or offensive and laughter good or mean is not something that lends itself easily to normative judgments. The major mistake that moralistic laughter-categorizers make is to think that occasions of laughter are morally transparent, as if every joke or comical situation were associated with a ­suitable declaration label. Sometimes, the context in which humor is delivered does imply such a “trigger warning.” For instance, when entering a comedy club in New York City, one better assume that racy, politically incorrect, and blasphemous fare is going to be served up. On the other hand, if one is in church, one naturally expects humor – if it occurs at all – to be only of the kinder, gentler sort. But these clear-cut situations are actually

40  Ideological and theological coordinates quite rare compared to most occasions when humor is encountered, such as by reading a book, participating at a dinner party, watching a TV show, or surfing the Internet. At those moments, humor erupts instantly and often unbidden. Anyone who expects that humor produces a pre-meditated or predictable response pattern is literally kidding himself. Because people manifest widely varying humor reactions, pontificating about how to react to a given joke or what constitutes acceptable comedy ignores the reality of how actual people react when exposed to a humor stimulus. Reactions to the same joke are spread across a spectrum, with some people finding it to be hilarious while others fail to see what’s funny about it, all depending on their comprehension of the joke, their personality, the context in which the joke is delivered, and the quality of the joke itself. The scientific study of humor appreciation, therefore, avoids prescriptive determinations about the quality of jokes and rather sorts through the empirical data, looking for trends and tendencies in people’s responses. As an example of this type of work, I  refer to a survey I  conducted in 2015 with 200 participants, asking them to rate a variety of jokes (including blasphemous jokes, “clean” religious jokes, and non-religious jokes) on a five-point scale from “not funny at all” to “very funny.” Figure 2.1 below shows the number of “votes” in each of six funniness categories for a total of 18 different humorous passages, arranged in descending order of the passage’s overall perceived funniness (the jokes are identified by short phrases on the x-axis).7 Clearly, some passages were perceived to be much funnier than others, on average. Based on a comparison of “funniness scores”8 for all 18 passages, some jokes outperformed others by a wide margin. For instance, the ­winning passage (Oscar Wilde’s witticism “I  can resist everything except temptation”) was perceived to be more than twice as funny (361 points on the funniness scale, versus 149 points), than a biblical passage about Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 18:10–15). A closer look at Figure 2.1 reveals an astonishing truth: the 18 jokes elicited responses that covered all six response categories in every case (including N/A when the passages were considered to be irrelevant to humor). As for the “funniest” joke overall, four survey participants still voted “not funny at all” when reading it, while three survey takers voted “very funny” when assessing the quote from ­Genesis 18 which the majority found lacking in humor. Despite such discrepancies, in the aggregate, many people found Oscar Wilde to be much funnier than God and the Bible. Such results are likely to make the life of those who would want to classify humor as either “good” or “bad” somewhat difficult since there is only a preponderance of judgments about the quality of humor, not a cut-and-dried distinction. Given the spread of humor responses, it stands to reason that some people would not see the “sinful” aspect of a caustic or aggressive joke while others would not agree that a certain joke is “harmless.”

Theology and laughter 41 100% 90%

4 9 21

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3

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31

60% 69

5

34

43 46

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21 3

39 12 4

20 22 8

60

400 28

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34 15 3

100 0

total Funniness Score

Figure 2.1 Stacked columns reflecting the number of votes in all six answer options for 18 humorous text selections (2015 study); the passages are arranged in descending order according to overall “funniness-score.” NF  =  not funny; HF = hardly funny; SS = so-so; F = funny; VF = very funny.

Responses to offensive humor The lack of unanimous responses to humor stimuli goes further than discrepancies over the degree of perceived funniness. In 2016, I designed a study which included “offensiveness” as a response option. Again, survey participants as a whole never unanimously judged one given joke to be offensive or another one to be inoffensive. Even respondents from the same demographic group (say practicing Christians or Hindus) were never in complete agreement about whether or not a given joke was offensive. As with degree of funniness, one can only observe trends regarding the offensiveness of certain jokes, not a shared consensus. The percentage of survey takers who indicated that they were offended by certain jokes varied widely based on the population, with the Muslims overall voting “offensive” more than four times as frequently as atheists, and other demographics posting percentages that lie in between these two extremes. Thus, from a demographic point of view, it makes no sense to

42  Ideological and theological coordinates say that certain jokes are de facto “clean” or “unclean,” because different groups (let alone different individuals) display widely differing perceptions as to whether a joke is offensive or not. Out of nine highly offensive jokes, only two jokes were voted “offensive” by slightly more than 50% of any group (see Table 2.2). The same joke (“Real/picture Jesus”) which was offensive to 53% of Christians was only rated as offensive by 23% of Muslims and by as few as 3% of the Atheists participating in the survey. Thus, if theologians of laughter declare that a certain joke is “bad” or “harmful,” the chances are remote that a majority of any demographic will agree with them, at least if “bad” means likely to be seen as offensive. From this point of view, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to establish a consensus about what is considered “positive” and what is “negative” comedy. This demonstrates once again how problematic it is to try to approach humor within a prescriptive framework. Our social science data also shows that “offensive” humor is not unfunny to everyone, although it is clear that jokes perceived as “offensive” have a high probability of being perceived as less funny or not funny at all. But once a joke is seen as both offensive and funny, then what are we to do with that? Outlaw such laughter because it is not nice? Allow it because it is amusing? Such questions run up against the involuntary nature of humor responses. Humor flies faster than the speed of moral reasoning, and often, whether a joke is perceived as funny or not trumps whether it is “clean” or not. Thus, instead of imposing a morally judgmental grid over joking matters, it is more productive to view manifestations of humor under the valueneutral aspects of liminality and entrenchment. That way, we are applying a coherent conceptual framework to account for the differential effects of humor without imposing the straitjacket of a moral dualism. Specifically, we are not saying that only one type of humor is to be promoted. Again, much of the so-called protest humor, i.e. the laughter of the oppressed and underground jokes, is of the “negative” sort. Table 2.2 The nine jokes most frequently voted “offensive” by members of different study populations, separated by individual joke and demographic group Joke ID

Control Agnostic

Atheist

Christian

Hindu

Muslim

Weed Wine into water Time-travel device Real/picture Jesus One woman’s affair Asterisk Muslims tolerant Holocaust Trinity

13% 23% 11% 30% 20% 23% 20% 28% 38%

5% 3% 3% 3% 3% 8% 11% 14% 9%

13% 41% 12% 53%  37% 45% 21% 35% 56% 

30% 47% 24% 22% 23% 34% 17% 13% 27%

49% 26% 49% 23% 35% 36% 44% 24% 36%

5% 7% 10% 10% 3% 11% 14% 21% 17%

Theology and laughter 43

The laughter of the oppressed As Jacqueline Bussie has shown in her book The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo (2007), dark humor and sarcasm are essential in liberationist scenarios both on an individual and on a collective level. In other words, forms of aggressive, caustic humor are often the only resource of hope, self-respect, and resistance that people living in adverse conditions have at their disposal. Hypocrisy, prejudice, greed, megalomania, and tyranny tend to impose or manipulate all kinds of boundaries, which in turn attract humor like jam attracts the wasp. In many oppressive situations, the best and perhaps only means of reacting meaningfully is through humor, especially the caustic forms of humor known as satire, parody, mockery, and ridicule. This does not imply that such forms of humor are necessarily apt to change existing conditions or bring down entrenched systems of power. As indicated in Chapter 1, the real-world consequences of subversive humor are hard to ascertain and remain dubious. The principal function of humor in oppressive situations appears to be to let off steam and to make situations psychologically more bearable. In this sense, as Christie Davies has argued, subversive humor is more a symptom of an oppressed people’s mood and a means of coping with adverse conditions rather than an actual strategy of political agency. If it is legitimate to marshal all kinds of humor, including clean and aggressive types, to deal with political abusers and entrepreneurial charlatans, then why should religion be shielded from caustic comedy? Do abuse, oppression, and hatred not occur in religious contexts? The proponents of “clean” religious comedy may argue that religious entities, i.e. deities, scriptures, churches, and clerics, must be shielded from the more caustic forms of comedy because such jokes may involve blasphemy or sacrilege. But rather than seeing blasphemous and sacrilegious humor as purely reprehensible, we need to acknowledge that such humor can confer distinct benefits upon its practitioners and their thinking, whether the benefits are theological, philosophical, intellectual, psychological, or social. Part 2 of this book is largely dedicated to identifying and discussing the effects – including the benefits – arising from manifestations of every kind of religious humor, including the abrasive and sacrilegious types. Over the course of this investigation, it will become clear just how fluid the boundaries are between what laughter theologians simplistically call the “positive” and the “negative” forms of laughter and comedy. Furthermore, not only are different kinds of humor susceptible to a more precise characterization according to their liminal or entrenching functions, but “negative” humor will reveal itself as simply unavoidable. Even explicitly “Christian” comedians use it. Thus, “true humor,” to borrow Simon Critchley’s term, is not a humor that avoids offending somebody or attacking something, but it is a humor that does what humor does best, i.e. play with, challenge, or ­reinforce all kinds of symbolical boundaries, taboos, and norms. In the final

44  Ideological and theological coordinates analysis, this realistic, non-prescriptive approach to religious humor  – or any humor – is guided by a robust support for the freedom of speech and the liberty of conscience.

Notes 1 Friedman admits that “to truly appreciate this [biblical] humor one must be well versed in the Hebrew language. Language-based humor, like puns, alliteration, and wordplay, does not translate well” (23). 2 See Bernard Schweizer and Karl-Heinz Ott, “Do Practicing Christians and Atheists Have Different Senses of Humor?” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, vol. 29, no. 3, Aug. 2016, pp. 413–38. 3 Only 9% of all study participants found the passage about Abraham and Sarah to be either “funny” or “very funny”; 15% of all participants voted the comment about the camel passing through the eye of the needle as either “funny” or “very funny”; and 20% though that the quip about Nazareth was “funny” or even “very funny.” By comparison, more than 60% of study participants rated a witticism by Oscar Wilde as “funny” or “very funny.” 4 While Hershey Friedman is sole author of his article in Humor, the book God Laughed is co-authored with his wife, Linda Friedman. 5 See, for example, Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. New York: HarperCollins, 2011; or Richard Elliott Freedman, Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. 6 For instance, secular philosopher Simon Critchley prescriptively stated that “true humour does not wound a specific victim and always contains self-mockery” (KL 14). 7 For details about this empirical research, see the article by Schweizer and Ott “Do Practicing Christians and Atheists Have Different Senses of Humor?” (2016). 8 Funniness-score is obtained by multiplying the number of votes (Nk) that each question received in the six response options (k) with the corresponding numerical equivalent of that funniness category (QRk), i.e. 0–5. The score is then further normalized to 100 participants such that differently sized subpopulations can be compared.

Part 2

Christian religious comedy Historical developments and the contemporary scene

3 A chronicle of triumph Religious humor from Dante to David Javerbaum

Creative, imaginative literature in the West, as it made its way from its headwaters in the ancient world, has flowed through a deep, meandering bed dug by the history of laughter. – Barry Sanders

This chapter traces the historical arc of religious humor in the Christian West, beginning with Dante’s Divine Comedy (1320) and ending with David Javerbaum’s The Last Testament: A Memoir by God (2011). For the sake of consistency and coherence, I strictly limit myself here to literary manifestations of religious humor in the Christian context. Such an approach avoids introducing too many religious, artistic, historical, and cultural variables. Moreover, this approach is based on an understanding that literature is a particularly suitable lens to bring into focus the deepest, most ­fundamental, and significant social, historical, and cultural developments. Supporting this view, Nigel Warburton writes that “we rightly privilege the role of the ­artist because it is through art that culture is transmitted and interrogated” (73). And since both humor and religion are ingrained aspects of culture, it makes sense to observe their interaction within the space outlined by literary creations. Dante is a good starting point for this survey because he so influentially paired the ideas of comedy and divinity (although his meaning of “comedy” differed from our contemporary definition of the term). The endpoint is less clearly demarcated, but David Javerbaum’s irreverent tour de force The Last Testament is both so deeply invested in scripture and so wholly irreverent that the work constitutes a convenient counterpoint to Dante. To prevent this account from reaching epic proportions, it is inevitable to be very selective (for instance, I will skip over some worthy candidates for inclusion such as the late-medieval Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brandt or Molière’s plays). To sample literary manifestations of religious comedy over the course of time requires deliberate choices. Principally, the selection of texts to be discussed in this chapter was guided by the idea that some works clearly stand out as milestones of a long development and are symptoms of

48  Christian religious comedy a deeper, underlying process. To my mind, the works that best illustrate the gradual evolution of religious humor in Christian culture include the following works and authors: •  Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy • Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron • Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly • François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel • Voltaire, Candide • Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger • Anatole France, The Revolt of the Angels • Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk • James Morrow, Blameless in Abaddon • Ron Currie Jr., God Is Dead • David Javerbaum, The Last Testament: A Memoir by God Any selection of representative texts intended to illustrate a given phenomenon leaves itself open to being criticized for incompleteness, tendentiousness, and other shortcomings. I don’t pretend that the above series of religious comedies is above dispute. Still, these authors/texts allow me to paint a picture that is precise enough without being overburdened with detail, while allowing me to illustrate the ebb and flow of developments which, taken together, can be fairly characterized as constituting a “triumph of humor” within Christianity. Where religion is concerned, a plethora of symbolic, ritual, conceptual, and legal boundaries and codes is in play, ranging from the regulations placed on monastic and clerical life, to codes of conduct for the laity, all the way to the distinction between the holy and the profane, the divine and the mundane. All of these boundaries are liable to be probed, subverted, or reinforced by the comical spirit. In the course of this chapter, I will trace the shifting attitudes of major artists and thinkers toward these boundaries and show how they have engaged them both with the means of liminal and of entrenchment humor.

Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265–1321): The Divine Comedy The brevity of my discussion of Dante is chiefly due to the fact that, despite its title, the Divine Comedy is actually not really a comedy. The way Dante would have understood the meaning of the word “comedy” was to indicate to his readers that the work displayed some lowly or “vulgar” behaviors and that it was written in the vernacular Tuscan dialect of Florence, not in the more lofty Latin language. In Dante’s time, these indicators of “lowliness” would relegate a work to the genre of comedy. By contrast, the tragic genre was distinguished by dignified, formal diction written in standard Latin, by a cast of socially elevated, elite protagonists, and by a set of lofty themes.

A chronicle of triumph 49 In a letter to his friend and patron, Can Grande Della Scala, Dante wrote about his choice to compose an ambitious work in an uncharacteristically local dialect: “with respect to the method of speech the method is lax and humble, for it is the vernacular speech in which very women communicate” (quoted in Heyneman). The meaning of “comedy” in Dante’s title, then, could be transliterated as indicating “a work about the redemption of man written in vernacular Tuscan dialect rather than Latin so as to appeal to common readers, featuring a cast of characters that includes commoners and comprising scenes of a nondignified nature.” Still, Dante’s work does in some sense conform to one of the more conventional senses of comedy. I am referring to the plot structure, i.e. comedy’s tendency to end on a happy note, to conclude in an upbeat mood. Most commonly, since comedies deal with all-too human, unheroic subjects, the happy end is synonymous with a wedding and a feast. The Greek word “komos,” from which the modern word “comedy” (or indeed the Italian “comedia”) derives, refers to a feast with song and dance, when revelry and sociability ruled. Before this feast can take place, however, the comical protagonist usually has to undergo a ritual death, as the descending plot line plunges him to a nadir of despair, bad luck, loss of love, or sickness, before the plot line rises abruptly, with the protagonist’s changed fortunes, to conclude with a marriage, redemption, or another mark of success. The common plot structure of comedy, then, in direct opposition to the Aristotelian tragic plot trajectory, consists in a story that starts realistically enough but then descends into the darkness of a figurative death, before things turn around, the protagonist’s fate suddenly improves, and an ascending plot line leads from ritual death to rebirth and marriage, commemorated by a feast. In an approximation of this plot structure, Dante’s story indeed starts out in the common reality, but then descends through the nine circles of hell (Inferno) to the innermost center of the earth and the dwelling place of Satan, only to rise from there all the way through the empyrean (­ Purgatorio) and further up to the ethereal realms of heaven (Paradiso), where the heroes (Dante and his guide, Beatrice) encounter the likeness of God in a blinding effusion of pure light. With its emphasis on redemption, salvation, and rebirth, the Divine Comedy does have a basic comical plot structure. Dante’s masterpiece has given Christian culture a lasting imaginary through which to think what the supernatural realms of hell, purgatory, and heaven look like. Dante’s long poem of more than 14,000 lines (written in the stanza form of “terza rima”) is divided into three books, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, representing the soul’s journey from sin to redemption. Taken together, this work creates a hallucinatory geography of damnation and salvation that has influenced and shaped the religious fantasy of many generations and furnished painters from Michelangelo to Botticelli, from Raphael to Eugène Delacroix with the spiritual visions that they have then committed to their canvasses, thus further potentiating the cultural impact of this visionary work. As usual with epic works of literature portraying

50  Christian religious comedy worlds of religious significance, hell turned out to be much more interesting than heaven, and what most people who have come into contact with The Divine Comedy remember best about the epic are the scenes from the nine circles of hell, where sinners are afflicted with a variety of grotesque punishments, as divine “poetic justice” is meted out in a manner that is both revolting and strangely fascinating. Most, if not all, instances of what would be conventionally termed humor in the The Divine Comedy are concentrated in the first, the Inferno section of the epic. Here Dante’s humor is dark and bitter, as when he sarcastically praises the corrupt city of Florence which enjoys great fame . . . in hell (Dante 26). Or one may consider as funny the way the sinners’ punishments grotesquely fit the sin that they had committed, like when gluttons are made to float in a sea of excrement. More explicitly comical is a passage in Canto 20, where magicians and soothsayers are depicted as walking with their heads twisted 180 degrees backward. This punishment, once again, is ironically befitting those who during their lifetime had pretended to possess a preternatural vision, seeing far ahead into the future. Dante depicts these false prophets as weeping perpetually, their “human self / so wrenched from true that teardrops from the eyes / ran down to rinse them where the buttocks cleave” (20:24). Another example of an amusing reversal occurs in Canto 19, where a corrupt ecclesiastic is stuck headfirst in a stone chute, his flaming feet pointing heaven-ward, thus presenting a topsy-turvy spectacle with the potential to amuse. Still, I agree with one critic who wrote that, overall, “Dante’s Hell, where malice and selfishness reign, is not a place of wholehearted laughter” (De La Vars 107). Or, in the words of another scholar: “The humorous possibilities of some of the punishments of Hell were repressed because of the lofty subject matter of the poem” (Minicozzi 113). Besides describing in grotesque detail the elaborate punishments meted out to sinners in hell, Dante also includes in Inferno a comically distorted image of Satan. The rebel angel we encounter at the center of Hell is anything but the awe-inspiring Lucifer that Dante’s readers may have been acquainted with from religious iconography. Rather, in a deliberate attempt to make Satan ridiculous, Dante depicts him as a slobbering, grotesque monster trapped in a sea of ice (Dante 34). But this is perhaps the closest that the Divine Comedy comes to inviting amusement about a matter of religious doctrine. Most of the dark humor associated with the shenanigans of the sinners and their extravagant punishments is aimed at mundane, worldly targets. The principal religious actors, i.e. the redeemer, God, and the angels, are not ridiculed in any way, and no articles of faith are ever exposed to mockery. In that sense, too, Dante’s work is not strictly speaking a religious comedy, although its title may lead one to think that it is. The Divine Comedy is a deeply confessional religious work, not a subversive text that encourages irreverent laughter directed at religious targets. Hence, on the summary table presented at the end of this chapter (p. 125), a tabulation of

A chronicle of triumph 51 the number of comical targets “hit” by each artist, The Divine Comedy only rates as aiming at a low-grade target, and even that only in a qualified manner. It is hardly the case that Dante wrote his Christian epic with the intention of poking fun at laypeople’s shortcomings or ridiculing corrupt clergy. Any passages verging on funny are incidental to the overall reverent tone and pious intention of the work. This is different with Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote The Decameron with a distinctly comical sensibility, aiming to entertain his readers by appealing strongly to his audience’s sense of humor.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375): The Decameron The proverbial age of faith – the Middle Ages – was not deprived of fun. Plenty of laughter echoed in the precincts of churches and within earshot of the sanctuaries. Much of this fun was directed at clerics, mostly those occupying the lower ranks, though there were also jokes at the expense of ­Christian thematics more broadly speaking. Whether it was bands of Goliardic students roaming the countryside in the 12th–13th centuries, reciting ribald parodies of church sermons in Latin; whether it was the various comical rites associated with the Feast of Fools around Christmas time from the 12th through the 15th centuries; or whether it was the popular mystery plays performed during the feast of Corpus Christi in the late Middle Ages, folk culture usually found a way to mix religious piety with mirth. This is not to say that laughter in religious contexts was officially encouraged or formally indulged. In fact, the higher ecclesiastical authorities and Christian theologians have long been suspicious of laughter and in many cases sought to curb the people’s inclination toward mirth and levity. This pushback came to a head in 1431, when the Council of Bishops in Basel released a statement officially condemning of the Feast of Fools. One century later, in 1534, the popular English mystery plays were banned by the austere English Protestants, and in the 1670s, Pope Clement X prohibited the custom of Easter Laughter (or risus paschalis) that had been widely practiced in southern Germany. Besides such official denunciations of comical practices, the spirit of comedy in the late Middle Ages had a limited topical range compared to today’s standards. For instance, it would have been unthinkable to laugh outright at the central doctrines of faith, to poke fun at God, or to mock religion as a whole. Especially in published, written form, religious humor in the late Middle Ages had only a narrow range to move in. Notably, it was the corruption of lower clerics and the sexual peccadillos of monks that endlessly exercised the popular imagination, a phenomenon most visibly expressed in the lowbrow literary genre of fabliaux that circulated widely at the time. “Fabliaux” is the plural noun of “fabliau,” the French term given to a corpus of about 150 mostly anonymous comical narratives that circulated in France and England in the late Middle Ages. Fabliaux are brief narrative poems, written in couplets of rhymed verse, typically containing lewd

52  Christian religious comedy material, obscenities, and scandal. Specifically, fabliaux focus on the sexual transgressions of members of the monastic orders and on the appetites of women. Stock figures widely employed in fabliau literature include the sexually voracious woman, the lecherous monk, and the cuckolded yet complacent husband. Because of its obsession with devious and sexually insatiable women, the genre has misogynistic overtones, although not all transgressive female characters are punished for their deeds, and not all “scandalous” women meet a bad end. By contrast with the morally didactic nature of fables (from which the fabliau derived its name), fabliaux are a transgressive, ribald genre attracted to scandal. Both Boccaccio and Chaucer based several of their tales on traditional fabliaux. The contradiction between the clergy’s claim to moral superiority and their carnal dalliances not only furnished material for low-brow comedy. Some of the great literature written at the height of the fabliaux’ popularity also delved into this particular subject matter. Especially friars, i.e. brothers belonging to one of the mendicant monastic orders (Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carmelites), were the perennial butts of anti-clerical jokes. The frequency with which the friars’ legendary lechery, greed, and hypocrisy were mined for scandalous situation comedy was second only to the rate at which such stories featured clever, promiscuous women who became the curse of the men who associated with them. And this, obviously, is the place where Boccaccio’s Decameron enters the picture. Giovanni Boccaccio began to work on The Decameron in Florence shortly after the end of the Plague in 1448. This catastrophic epidemic had wiped out half of the population of Tuscany. Florence was Boccaccio’s hometown, and he himself had witnessed the ravages of the catastrophe. The sequence of 100 short stories that makes up The Decameron is organized by a framing narrative centering around the plague. According to this framework, ten aristocratic Florentines (seven women and three men) make a pact to travel to a nearby hill retreat to seek respite from the outbreak and to divert themselves with lighthearted entertainment during this time of death and suffering. On the first day of their retreat, they agree to pass the time by storytelling, with each member of the group committing to tell one story each during ten consecutive days, thus making a total of 100 stories (the word “deca” in the title refers to the number 100). On each of the ten days, another member of the group would preside over the telling as a master of ceremonies. Most stories in the Decameron have a humorous tenor, often with burlesque overtones, and there’s a good deal of bawdy themes, although a few also follow a more serious approach, carrying a sincere moral note. What runs like a red thread through the stories is women’s power or, perhaps rather, the anxiety over female empowerment, with many stories featuring shrewd, devious, fickle, or domineering women, who are sometimes made the butt of the joke but often manage to make a laughingstock of men. The Prologue (or “Proem”) to the story collection discusses the atmosphere in Florence

A chronicle of triumph 53 during the months of the Plague, commenting on the seemingly contradictory combination of unimaginable tragedy and hilarious laughter. At a time of widespread suffering and sadness, with people quite at a loss about how to cope with the unprecedented disaster, laughter seemed the most adequate response to the sheer scale and absurdity of the catastrophe. It is out of this spirit of chaos, anarchy, and spiritual despair that The Decameron took shape. The plots of the stories are mostly derived from popular oral lore and from widely circulated folktales, with the origin of almost all stories tracing to Italian, French, and even Indian and Persian sources. In that sense, Boccaccio was a collector rather than an inventor; he consolidated a disparate body of pre-existing tales, putting the diverse material into a sequence and expressing it in an appealing, earthy Italian vernacular. One of the early stories in the Decameron (day 1, story 4) provides a good example of the fabliaux style of humor which puts its mark on the whole collection. This story (told by Dioneo, one of the three male narrators), tells of a “young monk, whose lusty vigour neither fasting nor praying could mortify” (29). One day, while “taking a walk about their church, which stood in a lonesome place, he cast his eye upon a good looking wench” (29), and through skillful application of persuasion and flirtation, he soon has the “wench” in his cell. Even while they are having intercourse, the abbot, attracted by unmistakable sounds, approaches the monk’s habitation and peers through a crack in the wall. What the abbot doesn’t realize is that the monk had well noticed that he was being spied on, and that he devised a crafty plan to escape the automatic punishment for violating a major monastic rule. He locks the maiden in the room on a pretext, asking her to wait for his return, then goes straight to the abbot, hands over the keys and asks for permission to leave the premises. “ ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘I could not get all my wood home this morning, and if you please, I will go now and fetch the remainder’ ” (30). The double entendre about getting his wood home is evidently lost upon the abbot. Being in possession of the key to the monk’s cell and guessing that the girl is still in there, the abbot makes straight for that location and, once there, succeeds in talking the girl into letting him have his way with her. More double entendre is in store for the reader, as the sexual position of the pair is described as follows: “his lordship lay down first on the monk’s bed – by way of encouraging her no doubt, and in tender consideration for her youth, lest she should be overwhelmed by the weight of his dignity – and then he gently drew her down over him” (31). Meanwhile, the monk observes these proceedings through the same chink in the wall that had served as a peeping hole for the abbot. Afterward, when the abbot calls the monk into his study to discipline him for his transgression, the monk quickly turns the tables on his superior: “your lordship instructed me well in the observance of fasts and vigils; but never told me that monks ought to yield the pre-eminence to women, and humble themselves beneath them. However, as you have so lately set me an example, I promise, if you will forgive me, to follow it, and always to do in

54  Christian religious comedy future as I have seen you do” (31). This is topsy-turvy humor at its best: Not only is the monk reversing the power relation between him and the abbot, he does so based on a physical inversion of the “customary” roles taken up by men and women during intercourse. And so, the abbot, knowing that he had been found out, has no choice but to pardon his inferior to avoid a scandal. In this story, higher ecclesiastical rank does not correspond to greater dignity or exemplary conduct. Here we have an incongruity based on the violation of several customary codes: First, religious vows are broken in the most blatant manner; second, the conventional “missionary position” is modified; and third, the ecclesiastical hierarchy is inverted. In addition, the reader’s voyeuristic enjoyment of this bawdy narrative violates the taboo against extra-marital sex. In such a story, a multitude of symbolic boundaries are challenged and crossed, with humor the beneficiary. Boccaccio’s preference for salacious material is brought into even sharper relief in the Alibech story, which combines outright bawdiness with hilarious wordplay and situation irony. In this story, again told by Dioneo, on day 3, a young girl called Alibech is prompted by youthful idealism to become a desert ascetic, hoping thereby to get closer to God. While wandering in the wilderness, she comes across a hermit by the name of Rustico, who promises to instruct her in the arts of mysticism. Once inside his cell, things progress rapidly from curiosity to desire to sexual consummation. But since Rustico is well aware of Alibech’s pious intentions for wandering around in the desert, he decides to dupe her while attaining his carnal satisfaction. Knowing her to be completely innocent in matters of sex, he instructs her in a curious catechism that mixes Christian demonism with body parts. After teaching her the rudiments of Christian demonology, especially regarding God’s desire to see the devil placed in hell, he then proceeds to apply this knowledge to the sex act: “Rustico, what is that thing I  see sticking out in front of you which I haven’t got?” “My daughter,” said Rustico, “That is the devil I spoke of. Do you see? He gives me so much trouble at this moment that I can scarcely endure him.” Said the girl: “Praised be God! I  see I  am better off than you are, since I haven’t such a devil.” “You speak truly.” said Rustico, “but instead of this devil you have something else which I haven’t.” “What’s that?” said Alibech. “You’ve got hell,” replied Rustico, “and I  believe God sent you here for the salvation of my soul, because this devil gives me great trouble, and if you will take pity upon me and let me put him into hell, you will give me the greatest comfort and at the same time will serve God and please him, since, as you say, you came here for that purpose.” (141) As can be expected, Rustico has little else on his mind in the following days than to go through the ritual of “putting the devil back in hell,” and

A chronicle of triumph 55 Alibech proves a willing and able collaborator. The double entendres contained in this elaborate joke were considered so risqué that some editors and ­translators decided to skip translating the offending passages altogether, leaving them in the original Italian, so that the target audience would not understand what is happening. Even Walter Kelly’s wonderful translation, published in 1855, still contains the offending passages in their Italian original, thus effectively censoring the bawdy humor. At the source of the story’s comical appeal is again a basic incongruity, i.e. that between asceticism and eroticism, between innocence and experience. The incongruity is rendered all the more amusing as the girl remains deluded regarding the real nature of the exorcism ritual that she practices with Rustico. But if the joke is on the girl at first, the tables are eventually turned, for the girl’s appetite soon outstrips the hermit’s desire, let alone stamina, leaving Rustico exhausted and worn out. This twist is quite common in Boccaccio, where female sexual appetites are frequently depicted as voracious and emasculating. The final twist of humor in the story is provided when Alibech’s family tracks her down and arranges her marriage to a local nobleman. When the female servants attending on the young bride inquire about her experiences in the desert, they learn about her strange doctrine of putting the devil back in hell. To everybody’s great amusement, they promise that her new husband will be more than happy to please God by the same means as Rustico. So, when it comes to the personal foibles, naïveté, credulity, and lechery of laypersons and members of the lower clergy, Boccaccio’s audience is invited to laugh heartily along with the characters in the story, who are often depicted as shaking with mirth. Sometimes, Boccaccio’s humor also targets the Church as an institution, although those instances are carefully calibrated. But when it comes to Christianity as a religion, the humor ends. An example of this is an early tale in the collection, which recounts a sort of religious contest between a Jew named Abraham and Jeannot, a Christian. Jeannot seeks to convert Abraham to Christianity, with Abraham (rather strangely) being receptive to the proposition, although he decides that he first needs to see how things fare at the Vatican before going through with the conversion. Off he goes to Rome, to the considerable worry of Jeannot, who is convinced that what Abraham finds in Rome will surely dissuade him from joining Christianity. Indeed, Abraham soon realizes that, from the highest to the lowest, [Catholic clerics] were given to all sorts of lewdness, without the least shame or remorse; so that the only way to obtain anything considerable was, by applying to prostitutes of every description. He observed, also, that they were generally drunkards and gluttons, and, like brutes, more solicitous about their bellies than anything else. Inquiring farther, he found them all such lovers of money, that they would not only buy and sell man’s blood in general,

56  Christian religious comedy but even the blood of Christians, and sacred things, of what kind soever, whether benefices, or pertaining to the altar; that they drove as great a trade in this way, as there is in selling cloth and other commodities at Paris. (25–26) This could serve as a springboard for stinging satire, with the numerous shortcomings of the clergy serving as the basis for satirical attacks on Christianity. But no such satire develops, and shortly after Abraham’s return from Rome, he does indeed convert to Christianity. This development is counterintuitive, to say the least. According to Abraham’s reasoning, the fact that Christianity managed to survive despite rampant ecclesiastical corruption testifies to the inherent strength and vitality of the religion. Such an argument is setting the bar pretty low. One problem with this line of argument is that the leadership of an organization reflects the ideology of the system as a whole, so that if the leadership is rotten, then there must be something wrong with the system as a whole or it would not tolerate the criminal conduct of the leaders at the top. If the center of the Christian ecclesiastical organization in Rome is corrupted, then the religious faith as well as the God in whose name this organization operates has to shoulder at least some of the blame for tolerating the way in which God’s servants misbehave. But Boccaccio resolutely refuses to take his comedy to the point of satirizing the belief system as a whole, thereby manifesting his refusal to comically undermine the faith. Indeed, Boccaccio never ridicules the doctrine of the trinity, he does not lampoon the Bible, and he refrains from blasphemy. It is the foibles of laypeople and the shortcomings of individual ecclesiastics that are the butts of his jokes. The very first story of The Decameron sets the tone in this regard. This story could easily be framed as a comical attack on religious irrationality and superstition. Indeed, the population of an entire town is duped into accepting as a saint a man who is as ruthless as can be. A thuggish individual by the name of Ciappelletto da Prato is sent to Burgundy to collect some outstanding debts for an Italian merchant. Boccaccio painstakingly outlines the moral failings of this man: To foment quarrels and disputes was his utmost pleasure, especially amongst friends or relations; and the more mischief he occasioned, the greater was his satisfaction. Was a man to be dispatched at any time, he was the person to undertake it, and would do it with his own hands. He was a great blasphemer of God and his saints, swearing and cursing on every occasion. . . . He was a glutton and drunkard, to the ruin of his constitution. He was also a most notorious gamester; making use always of false dice. And, to sum up his character in few words, perhaps his equal in wickedness has not yet been born. (15)

A chronicle of triumph 57 After arriving in Burgundy, Ciappelletto falls ill and soon stands at the gates of death. Knowing full well that any cleric familiar with his shameful background would use this occasion to reproach him for his sinful life – thereby spoiling his last hours on earth  – he tricks a local friar into performing the last rites for him, including confession and absolution, as if he were a thoroughly pious man. Using reverse psychology, Ciappelletto bemoans his numerous transgressions, but when pressed to be more specific, he cites only trivial lapses like speaking back to his mother, which leads the friar to believe that the man is a pillar of virtue. When the friar asks whether Ciappelletto had ever been guilty of gluttony, he “confesses” that he had “drunk the water, sometimes, especially when I  have been fatigued with prayer, or performing a pilgrimage, with as much pleasure as drunkards drink wine” (18). The comedy here thrives on repetition of the same technique: Ciappelletto draws attention away from his real sins by confessing to such minor infractions of good conduct that the effect of it is to persuade the friar that he holds himself to an impossibly high moral standard. The cumulative effect of these fake confessions is that the friar comes to think of Ciappelletto as a veritable saint. The friar not only absolves Ciappelletto of his (imaginary) transgressions while remaining ignorant about his real crimes, but he gives him all the sacraments that he had asked for, sacraments that would be hard to obtain were his true criminal character known. The friar’s impression of Ciappelletto’s saintly character spreads to the general populace, and when the criminal man eventually dies, people come in droves to perform vigils and matins in his honor. The friar hoping that God would work many miracles by him, he urged them to receive his body with all due reverence and devotion. To this the prior and the credulous brotherhood all consented, and that night they came in a body to the place where the corpse lay, and sang the great and solemn vigils. . . . And such was the fame of his sanctity, and people’s devotion towards him, that nobody in time of trouble would apply to any other saint but him, calling him St. Chappelet, and affirming, that God had wrought many miracles by him, and still continued to work them for such as recommended themselves devoutly to him. (22) At Ciappelletto’s funeral, which is accompanied by great religious pomp, the local population goes into ecstasies over the man’s holiness, even tearing pieces of clothes from his body to preserve them as relics. Boccaccio makes it abundantly clear that both the friar and the town’s population are foolishly misguided in celebrating their “Saint Ciappelletto.” Their blind faith is cause for amusement. However, while Boccaccio highlights the naïveté and deluded fervor of both the friar and the townsfolks, he never suggests that their folly constitutes a flaw built into the fabric of religious belief. Both at the beginning and end of the tale, he frames the story by providing

58  Christian religious comedy a theological rationale that neutralizes any subversive sting that this story may have contained: “Great is God’s mercy towards us; who, not regarding our errors, but the purity of our intention, whenever we make choice of an improper mediator, hears us as well as if we had applied to one truly a saint” (23). In this view, it does not matter whether the people apply to God via proper or improper channels, for God judges the intention, not the vehicle by which people reach out for his grace. The superiority laughter that has built up during the tale, ready to burst out in amusement at the credulity and superstition of the townsfolk, is thus disarmed. In fact, Boccaccio is careful to front-load the theological rationale of his tale and then to repeat the same rationale at the end of the story to ensure that our laughter at the folly of the town’s faithful is qualified by the knowledge that in the eyes of God, these people are not ridiculous. Since The Decameron was written a short time after the devastation wrought by the Plague, it would be imaginable to see the emergence of truly bitter, irreverent, cynical, and blasphemous comedy as a response to the sheer magnitude of the devastation. And indeed, Boccaccio does refer to the “Cruelty of Heaven” in reference to the Plague as well as to God’s absence or silence during the crisis. However, Boccaccio’s stories steer generally clear of “hard” humor, and they don’t utilize laughter in a subversive manner. To achieve his comical effects, Boccaccio is content to expose the shenanigans of individuals and to make us chuckle about the lengths to which people go to in order to satisfy their appetites. His humor flickers at the boundaries between ideal and reality, principle and practice, unlocking the comical potentials of incongruity, as taboos are broken and lines – especially sexual ones – are crossed backward and forward. But none of his comedy is mocking God, religion, and the church as a whole. In other words, there is hardly any Liminal 2 humor involved. In the Decameron, when Boccaccio pokes fun at laypersons and clerics, he does so mainly in the spirit of “soft,” good-natured, playful humor. He loves the incongruities that arise when a bad apple finds a way out of damnation by masquerading as a pious man, and he cannot get enough of the incongruities that arise when clergy and laypersons demonstrate their common weakness for the flesh. In doing so, Boccaccio activates a good deal of stereotypes, whether they are stereotypes about greedy, lecherous mendicants or about clever, promiscuous women. Much of this is done in the spirit of Entrenchment 1 humor, consisting of gentle ribbing, self-deprecation, and parody, with angry mockery and aggressive put-downs taking a backseat. While there are whiffs of Liminal 2 humor, generally the satirical impulse is mainly directed at perennial human follies like greed and envy rather than at specific religious topics such as church rituals, theological doctrines, or scriptural contradictions. For instance, the Ciappelletto story could have been a springboard for subversive religious satire targeting the counterfactual inclinations of believers, but instead the episode becomes an occasion for some good-natured Entrenchment 1 ribbing, demonstrating how

A chronicle of triumph 59 religious zeal can go a bit too far. Since Boccaccio was a Catholic Italian, this kind of comedy has self-parodying aspects. All of this is to say that while Boccaccio’s religious humor is definitely not “clean” – in fact it is pretty obscene – it is not therefore a caustic, critical, or subversive kind of comedy. There is mockery of individual sinners, there is a good deal of misogynistic humor, there is sexual horseplay, there is tomfoolery – all very funny but none of it designed to rattle ecclesiastical authorities or to unsettle Christian dogmas in any way. In fact, by ridiculing the transgressions of individual members of the clergy and by putting on display the corrupt antics of monks and laypersons alike, Boccaccio posits an implied standard of correct piety, proper religious observance, and conventional morality from which his funny characters have fallen off – hence the conservative implications of such anti-clerical humor. Still, one can argue that even poking fun at a single member of the clergy is making a statement that can be seen as critical of the larger organization to which the priest, monk, or abbot belongs. In this regard, Boccaccio’s stories come in at the lowest end of the subversive spectrum, just one notch above Dante in terms of critical potential.

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536): Praise of Folly Several commentators, including Peter Berger and James Wood, have identified Erasmus’s Praise of Folly (1511) as the starting point of modern European satire. Although there is plenty of lampooning and gentle ribbing in Boccaccio (as well as in the rich corpus of oral storytelling he drew on), satirical attacks against influential individuals or powerful institutions are largely absent in The Decameron, as are mockeries of the specifics of the Christian creed. Although Boccaccio demonstrates that religious zeal has clouded the townspeople’s judgment (in the story of Ciappelletto, the fake saint), he did not argue that religious belief is at the root of superstition, error, and conformity. Instead, he ends the story by invoking God’s forbearance toward the townsfolks’ silliness. As a rule, Boccaccio’s laughter is directed at individual believers and specific priests, rather than at the ecclesiastical system as a whole or at any specific religious doctrines. The Praise of Folly casts the comical nets significantly wider. Erasmus employs an ironic, heady form of liminal humor that contrasts sharply with the earthy vigor of Boccaccio’s bawdy, explicit jokes. Essentially, The Praise of Folly is an extended ironic monologue by an allegorical female speaker, Folly, who praises the many advantages of folly. This mock encomium starts with the argument that folly is needed to prevent social relations from getting off the rails, because self-delusion, make-believe, and blind custom – all forms of folly – are the proverbial oil in the cogs of social relations. But Folly’s real satirical target is less the foolishness of human interactions than the many and varied kinds of foolishness committed in the name of religion.

60  Christian religious comedy Accordingly, Erasmus’s work was far more controversial than Boccaccio’s or Chaucer’s, “provok[ing] a reaction of shocked hostility during Erasmus’s lifetime” (Levi xii). Clerics and theologians were so upset by the Praise of Folly because Erasmus’s satire of religious superstition, ecclesiastical graft, theological hairsplitting, and clerical hypocrisy was perceived as a serious attack against the religious establishment. While some of Erasmus’s comical barbs are directed at polytheistic rites and “pagan” deities, the Christian establishment of his day received the brunt of his verbal attacks. Notably, Erasmus exposed to withering laughter theological authorities and pedantic scholastics, whom he addressed as “a remarkably supercilious and touchy lot” (86). But inciting the condemnation of that “lot” was not a trivial matter. Erasmus expected that the theologians would “marshal their forces for an attack with innumerable conclusions and force me to eat my words. If I refuse they’ll denounce me as a heretic on the spot, for this is the bolt they always loose on anyone to whom they take a dislike” (86). The charge of heresy was still to be taken seriously 500 years ago. In passages such as this, Erasmus does away with the elaborate fiction of his allegorical persona (Folly) and addresses the reader in his own voice. Erasmus laments that these theologians “dwell in a sort of third heaven, looking on from aloft, almost with pity, on all the rest of mankind as so many cattle crawling on the face of the earth” (86). They are so crafty “that the meshes of Vulcan’s net couldn’t stop them from slipping out by means of the distinctions they draw” (86). But they can, apparently, be netted by the words of a skilled satirist! Erasmus effectively deflates the theologians’ self-importance by exposing the useless sophistries that they indulge in: “Are there several filiations in Christ? Is it a possible proposition that God the Father could hate his Son? Could God have taken on the form of a woman, a devil, a donkey, a gourd, or a flintstone? If so, how could a gourd have preached sermons, performed miracles, and been nailed to the cross?” (87). Erasmus delights in enumerating these absurd theological “problems,” and it is in such passages, i.e. where he writes in his own voice, that the rhetoric swerves into the angry, Juvenalian register of Entrenchment 2 humor: You can imagine their happiness when they fashion and refashion the Holy Scriptures at will, as if these were made of wax. . . . They also set up as the world’s censors, and demand recantation of anything which doesn’t exactly square with their conclusions. . . . Their heads are so stuffed and swollen with these absurdities, and thousands more like them, that I don’t believe even Jupiter’s brain felt so burdened when he begged for Vulcan’s axe to help him give birth to Athene. (94–95) The humor of such polemical passages feels very modern, and the comical techniques of persistent exaggeration, literalization, and generalization

A chronicle of triumph 61 are effectively marshaled to raise a withering laugh at the expense of hairsplitting theologians. Clearly, this is all good fun, provided one is not a theologian. Next in line as targets of Erasmus’s sharp satirical humor are the monastic orders, especially friars, who are described with visceral contempt: They believe it’s the highest form of piety to be so uneducated that they can’t even read. Then when they bray like donkeys in church, repeating by rote the psalms they haven’t understood, they imagine they are charming the ears of their heavenly audience with infinite delight. Many of them too make a good living out of their squalor and beggary, bellowing for bread from door to door and indeed making a nuisance of themselves in every inn, carriage, or boat. This is the way in which these smooth individuals, in all their filth and ignorance, their boorish and shameless behavior, claim to bring back the apostles into our midst! (96) The humor here veers deeper into the territory of aggressive Entrenchment 2, as Erasmus magnifies and reinforces the widespread negative generalizations and popular criticisms of mendicant monks. Erasmus’s resentment virtually drips off the page, producing a disdainful tone that mercilessly offends the targets of his attack. Such humor is directed not only against the behavior of monks but also against their monastic rules, which Erasmus ridicules with apparent gusto: Nothing could be more amusing than their practice of doing everything to rule, as if they were following mathematical calculations. . . . They work out the number of knots for a shoestring, the colour and number of variations of a single habit, the material and width to a hair’s breadth of their girdle, the shape and capacity (in sacksful) of a cowl, the length (in fingers) of a haircut, the number of hours prescribed for sleep. (97) Witnessing a good polemic like this can be entertaining, and Erasmus is having a field day attacking the friars and their habits. His cutting humor does not mince words, and he clearly intends to wound. In one mocking tirade, he indulges in a violent fantasy of silencing the friars’ noisy presence by throwing a sop in their mouth (99). At this point, what began with polemical satire ends up as direct insult, and Erasmus shows himself a master in the style of comical invective. After targeting monks, priests, and theologians, Erasmus does not stop there but goes on to aim his mocking style of satire against targets at the apex of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He briefly dispatches cardinals, accusing them of pursuing wealth and status rather than leading an austere life and ridiculing their appearance (their cloak is “quite big enough to cover a

62  Christian religious comedy camel” [108]). But his satire is more savage and elaborate when he turns his attention to the “impious pontiffs” whom he roundly accuses of being “the deadliest enemies of the church” (110). These fraudulent Vicars of Christ allow “Christ to be forgotten through their silence” (110). Even worse, they “fetter him with their mercenary laws, misrepresent him with their forced interpretations of his teachings, and slay him with their noxious way of life!” (110). The exclamation mark brings home that we are hearing Erasmus’s own outraged voice here. But the narrator slips back into the satirical stance when she describes the way these pontiffs tend to pass the buck of teaching Christian virtues: “The pontiffs who are so occupied with their monetary harvests delegate all their more apostolic work to the bishops, the bishops to the heads of the churches, and these to their vicars; they in their turn push it on to the mendicant friars, who put it in the hands of those who will shear the sheep’s wool” (112). Ironically, the people literally tending sheep are stuck with the task of teaching Christ’s message to the human flock. After thus ridiculing the truancy of the servants of Christ, Erasmus slyly notes that “I don’t want to look as though I’m writing satire when I should be delivering a eulogy” (112). This is a reminder of Erasmus’s elaborate game of pretending to praise foolishness while satirizing it. For his targets, this is a lose-lose situation, as the monks, theologians, cardinals, and popes are either praised by Folly or satirized by Erasmus, getting thus snared in a sophisticated net woven by Liminal 2 humor of the most witty and ironic kind. Praise of Folly ends with a sincere argument in favor of a de-institutionalized, mystical form of Christianity. That is, Erasmus now presents mysticism as the highest form of religiosity, shielding it from all mockery. Not surprisingly, the comical impulse is completely blunted by this sudden appearance of sincerity, as Erasmus builds a watertight case in favor of ascetic mysticism. When he pokes fun at human shortcomings in general, he employs the Menippean form of satire, with Folly as tongue-in-cheek speaker who inverts the negative connotations that are usually associated with the word “folly.” When he lampoons excesses of institutionalized Christianity, he employs the mordant tone of Juvenalian satire to criticize and mock theologians, friars, and even the pope. But when he speaks about the merits of transcendental mysticism, he uses neither a Menippean nor a Juvenalian style, but instead addresses his readers in the fashion of a religious sage, promoting a form of individualized devotion that was archaic and eccentric even by the standards of his own time. Such sincere advocacy, unsurprisingly, kills humor, and the ending of Praise of Folly leaves readers wondering why mysticism should be shielded from ironic humor. Indeed, the antics of mystics like Simon Stylites, who reportedly dwelled on top of a pillar in the desert for years, would seem to invite humor. But, for Erasmus, the fun ended where his most fervent belief began, showing that even a man of wit can lose his comical edge when sincere devotion takes center stage.

A chronicle of triumph 63 Compared to Boccaccio, Erasmus’s humor style is more consistently “hard,” whether it is in the form of Liminal 2 satire or as aggressive Entrenchment 2 mockery. Still, it is a predominantly intellectual, sophisticated attack humor that turns on argument, rhetoric, and persuasion. Another form of attack humor, much more visceral and narrative, is employed by one of Erasmus’s contemporaries and admirers, i.e. François Rabelais. As we shall see in the following section, Rabelais marshaled the carnivalesque, grotesque, and visceral potentials of eccentric storytelling to deliver a different kind of “hard” religious comedy.

François Rabelais (1483?–1553): Gargantua and Pantagruel François Rabelais was lucky to escape the fate that befell many compatriots suspected of heresy during his lifetime. Indeed, his stories were irreverent enough to earn him the condemnation of the theological doctors at the Sorbonne, followed by the outright banning of his works by the Paris Parlement (the regional appellate court seated in Paris) in 1534 and then again in 1546. Even while he wrote his comical masterpiece, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais was living in the shadow of death: “Always on the lookout for safe havens and protective patrons, [he] was constantly prepared to flee and did so (Poitou,  Chambéry,  Metz, Rome) each time one of his books was condemned. When the Sorbonne condemned the Third Book immediately after publication in 1546, he left France for the imperial city of Metz” (Zegura 111). A true Renaissance man, Rabelais not only mastered several classical languages as well as law and philology, he was also an ordained Catholic priest before going on to study medicine at the University of Montpellier to become a physician. In addition to all this, he started writing humorous, satirical stories that delighted those who read them in his personal circle and beyond. But being a humorist was a dangerous occupation, especially when writing about religious subjects. Arguably, his trademark irony helped Rabelais escape the wrath of ecclesiastical authorities. Since irony is slippery and indirect, Rabelais’s work could not be subjected to the same standards of inquisitorial “truth finding” as the statements of Protestants and even of progressive Catholic clergy who were accused of various forms of blasphemy and heresy. Moreover, Rabelais had powerful friends among the highest echelons of society, who valued his literary talents, including the king’s sister, Margaret, queen of Navarre (to whom he dedicated the Book III of Gargantua and Pantagruel). Two consecutive kings (King Francis I in 1545 and King Henry II in 1550) granted him permission (so-called privilèges) to publish his work regardless of ecclesiastical condemnation. Besides making the king his ally, Rabelais had associated himself with influential French churchmen of the time, including Jean  du  Bellay, a cardinal, and his brother Guillaume  du  Bellay, a diplomat and general. After Rabelais

64  Christian religious comedy became the personal physician of Jean du Bellay, he enjoyed the protection of this powerful patron. In fact, so close was the relationship with Jean du Bellay that Rabelais traveled with him repeatedly to Rome and might have met the pope there through his association with du Bellay. Just as Boccaccio and Erasmus did, Rabelais often singled out mendicant monks as butts of his jokes. But unlike other comical writers who poked fun at friars, Rabelais had inside knowledge about their ways, since he had been a member of a mendicant order in his early adulthood. Thus, at least some of his opinions about friars seem to be corroborated by his own experience. Book I of Gargantua and Pantagruel contains an exhaustive catalogue of reasons why “monks are shunned of all men, both young and old” (78): A monk – I mean those lither, idle, lazy monks – doth not labour and work, as do the peasant and artificer; doth not ward and defend the country, as doth the man of war; cureth not the sick and diseased, as the physician doth; doth neither preach nor teach, as do the evangelical doctors and schoolmasters; doth not import commodities and things necessary for the commonwealth, as the merchant doth. Therefore is it that by and of all men they are hooted at, hated, and abhorred. (78) As was the case with Erasmus, the disdain of friars runs so deep that Rabelais appears to address us in his own voice. But of course, the mendicant monks were both a blight upon the land and a welcome source of comical entertainment. Since they were considered wholly beyond the reach of selfimprovement and reform, stories about their follies and recklessness cannot count as satirical, since satire implies an impulse to correct perceived shortcomings and follies. Instead of using liminal, boundary-challenging, subversive humor in dealing with friars, writers from Boccaccio to Erasmus and Rabelais resorted to straightforward Entrenchment 2 humor, pouring their scorn and ridicule mercilessly upon the subjects of their humor. So, following the fabliaux tradition, these writers took the rumored licentiousness and lechery of the friars for granted, simply mining this seam of comedy for its boundary reinforcing, stereotype confirming potential. How this works in detail can be demonstrated with regard to an episode in Book V of Gargantua and Pantagruel. One of the islands that the travelers on Pantagruel’s ship alight on is inhabited entirely by friars. The very appearance of these monks is grotesque in a carnivalesque manner since everything about them is backward, doubled, and inverted: they cover their faces with a cowl but shave the backs of their heads on which they paint a mock visage; they wear two codpieces – one in front, where it belongs, and one in back; the soles of their shoes are perfectly round, which helps them confuse anyone trying to trace their comings and goings. “Now, if they offered to waddle along with their bellies forwards, you would have thought they were then playing at blindman’s buff. May I never be hanged if ’twas not a

A chronicle of triumph 65 comical sight” (466). The strange attire of these friars is intended to evade detection so that they can go about unrecognized, but of course the very ostentatiousness of their disguise is such that it draws attention to itself, thereby defeating the purpose of discretion. When Panurge, a member of Pantagruel’s entourage, interviews one of these monks, he gains some salacious insight into their way of life. For instance, Panurge learns that the monastic brothers masturbate several times per day and have sex multiple times per night. When asked what the most sexually active time of the year is, the monk answers “March,” which is of course the time of Lent when the Christian community, and especially monks, should refrain from any indulgences, including sexual gratification. In this manner, the friars are depicted as systematically and insatiably unchaste, systematically and flagrantly violating the most fundamental rules of monastic discipline. An entire chapter in Book IV is dedicated to the insatiable appetites of monks. Here Rabelais castigates monks for paying more attention to their stomachs than to their spiritual progress, for showing more interest in the larder and cellar than in the sacristy and crypt, and for expressing more devotion to “young wenches” than to the Virgin Mary. In a farcical set piece, Rabelais has a monk complain during a visit to Florence that the city is sorrowfully short of what makes a great Christian metropolis, notably a long “lane of roasting cooks.” Instead of admiring Brunelleschi’s dome and paying attention to the biblical scenes on the stained windows, this monk is looking for a decent restaurant: “Faith and truth I had rather see a good fat goose at the spit. This porphyry, those marbles are fine; I say nothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my mind. These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it; but, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country which please me better a thousand times” (336). The story’s protagonist feigns ignorance as to why monks are more powerfully attracted to the kitchen and pantry rather than to the altar and sacristy: “I will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily” (336). “Ticklish” is a fitting word choice here: On the one hand, making derogatory comments about any branch of the church could be risky business in Rabelais’s time; on the other hand, monks were always good for making people laugh. Friars were indeed the low-hanging fruit of religious comedy, and laughing at them was a popular sport. Their bad reputation was reflected in the larger cultural fabric of the times: “The sheer ubiquity of lecherous monks and priests [in medieval narratives] underscores that this type of behavior was viewed as a cliché; there is no satire or appeal to reform of the system. Again, resignation and acceptance dominate – just as women are expected to be sexually insatiable due to their fallen state, so it is assumed that all clerics are wanton because of the unnatural state of celibacy” (Hayes 50). What Hayes describes here is the basis of Entrenchment 2 humor, based on cliché, stereotype, and an attendant sense of superiority and contempt.

66  Christian religious comedy This is not to say that there are not elements of truth in these allegations. Friars were generally disliked because their status as mendicants made them quite literally parasitical upon the community; moreover, their mobility allowed them to come and go with greater impunity than members of other, domesticated orders; and finally, their moralizing tendency made them easy targets for charges of hypocrisy. Hence, through the popular literature of fabliaux as well as in the highbrow comedies discussed here, monks  – especially friars – were universally mocked and ridiculed. Still, hitting a target that has been pummeled by all and sundry and employing disparagement humor against a generally despised group is not a sign of subversive or even of original humor. While making fun of monks did not imply a direct risk, just as it did not convey a subversive message, it was a different thing altogether to aim one’s comedy at other targets of Christianity. Specifically, satirizing Vatican politics, directing mocking laughter at papal greed, or ridiculing idolatrous worship of the pope could land an author in a world of trouble. It is in this area that Rabelais performed his most daring feats of comedy. One of the satirical centerpieces of Book IV is set in the land of the “Papimaniacs.” Here Rabelais unleashes a salvo of sharply subversive humor. The Papimaniacs are, as the name suggests, a tribe of people maniacally devoted to the pope. Hilariously, the moment Pantagruel’s party arrives at their shore and before they even greet the newcomers, the natives pepper them with the question “Have you seen him?” Pantagruel first assumes that there’s a corsair on the loose in these parts, and he promises to give him a good drubbing should he ever meet him. But it is a misunderstanding. The Papimaniacs explain “We mean the god on earth. Did you ever see him? Upon my honour, replied Carpalin, they mean the pope” (386). When the visitors tell the islanders that they had seen three different popes in their lifetime the Papimaniacs go into ecstasies: They have seen him! they have seen him! they have seen him! That proclamation being made, all the mob kneeled before us, lifting up their hands towards heaven, and crying, O happy men! . . . O thrice and four times happy people! cried they; you are welcome, and more than double welcome! They then kneeled down before us and would have kissed our feet, but we would not suffer it, telling them that should the pope come thither in his own person, ’tis all they could do to him. No, certainly, answered they, for we have already resolved upon the matter. We would kiss his bare arse without boggling at it, and eke his two pounders; for he has a pair of them, the holy father, that he has; we find it so by our fine decretals, otherwise he could not be pope. (386) The idea of worshipping the pope by kissing his behind and laying hands on his testicles (“two pounders”) is so farcical as to be completely absurd. No

A chronicle of triumph 67 wonder the French guardians of religious decorum were outraged by such obscene jokes. After all, at the time of Rabelais’s writing, the pope was still nominally the head of (Western) Christianity. Had King Henry II not personally intervened to offer Rabelais a royal privilege, thereby allowing him to publish his work with impunity, Rabelais might have come to a bad end over such kinds of indecorous passages. This is not to say that the king condoned sacrilege and irreligion. King Henry II was as intolerant regarding dissent as his predecessor, Francis I. But at the time of Rabelais’s writing, King Henry was engaged in a protracted political conflict with the pope in Rome and did not mind this mockery of the pope. Henry II even temporarily broke off relations with the Holy See in Rome during the so-called Gallican Crisis of 1551–1552. Although this conflict involved territorial and dynastic issues – notably the pope’s support of the Habsburg emperor, Charles V, with whom the French monarchy had been on bad terms – the main bone of contention between the French king and Pope Julius III was the payment of so-called annates, i.e. large sums levied from France by the pope. The French royalty kept protesting “the depletion of the treasuries of France by papal taxes” (Duval 104) and temporarily suspended these payments to Rome. In retaliation, Julius III threatened to excommunicate Henry II. Rabelais directly refers to this dispute when he emphasizes the magical power of papal ordinances to “draw every year out of France to Rome four hundred thousand ducats and more” (393). But Rabelais selected not only high-level targets of comedy (the pope and the Vatican) beyond France’s borders; he also shone a satirical spotlight at domestic abuses of ecclesiastical power. Both French kings that he had lived under, i.e. Francis I and Henry II, were ruthless heresy hunters, invoking the death penalty (often by burning) of hundreds of Protestants and dissenting Catholic clerics. Throughout Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais satirizes the brutal repression of religious dissent in France (and elsewhere). An overblown catalogue of horrors that the bishop of the Papimaniacs has in mind to punish heretics includes this blood-curdling list: Yet these devilish heretics refuse to learn and know it. Burn ’em, tear ’em, nip ’em with hot pincers, drown ’em, hang ’em, spit ’em at the bunghole, pelt ’em, paut ’em, bruise ’em, beat ’em, cripple ’em, dismember ’em, cut ’em, gut ’em, bowel ’em, paunch ’em, thrash ’em, slash ’em, gash ’em, chop ’em, slice ’em, slit ’em, carve ’em, saw ’em, bethwack ’em, pare ’em, hack ’em, hew ’em, mince ’em, flay ’em, boil ’em, broil ’em, roast ’em, toast ’em, bake ’em, fry ’em, crucify ’em, crush ’em, squeeze ’em, grind ’em, batter ’em, burst ’em, quarter ’em, unlimb ’em, behump ’em, bethump ’em, belam ’em, belabour ’em, pepper ’em, spitchcock ’em, and carbonade ’em on gridirons, these wicked heretics! decretalifuges, decretalicides, worse than homicides, worse than patricides, decretalictones of the devil of hell. (393–94)

68  Christian religious comedy Such a violent imagination ill befits a representative of Christianity, a religion founded on Christ’s ethics of brotherly love. Still, Homenaz’s brutal intolerance differs only in degree not in kind from the official anti-heretical policies sanctioned by the French kings. Homenaz’s blood lust can be seen as a comment on the persecutions under Henry II, and Rabelais could have easily incurred the king’s wrath with this satirical takedown of religious intolerance. But it would be false to assume that Rabelais was a Protestant, simply because he critiqued the persecution of Protestants and because he had himself been accused of “heresy.” Rabelais was drawn to humanistic learning and secular erudition, and that he found more often in Protestants than Catholics. His long sojourns among Franciscan and Benedictine monks had persuaded him of the widespread ignorance among members of the monastic orders, and he favorably contrasted their uncritical conformism with the luminous erudition of more progressive humanists like Erasmus. Many aspects of the Catholic orthodoxy, like the observance of canonical hours (compulsory Matins, Lauds, Vespers, etc.) or the adoration of the saints, made no sense to him, and he sharply disagreed with the personality cult pervading the Church hierarchy. Whenever he had a chance, he would ridicule and satirize these practices. This aligned him in attitude to some of the Protestant grievances, but it did not make Rabelais a Protestant himself. When Protestants are satirized in Gargantua and Pantagruel, they are subject to less withering ridicule than the Catholics. The episode of the “PopeFigs” is a telling instance of this. The narrator states that “The next morning we arrived at the island of Pope-Figs; formerly a rich and free people, called the Gaillardets, but now, alas! miserably poor, and under the yoke of the Papimen” (381). The tribe of the Pope-Figs, whose name encapsulates an act of insubordination to the pope, is a rather transparent representation of the Lutherans. The story goes that during a visit to the land of the Papimaniacs, these Pope-Figs had been shown an image of the pope. But instead of expressing due reverence, they “made mouths at it, and cried, A fig for it! as a sign of manifest contempt and derision” (381). By crying “a fig for it,” the Pope-Figs had used a vernacular insult with sexual overtones, basically implying “fuck the pope.”1 In addition to the vulgar sexual connotations of the sign of the fig, there is the expression “I don’t care a fig for . . .” which is related to the low value of figs as fruit. This double insult to the pope was felt so keenly as to stir up implacable hatred in the Papimaniacs, who promptly invaded the Pope-Figs’ lands and killed the entire male population in revenge. As for the surviving women and children, the Papimaniacs made their punishment fit the crime, forcing them to pick a fig inserted in a donkey’s anus out with their mouth and then put it back in again by the same means, thus turning the vulgar connotations of the fig joke against its originators. This episode is evidently not designed to mock the Pope-Figs but rather to point to the base nature of the fanatical admirers of the pope. The rest

A chronicle of triumph 69 of the episode further turns the satirical blade against the oppressors of the Pope-Figs (i.e. the Protestants). In an episode with folk-mythological overtones, one of the Pope-Fig farmers gets rid of a demon who is pestering him (a thinly veiled reference to a heresy hunter) by outwitting him repeatedly. The demon is easily duped by the clever (Protestant) farmer because of the demon’s blatant ignorance. For instance, the devil doesn’t know that certain crops grow below the ground and he is unaware that the female genitalia are not a flesh wound. Using this common knowledge to his advantage, the Pope-Fig farmer defeats the little devil without too much trouble. The butt of the joke here is not a representative of the Protestants but a member of the party that is trying to inflict harm on them. As an inveterate satirist, Rabelais was more interested in mocking those in power, i.e. Catholics, rather than those who were in the 1540s an emergent and often embattled minority, i.e. Protestants. At every opportunity, Rabelais would ridicule heresy hunters, bigots, and zealots while siding with heretics and nonconformists. Other favorite target of Rabelais’s satire included idolatry, superstition, and generally religious intolerance and fanaticism. He hits most of these targets in the episode of Papimania. As indicated above, the fanatical worship of the Papimaniacs verges on sheer madness. Their superstition knows no bounds, and a parade of absurd stories attesting to the supposed magical powers of the “holy decretals” is designed to indicate to the reader how detrimental to human reason zealotry is. Rabelais suggests that naïve belief in supernaturalism, when combined with absolute power, ruthless manipulation, and fanatical intolerance, is a hot and dangerous stew. And in the figure of Homenaz, the leader of the Papimaniacs, Rabelais satirizes tendencies that he also saw, though in less extreme form, at the Vatican in Rome. While Rabelais prompted his readers to laugh at various shortcomings, follies, and evils committed in the name of Christianity, “the object of Rabelais’ attack . . . is not religion as such; it is rather papal ideology, the ‘ex cathedra’ infallibility of papal administration and law that are questioned as outrageously aggressive activities threatening peace” (Kritzman 202). Only with Voltaire do we encounter a type of religious satire that depicts the Church as an unquestioningly evil force. While attacking idolaters, monks, the clergy, the pope, and theologians was nearly enough to get Rabelais into trouble, he neither had the interest nor the inclination to direct his humorous attacks at something further up the hierarchy of religious targets. Specifically, the Almighty, basic articles of faith, and religion as a whole remained untouched by his comedy (see Table 3.1 on page 125). Rabelais may have been many things in his day, and although he is difficult to classify in respect of his exact religious beliefs and political loyalties, but he clearly was neither an atheist nor blasphemer. Religious comedy of a sort that blatantly targets the highest-order elements, including the persons of the Trinity, the Bible, and religion itself still lay several centuries in the future.

70  Christian religious comedy As a comical writer of nearly boundless imagination, Rabelais’s comedy is both associated with the “soft” modality of sheer playfulness (Liminal 1) and with the two “hard” types of subversively satirical (Liminal 2) and boundary reinforcing (Entrenchment 2) humor. Rabelais sharply satirized papal bellicosity, and he exposed to laughter the corrupt ecclesiastical culture that he saw evidenced both at the Vatican and among the clerical elite anywhere. Further, he derisively mocked the Christian personality cult, with the higher clergy commanding veneration that verged on idolatry. Equally harshly, Rabelais aimed his subversive comedy at the brutal persecution of heterodox individuals. Finally, Rabelais was a master of disparaging humor aimed at the usual suspects, i.e. friars, and he delighted in exploiting the rich seam of anti-clerical humor premised on monastic decadence. And although good-naturedly boundary enforcing, self-parodying (Entrenchment 1) humor is not his strong suit, it, too, is in evidence. For instance, Rabelais playfully invokes the conventions of certain popular literary genres, like the chivalric romance, by employing and farcically overexaggerating their narrative stock ingredients. Rabelais further ironizes his own status as a Renaissance Humanist by reminding his readers that any system of knowledge has limits, even the supposedly superior kind of knowledge developed by the best thinkers of his age. Hence, it is fair to say that although he is most strongly invested in both modes of liminal humor, Rabelais utilizes all four humor modes, as reflected in the table at the end of this section (see page 125),

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694–1778): Candide No historical overview of religious comedy could skip over the French novelist, historian, and philosopher Voltaire. Specifically, it is hard to overestimate the impact on literature, culture, and religion of Voltaire’s masterpiece of irreverent humor, Candide. Immediately after its publication in 1759 (under a pseudonym), the book raised a big scandal, which means it was sternly condemned by the authorities and snatched up by readers who soon started quoting snippets from it to each other (Mason 14). To amplify the shock effect, the slim novel popped up all over Europe in several languages. The authorities were in a funk. The advocate general to the Parisian Parlement protested that Candide was “contrary to religion and morals” (quoted in Mason 13), and police officers were sent around to the booksellers of Paris to confiscate all the copies that they could lay their hands on (Mason 13). Shortly after its publication, the book was banned in several European countries, and in 1762, Candide was listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Roman Catholic Church’s list of banned books. Meanwhile, the book rocketed to best-sellerdom (Mason 14). Voltaire had obviously touched on a nerve. His story not only exposed the inhumanity of warfare and criticized the arrogance of power, but Candide is arguably the first satire that systematically and mercilessly subverts a central

A chronicle of triumph 71 pillar of Christian teachings, namely, the so-called hidden harmony defense to the Problem of Evil. Moreover, the book takes an unapologetically antiecclesiastical stance, presenting with unprecedented frankness scenarios of hair-raising violence and corruption among members of the Church establishment. The resulting mix of dark humor led one commentator to say that “Candide is a cruel and destructive book as well as a funny one” (Adams vii). Indeed, on the surface, readers of Candide are given a fast-paced tale of adventure and exploration, couched in a humorous framework, full of exaggeration, whimsy, farce, and surprise, making it a very entertaining read. But underneath it lies an undercurrent of anti-clerical fury as well as an irreverent spoofing of central Christian tenets, such as trust in God’s wisdom or faith in the inherent goodness of creation. Readers coming away from Candide cannot help but question the validity of such optimistic principles of faith. The principal target of Voltaire’s satire is the theological and philosophical tradition which seeks to explain the existence of both manmade and natural evil in a cosmos created by an all-powerful and benevolent deity. In Voltaire’s time, the “hidden harmony defense” (see “Key terms and definitions”) was going strong. This theodicy “solution” to the Problem of Evil was popularized by the German thinker Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Splicing together the ontological and hidden harmony defenses (see “Key terms and definitions”), Leibnitz argued that since God is all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, and all good – the essence of Christian theism – consequently, any evil that exists in a world created by such a deity must be a kind of “misunderstanding” by man. Because man has such a limited, primitive, ant-like perspective in relation to the grand scheme of things, he cannot perceive the ultimate reason why something which appears to him to be evil may actually be necessary and even, from God’s perspective, constitute a form of goodness. This optimistic theodicy was ripe for a satirical takedown, and it is fair to say that it has never recovered from Voltaire’s withering attack. One contemporary writer, James Morrow, characterized the hidden harmony defense in one of his novels as “pornography for priests!” (Abaddon 190). Voltaire demonstrates with devastating clarity the implicit moral bankruptcy of this Leibnitzian optimism. In the early parts of the narrative, Candide tries to explain away any calamity or atrocity with the help of pious explanations drilled into him by his philosophical teacher, Pangloss. After experiencing his first series of Jobian calamities, he affirms that “all events are linked by the chain of necessity and arranged for the best. I had to be driven away from Miss Cunégonde, I had to run the gauntlet, I have to beg ­ therwise” my bread until I can earn it; none of this could have happened o (6). This optimistic determinism takes a long time to perish. Even as ­Candide is being robbed, betrayed, and cheated by the dissolute and greedy society of Paris toward the end of the book, he still clings to the dogma that “Troubles are just the shadows in a beautiful picture” (51). But Voltaire’s point

72  Christian religious comedy is that such optimism and trust in the ultimate harmony of God’s plan is a flawed, even ridiculous proposition. Candide eventually wises up, after seeing instance after instance of manifest evil and pointless suffering. In this way, Candide rejects the endless patience toward divine caprice that the Book of Job is touting as supreme wisdom. Rather, a disillusioned Candide admits “I must give up on [Pangloss’s] optimism after all. . . . It is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell” (40). Voltaire would want those among his readers who are inclined to say, “God works in mysterious ways” or “everything happens for a reason” to question their naïve belief. And Voltaire not only points out the absurdity of Leibnitzian optimism when it comes to dealing with real evil and actual suffering, he also demonstrates how reliance on this theodicy produces moral callousness and complicity with the true causes of suffering. For example, Pangloss justifies the existence of syphilis as follows: “It is an indispensable part of the best of worlds, a necessary ingredient; if Columbus had not caught, on an American island, this sickness which attacks the source of generation and sometimes prevents generation entirely . . . we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal” (8). Needless to say, such an attitude not only stands in the way of effective compassion with victims of syphilis, it also stands in the way of trying to find a cure for this disease. Voltaire exposes the religious thinking based on this Christian theodicy as passively tolerating suffering and, possibly, even encouraging callousness and immorality. For a religion that claims to offer the only valid path to salvation, these are devastating accusations. Naturally, as a satire Candide willfully exaggerates incidents, caricatures personalities, and even distorts ideas. One would be hard-pressed to find a man like Pangloss, who stubbornly upholds his optimistic theory, despite overwhelming evidence to its falsity; and instances of greed, hypocrisy, and dishonesty on such a scale as depicted in Candide would be quite rare. However, any exaggeration contained in this story is intended to clarify a point that does correlate with reality. Sadly, religious fanaticism exists, both in Voltaire’s time and in our own, and religious doctrines can lead to injustice and even fuel outright immorality. Religious intolerance is, after all, religious. When we read about the Auto-da-Fé in Lisbon, where people apprehended by the Inquisition are burned alive for such infractions of the “law” as speaking their mind or being Jewish, we are unfortunately not dealing with a willful distortion of facts; at most we are dealing with a satirical understatement of hellish suffering. It would be difficult to exaggerate the inhumanity of the Catholic Inquisition, which prided itself on protecting Christian doctrine. Voltaire’s anger is palpable when Cunegonde tells her story about how the Grand Inquisitor, a man bound to strict celibacy, paid money for “co-owning” her together with a wealthy Jewish trader, ravishing her on alternate days. Moreover, one of the book’s characters identifies herself as “the daughter of Pope Urban the Tenth” (19), another indication of hypocrisy since the leader of the Catholic Church could be expected to be held to the same standards of chastity as all the other ranks of the

A chronicle of triumph 73 priesthood.2 Such attacks against corrupt Church leaders are conveyed in a sharp, subversive, “negative” tone, corresponding to the modality of Liminal 2 humor. Throughout the narrative, Voltaire satirizes the injustice, oppression, and cruelty committed by leaders of organized religion. But he also seizes on the hypocrisy of lower-order clerics and laypeople, such as the Protestant orator in Holland, whom Candide overhears lecturing a crowd about the virtues of charity. When Candide, who is clearly in need of some charity, refuses to accuse the pope of being the Antichrist, the “charitable” Protestant curses Candide while his wife douses Candide with a bucket of human waste, making Candide wonder about “the excesses into which women are led by their religious zeal” (6). Voltaire’s text truly fulfills satire’s critical project to harness “negative” laughter in order to expose stupidity and vice to the light of day and to push back against folly, oppression, and corruption. In the process of delivering his stinging rebuke to worldly and religious powers, Voltaire does not shy away from employing the aggressive approach of sarcasm and Entrenchment 2 humor. Armies are slaughtering civilians to the strains of “Te Deum” (an ancient Christian hymn), and Candide’s brutal beating in Lisbon is accompanied by the melody of “Miserere” (a devotional song based on Psalm 51). The incongruity of these situations, i.e. when invocations of holiness collide with ruthless cruelty, is such an integral part of Voltaire’s comedy that it takes on the character of an entrenching principle. In dramatizing instance after instance of glaring hypocrisy, the impression is created that hypocrisy is a core principle undergirding the practice of Christianity or even more generally the mark of religiosity in general. The “natural” co-existence of clerical corruption and protestations of holiness are the most visible manifestations of this basic religious incongruity. Such an attack on piety was threatening enough to the Christian authorities that they proceeded to ban Voltaire’s book. But Voltaire’s critique of religious institutions and his mocking presentation of clergy is not informed by a complete rejection of faith in a transcendent order. Rather, Voltaire was a deist who lacked belief in a personal God. As a rationalist, he found the conundrum of the Problem of Evil ultimately unsolvable. In a poem composed shortly after the earthquake that devastated Lisbon in 1755, Voltaire expresses doubts about divine justice and even divine “logic.” In this poem, Voltaire thinks out loud: Even if, as quite a few commentators claimed at the time, this earthquake was a punishment for man’s corrupt behavior, then why would God be so selective, sparing Paris and London, towns no less vice-ridden than Lisbon? Why would God send such unspeakable suffering and destruction, failing to distinguish between those deserving of punishment and those not deserving of it, say infants? Why the unbelievable scale of the disaster? Can all this be squared with an all-good, all-wise God? Voltaire’s poem only poses these questions without providing an answer, but one senses an answer resonating within the very questions themselves. Only after Voltaire shifted the approach from

74  Christian religious comedy ponderous philosophizing poetry to the prose style of narrative satire did he hit his strides and deliver a memorable broadside against conventional religious piety and corrupt ecclesiastical authority. Since Candide is an episodic, picaresque novel, one of the main drivers of comedy is the quick succession of improbable adventures as well as the sheer exuberant playfulness of topsy-turvy scenarios. This spirit is evidenced in the land of Eldorado, where all the values of the regular world are turned upside down and in the motif of bringing back to life characters that were supposed to have died. Such touches of liminal playfulness are eclipsed by the darker, more subversive and even aggressive modes of “hard” humor. Mockery and derision are used purposefully to deflate greed, religious hypocrisy, and plain stupidity. On a philosophical level, both subversive irony and entrenching sarcasm are harnessed to falsify Leibnitzian optimism and to deal with a world perceived as out of whack. While Liminal 2 humor engages the cerebral faculties, providing arguments to deflate pompous pretense and nonsensical sophistry, Voltaire’s Entrenchment 2 discourse stimulates the emotional revulsion against folly, vice, and injustice. Both forms of “negative” humor – to use the prescriptive terminology of the theology of laughter – are engaged to fulfill Voltaire’s critical, and ultimately moral vision. The reader’s emotional reaction to Candide is amplified by the gory, explicitly sexual, and generally X-rated quality of the narrative, an aspect that fascinated contemporary audiences as much as any sacrilegious content that the narrative also contains. This doubly stacked offensiveness is used to great effect in Candide, although at times the material is so bleak as to stifle any laughter before it can arise. But in choosing a naïve ingénue figure as his protagonist, Voltaire stimulates the reader’s humor response despite the horror that the story also conveys. Showcasing Candide’s naïveté and ignorance, Voltaire is inviting his readers to draw parallels to the naïveté and ignorance at work in their own lives, urging them to question blind faith and avoid total obedience to authority figures. In accomplishing this skeptical task, Candide both entertains and teaches, it both amuses and horrifies, leaving the reader profoundly moved and quite literally shaken – both by laughter and by shock. It is this shock value – the fact that Candide breaks taboos, deflates pieties, and deconstructs conventions – that lent it such an explosive power, a power which would have been far smaller without the admixture of laughter stimulated by (mostly) “hard” humor. This is truly the laughter of emancipation, a laughter from below, aimed at the brutality of secular institutions, at the corrupt state of religious powers, and at the puzzling indifference and possibly malignant nature of the highest authority in the universe, God. The explosive force of such insubordinate humor was sensational, and the defiant laughter it triggered, aimed at structures of entrenched power, caused the book to become an instant bestseller. The laughter provoked by Candide is a subversive, “dangerous” laughter. It is the sort of disruptive,

A chronicle of triumph 75 liberating laughter that Mark Twain had in mind when he wrote his most sustained satirical work aimed at religion, hypocrisy, pomposity, and conformity, i.e. the posthumously published Mysterious Stranger.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1835–1910): The Mysterious Stranger Toward the end of his life, Mark Twain increasingly confided his most radical and blasphemous thoughts to diaries and manuscripts that remained unpublished. Only after his death did some of Twain’s most daring, unruly, and sacrilegious writings surface among his posthumously published works. So provocative were some of his thoughts that it took until 1963 for the most irreverent writings to finally appear in print. These texts, many of them abandoned drafts or diary entries, were collected and edited by Charles Neider and published under the title The Outrageous Mark Twain: His Rare Controversial Writings With Reflections of Religion Appearing in Book Form for the First Time. Here is a sample from this collection: Do I  think the Christian religion is here to stay? Why should I  think so? There had been a thousand religions before it was born. They are all dead. There had been millions of gods before ours was invented. Swarms of them are dead and forgotten long ago. Ours is by long odds the worst God that the ingenuity of man has begotten from his insane imagination – and shall He and His Christianity be immortal against the great array of probabilities furnished by the theological history of the past? No. I think that Christianity and its God must follow the rule. They must pass on in their turn and make room for another God and a stupider religion. . . . History shows that in the matter of religions we progress backward and not the other way. (Outrageous 41) These words, which Twain committed to his diary on June 22, 1906, are suffused with a passionate anti-theistic anger that almost burns the page, though at the same time, the vehemence of his words also borders on the comical. As he grew older, Twain repeatedly cast himself as a kind of rebel angel, a benevolent, clear-sighted though mischievously subversive adversary of the Almighty. It was the only role that seemed fitting to him vis-à-vis a deity that he despised. This attitude is clearly expressed in Letters from the Earth, where Twain imagines Satan as a kind of investigative journalist checking to see “how the Human-Race experiment was coming along” (6). This being the mature work of Mark Twain, it hardly surprises that Satan finds little to admire during his investigations on earth. One of the things that most sorely bothers him is the amount of evil perpetuated by religious institutions and seemingly

76  Christian religious comedy condoned by their God. Toward the end of his sojourn on earth, Satan/ Twain writes the following damning analysis of God’s moral stature: Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become the teacher of morals; of gentleness; of meekness; of righteousness; of purity? It looks impossible, extravagant; but listen to him. These are his own words: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” . . . The mouth that uttered these immense sarcasms, these giant hypocrisies is the very same that ordered the wholesale massacre of the Midianitish men and babies and cattle; the wholesale destruction of house and city; the wholesale banishment of the virgins into a filthy and unspeakable slavery. (Letters 42–43) Such an outpouring of antipathy against the Creator should not be confused with unbelief. In fact, it is a form of God-thinking that I  have identified as misotheism. In Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (2011), I classified Mark Twain as one of the most prominent “misotheists” (Gk. “misos” = hatred; Gk. “deos” = God). My book demonstrates that misotheists like him are not denying God’s existence; rather, they are convinced that God is not a caring, loving, fair, or wise deity. In the eyes of misotheists, the huge amount of suffering and evil on this planet cannot possibly be reconciled with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, and ever-present God. While some deistically inclined misotheists hold that God simply departed the world after having created it, thereby leaving it in the lurch, others like Zora Neale Hurston and Rebecca West suspected that he was actively playing mischief with humanity, imagining God to be a sadistically inclined, ignorant, but powerful demiurge in the sense imagined by the Gnostics. The group of people who think of God as either criminally negligent or as deliberately causing suffering includes great thinkers and artists from Thomas Paine to James Mill, from Percy B. Shelley to Algernon Swinburne, and from Zora Neale Hurston to Rebecca West. Biographical factors tend to play a major role in the development of a misotheistic outlook. Twain faced serious financial setbacks and personal losses in the later stages of his life, and this doubtlessly contributed to his bitter anti-faith. From the 1880s onward, he lost a large amount of money in various investments related to the printing and publishing industry, forcing him and his family to substantially cut back. Then, a series of deaths in the family plunged him into even great despair: In 1896, his daughter Susy succumbed to meningitis, his wife, Olivia, died in 1904, and in 1909, his second daughter, Jean, died. Other misfortunes added their share to his deepening gloom, extinguishing any remnant of faith in a benevolent deity that he may still have entertained. Like so many other misotheistically

A chronicle of triumph 77 inclined believers, Twain faced the Problem of Evil and found that not a single satisfying answer was provided by any of the explanations that claimed to reconcile the theistic God with the reality of pestilence, accidents, earthquakes, killers, and stray bullets, even as many villains die in high age, surrounded by pomp and splendor. The question for Twain was how to turn his sorrow, anguish, and loss of faith into creative channels and turn them into a source for comical perspectives on the human condition. The Mysterious Stranger represents the outcome of this struggle. I imagine Twain spending endless hours in his last decade trying to fashion comical material out of the chaos and suffering that he saw evidenced in human affairs all around him. In the end, his attempt failed, and the story he was working on remained unfinished. Although he had drafted and patiently tinkered with the various story versions in the last 13 years of his life, he never reached the point where he was satisfied with the text to finalize and publish it. So, how did this work come to see the light of publication? Among the many unpublished texts found among Twain’s papers after his death, the literary executors for Twain’s estate found three thematically related manuscripts: one was titled “The Chronicle of Young Satan,” another one bore the title “Schoolhouse Hill,” and the third was named “No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger” (LeMaster and Wilson 530–33). The stories in these manuscripts overlapped to some degree, all featuring a figure called “Young Satan.” One of the literary executors, Albert Bigelow Paine, together with the editor Frederick Duneka, spliced together the three manuscripts, taking “The Chronicle of Young Satan” as the principal source to create a single, linear narrative. The resulting text was published in 1916, six years after Twain’s death, under the title The Mysterious Stranger. When scholars realized in 1963 that Paine and Duneka had cobbled together The Mysterious Stranger from multiple sources, even writing some passages themselves, they cried foul and considered letting the edited version of the story “perish” (LeMaster and Wilson 531). However, although the 1916 edition of The Mysterious Stranger represents an unauthorized mix of different story versions, it is fair to say that the satirical, skeptical spirit of Twain comes through powerfully, even in this posthumously constructed tale. Following the example of Romantic poets like Blake, Shelley, and Byron, who had elevated Satan to the positive character of a justified rebel and a culture hero who gave to humanity the vital gifts that make life worth living, including wine, art, individuality, and freedom, Twain similarly presents us with an unconventional Satan figure who is not the embodiment of evil. Twain’s “Young Satan” (Satan’s nephew) is an ambivalent character whose role is rather that of a trickster deity than of an unredeemable demon. Indeed, this “Young Satan” displays more decency, honesty, integrity, and insight than the clerics, worldly authorities, and common folk featured in the tale, who are all depicted to various degrees as greedy, corrupt, and foolish. Thus, Twain asks his readers to make a significant leap of moral

78  Christian religious comedy imagination by accepting Young Satan as an – albeit ambivalent – agent of insight and as a vehicle of collective human soul searching. Young Satan displays all the typical traits of boundary crossing and liminality that are the stock-in-trade of tricksters. According to Lewis Hyde, “trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox” (7). This description closely fits Twain’s Young Satan. In his heterodox, shapeshifting, and mischievous forays into the world of late medieval “Eselsdorf,” Twain’s trickster consistently disorders seemingly fixed categories. In conversation with the young boys he consorts with – the narrator, Theodore, and his two friends, Seppi and Nikolaus – Young Satan challenges some of their commonsense judgments and turns them upside down. For instance, he explains that the Moral Sense, which is commonly thought the distinguishing mark of humanity, is in reality the source of cruelty because it proceeds from a sense of selfrighteousness that easily tips into bigotry. Or he teaches them that when they use the word “brutal” (brute  =  senseless animal) to indicate vicious behavior, they are being untrue because only humans behave in ways that are gratuitously violent, not animals. In other words, ruthless, barbarous acts should be called human-like, not brutal. This kind of heterodox thinking is in line with the revisionist functions of the typical trickster figure. But it also corresponds to the boundary challenging nature of the trickster. In Hyde’s words, “Boundary creation and boundary crossing are related to one another and the best way to describe trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found – sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there, the god of the threshold in all its forms” (7–8). If we substitute “trickster” with “humor,” we would still have a perfectly accurate statement. With its variously liminal or entrenching functions, humor behaves more or less exactly like a trickster. In this sense, trickster symbolizes the nature of humor, and Twain as a congenital humorist was drawn to this figure, whether knowingly or not. Twain exploited the boundary testing aspects of his trickster figure to the last consequence in The Mysterious Stranger. Although Twain is often in a dark mood of “negative,” subversive liminal comedy, he also breaks through to sunnier, playfully silly moods in this story. Both modes of comedy – the darkly subversive and the playfully bright – are immediately introduced at beginning of The Mysterious Stranger. The story is set in 1590, during the late Middle Ages, in a fictional Austrian village called “Eselsdorf,” which in German translates as “Donkeytown.” This provides a backdrop of “soft” liminal humor. But the tone soon hardens, with satirical points scored against clergy, church, and Christianity. Indeed, Eselsdorf is said to be a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge

A chronicle of triumph 79 was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had allotted for them, and God would not endure discontentment with his plans. (Mysterious Stranger 2) This is obviously an absurd notion, and Twain highlights the satirical potential of the boys’ complicity with their own subjugation by having them parrot ideas inculcated into them by a despotic Church. The liminal testing of boundaries is evidenced in the fact that what appears as pure irony to the reader is a non-ironic statement for the boys. Twain suggests rather subversively that the Church fulfills God’s will in keeping the masses ignorant, implying a sinister conspiracy between God and Church. The satirical screw receives a further turn when the narrator describes the characteristics of the two resident priests in Eselsdorf: Father Adolf is a show-off and a thoroughly corrupt church official whom the children dislike. They favor Father Peter (the name is telling), although the latter had recently been disgraced for allegedly saying that “God was all goodness and would find a way to save all his poor human children” (3). After being scolded for making such a “shocking remark,” Father Peter is promptly sacked. The “good news” about God’s universal love spread by Father Peter was thus condemned as a heretical view. Twain here suggests that the Church has lost touch with the original Christian message of love and forgiveness while spurning people’s natural impulse to look up to God as a loving Father. Even that source of comfort is denied them in a twisted version of Christianity that bears out Twain’s dictum that “if Christ were here today, there’s one thing he would not be – a Christian” (Notebook 328). Twain is allergic to the idea of hell, and he disdains the image of a vengeful God who uses hell as a punitive threat to keep the people in check. In fact, The Mysterious Stranger suggests indirectly that a vengeful, capricious, malevolent God is the very deity responsible for the chaos of human affairs and the occurrence of disasters. In one of the most memorable scenes of the text, Young Satan acts as a mock creator and builds a little world of play-people, ex nihilo as it were. Like the biblical Creator, he makes people out of clay, but he makes them so flawed that one of their first acts after coming to life is to start quarrelling with one another, invoking the story of Cain and Abel. Their quarreling so annoys their creator, Young Satan, that he squashes them with a wooden plank just to silence them. And when the remaining people continue to make trouble, Satan comes up with a more radical and properly biblical solution: he sends a dark storm cloud full of lightning and rain and causes an earthquake to happen, the combined forces of which destroy his recently created community completely. While thus wreaking havoc, he comments drily that that he can make many more of these beings and that they are of no great consequence. Twain here presents us with a thinly disguised, subversive analogy: just as Young Satan behaves to his creation – i.e. the Lilliput people around the castle – so God

80  Christian religious comedy behaves toward humanity on this earth. Indeed, we are told that Young Satan “mashed all those people into the earth just as if they had been flies” (17); this formulation recalls Gloucester’s cynical line in King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys, are we to th’ gods, They kill us for their sport” (act 4, sc. 1, 32–37). Twain’s layered analogy suggests that (a) just as flies are to wanton boys, so are we to God, and (b) just as the Lilliput people are to Young Satan, so are humans to God – he kills us without remorse. It is a theological argument of radical implications, indicting a culpable God who sent the flood to eradicate the very race he himself had designed and created, a race so flawed that they were predestined to fall into sin and thereby arouse their creator’s deadly wrath. In order to “see” this analogy, we need to go beyond the surface comedy of how the Lilliput people in Young Satan’s creation are behaving and enter into a satirical frame of reference. According to Peter Berger, humor is the method of transportation that conveys us into an alternate reality. In Berger’s view, comedy constitutes “a magical transformation of the world, or more precisely, an act of magic by which a counterworld is made to appear. This counterworld serves to illuminate the realities of the ordinary world, typically in a debunking or critical manner” (193). Although Berger does not mention Twain, his thinking applies directly to Young Satan and his magical creation of a counterworld in order to illuminate through satire the criticisms he wants to level at the actual world. These criticisms include, most prominently, an honest appraisal of human self-deception and hubris, i.e. what Young Satan calls the “Moral Sense,” which is really Twain’s code word for “free will” in the theological sense: “That mongrel Moral Sense .  .  .  [is] a sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which one he will do. Now, what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine times out of ten he prefers the wrong” (54). In this line of thinking, whenever people invoke the moral sense, they are already on the hook for hypocrisy, self-delusion, and deception. The vaunted moral sense (and the “free will” associated with it) that is supposed to distinguish people from animals is actually what makes humans behave more basely than animals because man deceives himself that his brutal and ruthless actions are justified in the name of some higher principle or tribal alliance. Once again, Twain performs the “magic” of critical liminal comedy by shifting our perspective and disturbing the boundaries that demarcate one of our central “realities,” i.e. the assumption that the moral sense is a positive attribute of humanity and that free will is a benefit. A sharply sacrilegious critique resonates within all this: Who gave us this perverse free will? We didn’t ask for it; it was foisted upon us. And how come the servants of God are among the worst perpetrators of crimes on earth? Doesn’t all this smack of divine conspiracy against the human race? These are ponderous topics, but the figure of Young Satan always manages to give them a humorous spin, and his shenanigans are designed to provide a lightheartedly playful tone of liminality to complement the serious,

A chronicle of triumph 81 subversively critical satire of human depravity and divine malevolence. In the case of The Mysterious Stranger, Young Satan’s nonsensical, foolish, actions (like creating a world and then destroying it on a whim), shifts our perspective, making us wonder if God’s punitive Flood is as foolish and his creation as absurd as that of Young Satan. Without an appreciation for liminal comedy, which conjures up a counterworld where God is a silly or sinister figure, we would not apprehend the subversive implications of the story. My interpretation of Young Satan as a trickster figure invalidates the reading of him as simply a stand-in for the biblical Satan, i.e. the epitome of lies, agent of darkness, opponent of God, and embodiment of evil. As a wise fool who sees straight through the self-deception of man, serving as a touchstone for profound truths, Young Satan is also Mark Twain’s own mouthpiece. Indeed, quite shockingly, Young Satan voices some of Twain’s most deeply held beliefs, and many of these are of a misanthropic kind that tend to reinforce generalized negative ideas about religious folks’ infinite capacity for self-delusion. Here is what Young Satan has to say on the topic of human conformity: “You know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities” (126). Twain doubles down on the notion of a general, inherent defect in humanity, thus comically entrenching collective judgments about the human race: “Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and debase you” (127). Here Twain is speaking directly to us through the intermediary of Young Satan. Although what he is saying carries the boundary reinforcing quality of over-the-top generalizations, the fact that he levels his attack at broadly human flaws rather than at specific groups softens the hardness of such bitter entrenchment humor. Twain’s engaging trickster, Young Satan, is arguably a more radical choice of ironic mouthpiece than the mouthpiece Erasmus used when he spoke through the allegorical persona of Folly. Also, Twain appears to have bigger fish to fry than misinterpretations of scripture or clerical malfeasance. His satire takes into its sight the biggest blight on mankind’s flourishing, i.e. war, and here we face Twain’s pacifism directly: “There never has been a just [war], never an honorable one – on the part of the instigator of the war” (119). The role of Christianity is depicted as aiding in the developments of ever-more effective machines of war: Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must

82  Christian religious comedy have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time. . . . Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians. (110, 111) Is this fair? If by today’s standards, the most “competent killers” are the inventors of nuclear weapons, then arguably this type of weapon was developed under the auspices of a Christian nation. In this matter, too, Young Satan turns out to be a messenger of truth and a debunker of the human mythmaking capacity, including the myth that Christianity predisposes its followers to carry out Christ’s message of non-violence. One can only imagine what mordant things Young Satan would have to say about data indicating that white American evangelicals are the group with the highest rate of gun ownership, many of whom go to church armed (Shellnutt). But not all is lost in Twain’s comical counterworld, this topsy-turvy kingdom of human foolishness and divine callousness. Humanity has one redemptive force at its disposal: laughter. Using again Young Satan as his mouthpiece, Mark Twain reveals his own theory of humor: “You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things – broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision” (141) This topic is close to Twain’s heart: “Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon – laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution – these can lift at a colossal humbug – push it a little – weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blast it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand (142). What Twain has in mind here is the liberating, subversive kind of laughter, which is linked to liminal humor. Yet, even as Twain promotes the liberating laughter from below, he is no stranger to the potency of superiority laughter in all of its entrenching manifestations. When a woman is about the be burned as a witch (because she had been good at curing headaches), a mean-spirited superiority laugh can be heard: “The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came flying and struck her in the eye, and broke and ran down her face. There was a laugh at that” (61). Even Young Satan’s own ironic laughter can be so disdainful as to veer into open disparagement. But rather than repudiating or discounting hard entrenchment humor, Twain lets his characters use it, while promoting the liminal laughter of his readers. While his subject matter is often grave, Twain’s comical style is so playfully intelligent and cleverly ironic that any mean-spirited laughter is kept at bay. Indeed, the funniest scenes in The Mysterious Stranger are those where Young Satan acts as the clever trickster rather than the disdainful cynic. One such scene involves the arrogant, scheming “astronomer” (who had engineered Father Peter’s downfall), whom Satan’s magic turns into a carnival juggler on a tightrope compelled to keep an infinite number of balls up in

A chronicle of triumph 83 the air. And in a punishment worthy of Dante, the astronomer is then sent to the moon to cool off: “I’ve got him on the cold side of it, too. He doesn’t know where he is, and doesn’t have a pleasant time; still, it is good enough for him, a good place for his star studies” (93). Comeuppance has never felt sweeter. The comical effect of the tale is further enhanced by the innocent voice of the young narrator telling the story from his viewpoint. When this naïve perspective collides with Young Satan’s cynical outlook, the result is a pervasive sense of dramatic irony which frequently tips over into burlesque, as when Marget asks Young Satan about his uncle (the “real” Satan): “ ‘But your uncle is a gentleman, isn’t he?’ asked Marget. ‘Yes,’ said Satan indifferently; ‘some even call him a Prince, out of compliment, but he is not bigoted; to him personal merit is everything, rank nothing’ ” (49). Twain was clearly engrossed in the premises of his own boundary crossing tale. Using the flexibility of the genre of speculative fiction, Twain satirizes a wide range of targets, including the Church, ecclesiastical authorities, God, and religion, not to mention social conformity, warmongering, and an array of more conventional vices like avarice and disloyalty. This is done under the aegis of Liminal 2 humor, as Twain aims his satirical weapon against sources of corruption, both human and divine, which he saw as threatening human flourishing everywhere. To a lesser extent, Twain activates purely playful humor (Liminal 1) as well as, somewhat more prominently, Entrenchment 2 humor. The latter arises from Twain’s impulse to mock and degrade systemic human follies, an aggressive humor that is in line with Twain’s misanthropic outlook. Because Twain is one of the very first writers in the Western canon to use subversive humor to target all possible elements of religion – from the silliness of individual believers, to the despotism of Church authorities, to the immorality of God, to the irrationality of religion – he is an important figure in the history of religious comedy. It is likely that Twain doubted whether the world was ready for his kind of radically subversive comedy, and this might have contributed to his inability to finish and publish the story about Young Satan. Indeed, bringing out such a controversial work could have seriously damaged his reputation as America’s pre-eminent ­novelist. ­Significantly, though, even while Twain’s editors, Albert Paine and Frederick Duneka, were still laboring on a coherent edition of The Mysterious Stranger, a French author by the name of Anatole France had already published a novel titled The Revolt of the Angels (1914) that was written in the very spirit of Mark Twain. France’s novel is so sacrilegious and unabashedly irreverent in its message that one could well imagine Twain penning a flattering jacket blurb for it, had he lived to see it.

Anatole France (Jacques-Anatole Thiebault) (1844–1924): The Revolt of the Angels Speculative fiction is an excellent vehicle for conveying ideas that are figuratively “out there,” and the genre lends itself particularly well to religious

84  Christian religious comedy speculation of a satirical kind. Like Mark Twain in The Mysterious Stranger, the French literary Nobel laureate Anatole France utilized the conventions of speculative fiction to develop a hilarious scenario based on Christian religious premises. In doing so, he pushed the boundaries of what religious comedy can do to new levels. In his novel The Revolt of the Angels (1914), France presents a stew of ideas based partly on religious sources – including the Book of Revelation, Pseudo-Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchy, and gnostic creation myths – and partly on the work of British Romantic writers like William Blake, Percy Shelley, and William Godwin. In addition, Revolt of the Angels presents a delectable parody of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. All this is powered by Entrenchment 1 humor in the spirit of parody as well as Liminal 2 humor in the subversive tradition of Voltaire and Twain. Essentially, France crafts a fanciful religious scenario in the form of seemingly harmless, playful parody to conduct from that basis highly irreverent attacks of a subversive kind. Although non-religious subjects are also made fun of, including the dissipated aristocracy, clueless law enforcement officers, and greedy bankers, the bulk of the narrative is aimed at the whole range of religious targets from individual believers to clergy at every level, to ecclesiastical organizations, to articles of faith and scriptural passages, to religion as a whole. Just like Voltaire and Twain before him, France was deeply concerned about the fate of the common man; he was a champion of the downtrodden masses, and he sought to do his share to raise awareness about social injustice, institutional corruption, and human misery – all through the intermediary of very clever comedy. According to the hilarious premise of France’s book, the frescoes that Eugene Delacroix had painted on the walls of the “Chapel of the Holy Angels” in the Church of Saint Sulpice (Paris) are not at all fictitious. Rather, they are a realistic depiction of angelic beings, as they appear to the initiated eye. The premise of mixing angels with humans reveals its full comical potential in the opening chapters of the book: The protagonist of the story, a dissolute scion of an aristocratic Parisian family, called Maurice d’Esparvieu, has a run-in with his own guardian angel, named Arcade, who decided to take on physical form. A note of bawdiness is added because the guardian angel chooses to incarnate at the precise moment when Maurice is having a tryst with his mistress. But the low comedy is soon transposed into high-concept amusement, as Arcade reveals the startling “secret on which hangs the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against Him whom you hold to be the Creator of all things visible and invisible, I am preparing the Revolt of the Angels” (49). So, Arcade turns out to be a pretty unholy angel, a blasphemer, really, who is “ready to dare all against an odious master, whom he pursued with inextinguishable hatred” (66). The “master” in question is the almighty God, Yahweh. Understandably, Maurice is rather shocked by the impious plans of his “guardian angel,” and the comical possibilities multiply from here. For instance, France pushes the envelope of role reversal when

A chronicle of triumph 85 he has Maurice try to convert his own guardian angel to Christianity. In a further twist of topsy-turvydom, Arcade seduces Maurice’s mistress, and when Maurice finds out about the affair, he challenges his guardian angel to a duel, a contest that does not end well for Maurice. Indeed, Maurice is seriously wounded by his own guardian angel, who stabs him in the arm. More significant than Arcade’s romantic designs upon Maurice’s mistress are the guardian angel’s designs upon Maurice’s God: I deny that He created the world; at the most He organized but an inferior part of it, and all that He touched bears the mark of His rough and unforeseeing touch. I do not think He is either eternal or infinite. . . . I no longer believe Him to be the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His worshippers made Him a monotheist. . . . He is not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like myself, know His true nature, call Him Ialdabaoth. (51–52) Such passages make it clear that France’s narrative is firmly anchored in the Gnostic tradition. Indeed, Yahweh is repeatedly characterized as a demiurge, i.e. an impostor who rules without consent and legitimacy, ignorant of the larger cosmic realities that he is embedded in. According to (a simplified version of) Sethian Gnosticism, the world was not created by a supreme deity but by a powerful demonic creature, a demiurge. This demiurge named Ialdabaoth falsely believed himself to be the highest deity in the universe. Such was his ignorance that he was unaware of the ultimate spiritual entity, the “nous,” hovering in the background and pervading all. In the Gnostic myth, not only was the visible world we live in created by this demiurge, but Adam and Eve are the spawn of other demons, and hence humanity’s genealogy traces back to a set of monsters. This bleak Gnostic view of creation is a reflection of the radically different Gnostic take on theodicy as compared to the Christian approach. Gnostics found that the world was so riddled with imperfection, so full of pain and suffering, and so laden with corruption and sin, that they gave up trying to square all this misery with the design and creation of an all-wise, all-knowing, all-perfect God. Faced with evidence of imperfection all around them, the Gnostics figuratively threw up their hands and admitted that if a creator was responsible for this mess, then he had to be a demon. They still believed in a pure, superior, blameless God, but that deity, which they referred to as “Pleroma” – an essence of purity and light rather than a personal God with a long, white beard  – was far removed and uninvolved in the day-to-day business of life on this earth. Like the Manichaeans, the Gnostics believed that a supreme divine essence was scattered in sparks throughout our terrestrial sphere, and they recommended ascetic practices and habits of austerity in order to isolate, collect, and liberate these “particles” of divine light that

86  Christian religious comedy were trapped in the darkness of matter. Since the Gnostic creation myth has some rather grotesque aspects to it (e.g. the stars and planets resulted from the ejaculate of sexually excited demons), it is rather easy prey for comical treatments. Like Voltaire and Twain before him, France uses subversive humor to ridicule elements of religion as well as critique contemporary political and social attitudes. Specifically, his angelic rebel leaders deride the political passivity of the French bourgeoisie, saying, “I have no need to tell you for you know it as well as I, how selfish, base, and cowardly the middle classes are” (68), a line that echoes Twain’s laments about the stultifying conformism of the masses in America. And when France’s rebel angel complains that “there is no country where the liberty of the individual is less respected than in France,” we can hear the grinding of the anarchist axe in the background. France also uses his story’s fanciful premise to ride a satirical attack against the imbrication between the Church and the world of finance. The specific target of this satire is a Jewish financier by the name of Baron Everdingen: His heart thrilled with holy enthusiasm; he drew attention to the French Savings Bank; the virtuous Savings Bank, that chaste and pure Savings Bank like unto the Virgin of the Canticle who, issuing from the depths of the country in rustic petticoat, bears to the robust and splendid Bank – her bridegroom, who awaits her – the treasures of her love. . . . By Deposit and Loan,” he went on, “France has become the New Jerusalem. . . .” Thus spoke the angel of finance. An invisible harp accompanied his voice. (96) These lines drip with Anatole France’s contempt for the mutual alliance of religion and moneyed interests, especially as Lord Everdingen (introduced as an “angel of finance”) reveals his enthusiasm about the war that is about to unfold in heaven, a war that will net him a good profit. Such elements of “hard” Liminal 2 humor are counterbalanced by the “soft” spirit of playfulness (Liminal 1) as well as harmless parody. Indeed, France’s book leans strongly on Entrenchment 1 humor, and it does so mainly by good-naturedly parodying Milton’s Christian epic Paradise Lost. As in Milton’s masterpiece, the rebels in France’s parody of the war in heaven are given some magnificent soliloquies. In one of them, the figure of Pan, one of the leading rebel angels in France’s story, explains his enmity to Yahweh: I perceived that the Universe had not been formed as its pretended Creator would have us believe; I knew that all that exists, exists of itself and not by the caprice of Iahweh; that the world is itself its own creator and the spirit its own God. Henceforth I despised Iahweh for his imposture,

A chronicle of triumph 87 and I hated him because he showed himself to be opposed to all that I found desirable and good: liberty, curiosity, doubt. (100) In passages like this, we leave polite Miltonic dissent behind and enter upon the more radical territory of crass anti-theism. France’s principled champion of human dignity and freedom is an eloquent and informed critic of God’s supposedly fraudulent claims to creatorship and divinity. By contrast to grim “Iahweh,” Pan is described as “possessed of a daring spirit, a restless soul, to those fired with a wild love of liberty” (100). This is of one piece with the Romantic re-valuation of the figure of Satan. William Blake believed that Milton had made his Satan so attractive and charismatic because “Milton was of the devil’s party, without knowing it” (Marriage 6), thus suggesting that as a free thinker, a revolutionary, and a poet, Milton was inevitably sharing Satan’s ethos. Besides finding expression in Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, this revisionist idea also occurs in Lord Byron’s Cain: A Mystery (1820), where the figure of Satan is presented as a fulcrum of free thought (Schock 9). The political implication of Satan as essentially a liberator was further elaborated by William Godwin. This founder of philosophical anarchism wrote in 1793 that “After his fall, why did he [Satan] still cherish the spirit of opposition? From a persuasion that he was hardly and injuriously treated. He was not discouraged by the apparent inequality of the contest: because a sense of reason and justice was stronger in his mind than a sense of brute force. . . . He bore his torments with fortitude, because he disdained to be subdued by despotic power” (309). The “despotic power” referred to by Godwin is in fact God’s power. But while Godwin, Blake, and Byron indirectly influenced Anatole France, his most direct and immediate influence appears to have been Percy B. Shelley. Indeed, some works by Shelley such as Queen Mab (1813), The Revolt of Islam (1818), and “The Mask of Anarchy” (1832 [published posthumously]) present an image of Satanic rebellion that prefigures France’s own story. Common to these Romantic re-valuations of Satan is that they eliminate the implications of corruption, radical evil, and error traditionally associated with Satan. Instead, these Romantics associated Satan with ideas of justified protest, liberty, art, and humanistic self-realization. Not only did the Romantic Satan exude self-confident political rebellion, he was also seen as a culture hero, advocating innovation and legitimizing pleasure, sexuality, intoxication, and play. This tradition of British Romanticism elaborated a version of Satan as a patron saint for the arts. This is the Satan that Anatole France gives glorious expression to in Revolt of the Angels. It is an anarchist Satan who rejects “big government” (including the celestial “big government”) and a culture hero, who promotes human flourishing, art, and pleasure.

88  Christian religious comedy That France uses mock-Miltonic style to describe the exploits of his Romantic Satan makes for an even funnier parody of Paradise Lost: “For three days our host swept onward over the ethereal plains. Above our heads streamed the black standards of revolt. And now, behold, the Mountain of God shone rosy in the orient sky and our chief scanned with his eyes the glittering ramparts. Beneath the sapphire walls the foe was drawn up in battle array” (101). Such pathos is patterned closely on Milton’s language of “rigid Spears, and Helmets throng’d, and Shields / Various, with boastful Argument portraid, / The banded Powers of Satan hasting on. . . / To win the Mount of God, and on his Throne / To set the envier of his State, the proud / Aspirer” (Paradise Lost VI, 83–90). A noticeable difference between the two passages is one of narrative perspective: While Milton described the scene before the heavenly battle from the perspective of the “good” angels loyal to God, France takes us into the ranks of the rebel angels. The parallels between Paradise Lost and Revolt of the Angels get more explicit when Satan rallies his forces with a speech that directly quotes from Milton: “ ‘Comrades,’ said he, ‘we must be happy and rejoice, for behold we are delivered from celestial servitude. Here we are free, and it were better to be free in Hell than serve in Heaven’ ” (103). Although the comical implications of the parody are clear, there is something at work here that transcends amusement, pertaining to the sphere of genuine conviction. Even more so than John Milton, Anatole France was of “the devil’s party,” and he knew it. France even puts a veritable manifesto of humanism into the rebel angel’s mouth: Godhead shall not be won save by knowledge alone. We must conquer the thunder; to that task we must apply ourselves unwearingly. It is not blind courage . . . which will win us the courts of Heaven; but rather study and reflection. In these silent realms where we are fallen, let us meditate, seeking the hidden causes of things; let us observe the course of nature. (103–104) This is an expression of 19th-century positivism, which is quite different from the stubborn, indomitable rebellion of Milton’s spiteful Satan. France uses this opportunity to “update” Paradise Lost and turn Satan into a paragon of scientific rationalism and liberal humanism based on secular principles rather than religious doctrines and divine dictates. At such moments, France’s novel becomes a little preachy, but the preaching is never strident because it is delivered in a patently unrealistic, satirical, and self-disparaging framework. After all, the irony of having Satan act as the harbinger of liberal humanism, scientific discovery, and artistic creation creates a frisson of incongruity that undercuts any presumed didacticism. Such a contrast between supernaturalism and secularism, theism and rationalism, might lead to a predictable outcome: That is, Satan’s rebel forces, amplified by the vast proletarian armies of disenfranchised, restive

A chronicle of triumph 89 guardian angels, might be expected to win the battle against the forces of the heavenly status quo – and thus Paradise Lost would be rewritten with the “right” party winning this time. Except that this is not how The Revolt of the Angels actually ends. Anatole France has one more surprise up his sleeve, and the reader has to get to the very end of the narrative to learn what outcome France has devised for this hilarious roller-coaster of anarchism, satire, and blasphemy. In the final section of the novel, readers are treated to descriptions of heavenly combat between the forces of Satan and God that rival anything written by Milton (or the John of Revelation, for that matter), except that there is a meta-critical, self-ironizing implication to France’s climactic battle: The thunderbolts of Raphael, hurled against the rebels, had, it was said, consumed entire squadrons. The troops commanded by the impure Zita3 were thought to have been swallowed up in the whirlwind of a tempest of fire. It was believed that the savage Istar4 had been flung headlong into the gulf of perdition so suddenly that the blasphemies begun in his mouth had been forced backward with explosive results. (205) Such parodic battle scenes tilt the parody into farce  – masterfully imitating the discourse of Paradise Lost, while just sufficiently over-the-top and grotesque to qualify as caricatures. The bombastic register of these descriptions just misses epical pathos by a hair, hurtling into the territory of sheer comicality. The humor is particularly pronounced when the announcement of God’s impending victory turns out to be, well, “fake news”: The high places resounded with hymns of joy; the Seraphim celebrated on harp and psaltry Sabaoth, God of Thunder. The voice of the elect united with those of the angels in glorifying the Invisible, and at the thought of the bloodshed that the ministers of holy wrath had caused among the rebels, sighs of relief and jubilation were wafted from the Heavenly Jerusalem toward the Most High. But the beatitude of the most blessed, having swelled to the utmost limit before due time, could increase no more, and the very excess of their felicity completely dulled their senses. The songs had not yet ceased when the guards watching on the ramparts signaled the approach of the first fugitives of the divine army; Seraphim on tattered wing, flying in disorder, maimed Kerubs going on three feet. With impassive gaze, Michael, prince of the warriors, measured the extent of the disaster, and his keen intelligence penetrated its causes. The armies of the living God had taken the offensive, but by one of those fatalities in war which disconcert the plans of the greatest captains, the enemy had also taken the offensive, and the effect was evident. (205)

90  Christian religious comedy In this parody of the Battle in Heaven, France makes it appear that God’s faction wins again, only to undercut this narrative by a sudden reversal. Too wrapped up in self-adulation and complacent optimism, the heavenly host all but forgets that the opposing side might do more than defend its positions. In any case, the description of the limping, tattered, beaten celestial army is superbly ironic. But more ironies are in store for the reader. First of all, we soon realize that this renewed battle in heaven did not really happen at all. Rather, the entire scene was merely a dream vision conjured up in Satan’s mind. Within this dream, Satan  – the dreamer  – envisions what would happen after the defeat of the heavenly host. At first, Satan “saw with ravishment the Most High precipitated into Hell, and Satan seated on the throne of the Lord” (206). But the sequel of this victory is a reinstatement of all the vices that had heretofore characterized the rule of Yahweh/Ialdabaoth: despotism, disregard for justice, self-adulation, corruption. The winners act in a manner utterly distasteful to an anarchist: “God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God” (208). Any position of power corrupts, as the victorious revolutionaries merely exchange one “God” for another.5 France ends the story on a strong note of philosophical anarchism, suggesting that victory can only be achieved if the defeat of “Ialdabaoth, our Tyrant,” means that “in ourselves we have destroyed Ignorance and Fear” (208). This outcome reflects a key principle of philosophical anarchism, i.e. that collective social and political change is predicated upon a change of individual consciousness. The last words of the novel, spoken by Satan, reinforce this message: “We were conquered because we failed to understand that Victory is a Spirit, and that it is in ourselves and in ourselves alone that we must attack and destroy Ialdabaoth” (208). This ending of Revolt of the Angels makes a concession to didacticism. Here the hilarity and playfulness of the earlier parts of the novel give way to a tone of philosophical wisdom literature, while the plot turns into an object lesson of anarchist principles. Contrary to Candide and The Mysterious Stranger – two texts ending on a note of disillusionment and withdrawal from the world – France trumpets the good news that it is OK to embrace the “demonic” qualities of play, laughter, art, and pleasure – all of which are boons bestowed by Satan’s forces upon humanity. We do not need atheist revolution, militant iconoclasm, or violent deicide to free ourselves from the shackles of religious dogmas. All we need is a personal affirmation of humanistic principles as well as plenty of scientific rationalism and humor in order to create a value system that has no need of supernatural agents, including Satan. Indeed, this is the devil’s ultimate wisdom and his most lasting gift, enabling us to free ourselves even from Satan himself, along with all other supernatural entities, religious leaders, and coercive ecclesiastical and worldly authorities. All three works, i.e. Candide, The Mysterious Stranger, and Revolt of the Angels, make heavy use of liminal humor, both in the sense of

A chronicle of triumph 91 sheer playfulness, as manifested in their fanciful, completely unrealistic, fictional frameworks, while delivering satirical messages in the subversive register of Liminal 2 humor. The principal comical targets differ somewhat: In Candide they include ecclesiastical corruption, hypocritical clerics, religious violence, intolerance, naïveté, and, of course, the philosophy of optimism and its theological correlate. Twain’s main targets include religious violence (especially witch hunts), intolerance, superstition, hypocrisy, gullibility, and conformity, which he presents as effects of religious institutions and conformist thinking. Anatole France rises to a different level, targeting specific Judeo-Christian beliefs. Echoing a motive from Lucian, he makes his angels so ludicrous as to suggest that anyone believing in God and his minions is likely to believe in anything. But there is also a secular angle to France’s satirical attacks, with his comical aim directed against Marxist revolutionary politics as well. With remarkable foresight, France predicted the outcome of the Marxist revolution in Russia. Arguably, the rebel angel who overthrows God in Satan’s dream is no less despotic than the “demon” (i.e. Joseph Stalin) who installed himself in place of the Russian tsar, wielding absolute power after the defeat of the previous ruler. As we shall see in the next section, the experience of World War I made it impossible for comedic writers to continue in this detached, high-concept mode of ironic playfulness. Jaroslav Hašek brings out the knives in his comedy shop, and he takes no prisoners, neither when it comes to the emperor of the realm nor regarding the dignitaries of the Church or the cosmic authority of God. In The Good Soldier Švejk, partisan and mercilessly subversive comical attacks become the order of the day.

Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923): The Good Soldier Švejk While Anatole France’s sophisticated comedy is based on the hypothetical premise of a renewed war in heaven (a scenario heavily satirizing the Marxist call for a proletarian revolution), another contemporary anarchist, the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, wrote a much harsher, brashly satirical novel that ridicules systems of authority anchored in both worldly and religious affairs. In The Good Soldier Švejk (1921–1923), set during World War I, Hašek mocks the insanity of military bureaucracy, critiques chauvinistic warmongering, ridicules the Habsburg monarchy, attacks the integrity of the Christian faith, and exposes to scornful laughter the unsavory alliance between Church and military. During World War I, major church organizations in England and on the Continent demonstrated “unquestioned advocacy of war” (Houlihan). Priests joined the army as chaplains by the hundreds (more than 1,500 served in the British Expeditionary Force in 19186), ministering to the wounded and dying as well as reinforcing morale and encouraging the troops to fight. In all belligerent nations, the churches helped to whip up

92  Christian religious comedy nationalistic sentiment and thereby contributed to the ferocity and prolongation of the war. Priests frequently sermonized about the nobility of the war effort and encouraged young men to enlist in the army. Each side believed it represented true Christianity, characterizing the other side as followers of the Antichrist or Satan’s brood – hence, Philip Jenkin’s argument that World War I was in some sense a “holy war.”7 According to Houlihan, the “ ‘just war’ bellicosity of the clergy mattered greatly” because it blinded people to the possibilities of non-military courses of action. The bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, made it clear where the Church stood with respect to the war effort: “The good old British race never did a more Christ-like thing than when, on August 4, 1914, it went to war” (Hoover 71). In Germany, “Pastors preached everywhere that Germany was the victim of Britain’s lies and jealousy, but that God was on the side of truth” (Hastie). Hastie sums up the devastating impact of the pro-war stance of ecclesiastical organizations throughout Europe during World War I: “The support for the war by virtually all churches and churchmen meant governments had little pressure on them to negotiate for peace. They were able to borrow money from their people and draft large numbers of workers, including women, into producing arms without reducing the number of men on the battlefield. All countries therefore fought only for victory” (Hastie). Each side sincerely believed that they stood for what was right, and they unapologetically invoked God and Christianity to legitimate their call to arms and justify the ongoing bloodshed. Hašek’s mordant satire of military life comes out of his own service as an infantryman for the Habsburg-Austrian army. He participated in the army despite his hatred of the Habsburg Empire’s bureaucracy and regardless of his many brushes with the law. As a young anarchist who lectured to working-class crowds and edited an anarchist periodical, Hašek was on the surveillance list of the imperial secret service and was repeatedly detained for questioning. The scenes of chicanery, surveillance, and imprisonment at the beginning of The Good Soldier Švejk are a direct reflection of Hašek’s own experience. After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Hašek was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and joined their ranks in February 1915. He served at the front in Galicia (today’s Ukraine) and was honored with a medal for bravery. Several of the principal characters in the novel and many incidents described therein are fictionalized versions of Hašek’s personal memories of his time in the army. Because of Hašek’s personal exposure to the madness of war, The Good Soldier Sveijk does not dwell on hypothetical comical scenarios but rather employs direct satire that goes for the jugular. At times, Hašek’s own voice pierces the fictional frame, e.g. when he delivers a searing indictment of the collusion between religion and bloody warfare: Preparations for the slaughter of human beings have always been made in the name of God or of some alleged higher being which mankind has,

A chronicle of triumph 93 in its imaginativeness, devised and created. Before the ancient Phoenicians cut a captive’s throat, they performed religious ceremonies with just the same magnificence as did the new generations a few thousand years later before they marched into battle and destroyed their enemies with fire and sword. (KL 1788–1791) It’s not that these things have not been said before, but perhaps they have not been said quite so caustically. One can only imagine Voltaire, Twain, and France nodding their heads in collective agreement at the following statement by Hašek’s narrator: The shambles of the World War would have been incomplete without the blessings of the clergy. The chaplains of all armies prayed and celebrated mass for the victory of the side whose bread they ate. A  priest was in attendance when mutineers were executed. A  priest put in his appearance at the execution of Czech legionaries. Throughout Europe, men went to the shambles like cattle, whither they were driven by butchers, who included not only emperors, kings and other potentates, but also priests of all denominations. Mass at the front was always held twice. When a contingent was moving up to the front line and then again before going over the top, before the bloodshed and slaughter. I remember that on one such occasion, while mass was being celebrated, an enemy aeroplane dropped a bomb right on top of the altar and nothing was left of the Chaplain but a few bloodstained rags. Afterward he was mentioned in dispatches as a martyr, while our aeroplanes were preparing similar glory for the Chaplain on the other side. (KL 1802–1809) The anger practically overwhelms everything else, with vestiges of comedy glimpsed only in a few sarcasms like the bit about the “glory” of blowing up an enemy chaplain. This tirade is motivated by a righteous revulsion against the indiscriminate butchery of World War I, with Hašek protesting the failure of Christian institutions to live up to their mission to promote peace and try to stop the bloodshed. Hašek paints the Church as a cynical accomplice in war crimes, a kind of fire accelerator rather than a humanizing force that would serve to douse the flames of war. Hašek takes satirical revenge against what he saw as the deeply corrupt religious institutions of his day. One way he vented his spleen against religious institutions is by turning an army chaplain in the ranks of the Austrian-Hungarian army, Otto Katz, into one of the most despicable characters of the book. This chaplain is described as an utterly dissolute, unprincipled, debauched individual. In one scene, he keeps haranguing the soldiers, going on about their sins, while he himself is visibly inebriated. On another

94  Christian religious comedy occasion, Hašek maximizes the farcical appeal of anti-Christian comedy by describing the religious imagery painted on a field altar used by Katz: The altar consisted of three parts, liberally provided with sham gilding, like the glory of the Holy Church as a whole. It was not possible, without a good deal of imagination, to discover what the pictures, painted on these three parts, actually represented. There was only one figure which stood out prominently. It consisted of a naked man with a halo and a body turning green. On either side of him were two winged creatures, intended to represent angels. They looked like legendary monsters, a cross between a wildcat with wings and the apocalyptic beast. Opposite this group was an effigy depicting the Holy Trinity. On the whole, the painter had let the dove off lightly. He had drawn a bird which might have been a dove or might equally well have been a female wyandotte. God the Father, on the other hand, looked like a bandit from the Wild West, as seen in a thrilling crook film. The Son, to counterbalance this, was a jolly young man with a well-developed corporation, draped in something which resembled bathing drawers. Altogether, he produced the impression of being a devotee of sport. In his hand was a cross, which he held with as much elegance as if it had been a tennis racket. (KL 1877–1885) In such passages, Hašek employs high burlesque comedy with liminal, subversive effects. Indeed, the “sham gilding” on the field altar is directly associated with the inauthenticity he associates with the entire Holy Church. In the above passage, religious boundaries are tested by subverting the traditional reverence due to the persons of the Christian Trinity. Instead of faithfully capturing the spirit of Christianity, these devotional paintings appear to Švejk to portray God as a “bandit from the Wild West,” while Jesus resembles a “jolly young man [wearing] bathing drawers,” holding a cross like a tennis racket. But even while these burlesque descriptions seem to be straightforward comical distortions, there is another way of looking at them. Could it be that they are funny because they do capture an appropriate sense of incongruity? Perhaps, associating the proud, irascible, and violent God of the Hebrew Bible with an outlaw is not entirely out of line. And what about Jesus in bathing drawers? Well, if he is really a divine figure, somebody may argue, why did he not take a dip in the River Jordan, instead of accepting the Roman court’s verdict of crucifixion? The carnival spirit of such irreverent descriptions creates an imaginary world of topsy-turvy possibilities that collides with traditional Christian teachings. The figure of Švejk, who precipitates these unheard of possibilities, is the very incarnation of liminality. One never knows on what side of sanity, integrity, and truth he stands. In a sense, Švejk illustrates Peter Berger’s principle of the holy fool as the agent who precipitates a counterworld because “the madness of the fool is now seen to be the infinitely more profound

A chronicle of triumph 95 truth” (195). This is one way of describing liminality, which fundamentally tests and disturbs conventional boundaries. Specifically, Švejk’s behavior consistently calls into question the boundaries between sanity and insanity, sincerity and insincerity, reality and appearance. At times Hašek transforms Švejk almost literally into a holy fool. For instance, when Otto Katz wants to hold a field mass, he hires Švejk to serve as his ministrant. Because Švejk does not know the liturgy, the Chaplain directs him hither and tither during the mass by whistling commands. The effect is a kind of clownish religious performance: Those who were close to the centre of operations wondered very much why the Chaplain whistled while he was officiating. Schweik showed a smart mastery of the signals. He walked to the right-hand side of the altar, the next moment he was on the left, and all he kept saying was: “Et cum spiritu tuo.” It looked like a Red Indian war dance round a sacrificial stone. But it produced a satisfactory effect by relieving the boredom of the dusty, dismal exercise ground with its avenues of plum-trees at the back, and the latrines, the odour of which replaced the mystical perfume of incense in Gothic churches. (KL 1922) The foolishness of mechanically going through the motions of a meaningless ritual is mirrored in the attitude of the congregation, including both officers and soldiers. The reference to a “Red Indian” war dance accentuates a picture of incongruity which is rounded off as follows: The officers standing round the Colonel were telling each other stories, and this was as it should be. Here and there among the rank-and-file could be heard the words, “Give us a puff.” And blue clouds of tobacco smoke arose like the smoke of a burnt offering from the assembled companies. All the N.C.O.s started smoking when they saw that the Colonel himself had lit up. At last came the order: “Let us pray.” There was a whirl of dust and a gray rectangle of uniforms bowed the knee before Lieutenant Wittinger’s challenge cup, which he won as a representative of the Favourite Sports Club in the Vienna-Môdling cross-country Marathon. (KL 1923–1927) This description of the mass has more than a little of the carnivalesque about it. Indeed, what we have here looks very much like an updated version of the festum stultorum, i.e. a modern reenactment of the medieval Feast of Fools. The medieval Feast of Fools was an annual religious tradition with particularly strong roots in France and Spain. The festival, which centered on the holy days of the ceremonial calendar around Christmastime and New Year, included a number of distinct practices and rituals: a boy bishop or

96  Christian religious comedy “Lord of Misrule” was elected and then processually carried through the town; there were sacred dances held in the nave of the church; a ceremonially decked out ass was brought into the church, surrounded by priests following a scripted ritual; and there were other traditions involving singing and masking. All these practices brought a measure of levity, joy, celebration, role playing, and inversion into the otherwise solemn religious rites of the congregants. As Max Harris argues in his seminal study Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (2011), these rituals were largely intended to serve devotional purposes, although excesses did occur. It was the excesses that detractors of the tradition highlighted, depicting the Feast of Fools as an occasion of disorder and subversion, and even of blasphemy. The most famous denunciation of the Feast of Fools was penned in 1445, by theologians of the University of Paris: “They sing wanton songs. They eat black pudding at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they . . . rouse the laughter of their fellows and bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and verses scurrilous and unchaste” (quoted in Harris 2). It appears that Hašek was familiar with this view of the Feast of Fools and that he liked it because of its comical appeal. Arguably, his depraved army chaplain, Otto Katz, acts in ways that are consistent with a profane Lord of Misrule. For one thing, this man flatly denies the existence of God in private, making a complete mockery of his subsequent shows of devotion. For another, he employs the bumbling Švejk as his ministrant during the field mass, thus hiring a suspected lunatic to perform a key liturgical role. Then there’s the fake reliquary (a sports trophy serves as the monstrance), the field altar bears farcical depictions of holy images, the congregants engage in loose talk while the service is ongoing, and they smoke cigars during the ceremony. By contrast with the medieval Feast of Fools, which was generally intended to communicate devotional joy, Hašek’s debased religious service turns into an open farce without any redemptive value. There is not a spark of piety among the congregants, from high to low. And while the Feast of Fools represented only a temporary relaxation of religious solemnity, Hašek’s carnivalesque mass stands for a permanent state of religious affairs in a world devoid of real grace and penance. The Great War had affected everything, and there was not one noble ideal or sacred object that remained untarnished by the general sense of hopelessness, inhumanity, and destruction. In Hašek’s view, the only adequate response to the unlimited carnage and madness of the war was to hold a carnivalesque mirror up to the insanity of the world. In this sense, his humor is very “hard,” indeed, engaged in harshly critical Liminal 2 humor as well as, occasionally dipping into boundary-hardening Entrenchment 2 sarcasms. Because the fulcrum of Hašek’s comedy, i.e. the good soldier is such a slippery and ambivalent figure who confounds all normative categories, he can

A chronicle of triumph 97 therefore not serve as a vehicle for entrenching humor. That’s why Hašek normally breaks the fictional frame to deliver a piece of aggressive entrenchment humor in his own voice, such as when he mocks the church as a whole or when he attacks the Habsburg dynasty. Except for such didactic passages of political vitriol, the vast majority of Hašek’s jokes are of the liminal variety, and especially of the ironic and subversive (Liminal 2) kind. As the ultimate fool, Švejk defies countless boundaries and conventions, including boundaries of decency and “good breeding,” as well as boundaries of sanity and insanity, cleverness and stupidity, devotion and sacrilege. Although Švejk appears to be a genuine idiot, it is equally likely that he feigns stupidity in order to subvert the coercive authority of the state and to negate the power of religious institutions. This makes him a slippery, unclassifiable, and utterly subversive figure, a trickster rather than a clown. The indeterminacy of his character even includes aspects that link him to Christ. Early in the story, we read that “Švejk carried his cross up on the hill of Golgotha, sublimely unconscious of his martyrdom” (19). The connection is further elaborated in Chapter 3, where Hašek invokes the Gospel according to Matthew: “The glorious times of Roman rule over Jerusalem were coming back. The prisoners were led out and brought before the Pontius Pilate of 1914 down on the ground floor. And the examining magistrates, the Pilates of modern times, instead of honorably washing their hands, sent to Teissig’s for goulash and Pilsen beer and passed more and more indictments to the Director of Prosecutions” (24). But rather than elevating Švejk to the level of saintliness, this connection goes instead the other way, hollowing out the concept of holiness by associating it with such an earthy, unspiritual, and profane character as Švejk. As one critic has noted, “We can observe here a double parody or two stages of a parodic development: Hašek first makes Švejk into a parody of Jesus, then he strips his Jesus-figure of any faith or religion” (Arie-Gaifman 210). A more subversive procedure can hardly be imagined, as the Christ-like lamb, Švejk, reveals himself to be a resolutely secular savior with not a holy bone in him. The time was obviously ripe for such subversive comedy because Hašek’s contemporary audience gobbled up his writings. The Good Soldier Švejk proved to be immensely popular both in its original, illustrated text version, and in numerous adaptations on stage, film, and in cartoons, making the good soldier into a fixture of modern folklore. Hašek’s contemporaries were famished for laughter, and the comedy that this anarchist humorist gave them was aimed at pushing back against any system of power including the military, the empire, the Church, not excluding the power of God. As one critic noted, “Play and laughter emerge from Hašek’s novel as the only hope for humanity” (Arie-Gaifman 210). But it is a an utterly unholy kind of laughter that leaves not a single piety intact, whether it be charity, patriotism, heroism, or the Christian faith. Laughter is the radical leveler here, and Hašek’s comprehensive comedy hits each imaginable worldly target, from the cowardly soldier, to the agent provocateur, to the magistrate and the

98  Christian religious comedy army commander, even to the emperor himself. In terms of religious targeting, he aims his comedy equally at the lowest objects (individual believers) as well as at clergy, scripture, the deity, and Christianity as a whole – the entire spectrum, just like Twain and France before him. Hašek’s irreverent satire provided widespread cathartic relief. But his savage comedy was not welcome by representatives of authority. One commentator notes that “The Good Soldier Švejk was a provocative, mickey-taking book8 and was removed from Czechoslovak army libraries in 1925, the Polish translation was confiscated in 1928, and it was suppressed in Bulgaria. The German translation burned on Nazi bonfires in 1933” (Chilton). Chilton goes on to say that “The power of Švejk to subvert continued long after the author’s death. Gustáv Husák, the general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, who replaced the Prague Spring reformer Alexander Dubček in 1968, told the people in the late 1970s to ‘stop Švejking!” ’ Thus, Hašek’s work can be added to the list of censored, “dangerous” religious comedies in the West, a list that includes Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tartuffe, and Candide, i.e. works that defied current norms of piety and leveraged laughter to test the boundaries of taste, authority, and belief. It is easy to consume Hašek’s comedy purely based on its playful, “soft” Liminal 1 kind of drollery and situation comedy. Indeed, I  have myself enjoyed the clowning aspects of Švejk performances as a child before I was even aware of its undercurrent of sharp, didactic, aggressive humor. Another way of putting it is that under the guise of mere clowning, this book delivers a steady supply of “hard” humor aimed at subverting not only the Church and its servants, but also the underlying worldly power system that props up the ecclesiastical structure. Indeed, Hašek has nothing but withering scorn for Franz Joseph I, referring to him as a “bastard Austrian he-louse” (380). Ironically, the military medical board charged with assessing Švejk’s mental fitness takes Švejk’s public declaration “long live emperor Franz Joseph!” as a sign of his insanity. And when outlining the general incompetence of an Austrian army commander, the narrator states that “if we analyze his mental capacities, we reach the conclusion that they were not one wit better than those which had made the big-lipped Franz Joseph Hapsburg celebrated as a patent idiot. In each you found the same torrent of words, the same store of colossal naivety” (202). Whether this withering depiction of the emperor is fair or not is beside the point (by general consensus, Franz Joseph was a rather decent man). Coming from a member of the exploited Czech minority who was pressed into military service against a country that was not his natural foe, such a vitriolic depiction of the emperor served as much a nationalistic as it did a therapeutic purpose. Hašek’s novel struck a nerve with his contemporaries because his visceral, aggressive humor brought comical relief to the exhausted, depleted, and disillusioned population of Czechoslovakia and later of Europe at large. By aiming his subversive satirical pen directly against real (rather than imaginary, divine) power structures, Hašek arguably achieved a greater,

A chronicle of triumph 99 more direct result than Anatole France did with his urbane, highbrow satire. Indeed, while Revolt of the Angels is out of print in the English speaking world, The Good Soldier Švejk still lingers in the popular imagination as a literary classic featuring the quintessential 20th-century buffoon. Granted, Hašek’s satire did not snuff out rapacious imperialism, end bureaucratic inhumanity, or curb religious hypocrisy and ecclesiastical chauvinism, but he helped to disgrace these tendencies and put them on guard. While both Anatole France and Hašek were clearly on the right side of history, and while both unleashed irreverent comedies to reflect and attack abuses and follies deeply embedded in the fabric of their societies and in the larger political scene, Hašek’s work simply aligned more closely with a general zeitgeist which allowed his humorous critiques to gain more traction in the long run even down to the present moment. As the quintessential proletarian shapeshifter, the good soldier Švejk has become an international icon of liminality, who uses laughter as a method of both resistance and survival under extremely adverse conditions.

James Morrow (b. 1947): The Godhead Trilogy James Morrow’s Godhead Trilogy (1994–1999) is a tour de force of religious humor comprised of irreverence, blasphemy, anti-clerical mockery, theological satire, and secular humanist philosophy. With its compendious religious thematic and eclectic range of styles, the trilogy constitutes a remarkable contemporary instance of Menippean satire. Thematically, Morrow’s trilogy is somewhat loosely connected, with few characters migrating from one novel into the other. Thematically, though, the series holds together, its narrative arc tracing a development from the discovery of God’s literal demise (Towing Jehovah) to the trilogy’s high point, a philosophically profound and hilarious updating of the story of Job (Blameless in Abaddon), to the dark mood of a post-theistic world descending into collective morbidity (The Eternal Footman). The first book of Morrow’s trilogy, Towing Jehovah (1994), begins with a latter-day annunciation by Raphael. The arch-angel informs a certain Anthony Van Horne, a former mega-tanker captain, that God had fallen from the sky, dead, and was now drifting in the Atlantic Ocean. Raphael urges Van Horne to take the helm of the largest, most powerful ship on earth to tow God’s body to the Arctic, where it was to be preserved in a gigantic ice tomb. The practicality with which the captain faces the task of towing the two-mile-long body of God across the ocean, turns the novel’s premise into ripe material for comedy: “ ‘Big sucker, eh?’ he said, staring at the photos. ‘Two miles long, Raphael told me. About the size of downtown Wilkes-Barre.’ He dragged the edge of his hand among the blurry corpse. ‘Small for a city, large for a person’ ” (32–33). The incongruity of referring to God as a “big sucker” and comparing his size with “downtown WilkesBarre,” a third-tier former mining town in Pennsylvania, could hardly be

100  Christian religious comedy topped. Indeed, the practical (and nautical) ramifications of the towing project are again and again delivering material for hilarious (and, some may say, “outrageous”) comedy, as crew members of the supertanker step on God’s body and explore its various features, as if it were a floating island in Gulliver’s Travels. During one of these expeditions, a Jesuit by the name of Thomas Ockham9 drives a jeep over God’s body, remarking along that way that “an ordinary car – his Honda Civic, for example – would have been defeated by now, hung up on a pimple or mired in a pore. It all sounded like an announcement you’d see emblazoned outside some run-down Evangelical church in Memphis. Today’s sermon: It takes a four-wheel drive to really know the Lord” (115). Morrow gets a lot of comical mileage out of the idea of taking divine anthropomorphism to its last consequence: The Wrangler bucked and lurched but stayed on course, looping steadily eastward into the mustache. Twin caverns rose before them, the great yawning tunnels through which their cargo [i.e. God] had once breathed and sneezed. “To be honest” – Miriam stared into the moist depths – “I’m learning more than I care to.” “Quite so,” said Thomas, grimacing. Marshes of mucus, boulders of dried snot, nose hairs the size of obelisks. This was not the Lord God of Hosts they’d grown up with. (119) Neither, we may add, is it the God that religious humorists have heretofore considered to be a legitimate object of comedy. But it gets better yet (or worse, depending on one’s sensibilities), as both the Jeep and the comedy turn south. Driving down God’s torso, Ockham pauses “atop the abdomen to behold the great veiny cylinder floating between the legs” (115). This might be seen as a purely gratuitous form of sacrilege, except that the subject of God’s penis is precisely not pointless. Rather, it becomes the subject of theological speculation: A God without a penis would be a limited God, a God to whom some possibility had been closed, hence not God at all. In a way it was rather noble of Him to have endorsed this most controversial of organs. Inevitably Thomas thought of Paul’s beautiful First Letter to the Corinthians: “And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor.” (116) Divine anthropomorphism has deep roots in Christian iconography, and one is justified to wonder whether the thought crossed Michelangelo’s mind whether God’s human form was endowed in the masculine organ underneath the purple robes he was painting. What is visible in Michaelangelo’s depiction of the Almighty in the Sistine Chapel is a slight indentation of

A chronicle of triumph 101 his dress where the navel is. Of course, a God with a navel conflicts with the ex nihilo conception of the divinity. Similarly, the issue of God’s navel in Morrow’s story prompts some theological soul searching, raising questions about religious iconography and especially about divine anthropomorphism. One imagines Morrow thinking “let’s take the idea of God as a ‘Him,’ a ‘person,’ a larger-than-life human to the last consequence and look at it very closely.” As Bakhtin has argued, laughter functions like a magnifying glass, bringing things that normally exist at a distance within close range: Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into the zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from above and below, break open its external shell, look into its center, doubt it, take it apart, dismember it, lay it bare and expose it, examine it freely and experiment with it. Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object. (Dialogic Imagination 23) When a member of the crew who is towing the divine corpse across the Atlantic beholds God’s enormous navel, a train of thought ensues that is both humorous because of its incongruous subject matter and “serious” because it prompts a legitimate theological train of thought: At first blush, of course, their cargo’s navel held no more teleological meaning than its warts . . . and yet something about this particular feature, with its clear implications of a previous generation, had aroused in Thomas an uncharacteristic optimism. Did a navel not herald a Creator’s Creator? Did it not bespeak a God before God?  .  .  . Dropping to his knees, he ran his palm along the epidermis, searching for some clue that an umbilicus had once towered, sequoialike, from this spot – evidence of a proto-Deity, sign of a pre-Creator, proof of an unimaginable placenta floating through the Milky Way like an emission nebula. (156) This humor straddles both the “soft” and “hard” divide of liminality: it is at once extremely playful and imaginative while at the same time pushing the boundaries of irreverence. Passages such as this demonstrate why religion is so supremely receptive to comical treatments. Figuratively, James Morrow went right up to the border between physicality and transcendent divinity and pushed the border resolutely toward the finite, physical end of the spectrum. This could be perceived as a subversive ploy, but in actual fact, the playfulness of Morrow’s speculative thinking outweighs the subversive content of his descriptions. The images of a “sequoialike” umbilical cord and a placenta the size of an “emission nebula” are primarily intended to

102  Christian religious comedy give aesthetic pleasure. Although some readers might balk at the irreverent implications of this type of literal anthropomorphism, what Morrow is helping us realize is that representing the deity in anthropomorphic terms always contains the seeds of sacrilege. With this in mind, it is understandable why Islam so scrupulously resists any form of anthropomorphism with regard to Allah and the Prophet, because the indecorous – and humorous – possibilities implied in the process of establishing a divine iconography are very real. By depicting the divine in human form, complete with hands, feet, legs, arms (hairy armpits?), nose, ears, and teeth (with fillings?), etc., the first step toward a comical distortion of the idea of divinity has already been taken. It can be argued, with Bakhtin, that any anthropomorphism implies a comical dimension by bringing the divine down to the human level. Towing Jehovah goes on piling sophisticated absurdities upon one another, including a scene where the half-starved crew of the supertanker towing God’s corpse is cutting some choice filets from God’s body and barbecuing them while the priest in attendance recites the ritual prayer accompanying Communion (“Let not the partaking of Thy body, O Lord . . . turn to my condemnation”); there is a raid on the “cargo” of the supertanker, with bombs tearing huge chunks out of God’s body followed by sharks feasting on the lacerated flesh; and in the end, the funeral oration over God’s torn and violated body, given by a religious skeptic, contains this piece of faint praise: “You were not a very good man, God, but You were a very good ­wizard, and for that I, even I, give You my gratitude” (353). This is designed to push the boundary quite resolutely toward total irreverence, but iconoclasm is not Morrow’s sole objective. As in the work of religious humorists who went before him, irreverent comedy is an act of radical perspective shifting that serves as an entry point into theological speculations. Indeed, as God’s mangled body is entombed in a sarcophagus of ice in the Arctic region, one of the participants at this event says that “it is perhaps the ordeal of Job that best allows me to articulate how rationalists such as myself felt about our cargo” (352). The rationalist saying this is a stand-in for the author since the next installment of the Godhead Trilogy – Blameless in Abaddon – is indeed one long speculation on the “ways of God to man” from the point of view of a modern Job figure. It may seem counter-intuitive to invoke the story of Job as a springboard for comedy, and yet several comical works have been written that are more or less loosely based on the story of the blameless man from the land of Uz, including Archibald MacLeish’s play titled J.B., Robert Heinlein’s novel JOB: A Comedy of Justice, and, to some degree, Elie Wiesel’s The Trial of God. What all these works have in common is that they are, more or less, parodies of the Book of Job. And Morrow’s story is perhaps the greatest of all Job parodies, offering incisive, thoughtful, and yet humorous explorations of questions surrounding the existence of God (and the devil), the problem of evil, and the chances of human flourishing.

A chronicle of triumph 103 Biblical scholarship considers the Book of Job as one of the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible, with an estimated date of composition sometime in the sixth century BCE. The Book of Job is one of the most beloved books of the Bible, not only because of its magnificent poetry, which shines even after translation, but also because it touches on one of the biggest human conundrums: Why do good people suffer misfortunes? Can humans ever comprehend God’s will, and what if they feel the urge to communicate with Him? The plot of the Book of Job is well known: An honest, industrious, kind, and pious man by the name of Job is suddenly struck by one misfortune after another: all his property is destroyed, his cattle are wiped out, his children are killed, his body is afflicted with sores. Seeing no rhyme or reason in these sudden misfortunes, Job first laments the day he was born, wishing he had never seen the light of day, and then he tries to make sense of it all by talking to four of his friends. But his advisors have little of real value to say to him, mainly reiterating that the misfortunes that befell Job must be divine reprisal for something he had done, even if he was not aware of having sinned. Failing to find solace, Job gets angry and sends his friends away, then loudly demands that God himself provide an explanation. At this point, God reveals himself to Job in the form of a whirlwind, hectoring him not to demand divine justice, seeing how small and insignificant Job was compared to the almighty power of God. Job falls silent after this harangue and stops protesting. As reward for his steadfastness, God gives Job renewed prosperity, he blesses his enterprises with success, and he grants him a new set of children. Conventional interpretations of the Book of Job use this narrative as an object lesson in how to deal with unexpected and (seemingly) undeserved suffering. Early in the story, while he is not yet afflicted with sickness, Job had already acquiesced to his misfortune by saying that “God giveth and God taketh away, Praised be the name of the Lord.” This stance is considered by many the take-away lesson from the Book of Job. A less pious approach would point out that the whole sequence of calamitous events was, unbeknownst to Job, set into motion because God wanted to prove a point to Satan, sort of like a wager. Satan had challenged God’s sense of pride by saying that Job was only such a model servant of God because things were going well for him. God then decided to turn Job into an object lesson of steadfast devotion, testing his faith in every way imaginable. Thus, the notion that Satan is responsible for Job’s misfortunes is wholly wrong. God alone is responsible for the calamities that befall Job; Satan is merely God’s intermediary, harrying Job with God’s explicit permission. When Job’s faith remains steadfast after the first round of misfortunes, God again explicitly permits Satan to afflict Job with additional torments, as long as he does not kill him. All this is a consequence of God’s desire to prove Satan wrong. One may argue that “all ends well in this story,” but that simply overlooks the fact that countless human beings and animals

104  Christian religious comedy were butchered in the pursuit of God winning his wager with Satan. Death and destruction occurred because of God’s prideful boast to Satan. The plot of Blameless in Abaddon centers on the vicissitudes of Martin Candle, a middle-aged, moderately conservative judge in the Pennsylvania town of Abaddon. He is our stand-in for Job. Shortly into the story, this upright and popular, though somewhat mediocre, man is struck by one misfortune after another, starting with his diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer, followed by the demise of his beloved wife in a freak accident, followed by the end of his career, followed by the destruction of his home, etc. Sensing that his life is turning into a re-enactment of Job’s story, Martin right away breaks with the Jobian script and goes on the offensive. He founds the “Job Society” to attract fellow sufferers who are willing to prosecute the comatose body of God at the International Court of Law in The Hague in a class action suit. These modern-day “Jobians” aim to convict God for lethal incompetence and criminal neglect, including, possibly, plain malevolence. There is not much that is funny about the proceedings so far, but the wide range of Morrow’s style has room for both genuine laments à la Job and for genuine humor. We know we’re reading a surreal comedy when it becomes apparent that a fact-finding mission in the run-up to the trial includes going inside God’s cranium. Martin Candle is selected to join a small band of fellow “neuronauts” who head into God’s head in order to search for answers to some of humanity’s perennial conundrums. On the basis of this fantastical premise, some of the most hilarious scenes of Blameless in Abaddon unfold. Due to a platonic conceptual twist in this fictional world, the “neuronauts” who enter God’s gigantic brain are greeted by platonic ideas floating around, including the idea of Lot, Noah, Isaac, Abraham, Job, and Saint Augustine. Martin Candle, who idolizes Job, is naturally thrilled to meet his hero (that is, the “idea” of Job). Like the biblical original, the idea of Job sits on a dunghill, albeit a strangely updated one, littered with “blenders, toasters, and washing machines” (198). Also, instead of scratching his sores with pottery shards, Job is “scraping himself with a Tupperware lid” (198). This is pure Liminal 1 comedy based on playful incongruity. In addition to the situational incongruity, the scene is rife with conceptual incongruities as well based on Martin Candle’s run-ins with Job, Noah, Saint Augustine, and other notables. There is plenty of verbal comedy, too, as when Candle addresses Job with the words “the faith of Job can move mountains,” to which Job replies drily “if not dung heaps!” (198). But then Liminal 1 play subtly yields to Liminal 2 irony when Job helps Martin Candle defeat the very rationalizations of evil and suffering that the Judeo-Christian theodicies offer in the name of Job. Because the Book of Job is the go-to portion of the Bible to answer those who would question the wisdom of God when faced with undeserved or random suffering, Job is practically synonymous with theodicy. Morrow

A chronicle of triumph 105 boldly reverses this scenario by giving us a biblical Job bent on disproving theodicy. Here Morrow departs radically from pious readings of the story of Job by turning its conventional “lesson” upside down. Just like Martin Candle (the modern Job figure), the Platonic idea of Job himself is advocating revolt against God’s supposed wisdom, forswearing meek resignation. As a secular humanist, Morrow does not have to watch his mouth (or pen) to avoid violating a creed, he does not have to stay within the boundaries of reverence, and his misotheistic protagonist does not have to “repent in dust and ashes” as Job did (42:6). Yet, this subversive scenario resonates with what the radical theologians Charles Campbell and Johan Cilliers call the Christian rhetoric of folly. In their book Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly (2012), Campbell and Cilliers follow in Kierkegaard’s footsteps insofar as they promote a view of Christianity as essentially humorous. But they go further than Kierkegaard in the explicitness of this claim, including their ­characterization of Christ as a trickster or “holy fool.” Consequently, they see plenty of evidence for what they call the “rhetoric of folly” in the gospels, including elements of parody, irony, and playfulness. The authors sum up their key concept as follows: Like the gospel itself, the rhetoric of folly interrupts and unsettles normative discourse in order to unmask the old age and open a space where the new creation might be perceived. Such rhetoric is unsettled and liminal, playful and creative, open – never closed. It is the opposite of iron rhetoric and iron theology and circled wagons, all of which seek stability, control, security – and usually domination. A rhetoric of folly does not operate with maxims and does not eternalize; it is open to others and flourishes among fragments, in the bifocal spaces created by paradoxes and metaphors, parody and irony.” (216, my emphasis) In this view, the gospels are a powerful repository of multiple perspectives and playful, ironic attitudes, even as they eschew petrified dogmas and authoritarian tendencies. In other words, Campbell and Cilliers claim that the gospels represent a liminal discourse. As in my own use of the term, their notion of “liminality” encapsulates the condition of being on a threshold or inhabiting a space of transition: “Scripture is replete with experiences of, and metaphors of, liminality, some of the most representative being the tomb, the wilderness, exile, and the Way” (58). Another term frequently used by Campbell and Cilliers is “bifocality.” This refers to the ability to see two (or more) perspectives at once and to consider alternative modes of being and thinking. In the simplest explanation, the way Jesus stood at the threshold between an old and a new age (exemplified by the new count of years in the “Common Era”), and how he mediated between the human

106  Christian religious comedy and the divine, the secular and the spiritual, captures the concepts of both liminality and bifocality. What this all leads up to is the notion of folly as a crossing of boundaries. According to Preaching Fools “Jesus, like a trickster, is the boundary crosser par excellence. . . . Like a jester, Jesus thus embodies the realities of the outsiders in the places of privilege and power, and he invites others into his transgressive, boundary-crossing ways” (105). To see religious key documents as inherently liminal and to consider the Savior himself as a comical figure constitutes a radical and, to my mind, refreshing way of looking at Christianity. There is a direct connection between the rhetoric of folly as developed by Campbell and Cilliers and the fictional work of James Morrow. Specifically, the concepts of bifocality, unsettling of normative discourses, openness, unmasking, playfulness, paradox, parody, and irony are all amply evidenced in Morrow’s novel. Blameless in Abaddon ends with a great, paradoxical unmasking of the divine: Jesus reveals himself to be a true shapeshifter, both Satan and Savior, werewolf and saint, a dualistic entity with no stable center. According to the novel’s logic, only a dualistic deity squares with the state of the world. Unsettling of normative discourses is evidenced in Morrow’s persistent debunking of complacent theodicies. As for bifocality, Morrow’s story is explicitly dialogic, both invoking Judeo-Christian apologetics and Biblical scenarios, while countering them with alternative versions. Most notably, the whole premise of a comatose God having been purchased for a set dollar amount by the “Southern Baptists” and then turned into a theme park attraction is extremely playful, albeit sacrilegious. Campbell and Cilliers place a lot of emphasis on the crucifixion – which is literally “the crux” of their rhetoric of folly  – stressing its original intent of mockery. The low-born and/or low-life criminals condemned to be crucified were parodically elevated on the cross, thus inviting scoffing laughter: “In addition, as a form of parodic exaltation, crucifixion was often explicitly or implicitly linked with a kind of mock kingship. A common understanding of crucifixion was ‘enthronement,’ and the connection between the raising up of the crucified and the raising up of the king made for a good joke” (24). In the case of Jesus, the mockery deepens by virtue of the inscription “INRI” (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) above his head. Campbell and Cilliers emphasize the double parody and self-inverted irony of this situation, as Jesus – in Christian terms really and truly the king of the universe – is parodied as being falsely elevated. This is the real reason of Easter laughter, or risus paschalis, which acknowledges the parody of the parody, the trick played on those intending to play a trick on Jesus. Being tortured on the cross for the non-violent crime of preaching the message of brotherly love, forgiveness, and otherworldly salvation is the crowning irony of multiple ironies played out in Jesus’s life: the Messiah born into a common family, the god as baby, the god helpless on the cross. According to the rhetoric of folly, such incongruities manifest a cosmic kind of humor.

A chronicle of triumph 107 If the crucifixion is already rife with ironies, James Morrow’s version of it gives it another twist: he has Jesus actually trying to crucify himself and, of course, failing in this attempt, as hammering requires a free arm: Reaching the top of Golgatha, the neuronauts happened upon a curious sight. A muscular man wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe, a ponytail, and a crown of thorns lay spread-eagled on his back, busily pursuing the uncommon ambition of attempting to crucify himself. He had the proper tools – mallet, spikes, wooden cross featuring a plaque reading INRI – but it was nevertheless a hopeless task. Every time he managed to secure his right wrist to the wood, he had to tear it free so he could nail down the left. (245) When Jesus (named “Yeshua” in the novel) spots Martin Candle, he promptly asks for his help in hammering in the last nail. Understandably, Candle hesitates in lending his assistance, prompting Jesus to urge him on with the words “Look, everybody: the man who would kill God, and he can’t even hammer one lousy spike into one crummy rabbi. . . . Do it, sir. Strike while the irony is hot” (246). The puns on hammering turn into a running joke, such as when Jesus confirms that he is indeed the Creator of the World: “You’ve hit the nail on the head” (247) – words of pungent irony spoken in the midst of his voluntary crucifixion. The ironies are indeed hot here. They are so hot as to appear as flaming blasphemies to a more conventional Christian, and they would have landed the author in hot water, had he written the scene at any other time than the 20th century. But pure provocation and mere blasphemy are not Morrow’s sole intention here. Indeed, the scene raises legitimate questions. What are we to make of a Jesus so fixated on crucifying himself? A Jesus who says that “Even I don’t have faith anymore,” and a Jesus who explains that the acronym “INRI” signifies “I’m Not Returning Immediately” (248)? On one level, this is simply sacrilege. On another level, it is the rhetoric of folly carried to its ultimate conclusion, suggesting that there is some truth to all of these perplexing utterances. Yes, as a deity Jesus could have avoided the crucifixion; yes, Jesus cried out on the cross “my father, my father, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46); and yes, Jesus did not return immediately, at least not in the sense of a permanent messianic return, as many early Christians expected he would. Last but not least, Morrow reminds us of the original parodic implications of the crucifixion, what Campbell and Cilliers call the “folly of the cross” (34). Indeed, joking about Jesus’s crucifixion is in keeping with this “foolishness of the cross”: “Christ carries in his resurrection body the coarse and vulgar joke of crucifixion. The joke, one might say, lives on” (Campbell and Cilliers 34), except, of course, that in Morrow’s treatment, the “coarse and vulgar joke” of the Roman capital punishment via mockery and torture has been transformed into the far less

108  Christian religious comedy vulgar farce of situation comedy and sophisticated punning. In the logic of Campbell and Cilliers, the crucifixion is already a parody of a parody; that would make Morrow’s treatment of this scene a parody of a parody of a parody, and thus a triumph of liminality. But while Blameless in Abaddon celebrates the whole bandwidth of liminal humor in all its playful (Liminal 1) and subversive, satirical (Liminal 2) manifestations, the last installment of the trilogy takes another approach. In The Eternal Footman, what stands out is mild Entrenchment 1 humor, as the novel parodies a number of classics of world literature, including Dante’s Divine Comedy, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the epic of Gilgamesh, and T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Significantly, none of these models is purely comical, including the Divine Comedy, despite its title, and Morrow never fully gets out of the shadow cast by these variously somber antecedents. The result is a less amusing novel compared to the first two installments of the trilogy. As opposed to the rollicking fun of Towing Jehovah and the sparkling existential comedy of Blameless in Abaddon, The Eternal Footman is essentially a tragedy with comical touches as a relief mechanism to make the story’s grim tapestry of anarchy, nihilism, violence, sickness, and hopelessness more palatable. The story of The Eternal Footman picks up where the narrative left off in Blameless in Abaddon, i.e. with the dauntless captain Anthony van Horne towing God’s two-mile-long, truly lifeless body across the seas, this time to return it as “damaged goods” to its previous “owners,” the “American Baptist Confederation.” The tow does not proceed further than Brighton Beach, England, before the body of God begins to disintegrate in a display of supernatural special effects. After exploding right in front of Brighton Beach, the skull of God ascends into a geosynchronous orbit from which it flashes its permanent death grin down at the Western hemisphere. Humanity does not prosper under the auspices of the deity’s gigantic skull, a daily reminder of God’s demise. Soon enough, a plague of nihilism and metaphysical hopelessness breaks out, affecting all members of the human tribe regardless of sex, age, and race. The eternal footman of the title is personified death, imagined not as a “grim reaper” but rather as a mischievous sprite named a “fetch.” As soon as one of these fetches claims a body, the person undergoes a steady deterioration, and Morrow does not spare his readers the minute details of the boils and lacerations that accompany the victims’ slow physical decay, as the “infection” runs its course. In Morrow’s imagination, this plague of nihilism is the direct result of human disillusionment in a godless universe. Not surprisingly, a new religion soon rises like a phoenix from the ashes of global nihilism: “Death, when done right, became as grand and fierce a religion as anyone could want. Look at ancient Egypt. Look at Christianity. On this Prufrock I shall build my church” (128). This passage encapsulates the dark mood of the book, with its emphasis on the power of death, a mood that is only momentarily lightened by the joke about Prufrock. The reference to

A chronicle of triumph 109 T. S. Eliot is not spurious. The very phrase “eternal footman” is taken from Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker / And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.” In keeping with the story’s woeful meditations on impermanence and the desperate search for eternal life, Dante is also quoted at length throughout the book, often to provide a poetic equivalent for apocalyptic scenes that resemble the various circles of hell. Moreover, Gilgamesh is acted out by a traveling troupe of actors who find a ready audience in plague-stricken, anarchic America. Finally, echoes from Heart of Darkness add to the somber mood of the story, as Nora pilots a dilapidated paddle steamer up the (fictional) Uspanapa river in southern Mexico toward a sort of “Inner Station” presided over by a Kurtz-like figure named Dr. Adrian Lucido (a variant of “Lucifer”), who ostensibly runs a clinic to cure victims of the nihilistic plague by offering them an ersatz worship of “Earthly Affirmation.” In reality, Lucido is a power-hungry, egomaniacal, and ultimately psychopathic individual patterned on Conrad’s Kurtz who is using the jungle retreat upriver as his private fiefdom where he can cultivate his love of excess and play God with impunity. Lucido’s antagonist is the artist Gerard Korty, commissioned by Lucido to sculpt the deities of the new, synthetic religion he has invented. All of the literary models to which Morrow pays homage tend to end on an anticlimactic note. Dante’s scenes in heaven are nice, but they are nothing compared to the visceral, fascinating, and emotional scenes set in hell. Gilgamesh, having reached the end of his failed quest for immortality, settles for normality; in other words, he accepts the fact that he will die. Marlowe fails to grasp the mind of Kurtz, ending the story with an anticlimactic moment of defeat when he lies to Kurtz’s fiancé, rather than telling her the grim truth about Kurtz’s deranged life in the jungle. And, finally, Prufrock ends his lament on a melancholy note of growing old and pathetic. By comparison, Morrow takes his story in a different direction. Indeed, The Eternal Footman ends with a true apocalypse – and thus a chance for renewal – as a volcanic eruption destroys the entire “Inner Station” and wipes out Dr. Lucido’s hellish fiefdom. The earthquake accompanying the eruption dislodges Korty’s masterpiece, a gigantic sculpture of a human brain displaying all the major achievements of secular humanism, sending it sliding down a hill and onto the deck of Nora’s steamer. With their symbolical “payload” perched on top of the steamer, the survivors of the apocalypse make their way to Rome where the sculpture becomes a new attraction on Saint Peter’s Square, providing a positive counterpoint to the despair following the death of God. This final volume of Morrow’s Godhead Trilogy has only one true survivor, i.e. Steven, the son of Anthony van Horne and Cassie Fowler, who narrowly escapes the clutches of his own fetch and thrives to become a prosperous dentist in New Jersey. The end of Steven’s ordeal coincides with the miraculous disappearance of the grinning Cranium Dei from its orbital

110  Christian religious comedy position, an event that is as inexplicable as the skull’s initial ascent into that position. Morrow suggests that as long as humanity sees a daily reminder of God’s death visible in front of it, human flourishing is impossible, and the negative forces of hopelessness and mortality will grip humanity, to its ultimate detriment. Only by removing that last reminder of God’s existence and death can humanity escape the clutches of nihilism and go about its business of making a world worth living in. The Eternal Footman is dominated by three principal thematic clusters: nihilism and anarchy, humanism and art, synthetic religion and New Age spiritualism. The first theme is too grim by nature to favor comedy, the second is too close to Morrow’s own sincerely held humanistic belief system to invite mockery, and only the last of them is receptive of ridicule. Driving a jeep over God’s prone body in Towing Jehovah while contemplating the implications of God’s navel is matter for liminal comedy because the thought experiment is so patently absurd. Similarly “out there” is the idea of erecting a religious amusement park on God’s comatose body in Blameless in Abaddon, an idea with almost unlimited potential for send-ups of religious theme parks, superstitions, and divine anthropomorphism. Then, there are the comical potentials of juxtaposing figures from different books of the Bible in the same scene and bringing them all together with a modern man. The main humor modality in the first two books of the trilogy is of the liminal type, as Morrow is messing with biblical chronology and twisting standard Christian teachings, while subverting the concept of theism (a truly theistic deity is beyond death, nostrils, excretions, etc.), while mockingly over-drawing certain elements of Catholicism such as communion. But as far as The Eternal Footman is concerned, apart from subverting naïve New Age spirituality and exposing the moral bankruptcy of narcissistic modern gurus, this book has relatively few targets of comical appeal due to the thematic prominence of fear, sickness, and dying. Overall, Morrow’s Godhead Trilogy is saturated with liminal humor, as symbolical boundaries are constantly crossed, pushed, and overturned. No doctrine remains untouched by Morrow’s humor, no chances for absurd reimaginations of the Bible are passed up, and no principle of theism remains safe from his comical touch. In this way, Morrow delivers a heady, associative, and irreverent form of religious comedy that is as subversive of religious orthodoxy as it is refreshingly original. Morrow’s humor is both an act of playful deconstruction of religious certainties and an act of opening up new possibilities for thought and, perhaps, even creating the basis for a new kind of faith, a faith in the decency and sufficiency of a humanistic outlook.

Ron Currie Jr. (b. 1975): God Is Dead If we think of religious comedy in the West as steadily expanding its range of comical targets (from low to high-order targets) while also sharpening the

A chronicle of triumph 111 sting of the comical treatments, then we may well ask if there is any room for further radical developments of religious comedy in the current era. In other words, are there any boundaries, taboos, or pieties left that could be tested and possibly breached by an utterly radical kind of religious humor? Arguably there is, and the proof of that would be Ron Currie’s book God Is Dead (2007), a religious comedy so acerbic, blasphemous, and disturbing as to seem daring even by today’s tolerant standards. God Is Dead is radical in ways that may seem to stretch the concept of religious comedy to the breaking point, where humor becomes so dark, we are reluctant to give in to the impulse to laugh. Currie’s debut novel belongs to the same death-of-God sub-genre as James Morrow’s Godhead Trilogy, but there is no continuous story line in Currie’s book and less of a thematic unity. Most of the short narratives circle around the literal occurrence of God’s actual death, imagined as taking place in 2004, amid the horrors of genocidal warfare in south Sudan. The premise of the opening story is as gripping as it is absurd. For reasons that are never clearly spelled out, God decides to incarnate and wander the earth as a Dinka woman, among the hunted and starved Christian refugees whom the ­Sudanese ­Janjaweed militia are targeting for extermination. There’s a sub-plot where then-­ ­ Secretary of State, Colin Powell, while visiting South Sudan to ­negotiate peace, has a sudden epiphany after remembering an incident of police brutality that he had witnessed in his youth. As a result of the fl ­ ashback, he connects to his boss, George W. Bush, via satellite phone, calling him in a fit of rage a “ ­ silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker” (19). This marks the end of Powell’s (fictional) political career. Here Currie ­succeeds in ­mixing racial tension with humor, but it is his mixing of humor with ­theistic axioms that is my principal focus. One such axion, namely that God is supposed to be eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient is casually invalidated when the world learned God had been found dead in the Sudan. As far as anyone could determine, he’d taken mortal form to observe firsthand the armed conflict between Sudan’s Islamic government and the Christian Nuer tribe in the south. Fleeing to Kenya with Nuer refugees, he’d gotten snagged in a razor-wire fence bordering a minefield. Others in his group tried to free him, but were forced to leave him behind when bombs from government attack planes rained down. He died, stripped naked by thieves and scorched by the equatorial sun, near the border town of Kapoeta. (60–61) As if it were not provocative enough that God undergoes a transgender incarnation, he is pathetically powerless to stop the mayhem that is unfolding amidst Sudanese refugees: “The people still in the camp . . . called to God in a hundred different dialects. He laughed and cried at once. He had

112  Christian religious comedy so many names, yet could not answer to any of them. . . . God closed his eyes and wished for someone he could pray to” (22). To add comical insult to anti-theistic injury, God’s corpse is subsequently consumed by stray dogs, with curious effects, as we shall see. None of this prevented Currie’s novel from being well received, with commentators like Andrew Ervin singling out the comical thrust of Currie’s dark and outlandish flights of fancy: “few authors would dare to depict the near rape and death of God amid a horrendous genocidal war, and fewer still could make it so bladder-threateningly hilarious” (Believer). The Western World has obviously arrived at a point where blasphemous humor is no longer considered a sin worthy of punitive action or social sanction. In Currie’s daring thought experiment, the prospect of a post-theistic world is viewed through the lens of comedy. Whenever Currie returns to his fundamental apocalyptic premise, humor seeps into his discourse: Naturally, the news of God’s death hit the world like a sledgehammer. An initial wave of panic, civil unrest, and general bad behavior swept the globe. Martial law was declared, and the National Guard took up residence in every American city. Suicide among nuns and clergy reached epidemic proportions, as did the looting of stores for comfort foods such as Little Debbie snack cakes. (61) To mention the death of God, clerical mass suicides, and Little Debbie treats in the same breath takes some temerity. The burlesque juxtaposition of high and low, big and small manifests itself both on the level of content and on the level of diction. Right after describing the dramatic developments following upon God’s demise, Currie continues: “And then a strange thing happened: nothing. . . . God had created the universe and set it spinning, but it would continue chugging along despite the fact that he was no longer around to keep things tidy” (61). The specter of apocalypse is here incongruously combined with terms like “spinning,” “chugging along,” and “keep things tidy.” The distance between the trivial and the weighty cannot be wider than the difference between the grandness of the created universe and a state of affairs described as “chugging along.” Out of such incongruity springs an existential kind of comedy. Humorous wordplay is highlighted in Currie’s conspicuous use of the god/dog reversal: “[God’s] passing would have gone unnoticed if the feral dogs who fed on his corpse hadn’t suddenly begun speaking a mishmash of Greek and Hebrew and walking along the surface of the White Nile as if it were made of glass” (61). Currie uses this absurd premise as a springboard for developing a satirical comment on man’s infinite capacity to believe, a capacity that doesn’t seem to be checked by the fact that the object of worship is a dog, not a god. Of course, the slippage between “god” and “dog” is only funny to the readers, not to the characters in the story: “People were

A chronicle of triumph 113 making pilgrimages to Mandela, worshipping a dog as if he were God” (109–110). In a further satirical twist, Currie suggests that the dog-god is not any kinder to his worshippers than the Judeo-Christian God has been to his devotees. In order to placate his miracle-seeking worshippers, the dog-god admits “I lied to them. I told them that their dead fathers would return, that their grandmothers were happy in an afterlife I knew did not exist, that their psychotic sons would someday repay their love tenfold” (108). The supernatural as a source of false hopes is soon harnessed as a revenue source, while a rudimentary religion springs up around the doggod: “People came to Mandela from as far away as Uganda and the Congo. They brought fear, despair, and money, and left that room relieved of all three” (109). It is the kind of joke about gullible believers that one might expect from Mark Twain, and indeed Currie is deeply Twainian in his sharp mockery of human folly, credulity, and conformity. Besides sounding like a 21st-century Mark Twain in a somber mood, Ron Currie also echoes the high-concept irreverence perfected by James Morrow. In one of the most provocative scenes in Morrow’s Towing Jehovah a literal communion takes place, as famished crew members of the boat that is towing Jehovah’s corpse harvest meat from their “cargo,” barbecuing filets from God’s body to keep from starving. Surprisingly, the communicants realize that instead of tasting like a “classy cut” God’s flesh “evoked . . . a  Big Mac” (225). Similarly, the taste of God’s body in Currie’s novel is no culinary revelation. As one of the speaking dogs recounts, God’s meat was, “tough, sour, gritty, the vilest meat I’ve ever tasted. Which is why none of us ate more than a mouthful. . . . It is surprising when one stops to think about it. The flavor was anything but divine” (93). Despite its grotesque overtones, this statement actually has theological implications. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that the host and the wine become literally the flesh and the blood of the Savior after being consumed by the faithful during Communion, is satirized both by Morrow and Currie. Furthermore, the dogs’ meditation on their status as half animal and half god recalls Christological arguments about Jesus being part divine part human. Add to this the epigraph to each chapter in Currie’s book – a biblical quote shedding an ironic light on the content of the chapter that ­follows – and the result is a type of religious comedy that both invokes and comically subverts religious ideas, resulting in a bifocality that invokes once again the rhetoric of folly. Significantly, the principal satirical targets of Currie’s novel are not clergy, monks, the pope, or ecclesiastical organizations but rather the highest-order topics including theistic articles of faith, the human desire to worship, and religion as a whole. It is as if the story were written by somebody who was brought up in a family with strong religious ties, who then subsequently lost his faith and is now looking back on his former self with the same kind of bemusement with which he regards the characters in his book who build synthetic beliefs from the ruins of a post-theistic world. The results of this

114  Christian religious comedy crisis of belief are sometimes nihilistic and almost unbearably violent, but mostly they are comical. One of the more lighthearted stories in Currie’s book, “False Idols,” confronts the post-theistic panic head-on. It is a satire of the contemporary world and its tendency to put children on a pedestal. The story is told from the perspective of a Child Adulation Prevention Psychiatrist, “the most hated man in Kennebec County” (60) because he “force[s] people to see their children for what they really are: flawed, mortal, and essentially useless creatures” (60). The psychiatrist’s preeminent task is to undo the transference of the worshipping impulse from God to The Child: People everywhere were casting about for something to place their recently orphaned faith in. Agnostics joined the atheists and put their money on science, but they were, as always, hopelessly outnumbered. Many people, including most of the population of Africa, built temples dedicated to the dogs who had feasted on God’s flesh, churches where the hymnals consisted entirely of barks and whines transcribed phonetically onto the page. And here, out of the swamps of Louisiana’s Attchafalaya basin and into this burgeoning chaos came a sort of secular evangelist known as The Child. (62) On the one hand, “False Idols” is a satirical takedown of modern, urban, upper-middle-class parents who waitlist their progeny while still in utero at highly selective, astronomically expensive pre-schools and who treat them from day one as budding geniuses who need to be catered to in every way to foster their fragile selves. More poignantly, though, this is a modern satire of the link between faith and credulity, between religious fervor and rank folly. Currie clarifies that the worst excesses of child worship “were found in the country’s traditional bastions of religious piety – the Deep South, the rural Northeast, Utah. In these places the transition to child worship was brisk and absolute” (63). Hence, forcing parents to curb their child adulation is not an easy job. The psychiatrists coaching parents to have a normal (as opposed to adulatory) relationship to their children become the object of intense hatred, comparable to a hypothetical scenario in which atheists would be forcing Christians to abandon their faith. Somewhere around the edges of the story hovers not only the commandment “Thou shalt have no idols before me” (Exodus 20:3), which precedes this story as an e­ pigraph, but also the notorious passage from The Brothers Karamazov which suggests that morality is anchored in theistic belief. In Currie’s story, not only is the religious impulse presented as inevitably keyed to idol worship, but ­religious faith is correlated with an increased tendency to violence and destructiveness while secularity is associated with order and reason. The only two sane people in this story, the psychologist and his girlfriend, Selia, are also the only people not infected with the urge to worship their children.

A chronicle of triumph 115 The two humanists in the story clearly grasp the Freudian implications of religious faith, with God functioning as a pater familias who both punishes and rewards, and who consequently is both respected and hated: “I  think that’s the hardest thing about God being dead,” Selia says. “You know? Because before, when bad things happened, you could always shake your fist at the sky and say something nasty under your breath and you kind of know that God would understand, he put you in a shit situation, so you had a right to be pissed. Now things go sour and there’s no one to take the blame.” (75) What makes this statement border on absurd humor is the naturalness with which God’s plan and his whole grand creation is dismissed as a “shit situation.” Also, bad things evidently happen whether or not God is part of the world, reducing his role to that of a scapegoat or a stress ball, a convenient psychological crutch to relieve anxiety rather than a supernatural entity intervening in human affairs in a meaningful way. This demotion of God is so drastic as to seem funny, at least to the secular reader. It is not difficult to guess that people of faith will not find such speculations particularly amusing. Perhaps it is not going too far to say that Currie’s religious comedy, while clearly based on a close familiarity with Judeo-Christian precepts and peppered with scriptural references, is ultimately the endgame of religious humor: a humor so “hard” and subversive it can almost only be enjoyed by non-believers. God Is Dead thrives on radical boundary-challenging humor aimed at targets on the top of the hierarchy, including God, who is described as a pathetic victim of religious conflict, and scriptural passages whose meaning is ironically undercut by the context in which they appear. But the main object of comedy in Currie’s narratives is the human compulsion to worship anything, no matter how serviceable. Whether it is mangy dogs or spoiled children, the people fixate on an object of worship, while the few outliers who can resist this reflex come across as the real stalwarts of sanity. The satirical thrust of this theme is directed at two objects: there are the individual believers who manifest their folly in absurd forms of ersatz worship; then, there are the dogs turned gods, a motif ridiculing the concept of religion. It is a sort of comedy that observes no decorum, maintains no safe distance to sanctities, and pretends no respect for piety. Despite its lurid details, Currie’s book is far from superficially sensationalist. Rather, the linked stories succeed in conveying meaningful meditations on the human condition such as the observation that “people are more frightened of no-God than of the soldier” (105). Currie extends the tradition of mocking superstitious folly and equating religious faith with gullibility – something we find also in Boccaccio, Chaucer, Voltaire, and Twain – with unparalleled irreverence, making obscene and explicitly blasphemous

116  Christian religious comedy humor a central part of his religious comedy. Although there is some playful ­Liminal 1 at work in this text, notably as regards the implications of the dog-god reversal, and although some mild entrenchment humor is evidenced (such as when Currie imagines the culture wars of the 1990s as actual armed conflicts between postmodernist and e­volutionary-psychologist armies), ­ overall the main thrust of Currie’s humor is in the subversive, Liminal 2 modality. Currie could have used his talent to poke merciless fun at specific religious systems or particular faith communities. He does not do that, instead using humor to push boundaries involving the more abstract concepts of divinity, theism, and worship. Despite its sacrilegious content, this kind of offensive satire derives its ultimate force from a stance of clever intellectual speculation. Currie has the ability to provoke thought, if one is willing to suspend one’s outrage and play along with his liminal game of questioning all possible boundaries related to religion, using humor as fuel to propel thinking beyond the boundaries set by ideologies, pieties, or certainties of any kind.

David Javerbaum (b. 1971): The Last Testament: A Memoir by God David Javerbaum’s wickedly funny book The Last Testament: A Memoir by God10 (2011) is in some ways the culmination of a development of religious comedy that had begun with Dante in the 14th century CE. This daring work is a kind of anti-scripture, divided into book, chapter, and verse.11 For the appreciative reader, Javerbaum offers fun of biblical proportions. This work quotes liberally from the Holy Book, while crossing, recrossing, deconstructing, elaborating, and subverting all conceivable religious boundaries. Beyond parodying with gusto any subject considered sacred in the Judeo-Christian tradition, he also jokes about Hinduism, Mormonism, and Islam. This is religious comedy of such a comprehensively irreverent and boundlessly skeptical nature that it can be said to close the arc of a development begun with Dante. In a manner of speaking, Javerbaum thereby re-sets the clock of religious humor. Clear evidence of Javerbaum’s decidedly 21st-century style of freewheeling, multi-pronged, innovative, and blatantly irreverent humor can be found in his series of “TheTweetOfGod,” a sampling of which is printed at the beginning of his novel. Javerbaum still tweets daily in the persona of “God” at the time of this writing. Often these tweets are quite facetious (“Sometimes I  wish I  were real” [September  28, 2018]), while occasionally they are nuanced and layered, as on October 8, 2018. TheTweetOfGod that day shows a reverential depiction of Jesus below the words “This is my son. He graduated #1 in his class at Nazareth High. He is a gentleman who loves women and respects virgins like his mother. He is afraid to go on solo dates with women because he is afraid they will lie and say he made them wash his feet. That, plus he’s gay.” On one level, this is a jab at Vice President

A chronicle of triumph 117 Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian, who said he refuses to have dinner with another woman unless his wife is present. On another level, the logical impasse of a son paying respect to his virgin mother leverages common sense to burst the bubble of an implausible dogma. As for the foot-washing reference, Javerbaum updates the biblical reference to infuse it with a 21stcentury sensibility about sexual harassment. Of course, the whole premise of a tweeting God has political implications, alluding to President Trump’s loud and sometimes ill-advised tweets. Judging from the edgy content of TheTweetOfGod, one imagines a group of archangels frantically trying to persuade God to leave off using the micro-blogging service. David Javerbaum’s professional background affirms religious comedy’s long-standing affinity with popular culture, an affinity that goes back to the late Middle Ages when the marketplace was often the only venue where religious comedy could exist. In today’s context, irreverent comedy’s affinity with pop culture expresses itself in the frequency with which religious themes are raised by stand-up comedians, in religion-centered episodes of South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons, and in Internet-based vehicles like DarkMatter2525. Javerbaum earned his comedy credentials as a writer in modern mass media outfits. Specifically, he was head writer for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the first decade of the 21st century, earning 11 Emmys for his role there. The Last Testament, written after Javerbaum’s departure from the Daily Show, postures as an autobiography authored by God (with Javerbaum’s assistance). Basically, this memoir “sets the record straight” about many things between heaven and earth, including what really happened “in the beginning,” how Adam and Steve got on with one another in the Garden of Eden, what ticked off Cain about Abel, and why God’s behavior often veers into psychopathology. Javerbaum’s talent for clever punning, layered parody, farcical pastiche, and dense webs of cross-cultural and intertextual allusions is on full display throughout The Last Testament.12 At the core of the book’s subversive procedure is the constant blurring of lines between original and derivate. Not only does The Last Testament start with the words “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” but the work is pervaded by extensive direct quotations from the Bible. The subversive force of this approach is undeniable. That a blasphemous comical superstructure can be so deftly erected on the sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition might be seen as an indication that the Bible itself holds elements of incongruity and absurdity, requiring only a slight perspective shift or further elaboration to reveal themselves. In “Againesis,” a title spoofing Genesis, the character of Yahweh remembers the first day of creation October 23, 4004, BCE “like it was yesterday” (3). On that memorable day, God reminisces, “I  saw darkness and called it ‘night’; and I saw the light, and called it ‘day’; and then I called it a day” (5). Here, a quote from Genesis 1:5 leads seamlessly into the contemporary idiom “to call it a day.” Similarly, Psalm 23 is rewritten

118  Christian religious comedy as follows: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. Then one morning he bringeth me to the shed out back and boom! He maketh me into lamb chops” (191). Integrating the lofty, archaic diction of the King James Bible with contemporary lingo and mundane subject matter conjures up a potent sense of comical incongruity. This motif of pastiche is particularly prominent in the section “Revelation.” Here, Javerbaum reproduces on 79 pages the entirety of John’s Book of Revelation. The original text is paired side by side on the page with God’s “new, updated” version of the apocalyptic prophecy. The rewrite weaves in and out of the original, sometimes closely paralleling the biblical text, as in this example: “And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and all the angels, stood the Bieb of God” (5:6), where only the word Bieb differs from the original, as Javerbaum substitutes “a Lamb” with “the Bieb” (short for Justin Bieber). At other times he diverges wildly from the biblical original. For instance, in the rewritten version of Revelation, verse 6:6, we get a series of garbled statements attributed to George W. Bush (“Misunderestimate me once, you can’t have no disregard for childrens do learn again, he or her” [350]) juxtaposed with the biblical original: “A  measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” Here, the reader may begin to wonder which version is more bizarre, the original verse from the Book of Revelation or Bush’s misprisions and stylistic infelicities. This game of defamiliarization is played to excess in the chapter “Revelation,” as Javerbaum inserts emails lamenting the sex abuse among Catholic clergy (“just DON’T!”), alludes to Obamacare (“cancerous evil”), and plugs a reference to Tea Party politicians (“totally incoherent”) in this updated account of the apocalypse. Having the two versions displayed on the page side by side cuts both ways: Just as the authority of the original is eroded by its absurd adaptation, so the adaptation is challenged on the page by the (often) dignified tone and imagery of the Bible. Arguably a parody that verbatim reproduces all 10,000 words of one of the most celebrated books of the Bible is working from within rather than without religion. Many other jokes are similarly anchored in scriptural precedent. Javerbaum gets plenty of comical mileage out of God’s covenant with humanity after the Flood, as reported in Genesis, chapter 9, verse 11: “Lo, everything changed after Genesis 9:11. For the survivors of this new, post-9:11 world had learned through bitter experience, that behind daily life’s peaceful façade there lurked always the potential for unimaginable horror” (21–22). The humor here springs from the surprising “appropriateness” of the incongruity between the two uses of the “9:11.” As humor scholar Elliott Oring has argued, humor does not automatically arise from the perception of a mere incongruity. In order for an incongruity to be perceived as funny, it needs to contain a surprisingly fitting dimension, i.e. the incongruity needs to be “appropriate.” In this case, although Genesis 9:11 seems completely

A chronicle of triumph 119 unrelated to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the fact that both events marked a watershed moment in the story of their respective communities provides the “resolution” that makes the juxtaposition of the two incongruous pieces of information surprisingly “appropriate,” with the result that a sense of amusement arises. The master incongruity that puts its stamp on the entire book is God’s repeated confession “that there was something seriously wrong with me” (39). Javerbaum pushes the envelope of blasphemy quite hard when he has God muse on his own shortcomings: “I may have my faults: impetuosity, jealousy, short-temperedness, and others I  shall reveal.  .  .  . I am coming clean” (28). Cumulatively, these confessions make it look like the “author” of The Last Testament is of questionable sanity. Again, the humor arguably arises from an understanding of the surprising appropriateness of the incongruity between “the LORD thy God, King of the Universe” (3) and a deity who admits (in the play version) to being “a jealous, petty, sexist, racist, mass-murdering narcissist” (Act 28). Although official Christian teaching stresses the warmth and love of God the Father, the Old Testament God does commit all the crimes Javerbaum’s God confesses to. Evidence of Yahweh’s jealousy, impulsiveness, intolerance, vindictiveness, violence, and vanity can be found throughout scripture, especially in the Old Testament: Genesis 6:7ff. (extermination of humanity, except for one family); Genesis 22:1ff. (the binding of Isaac)]; Exodus 11:4ff. (the killing of the Egyptian firstborns); Exodus 21:7ff (parents can sell their daughters into slavery); 1 Samuel 15ff. (genocide against the Amalekites); Leviticus 20:9 (disobedient children are to be put to death); Leviticus 24:13 (blasphemers are to be stoned); Book of Job (God condones mass murder to win a bet), and so on and so forth. All Javerbaum does is highlight these troubling aspects of Yahweh’s track record instead of ignoring or arguing them away with far-fetched sophistries. The surprising incongruity in all this is that Javerbaum’s God in fact experiences remorse and occasionally even suspects that he might be deranged. The title of Javerbaum’s play version, An Act of God, highlights this destructive potential of the Almighty. The expression “act of God” is invoked to capture both God’s awesome power and his immorality. In the following passage from the “Book of Smitus” of The Last Testament, God comes clean about his penchant for causing havoc: Natural disasters are indeed “acts of God”; usually one-acts, but once in a while I will join two of them together and give thee a full night at the theater. Volcanoes? Mine. Tsunamis? Tsuna-Mes. Mudslides? Lo, that’s how I roll. Now, verily, after the Great Flood I  made a covenant with Noah never again to kill all of mankind; and I have kept my word.

120  Christian religious comedy I have never again killed all of you at the same time; but I have killed lots of you, often I have always had wrath-management issues . . . (51) In such passages, word play meets world play, as God revels in his power to create mayhem while seemingly enjoying the results of his mischief. Javerbaum insinuates that there is more than an ounce of sadism in all this. Of course, whether God’s actions as reported in the Bible give evidence of sadism is up to the reader to decide. But Javerbaum’s anti-scripture leaves no doubt about it. God’s sadistic temper reveals itself in episode after episode, based on actual biblical incidents. As a result, Javerbaum’s satire is most stinging when it undercuts the Bible’s claim to serve as a meaningful guide to moral behavior: The right and wrong ways to sell thine own daughters into sexual slavery are not the product of a particular group of people in a particular place at a particular time. They are timeless. The last thing thou shouldst ever do, is create thine own set of moral values based on the realities of the world in which thou actually livest. (31) In keeping with Javerbaum’s multi-dimensional humor, the satirical implications of this passage are layered: Is there a “right way” to sell one’s daughter into sexual slavery? The answer is “yes” according to Exodus 21:7–11. Therefore, the assertion that such repellent behavior should not be seen as a sign of the Bible’s outdated moral provincialism seems laughable. Against the dubious principle of basing one’s moral values on the Bible, Javerbaum’s satire implicitly presents the better solution: Morality ought to be based on a social contract that posits justice and human flourishing as the highest good, not some outdated, archaic, and inapplicable Canaanite customs. But as radical as Javerbaum’s religious comedy appears, it is not entirely unprecedented. When we laugh at the townsfolk in Boccaccio’s story about Ciappelletto (see p. 57–58), we recognize the incongruity of their religious fervor, which had clouded their judgment to the point of leading them to mistake a seasoned criminal for a saint. The same can be said, except on a much higher order of magnitude, for the incongruity of worshipping the God of scripture as the God of Love. Thus, when the God character in Javerbaum’s play version states “I made mankind in My image, and I am an asshole” (Act 27), the word choice is inappropriate but perhaps not so the underlying idea. Such sharp humor operates at the far end of Liminal 2 humor. But since there is such a strong dose of irony in all this, it does not qualify as Entrenchment 2 humor. Javerbaum is destabilizing, inverting, questioning, and ironizing the conventional image of God, just as his

A chronicle of triumph 121 play ironically inverts the Ten Commandments, working toward the most ironic of all: “Though shalt not believe in Me” (Act 28). This type of liminal humor is so “hard” that it would horrify the theologians of laughter. But it makes nevertheless for legitimate and, depending on one’s viewpoint and sensibility, for truly hilarious comedy. If blasphemy is defined as insulting the sacred, then such jokes presuming God to be clueless, incompetent, and immoral are certainly blasphemous. And where there is blasphemy, there is profanation. Shockingly, God himself is profane, as evidenced in his way of referring to Jesus as “a pussy” (168) because God’s son has a soft spot for poor, confused, sinning humanity. After Jesus dies a martyr’s death, God changes his tune to a more prideful but no less profane testimonial: “Jesus was one tough son of a bitch” (200), says God. Faced with such irreverence, one may wonder if this kind of humor exclusively appeals to atheists. But this is not necessarily the case. Indeed, just as one need not share a racial or gender stereotype in order to find a joke using such a stereotype amusing, so one need not be an advocate of blasphemy to find a blasphemous joke funny. Mere recognition of the act of blasphemy can trigger a humor response. In fact, in order to “get” a blasphemous joke, one needs to be aware of the principles of sanctity that the joke undermines. On those grounds, it is safe to say that both believers and unbelievers may find something to laugh about in clever acts of profanation. Keeping all this in mind, it is surprising that Javerbaum’s extended exercise in comical blasphemy has not been met with an outcry or public controversy after its release. This has probably something to do with the book presenting a combination of sheer ludic extravagance (Liminal 1) and sophisticated, cerebral, witty Liminal 2 humor. Both elements are likely to veil the utterly radical propositions at the core of this comical text. Moreover, the level of free speech protection is so high in America that today’s society is accustomed to tolerating all kinds of expressions, as long as they don’t constitute true threats, libel, or criminal conspiracy. Thus, the free speech framework is the safety net that allows works like The Last Testament to continue their high-wire walk of irreverent humor with confidence, knowing that even the humorist’s most blatantly heterodox expressions are going to be protected. Significantly, though, Javerbaum’s book was not published in England, a country with narrower free speech definitions than the United States. In an interview, Javerbaum confirmed that “Simon and Schuster UK has pre-emptively refused to publish the book on the grounds that it is too inflammatory” (Interview). It is indeed conceivable that The Last Testament or An Act of God might have run afoul of segments of the British public or come into the crosshairs of the country’s hate speech laws (or both).13 This situation is a demonstration of what damage pre-emptive censorship can do by depriving the public of a work of art that, though, blasphemous, deserves high accolades. Javerbaum’s work can even be considered a legitimate instructional tool about matters of scripture, theology, and the Christian creed. On some level,

122  Christian religious comedy The Last Testament is an (albeit unorthodox) teaching aid about Moses, the Book of Job, the Patriarchs of Israel, Jesus’s life and ministry, and the Book Revelation, not to mention theological issues related to the Problem of Evil or the Trinity, biblical exegesis, Church history, and many other topics deeply relevant to the study and appreciation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. When I taught Javerbaum’s book in a graduate course in 2018, some of my graduate students were actually reading parts of the Bible for the first time through Javerbaum’s mediation, including narratives of the Prodigal Son or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even a critical or irreverent treatment of matters pertaining to Christian lore can entail a real encounter with religious thought and provide legitimate knowledge about matters that are relevant to the culture and value system of Christianity. In a significant departure from the radically irreverent works of James Morrow, Ron Currie, Monty Python, and others, Javerbaum is truly an equal-opportunity offender of different religious traditions. Although it is fair to say that when it comes to poking fun at aspects of Islam, ­Javerbaum is noticeably circumspect, changing his tone from daring to “safe” comedy. Nothing outrageous is uttered in the Islam themed chapter titled ­“Koranicles.” Here Javerbaum takes a meta approach to his topic, just as the ­writers of South Park and Family Guy have done when referencing Islam. No sooner is the topic raised than it is self-consciously deflected: “I  am Allah, the Wise, the All-Powerful; yet these days even I get a little nervous talking about Islam” (235). The paradox of Yahweh speaking as Allah is immediately and powerfully felt. This assertion alone would be definite heresy to any exclusivist monotheists on either side of the C ­ hristianity-Islam divide. How many wars have been fought over precisely this matter, i.e. that Allah is not Yahweh, and that only one of the two “mono-deities” is real while the other is sham? Javerbaum does away with such exclusivist thinking by pushing radically ecumenical comedy: This is not to say that Islam is more correct than other religions; it is simply to say I  like the way it does business. For Christianity is like unto Walmart: an unstoppable behemoth that will do whatever it takes to gain a foothold. . . . And Judaism is like unto Blockbuster Video: a creaky old institution evoking a bygone era. . . . But Islam is like unto Starbucks; straightforward and unchanging; its menu but a few variations on a single theme; an institution to which throngs of people devote much of their lives. (243–44) It’s rather daring – and funny – to compare whole world religions to mundane business franchises. Javerbaum takes his cue from Erasmus here, as he launches into a modern mock encomium of Islam’s five pillars of faith. The first pillar of the faith, i.e. “there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger” is presented as a “catchy slogan.” The Muslim practice of daily prayer routines yields

A chronicle of triumph 123 “impressive numbers” (“7.5 billion adorations every 24 hours”). Ramadan represents “team-building at its best.” The hajj is “the ultimate corporate retreat.” And the requirement “to spend 2.5 percent of their income for the benefit of the poor or needy” leads to the remark that not even Delaware has “a lower corporate tax rate” (244). The managerial business jargon is seamlessly fused with the central tenets of Islam. This sort of religious comedy has philosophical ramifications. Notably, it suggests that ecclesiastical organizations and even entire religious traditions are built upon a material basis, involving an economic superstructure, and that in some cases they come with explicit corporate arms such as the Vatican Bank. Although expressed in a joking manner, the subliminal message is that religions, just like corporations, are essentially man-made constructs. Another comical perspective shift occurs in relation to God’s attitude on matters of sexuality. Here, Javerbaum’s God is heterodox in the extreme. The Almighty quickly dispels any “false” impressions taken from the Bible that he is “prudish and stuffy; contemptuous of all purely recreational sexual activity” (319). As regards “fornication,” we are told, “that word has over time taken on a negative connotation I  did not intend” (319). Saint Augustine would faint. When it comes to sexual practices, God boasts to be an expert “on foreplay, oral sex, and tantric orgasm” (320). There’s just one thing God wants humans to do differently when it comes to sex: “Stop shouting my name.” (320). Now, these are obviously comical projections of 21st-century secular ideas attributed to a bronze-age deity. The farcical incongruity continues with God’s assertion that “I meant marriage to be a relationship between any two people, and the enormous amount of shit they have to deal with on a daily basis” (322). Subversive liminal humor erupts from stark inversions like these: Not only does God directly contradict biblical teachings against homosexuality (such as expressed in Leviticus 18:22), and not only does he appear to legitimize gay marriage, but by interspersing God’s discussion of marriage with expletives, Javerbaum uses the verbal clowning of low burlesque to heighten the comedic appeal on his work. Finally, in a series of astonishingly bad pieces of advice (e.g. “Do not tell thy partner what thy needs are” [324]), God confirms that he is not to be trusted in matters of love. In fact, he admits as much, saying that although everyone claims that “God is love,” love is something he “only partially understand[s]” (321). As blatantly blasphemous as Javerbaum’s humor is in such passages, it would be mistaken to regard it as cheaply sensationalist, gratuitously offensive, or irresponsibly irreverent. Even in this most radical of religious comedies, we encounter again the comedian’s desire to grapple with some pretty fundamental aspects of our existence. According to one reviewer of the play version, An Act of God serves up mordant satiric wit that masks the playwright’s very thoughtful exploration of some of the most serious existential human questions. . . . Javerbaum takes on mythos, religion, tradition, and all the

124  Christian religious comedy other central pillars of social discourse and gleefully turns them each on its head, replacing answers with questions. An Act of God . . . is a fearless and funny vehicle for examining the absurdities of the human thought processes, the journey into faith, and the helpless grappling with the universe’s mysteries by the creation of doctrine. (Verdino-Süllwold) Thoughtfully exploring the fundamental conundrums of the human condition, examining the journey into faith, and fearlessly dealing with the mysteries of the universe clearly qualify as worthy endeavors. And yet, these “serious” intellectual and philosophical meanings are precipitated by means of utterly irreverent comedy, thus demonstrating the co-existence of blasphemy and gnosis, mocking laughter and thoughtfulness. Sometimes it takes this fire of profane laughter (what Barry Sanders calls “asbestos laughter”) to purge the mind of pretense and to cleanse the thought process of adherence to half-baked ideas. Mental flexibility, perspective shift, humility, and open-ended thinking are significant values brought into play by Javerbaum’s radical comedy, and they are complemented by the aesthetic pleasure of his consummate skill as a writer of uncommon nuance, subtlety, and cleverness. All this is almost exclusively aimed at the highest-order targets on the hierarchical scale of subjects that comedy pokes fun at. Hardly any ridicule is aimed at foolish laypeople, at corrupt priests, or rapacious ecclesiastical organizations. This represents the culmination of a development that had begun in the late Middle Ages. While in Dante’s time, it would have been inconceivable to produce comedy that even remotely approaches Javerbaum’s level of explicit irreverence and blatant blasphemy, today it appears, on the contrary, that religious comedy is less and less attracted to the lowerorder comical targets like laypeople and monks. In this sense, religious comedy in a literary format has run its course, and there seems to be little further room for it to be innovative and daring after the highest-order targets have all been roundly and exhaustively mocked. New frontiers of religious comedy would seem to lie outside the bounds of Christianity, with Islam an obvious target ripe for the taking; indeed, initial moves in that direction have been made as in Salman Rushdie’s controversial The Satanic Verses (1988) or in Michel Houellebec’s darkly satirical Submission (2015). However, such attempts remain rare, and they come mostly from outside of Islam. The recent rise of Muslim stand-up comedy, which flourishes in Britain and the United States is, not too surprisingly, focused on the lower-order comical targets like the Muslim believers’ daily foolishness or other harmless ways of poking fun at some faith practices in a non-subversive, affirmative way. Now that we have traced the long march of Christian religious comedy as reflected in the literary tradition from Dante to David Javerbaum (see Tables 3.1 and 3.2), the next chapter looks at the contemporary diversity

(X)

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Dante 14th Cent.

Boccaccio 14th Cent.

Erasmus 15th/16th C.

Rabelais 16th Cent.

Voltaire 18th Century

Twain 19th Century

France 20th Century

Hašek 20th Century

Morrow 20th/21st C.

Currie 21st Century

Javerbaum 21st Century

Lower clergy, monks

Individual believers, laypeople

Specific Targets

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Higher clergy, pope

Anti-Clerical humor

Raillery

Humor Category

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Church, ecclesiastical institutions

Anti-Ecclesiastical humor

X X

X

X

X

X

X

Scripture (Bible)

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

(X)

Christian articles of faith

Sacrilegious humor

X

X

X

X

X

X

Deity (Trinity)

Blasphemous humor

X

X

X

X

X

X

Religion in general

Anti-Theistic humor

Table 3.1 Progression of Christian religious comedy since Dante, indicated by the range of different religious targets addressed by each separate literary humorist

126  Christian religious comedy Principal humor modes Table 3.2 Correlation between authors and the principal humor modes activated by them “Soft,” clean, playful modes of humor

“Hard,” subversive, aggressive modes of humor

Liminal 1 (affirmation, play) Boccaccio, Rabelais, France, Morrow, Javerbaum

Liminal 2 (subversion, critique) Erasmus, Rabelais, Voltaire, Twain, France, Hašek, Morrow, Currie, Javerbaum

Entrenchment 1 (parody, selfdeprecation) Boccaccio, Rabelais, Morrow, France

Entrenchment 2 (aggression, stereotyping) Erasmus, Rabelais, Voltaire, Twain, Hašek

of religious comedy through analyses of present-day pop-culture manifestations of the theme. This will help us understand how the contemporary range of different kinds of religious humor is related to the longitudinal view of religious comedy as demonstrated in this chapter’s historical trajectory.

Notes 1 This term – “a fig for it” – goes back to an ancient obscene hand-sign when the thumb is inserted between index and middle finger while making a fist. 2 Voltaire, who invented the name “Urban the Tenth,” likely had in mind Pope Alexander VI (Roderic Borgia, pope from 1492 to 1503), who had fathered several children with his mistresses and whose papacy was marked by rampant corruption. 3 One of the leaders of the rebel angels. 4 Another leader of the rebellious angelic faction. 5 Thirty years later, Albert Camus would come essentially to the same conclusion in The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. 6 See Stuart Bell, “Church of England.” Online Encyclopedia of the First World War. http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/church_of_england 7 See Philip Jenkins, The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. New York: HarperOne, 2014. 8 “Taking the mickey”: Cockney slang for making fun at somebody or something. 9 William of Ockham (ca. 1287–1347) was a medieval monk whose name has become synonymous with the philosophical law of parsimony, aka “Ockham’s razor.” According to this principle, the more assumptions one makes to solve a problem, the less reliable the explanation is. Or in other words, among two possible solutions to a problem, the simpler, more straightforward answer is usually the correct one. 10 The book was later re-issued as An Act of God. This led to some confusion since there is also a play by Javerbaum titled An Act of God. The prose work and the play represent two distinctly different works. 11 I will cite by page number rather than by book, chapter, and verse.

A chronicle of triumph 127 12 In 2015, David Javerbaum released a play titled An Act of God, which is adapted from The Last Testament. The play and the prose book are two different works, though the idea of God “setting the record straight” is the same. 13 In the United States, hate speech is generally constitutionally protected, except in cases where it constitutes libel, true threats, direct incitement to violence, or targeted harassment.

4 Varieties of humorous irreverence Contemporary religious comedy from Brad Stine to South Park

When done right, religious humor in film, television, literature, and stand-up can be a gateway to important conversations and even instill listeners with humility. – Jonathan Merritt

This chapter examines a cross-section of contemporary religious humor, focusing mainly on stand-up comedy and other pop culture creations. This inquiry starts with supposedly “clean” Christian comedy, contrasting this “safe” comical approach with starkly irreverent displays of religious comedy, including episodes of DarkMatter2525 (an atheist YouTube Channel), before concluding with three case studies of mainstream performances by celebrity comedians. Throughout these treatments, I will deal with religious humor strictly in a non-judgmental, inclusive, and tolerant manner, ­looking at a wide array of comical expressions, ranging from benign to highly irreverent. Applying the four-factor humor analysis presented in Chapter 1, I will outline the extraordinarily rich and varied landscape of contemporary religious comedy. As the previous chapter has shown, religious comedy in Christian culture has undergone a progressive liberalization that tracks the West’s gradual adoption of scientific rationality, secular politics, capitalist economics, and modernity in general. In comedy, these developments accompany the larger socio-economic, scientific, and political developments, which in turn are mirrored in the gradual expansion of liberties of conscience and free speech. This series of contemporary case studies begins with a parade of three standup comedians who define themselves explicitly as “Christian comedians,” i.e. performers whose comedy can be expected to be mild, “clean,” and “soft,” not to say pious. This sub-genre of stand-up comedy has come into existence roughly simultaneously with the rise of the modern theology of laughter, i.e. about the 1980s. Numerous such faith-based comedians have been touring the United States, delighting audiences in churches and theaters with their brand of child-friendly, apparently inoffensive, and benign

Varieties of humorous irreverence 129 comedy which functions in the service of Christian apologetics. By analyzing actual comedy performances of three such Christian comedians, we shall see whether it is indeed the case that Christian comedy tracks consistently “soft” and positive, i.e. whether it avoids what Christian theologians of laughter have termed “negative” forms of amusement.

Mark Lowry Mark Lowry, a practicing Baptist, is a full-blooded entertainer and t­ alented musician, regularly performing to large audiences across the United States. He belongs to the sector of evangelicalism that sees in comedy a legitimate vehicle for conveying religious themes. Since his routines steer clear of obscene material and maintain a reverent tone, Lowry might be ­considered a poster boy for the concept of “clean” Christian comedy. With a few exceptions, when he mocks, he does so in the register of Entrenchment 1. For instance, during a performance at a large Hollywood venue, he asked his mixed audience to raise their hands if they were Methodist, Baptist, ­Catholic, Nazarene, Seventh-Day Adventist, etc. This roll call has a nice ecumenical ring to it, and the jokes flow easily and good-naturedly, as Lowry acknowledges one denomination after another, gently ribbing the quirks for which each one of them is known (e.g. to Seventh-Day Adventists he says, “We’ll get you out early since you have church tomorrow morning”). At one point during this “roll call,” he asks the audience if there are any members who “just got saved but don’t know yet what you are?” and before anybody can respond, he advises those “don’t raise your hand; a Baptist will sign you up.” The self-deprecating nature of this joke is appreciated, since it is well known that Lowry himself is a Baptist. This mildly boundary-reinforcing aspect of Lowry’s humor confirms some preconceived, perhaps even stereotypical, notions about what it means to be a Baptist, a Lutheran, or a Seventh Day Adventist. But Lowry also activates a potentially subversive, Liminal 2 register of humor in this performance. “All those denominations under one roof,” he says affably, smiling broadly, but then he unleashes an unexpected zinger: “And somebody is wrong!” The laughter is somewhat uneasy. This joke plays on the boundaries that are drawn between different denominations, and Lowry uses Liminal 2 humor to push his audience – if only for a moment – to consider the question why faith leads invariably to disagreement and division. In all likelihood, Lowry is all for ecumenicism, but his joke prompts the audience momentarily to cross the boundary of complacent “live and let live” to consider the possibility that somebody’s faith might indeed be “wrong,” including their own belief. There’s at least the implication that disagreement and conflict are built into religion. Some doctrinal differences like those between Catholics and Seventh-Day Adventists can be so grave as to prompt one group (Seventh-Day Adventists) to deny the other (Catholics) membership in the Christian fold altogether.

130  Christian humorous comedy Lowry’s humorous subversion of ecumenical harmony could lead to some harsh conclusions about the sectarian tendency of religious communities. But Lowry quickly defuses these potentially troubling implications: “That’s why eternity is going to last so long  – God’s going to straighten all you out.” And immediately, he moves on to the next joke. Continuing in the self-deprecating vein, he pokes fun at Baptist church choirs whose members always wag their heads as if gesturing “no” while singing “I believe . . .” as well as firmly closing their eyes as they belt out “turn your eyes upon Jesus . . .” Incongruity works as the humor engine here, with people’s involuntary body movements contradicting the message that the lyrics are conveying. There’s a cognitive dissonance between the mechanically repeated words and their actual meaning, which is lost through repetition and habit. In this, too, there is an element of critically subversive humor since Lowry uses laughter to expose the self-absorbed, non-aware attitude of many fellow human beings, even as they perform their religious duties. So, within a few jokes, Lowry’s humor has run the gamut from playful Liminal 1 to mild Entrenchment 1 to somewhat subversive Liminal 2 humor. A little further on in his routine, Lowry again skirts subversive liminal territory. In order to encourage his audience to be more understanding of sinners who are divorced, he states that at one time God had also divorced himself from Israel. This is in reference to the Book of Jeremiah (3:8), where the prophet refers to Israel as a faithless woman whose husband (God) had divorced her. Yet, the actual analogy in the Bible implies quite the opposite of what Lowry wants it to mean. Jeremiah contrasts the behavior of a husband refusing to take back his adulterous wife with the forbearance of God, whose mercy transcends human laws and customs. While Jeremiah thus makes a distinction between worldly divorce and divine divorce, Lowry puts both of these on the same level, thereby manipulating the original meaning of the biblical parable to suit his ends. Lowry’s plea for tolerance toward divorcees also sits uneasily with Christ’s admonition “What God has joined, let man not separate” (Mark 10:9, Matthew 19:6). Jesus, who is clearly opposed to divorce, equates marrying a previously divorced person with committing adultery (Matthew 5:32). Thus, motivated by the best of intentions, Lowry undermines biblical injunctions against divorce by agitating for greater tolerance toward divorcees, thereby mixing Biblical morality with contemporary Western mores. That constitutes a departure from accepted orthodoxy, and therefore a mild subversion of established boundaries. Lowry pushes these boundaries gently and perhaps quite unintentionally, but his humor here nevertheless pertains to the mode of Liminal 2. But what about the fourth category, i.e. aggressive Entrenchment 2 humor? Sure enough, Lowry also utilizes hard superiority humor by leveraging biased and arrogant attitudes to laugh at members of an out-group. Specifically, he describes atheists in terms that invoke exotic animals in a zoo which people come to gape at. This dehumanizing caricature of atheists smacks of “hard” entrenchment humor. Lowry goes on to make a

Varieties of humorous irreverence 131 pitch for creationism, which further shows the telltale signs of tendentious attack humor with preachy overtones. The joke here is based on the central creationist argument that a designer is required to create a complex, i.e. “designed,” reality. In order to “disprove” the theory of evolution, Lowry relies on an argument that is as popular among creationists as it is fallacious: disassemble a watch, throw all the parts in a bag, and shake it for six billion years, then open the bag to see if there is a completely assembled, working watch in it. People in the audience nod eager agreement as Lowry shares this piece of creationist “insight.” A  rationalist would expose this analogy as a fallacy because somebody who understands how evolution works knows that the process of natural selection is precisely not random. At this point, Lowry is rehearsing well-worn logical fallacies while peddling scientifically invalid arguments, eliciting agreement from an audience that is pleased to feel superior to secular humanists and “atheists.” This is an instance (though a mildly worded one) of superiority humor belonging to the Entrenchment 2 class of jokes. Thus, our first Christian comedian, although mostly operating in the “soft” registers of humor, does utilize some “hard” humor potentials as well.

Brad Stine Brad Stine is billed as the “World’s Most Influential Christian Comedian,” yet it would be hard to make the argument that his comedy conforms to the Christian theology of laughter’s preference for affable (“positive”) humor. His material presented in the “God’s Comic” show (see Figure 4.1), released on DVD in 2012, is strongly based on mockery of “stupid” people, especially atheists, although he occasionally also ridicules members of his pious audience. Stine’s trademark approach is to act as a frantic social commentator who preaches against the “wussification that’s killing America” while venting his frustration at political correctness and secular humanism. At times, he appears to be self-ironizing, and one isn’t always quite sure whether he genuinely mocks “false” ideas or whether he just pretends to be a half-deranged motivational speaker. Stine rails against young people in general, at one point calling them “wussified” for wearing bike helmets (“when I was a kid, had I worn a helmet to bike around, others would have beaten me up, and they should have!”). Or he portrays young people as borderline illiterate because they spend too much time on social media. At such moments, Stine comes across as an Entrenchment 2 comedian, somebody who reinforces collective judgments and draws lines of exclusion based on presumed shortcomings of whole segments of the population. In Stine’s own view, his frantic act simply reflects his desire to tell the truth. Stepping out of character during one of his performances, he proclaims, “I  am not allowed to think myself superior, or to be a racist or a bigot, but if you are offended by the truth, then that’s your problem. . . . I always

Figure 4.1  Christian comedian Brad Stine Source: Photo used with permission of Brad Stine

Varieties of humorous irreverence 133 speak the truth, that’s all I got.” On another occasion, he defends his abrasive brand of comedy like this: “There’s a difference between maliciously offending somebody on purpose and somebody being offended by [pause] truth!” (“Wussy Christians”). But a closer look at his material shows that what passes as “truth” for Stine includes personal bias or misrepresentation of a group, notably “wusses,” atheists, and evolutionary scientists. His attempt at “satirizing” evolutionary theory does not convince me. When he shouts, “If evolution were true, it would still be happening,” he fails to realize that the workings of evolution are indeed observable in real time as well as being conclusively documented in fossil strata. The development of antibiotic-resistant germ strains is an instance of adaptation confirming the evolutionary principles of mutation and selection. Or he states that “I look at the creation and see the beauty. Because only those who believe in God get to have poetry and music. The atheist gets nothing – ‘it’s just molecules in motion.’ ” This view can be easily falsified, as many great artists are in fact atheists, while being an atheist hasn’t stopped anyone from appreciating beauty. Stine implies that only what is created (by God) can be beautiful. At the very least, to be consistent, this principle needs to be extended to any other attributes – i.e. for something to be ugly, it needs to be created, or for something to be bitter it needs to be created, and so on. Would Stine claim that atheists, who supposedly can’t perceive beauty because they lack belief in God, don’t sense bitterness or sweetness because by denying that God created beauty (as well as bitterness and sweetness), they cannot perceive these things? By stating that beauty can only be perceived by the religious mind, Stine tangles himself up in all kinds of logical knots that undermine and ultimately defeat his attempt to be funny, at least for me. Since I can’t recognize as truth what he bases his biting humor on, I do not perceive it as satirical. For satire to work, the recipient needs to accept the moral stance and truth claim underlying the message intended to be satirical. Thus, my response to Stine’s material is to see it not as critical Liminal 2 humor (i.e. satire), but as Entrenchment 2 humor, based on distorted views about nonbelievers and on invalid pseudo-scientific theses. Moreover, an overtly confessional and preachy tone such as Stine’s clashes with the ironic essence of genuine satire. Stine makes no secret about the fact that he is preaching to the converted: “I am giving that [i.e. laughter] to people who are like-minded” he says (Apostles), and he continues, “When people come to my show, they know exactly what they are getting. They are getting a guy who believes like them. But he is delivering it in a comedic way” (Apostles). Such a predictable setup illustrates the limited appeal of preachy comedy. What he says about Darwinism and about atheists is not something with a solid basis in evidence-based argument, and his comical takedown of these ideas, therefore, may be funny to an in-group who share his biases, but it is likely to annoy rather than amuse a broader, less partisan audience. For satire to be conducive to insight – which is its ultimate

134  Christian humorous comedy purpose – it must stand up to critical scrutiny, regardless of the spin that the satirist gives his premises. But, there is another side to Stine’s humor, a side that surprisingly departs from the confessional script of Christian comedy. Something interesting happens when Stine begins to address God as the target of his comedy. At this point, the messaging appears to morph into something far more unconventional, as he dares to play with ideas that border on blasphemy. Although he perhaps does so unintentionally, Stine actually crosses into subversive comical territory here. A heterodox dimension opens up when he asks rhetorically how we can know for certain that “God is a guy.” Addressing God as “guy” is not particularly respectful, but it gets more interesting yet. This part of the routine is worth quoting in full: Empirical evidence can give us the very God that gave us the ability to think. How do we know God is a guy? He says he is the Father, and up till 2012 that usually meant a guy. Also, he created all this stuff und then said “it is good.” How else do we know he is a guy? He worked for six days then took Sunday off so he could watch the game. How else do I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God is a guy? Because he invented women. And they were naked. Only a guy would have come up with that one. (God’s Comic) I’m unsure whether Stine is being ironic when he talks about “empirical evidence” in favor of God’s existence. On the face of it, this is of course a dubious proposition. Even the pope would likely refrain from trying to prove the existence of God “empirically.” In this part of the routine, Stine anachronistically depicts God as watching Sunday football (something God evidently does before having created the men required to play that game). But that is not all: Stine’s further pushes the idea of God as a bit of a prig, subtly ridiculing God by suggesting that just like any guy who does anything at all, God craves praise. Finally, Stine portrays God as a regular testosterone-driven male. Not only did he invent woman to gratify his desires, but he created her naked so as to better be able to ogle her. Nothing in this part of the routine is designed to inspire awe, piety, and worshipful reverence, as Stine’s comedy shifts out of the Entrenchment register to achieve Liminal 2 humor with ironic and even subversive implications. Portraying God as a voyeuristic, narcissistic, football loving, supernatural “guy” is more likely to undermine rather than to reinforce devotional attitudes. Stine made “the sacred appear profane,” thus fulfilling Brent Plate’s pivotal condition for blasphemy. In sum, Stine turns out to be a Christian comedian who not only delivers aggressive entrenchment humor directed against atheists and rationalists, but he is also a comedian who – whether deliberately or not – masters the subversive liminal humor modality, specifically when his humor targets God. Even more so than Mark Lowry, we have

Varieties of humorous irreverence 135 here a Christian comedian whose routine trades in some aspects of “hard” humor. Judged by the criteria of the theology of laughter, Stine would hardly qualify as a specifically “Christian” comedian. How slippery comedy is and how easily it crosses over from a “soft,” “clean” into a “hard,” subversive, perhaps even cynical register can be demonstrated by juxtaposing Stine’s presentation of God as an undignified “guy” with Sarah Silverman’s deliberately blasphemous presentation of Christ. In her popular YouTube skit titled “Sarah Silverman Is Visited by Jesus Christ,” the Jewish-atheist comedian uses comedy to push back against the conservative political agenda that wants to limit women’s reproductive rights. The premise of the video is that Jesus uses the occasion of his Second Coming to discuss current political affairs in the United States, including right-wing sexual politics. It is ironic enough to imagine Jesus lending moral support to a pro-choice feminist, but a Jesus who asks Silverman to fight against evangelicals who use “my name to spread intolerance” is even more provocative. When Silverman hesitates to carry out Jesus’s wishes at once, he admonishes her with the words: “I’m Jesus fucking Christ!” From here, the video moves from joke to joke, with Jesus announcing that “life begins at 40” (instead of “at conception”) and Silverman calling him “a total DeNozzo.”1 This irreverent portrayal blatantly crosses the line from the sacred to the profane. Many online comments on this YouTube skit accuse the clip of ridiculing Jesus and desecrating Christianity. A  typical entry reads “Mocking Jesus Christ. Go to hell Sarah Silverman, Jew scum.” David Gianatasio wrote with regard to the controversy created by this clip: “If there’s one thing that can finally bring America together on this whole abortion issue, it’s definitely a blasphemous video of Sarah Silverman hanging out with her feminist bestie, Jesus Christ.” Silverman’s “DeNozzo” Jesus is of course a far cry from the dignified figure we know from the gospels, but so is Stine’s voyeur-cum-couch-potato God. Both Silverman’s and Stine’s versions of Jesus and God, respectively, are anthropomorphic pseudo-deities presented irreverently. In Silverman’s case, the intention is clearly to shock the audience by presenting an absurdly incongruous Jesus who, although dressed like an Israelite 2,000 years ago, speaks and thinks like a contemporary regular guy, even using the F-word. Although Silverman presents a calculatedly sacrilegious and Stine a casually irreverent likeness of God, in both cases the respective deity is presented with very little decorum, thus manifesting a subversive liminal humor dynamic. In sum, it cannot be said that Stine specializes in soft, harmless, and playful comedy, such as the Christian theologians of laughter would like to prescribe. Neither would it be fair to say that Stine is therefore an un-Christian comedian. In fact, he conveniently illustrates an important aspect of all comedy: either take all of it or leave it. The theology of laughter wants only half of comedy and thereby reveals itself to be removed from the messy reality of comedy and quite unaware of the pitfalls of setting prescriptive limits for a type of discourse that thrives precisely on variously transgressing and

136  Christian humorous comedy reinforcing boundaries. This boundary relevant aspect of comedy moves into clear focus when we consider the work of our third Christian comedian, Anthony Griffith.

Anthony Griffith Anthony Griffith teamed up with Brad Stine and two other Christian standup comedians to form a troupe called “Apostles of Comedy,” which toured the United States in 2008. Griffith is to me the most accomplished of the four “Apostles of Comedy.” His performance, which references topics like race (he is black), poverty, and domestic violence, is occasionally dark to the point of almost ceasing to be funny. But Griffith is truly gifted and, to my mind, the most relevant of the four “Apostles.” Another plus, in my view, is the fact that he clearly delights in self-deprecating humor. The most poignant moment in one of Griffith’s recorded performances comes when he establishes a startling link between domestic violence and religion. At this point, the subversive implications of Liminal 2 comedy move into focus. Griffith repeatedly refers to the “whuppings” his pious Baptist mother used to give him when he was a child. Just in case the audience thinks he talks about an occasional cuff on the head, Griffith enacts one of the “whuppings” in graphic detail: I have a love-hate relationship with the church because in church I got some of my worst whuppings. My mother would praise God with one hand and with the other try to take my life. Because as Baptists we don’t believe in time-out, we believe in knock-out. Time-out is the time parents take out to recover from hitting their children. And my mom, she would multi-task at church, she would whup me and sing a praise-song at the same time. (Apostles) At this point, Griffith slowly takes his belt off, while imitating his mother singing a church hymn. Then he starts to hit down on the imaginary child with the belt while continuing to intone the hymn. As the audience laughs at the glaring incongruity of this “joke,” the scene nevertheless has a chilling effect since Griffith basically enacts criminal child abuse. Not only did the violence take place inside a church, but it happened synchronous with the singing of God’s praises. This should be an effective rebuttal to those who claim that religion is the only thing that stands between man and immorality, i.e. that without religion “anything goes.” As Griffith demonstrates rather chillingly, with religion a whole lot of bad things go. By highlighting hypocrisy and linking religion with violence, Griffith shows us nothing new. However, what makes this scene noteworthy is that it takes place within the context of Christian comedy and that it happens under the sign of Christian apologetics. It doesn’t matter whether Griffith’s

Varieties of humorous irreverence 137 mother really hit him with a belt (one rather assumes that she did because he keeps coming back to the beatings); what matters is that Griffith demonstrates that faith does not prevent people from doing really bad things and thus, by implication, that when atheists do bad things, this cannot be attributed to their lack of religious faith. In addition, Griffith’s comedy also raises awareness that hypocrisy is a bigger problem for people of faith than it is for secularists because religionists are more apt to claim the moral high ground, assuming a holier-than-thou attitude. Griffiths demolishes that claim in one fell swoop, literally exposing the hypocrisy of singing pious hymns while committing child abuse. One can go one step further and perceive this scenario as suggesting that religious fervor can be an aggravating factor, since a sense of religious righteousness might well have served the abusing mother as a justification for meting out her corporal punishments. For instance, the countless Irish children who were physically abused, beaten, and starved in Catholic institutions felt on their own bodies that the Christian faith did not temper their tormentors’ violent tempers – on the contrary, it appears to have aggravated them. In 2009, a 2,600-page report detailing patterns of appalling violence and sexual exploitation at hundreds of schools run by the Catholic church in Ireland irreparably damaged the Church’s reputation there. As for beatings, The Guardian reports that “a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from” (McDonald). In this context, Griffith’s comedy grows uncomfortable. Yes, he gets laughs for his beatingwhile-hymn-singing act, but underneath the (uncomfortable) laughter, he plants seeds of doubt and starts a train of thought which may well have a subversive aftereffect, awakening inconvenient thoughts about the connection between faith, intolerance, violence, and hypocrisy. This is a subversive move befitting the function of “negative,” Liminal 2 humor. Two things emerge as a noteworthy takeaway after sampling the above three practitioners of specifically Christian comedy in America. First: Although the comedians ostensibly target mainly the foibles of individual believers (and a host of non-religious topics), thus aiming their comical barbs at low-order comical targets, occasionally their restraint slips as the comedy aims at higher order targets, if mainly implicitly so. Mark Lowry suddenly raises the specter of religion’s inherently constructed and divisive nature. Brad Stine enters blasphemous territory by “proving” the existence of God, making him out to be a “guy” who vaguely conforms to a redneck. Anthony Griffith takes a satirical stab at the evangelical Church he grew up in, while undermining the legitimacy of the claim that religiosity confers moral benefits. Table 5.2 on page 169 displays these mildly subversive qualities of Christian stand-up comedians by marking the corresponding field with an X in parenthesis, thereby indicating the qualified nature of the comical targeting. But whether or not the targeting was intentional, the fact

138  Christian humorous comedy remains that these comedians’ laughter is occasionally also directed at God, Church, creed, and religion. Second, while theologians of laughter discount any but affable, goodnatured, “soft” forms of laughter, it is undeniably the case that the Christian comedians we have considered above also provoke more negative, caustic forms of laughter. Notably, Brad Stine is a determined practitioner of mocking superiority laughter in the Entrenchment 2 mode. Likewise, Mark Lowry occasionally indulges in a bit of “negative” entrenchment comedy, notably, when he dehumanizes and mocks atheists. Only Anthony Griffith does not appear to be really drawn to Entrenchment 2 humor. Instead, he persistently emphasizes Entrenchment 1, i.e. self-deprecatory, mildly parodic humor. Interestingly, then, the most subversively critical of the three comedians, who uses humor to raise doubts about the supposed moral superiority religious faith confers, is at the same time the comedian who is least interested in leveraging laughter as a weapon to stereotype and deride others. Clearly, then, “negative” forms of humor and laughter are present when Christian comedians ply their trade. Thus, to demand that comedy never stray from the territory of “positive” humor would put quite a few Christian comedians out of work. Another way of putting this is that so-called negative, “hard” humor has its place even in comedy by Christians about Christianity. And if Christian comedians engage in “negative” humor, including entrenching types, then we should not be surprised to find this kind of humor also in the comedy of non-believers. After sampling the work of three practitioners of explicitly Christian standup comedy, I  now turn to works of more aggressively irreverent humor. Until quite recently, such comedy would not have had a leg to stand on, and it certainly would have been proscribed by guardians of religious propriety such as the British Society for the Suppression of Vice. However, in this day and age, guardians of religious propriety are not swooping in when religious institutions and even scriptures and deities are made the butt of jokes, suggesting that Western societies today have developed a high level of tolerance toward amusing irreverence. A watershed moment in this development, i.e. when a more hard-nosed religious comedy went mainstream, occurred in 1979, the year Monty Python’s hilarious spoof of the gospel story, Life of Brian, was released. In some ways, this movie marked the beginning of a new era for religious comedy in the West, an era when irreverent comedy and blasphemous joking were no longer in danger of being persecuted either by ecclesiastical or by worldly authorities.

Life of Brian by Monty Python When Monty Python’s Life of Brian hit movie theaters in the summer of 1979, the threshold for the public acceptance of provocative religious

Varieties of humorous irreverence 139 parody was significantly higher than it is today. Many people today would be surprised and even bemused to learn about the passionate outcries that the Python movie prompted in 1979: Street protests erupted in cities from New York to Liverpool, several British towns banned the movie, the film was censored in Southern states of the United States, and it could not be shown nationwide in Norway, South Africa, and Ireland (Bhaskar). Tempers ran especially high in New York City after the movie premiered there in August 1979, with Rabbi Hecht quoted as saying the film was “blasphemous, sacrilegious and an incitement to possible violence” (Harmer). Reverend Roger Fulton of New York referred to the comedy troupe as “Monty Snake,” and the New York Archdiocese went on record as officially opposing the movie (The Story of Life of Brian). Legal trouble was also brewing. The Pythons faced the prospect of being sued for blasphemy. Mary Whitehouse, the leader of the evangelical organization Nationwide Festival of Light, had received some leaked pages of the script before the movie’s release and promptly complained to the British Board of Film Classification, reminding the board of “the wider implications of scurrilous abuse of God, Christ, or the Bible” (The Story of Life of Brian). But Mary Whitehouse’s group failed to stop the distribution and screening of Life of Brian on legal grounds, and her blasphemy suit crumbled. It was to be the last serious challenge to free speech based on the charge of blasphemy in Britain. In 2008, Britain’s blasphemy law was retired, and Ireland followed suit in 2017. Still, the failure to prosecute the Pythons for blasphemy did not deter protesters in 1979. The Liverpool City Mission distributed leaflets against the movie, detailing the “lies” it disseminated: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The Wise Men went to the wrong place and gave their gifts to the wrong baby The Sermon on the Mount resulted in scornful blasphemy and mocking laughter The healed leper mockingly complains that Jesus, “that Do-Gooder,” had healed him – without so much as a by-your-leave A blind man testifying to being healed promptly falls into a pit (Denying the reality of our Lord’s miracles) Brian says that there is no need for a Messiah, no need to follow anyone Death is the end, there is no need to worry The crucifixion scenes are mockingly lighthearted (from The Secret Life of Brian)

The pedantic nature of this catalogue is in itself quite funny, but its criticisms are technically correct since the movie does indeed mock religious teachings as stated on this list. What the protesting Liverpudlians did not take into account is that jokes like the ones listed as number 1–4 would not have been out of place in an English mystery play or a French sotie half a millennium before the religious tomfoolery of the Monty Python

140  Christian humorous comedy hit the silver screen. This kind of spoofing of biblical contents has a long pedigree. Specifically, the idea of the three magi at the start of Life of Brian offering gifts at the wrong nativity is loosely patterned on a scene in the Second Shepherd’s Play (Secunda Pastorum), an English late-medieval mystery play from the Wakefield Cycle. Like many other mystery plays of the time, The Second Shepherd’s Play contains burlesque elements. Specifically, a group of shepherds is searching for a stolen sheep, forcefully entering the suspected thief’s home and searching the premises, only to find a cradle with a newborn baby in it. After departing empty-handed from the suspected robbers’ home, they abruptly decide to return because it occurred to them that they should have brought some gifts for the infant. After entering the home a second time, they realize that the “baby” lying in the cradle was in fact the purloined lamb. The shepherds angrily reclaim their presents (as well as the lamb), unaware of the irony that the “false” baby is also symbolically the right one, i.e. the “lamb of God.” It is immaterial whether or not the Pythons knew about this dramatic precedent of their own joke about the magi bringing gifts to the wrong baby. The fact remains that a comical treatment of the nativity had been conceived long before the Python set out to do something similar, although the Python’s coarse situation comedy made this scene even more laugh-out-loud funny. Some of the negative reactions to Life of Brian were prompted by the movie’s burlesque elements. For instance, pastor David Jebson of the Liverpool City Mission protested against it by saying “They are insulting the Savior that we love, who shed his blood for us, who died for us.  .  .  . To treat crucifixion as a kind of jolly boy dancing, I think, that is something that I felt was really offensive” (The Story of Life of Brian). What sets Life of Brian apart from medieval humor practices like Goliardic mock sermons or comical interludes in mystery plays is that the movie not only uses soft, indulgent laughter to poke fun at common human foibles or manifestations of religious hypocrisy; rather, it actually casts doubt on the very foundations of the Christian faith and questions the justification of the religious mindset. Supporters of the movie have tried to soften its subversive force by insisting that Brian is not about Jesus but about a person confused with the Savior. However, by “contaminating” the mental image of Jesus’s with that of the hapless Brian, the boundary between original and copy is disturbed, and the resulting humorous liminality undermines the supposed certainties surrounding the Christian foundational narrative. Moreover, Brian does at times impersonate Jesus, such as when he literally quotes from the Sermon on the Mount: “Don’t pass judgment on other people, or you might get judged yourself,” which is a close rendition of “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1). In the same scene, Brian goes on to ask his listeners to “consider the lilies in the field” (based on Matthew 6:28), before switching to birds because he had lost his audience at “lilies”: “The birds, they do alright, don’t they. . . . And you are much more

Varieties of humorous irreverence 141 important than they are, right? So, what are you worrying about?” (based on Matthew 6:26). From the context of this scene, we can infer that Brian is just speaking out of the side of his mouth, making it up as he goes along, merely confusing rather than enlightening his listeners. In that sense, surely the holy words are profaned, but profaned in a way that is so incongruous as to make the scene brim with humorous implications. What is most subversive about the scene is not its ability to make us laugh at bits from the Sermon on the Mount but rather its suggestion that people with a religious mindset are apt to mistake plain nonsense for revelation. Indeed, the scene satirizes the thin separation between prophecy and gibberish. More destabilizing from a religious perspective is the sequence of events that follows this ludicrous pastiche of the Sermon on the Mount: After ­suspending his sermon in mid-sentence, Brian is urged by his listeners to finish his thought since he had just then seemed to be getting around to making an important point. But Brian doesn’t want to attract public attention because he is still on the run from the Romans, and so he escapes from the gathering crowd, which follows him in a mad pursuit. Brian’s listeners are now convinced that his convoluted rhetoric must be a sure sign of prophetic inspiration. In his haste to get away, Brian has left a water gourd behind, and he drops one of his sandals as he dashes down the street. Coming across these “relics,” the mob is arrested in its pursuit of the holy one. A devotee rises the sandal above his head shouting “Hold up one shoe and let the other one be upon his foot, for that is his sign that all who follow him shall do likewise,” while another follower interrupts him, “No, no, no, the shoe is a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance.” Then a woman pushes her way to the front of the crowd proclaiming “Cast off these shoes, follow the gourd!” while raising Brian’s water gourd above her head; “No, let us gather shoes,” others shout, and so on. Thus, even before the messiah has become officially recognized, his followers are already quarreling among each other, as “theological” schisms are forming and factions appear out of nowhere. In this scene, neither the choice of the messianic symbol nor its meaning has anything to do with truth or divine revelation. Rather, we witness the willful elevation of random events to holy signs and the human tendency to split and feud over fine points of doctrine. Here, religion is presented as a driver of conflict born from ridiculous causes. Although amusing in its absurdities, this scene implies a fundamental criticism of religious formation. This was not lost on Monty Python’s own Terry Gilliam, who singled out this scene as his favorite of the whole movie because “in five minutes we do the history of any major religion and all of its heresies, and its punishments, and its madness“ (The Story of Life of Brian). Thus, the movie satirizes the way religions are founded, demonstrating how orthodoxies and heresies reflect human rather than divine agency. There are further criticisms of religion built into the movie. Life of Brian also suggests that the whole process by which someone gets elevated as a

142  Christian humorous comedy prophet or identified as deity is ultimately man-made and based on chance rather than guided by providence. What if the three wise men had not recognized their mistake in time and left their gifts at the wrong cradle? Would the “wrong” baby boy have been designated as Son of Man? The notion of Christian teleology or divine providence is undercut in this way. Because of such considerations, Joan E. Taylor has insisted that “the Life of Brian is a subversive film, and – in my view – we need this subversion” (KL 453–54). The movie’s liminal humor potential goes far beyond playful reimaginations of classical episodes from the gospels to bring subversive and skeptical perspectives to bear on themes that have a direct relation to Christian faith and religious devotion. The famous speech by Brian about the importance of being individuals (“Look, you’ve got it all wrong, you don’t need to follow me, you don’t need to follow anybody. You’ve got to think for yourselves; you are all individuals”) is another incident where the religious impulse to form groups and to seek meaning in collective submission is mocked as anti-humanistic or even plain silly. Indeed, when the crowd roars back at Brian in unison, “we are all individuals,” they admit thereby that they are merely repeating words without understanding their meaning. The collective desire to submit to a higher authority comes across as a voluntary form of self-abnegation. Where is the line drawn between lampooning the blind faith of the crowd that has gathered outside Brian’s bedroom and ridiculing Christians participating in the call-and-response in church? Other scenes suggest that religious dogmas are inherently illogical, as expressed by one of Brian’s fervent devotees: “I  say you are the messiah, and I  should know  – I’ve followed a few!” This tautological statement asserts at one and the same time that there is only one messiah, while also acknowledging that there have been several. All this is quite different from purely benign, “soft” religious comedy. By questioning fundamental aspects of faith, undermining the ethos of organized religion, and mocking central claims of dogma such as the virgin birth, Life of Brian is squarely built upon a strong foundation of Liminal 2 humor. But in keeping with my overall view of humor as a phenomenon that is multivalent and slippery, Life of Brian activates not just subversive liminal humor tendencies. Rather, all four humor modes are represented. Straightforward playfulness (Liminal 1) and “soft” jokes, including situation comedy, slapstick, and wordplay, figure prominently in the movie. The whole cartoon interlude, with a spaceship appearing from out of nowhere to whisk Brian away just as he is falling to his death, is a pure a piece of nonsense humor delighting in absurd and exaggerated fantasies. If we are looking for mild Entrenchment 1 humor, we’d have no problem finding it as well. Indeed, on one level, the movie is an elaborate parody of contemporary England and its political and social issues. As one critic observed, “sophisticated viewers will recognize the digs that are made against the class system, the public school, bureaucracy, the trade unions” (Taylor KL 688–89).

Varieties of humorous irreverence 143 Certainly, the recurrent theme of the hopelessly inept People’s Front of Judea and its craven leadership of wannabe rebels who spend their energies inveighing against rival groups rather than taking any forthright action against the real oppressors, can be seen as a good-natured parody of British trade union politics (Crossley KL 2503), thus representing an instance of mildly entrenching humor. The mode least strongly emphasized in Life of Brian is aggressive Entrenchment 2 humor. Perhaps the bit about the lisping, homosexual governor of Judea and his boyfriend, “Bigus Dickus,” can qualify as a bit of aggressive entrenchment, since the stereotypes involved are rather starkly outlined. Or the stuttering jail warden could be considered another stereotypical figure. Indeed, any time a whole nation (or any group) is collectively made the butt of a joke, we are likely faced with an instance of more or less pronounced Entrenchment 2 humor. But of all the humor modes employed in Life of Brian, the aggressively entrenching form is arguably the least prominent. Clearly, then, we have here a culturally valuable and indeed a pioneering comedy that manifests plenty of both “soft” as well as “hard” modes of humor. The foregoing discussion has mainly emphasized the movie’s subversive comical aspects (Liminal 2) because this is the most controversial and in some ways also the most noteworthy humor mode employed throughout Life of Brian. Again, the point is to demonstrate that a modern classic of comical cinema is squarely built on the foundation of irreverently subversive, “negative” humor. To curb such humor, as theologians of laughter and even some secular commentators seem to prefer, would mean to censor or otherwise wipe Life of Brian from the cultural slate, and that is not something liberal-minded comedy lovers would ever be likely to welcome.

South Park South Park is a cutout-style US animated cartoon program that has gained notoriety for its free use of profanity, its often bizarre plot developments, and its unfettered satirical approach to just about any topic, including religious thematics. The program, which has been running for 22 seasons at the time of this writing, has a weekly viewership of over 3 million per episode in the United States and Canada (Johnson-Woods 7), as well as an unspecified number of viewers via syndicated reruns and Internet downloads worldwide. The program is no stranger to controversies over its treatment of religious topics, and the sponsoring network, Comedy Central, has faced concerted efforts from representatives of various religious communities to censor certain episodes considered to be too offensive. In fact, after protests from Muslims, Catholics, and followers of Scientology, the network decided to partially censor and, in some cases, permanently retire specific episodes. While it is true that South Park does not single out one specific religion for ridicule, it is noteworthy that the show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, go to some lengths to avoid giving offense to Muslims. In older

144  Christian humorous comedy episodes such as “Super Best Friends” which aired in July 2001, Muhammad makes an appearance as a good team player with supernatural powers. The “best friends” referenced in the title are a posse of saints and prophets including Moses, Laozhi, Buddha, Krishna, and Muhammad, who are charged with defeating the cult of Blaintology (a reference to both Scientology and the US illusionist David Blaine) that advocates the mass suicide of its members. This episode raised no controversies. Things were different in 2006: After the riots over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish paper Jyllands Posten, South Park decided to do a two-episode mini-series titled “The Cartoon Wars.” Both episodes thematized religious censorship and threats against free speech. In the first installment, the show’s characters debate whether or not Family Guy – another animated US comedy show  – should be allowed to show a depiction of Muhammad. While “Cartoon Wars: Part I” builds suspense as to whether or not Muhammad will eventually be shown on Family Guy, “Cartoon Wars: Part II” was going to show a cameo appearance by Muhammad. In a cutaway from a Family Guy episode, Muhammad would briefly be shown at a remove, as part of a scene in a Family Guy episode integrated into a scene of South Park. Despite multiply embedding the Prophet’s image, Comedy Central got so nervous that the network opted for self-censorship, inserting a black intertitle where Muhammad would have been briefly seen on a TV screen inside the story. Not content with continuing to step around the issue, Parker and Stone tried to bring Muhammad back into the show in 2010. Again, Islam’s aniconic stance was going to be thematized. In the series’ 200th episode, one of the show’s perennial objects of mockery, Tom Cruise, is threatening to sue the town of South Park because its citizens have so relentlessly ridiculed him. Only under one condition would Cruise agree to drop his lawsuit, and that is if the town can arrange a meeting between him and the Prophet Muhammad. The reason for Cruise’s proposed meeting with the Prophet is that he wants the latter to tell him the secret of immunity from mockery. The townspeople are nervous about this deal, but they finally give their consent, under the proviso that the Prophet will remain unseen during his time in South Park. Absurdly, they conceal Muhammad by towing him to South Park inside a covered U-Haul trailer. When Muhammad has to be transferred from the trailer into Cruise’s limousine, he does so wearing a baggy bear costume. This silly procedure succeeds in showing Muhammad while also not showing him. But even this was not enough to placate at least one fundamentalist Muslim group who lodged a strong protest against the network. David Feltmate reports that “the network’s fears were borne out in 2010 when South Park Studios were threatened with violence by the group Revolution Muslim, which posted a picture of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh’s death on their website and claimed that Parker and Stone would probably end up like him for their blasphemy” (KL 3930–3932). This warning was likely what prompted the network to censor the “offending” scene.

Varieties of humorous irreverence 145 In a follow-up episode, #201, any mention of (or utterance by) the Prophet was bleeped, and during the episode’s conclusion, with Kyle giving a stirring speech in favor of free speech, a black intertitle appears where Muhammad would have been seen standing in the audience. The concluding scene was ultimately restored in subsequent broadcasts, but the figure of Muhammad remained blocked by a black bar with the inscription “Censored” (Itzkoff, 2010). This was not the only case of partial self-censorship by Comedy Central. A risqué episode of South Park suggestively titled “Bloody Mary,” was also taken out of circulation after pressure from Catholic lobbyists (Feltmate, KL 3438); moreover, the episode “Trapped in the Closet,” which sharply satirized Scientology (featuring Tom Cruise as a closeted homosexual), appears to have been retired permanently. These instances notwithstanding, South Park does not pull its punches and can hardly be said to step around anybody’s sensibilities, whether they are the sensibilities of Mormons, Wiccans, Scientologists, or Christians. In fact, numerous episodes involve Jesus in absurdly anachronistic scenarios, usually placing him in situations where his powers are unequal to the occasion. In the episode “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Jesus” (December 1999), a crowd of South Park citizens asks Christ to perform a miracle to mark the turn of the millennium in 2000. While the crowd is clamoring outside Jesus’s little house, a reporter on the scene compares the Second Coming of Christ to the appearance of Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day: “We all know if Jesus comes out of his house and is not scared by his shadow, it means the next 1000 years is all going to be full of peace and love.” As if this premise were not ridiculous enough, the crowd then requests to see God the Father on the eve of the year 2000. The following rationale is given for this request: “We followed blindly for thousands of years, and we think the least God could do is show up for new year’s eve 1999.” Annoyed by the demands of the crowd, Jesus barricades himself inside while pleading with his Father to make a miracle happen to let him off the hook. God finally responds to his son’s entreaties, and Jesus steps outside to address the people with the following piece of good news: “We just got Rod Stewart to agree to play a comeback concert at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, and you’re all going!” (South Park “Are You There”). As it turns out, this “miracle” was not such a good idea after all. The concert flops when Rod Stewart, all wrinkly and slumped in a wheelchair, barely croaks a few syllables before soiling himself. Angered by such a disappointing performance, the mob wants to crucify Jesus all over again. Just at this moment, Jesus remembers his role as spokesperson for God and delivers a short speech in his own defense: “God can’t just answer every prayer and give you everything you want. That takes the living out of life. If God answered all our prayers, there would be nothing left to do for ourselves. Life is about problems, and overcoming those problems, and growing and learning from obstacles. And if God just fixed everything for us, there would be no point in our existence” (South

146  Christian humorous comedy Park “Are You There”). This is actually a theologically coherent answer to the Problem of Evil (it is the so-called free will defense), although viewers distracted by the multiple ironies piled on top of one another in this scene may not notice that. In any case, God is pleased with his Son’s handling of the situation in Las Vegas, and as a special favor, he descends in a ball of light from the heavens to make a rare appearance on earth at the millennial moment. It is at this point that the episode crosses the boundary into openly sacrilegious territory. Rather than giving viewers an impression of an awe-inspiring deity, like the blinding vision of the Creator’s pure essence at the conclusion of Dante’s Paradiso, in South Park the heavenly Creator turns out to be a goblin-like creature with a passing resemblance to a furry baby rhino. Jesus only heightens the palpable sense of incongruity when he says “’Tis my father the creator. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end” (South Park “Are You There”). The mishappen godling crouching beside Jesus looks anything but worshipful, something that is not lost on the crowd, who begins to grumble and hiss. If the creators of South Park were theologically inclined, one could argue that they are illustrating the principle of the via negativa. This term denotes an early Christian mystical school of apophatic theology which taught that God could only be known indirectly by enumerating the things which he is not. This essentially mystical view insists that God is removed from common human perception and cognition and that he could therefore not be expressed by the conventional terms available in human language. The apophatic approach to divinity, although an epistemological tradition reaching back to Plato, is in the Christian tradition associated with Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, who lived sometime in fifth to the early sixth century CE. To Pseudo-Dionysius, God was radically unknowable and eternally mysterious, only capable of being approached by an infinite regression of negatives (God is not material, not finite, not subject to physical laws, not moral in the human sense, etc.). Since this includes negating the certainties outlined in the Nicene Creed, apophatic theology is at odds with mainstream Christian theology and can even be considered a “heresy.” Whether the creators of South Park were invoking apophatic theology or not is unclear, but it is certain that the goblin-like Yahweh we meet in the South Park episode doesn’t resemble anything people thought they knew about God. So, while there are flashes of “theological correctness” (Jesus knows his theodicy and God baffles any and all expectations), this is not enough to create the impression of a sustained theological satire, as is the case with DarkMatter2525 (see next section). Rather, this irreverent episode of South Park simply piles incongruities and anachronisms upon one another just to raise a laugh. It is free-wheeling religious comedy without a sustained satirical rationale or subversive calculus. Indeed, South Park abounds in unfettered, anarchically sacrilegious comedy that activates all four humor modes. For critic David Feltmate, the

Varieties of humorous irreverence 147 show’s radical irreverence goes too far. In Drawn to the God: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, & Family Guy (2017), Feltmate takes all three animated comedy programs to task because “easy stereotypes rule the day. . . . Their humor reduces complexity, dismisses theology, and reinforces their own ideology” (KL 4084–4085). In his view, boundaries are reinforced by what Feltmate calls “ignorant familiarity,” a term he uses frequently throughout the book. According to Feltmate, the humor in South Park “makes it easy to use different moral boundaries to exclude people for varying reasons” (KL 4106). In his view, the laughter prompted by shows like South Park serves to “emphasize these ‘others’’ outsider status. Humorous exclusion is often facilitated through ignorant familiarity, because this kind of knowledge is widespread, superficial, often erroneous, directed at outsiders, and deployed with a degree of certainty as to the validity of the knowledge” (KL 4102–4104). Not all critics agree with this censorious view. Ted Gournelos draws an almost inverse conclusion, emphasizing the productive disordering of dominant ideological discourses offered by the program: “Shows such as South Park have such a large viewership precisely because they inhabit and attack discourse from so many standpoints that it is reductive to place them in one political camp. Such an approach is not political in the usual sense of parties and platforms but rather political on a deeper level, forcing questions and discussion where normally we would be presented with binary options” (Gournelos 162). Remarkably, Gournelos values South Park precisely for not trotting out easy stereotypes, and he approves its “anarchic humor” because “South Park opens up spaces for potential challenge in a continual interrogation of its own ideology” (144). I agree with Gournelos that South Park is too slippery, ironic, self-referential, metacultural, and layered to support Feltmate’s criticism that its humor necessarily “reduces complexity” in order to “exclude people” (KL 4108). Feltmate’s rejection of aggressive entrenchment humor shares a temperamental similarity with the theology of laughter’s righteous views regarding “negative” humor. Manifesting a strong aversion to any kind of exclusionary discourse, Feltmate would like to replace South Park’s vocabulary of offensiveness and insult with a gently edifying menu of social justice options: We should use religious satire  .  .  . to consciously own the legitimations that comprise the plausibility structures undergirding our unseen orders. In this way, we hope to be able to overcome divisive difference by recognizing the basic humanity that has gone into the creation of other unseen orders, learn the legitimations that justify those ways of life, and engage in intelligent criticism based on comprehending others and accepting the fact that there may be fundamental reasons for differences between varying human groups.” (Feltmate, KL 4243–4248)

148  Christian humorous comedy One can imagine what would happen if South Park underwent the kind of sensitivity training suggested here. Yes, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Mormons, Scientologists, Wiccans, and others might no longer feel offended, and the level of understanding between various religious groups might (marginally) be raised. But the program would also cease to be comical. Feltmate insists that “popular culture creations are important locations for disseminating and acquiring religious literacy” (KL 4156–4157). This is another attempt at legislating away “negative” humor, especially curbing the negatively entrenching kind. To make the world a better place by educating people about the various “plausibility structures undergirding our unseen orders” is an admirable undertaking, but comedy and satire are the wrong places to look for implementation of this edifying project. Taking the offensive, profane sting out of satire would be like taking the hot pepper out of the chili or the alcohol out of the wine. Such a courteously safe vision of “sensitive” comedy would have no room for South Park’s crude humor, nor would it allow for the radical satire of The Book of Mormon. Imposing a sensitivity requirement on comedy would not only eliminate offensive comedy aimed at subjects dear to the political left, but it would also undercut the anti–right wing comedy disseminated by Saturday Night Live, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and others. After all, there are “unseen legitimizing orders” that underpin the plausibility structure of Trump supporters. Hence, to protect the sensibilities of conservative, white Americans could mean scrapping entrenching comedy routines by liberal comedians which smack of “ignorant familiarity” regarding the lives, interests, and beliefs of Trump voters. As with other utopian prescriptions motivated by noble, righteous ideas, there is a double-edged quality to this critique against indecent comedy. The gain in social harmony is likely to be greatly offset by the loss incurred when comedy is declawed, tamed, and made child-proof.

DarkMatter2525 For those in 1979 who thought that Life of Brian was a startling manifestation of sacrilegious humor, much more radical forms of comedy were in store. Here, I take a look at one of the hard-core religious comedies of the Internet age. The YouTube channel DarkMatter2525 employs a cartoon approach to poke fun at fundamental aspects of religious belief while deconstructing specific tenets of theistic doctrine from a secular-humanist perspective. These animated episodes push the envelope of subversive liminal humor about as far as it can go before funniness gives way to didacticism. Given its savvy use of youth-culture references, its high entertainment value, and its technical sophistication, the videos on DarkMatter2525 appeal strongly to a young audience. Each installment of the series features a similar setup: two characters or a small group of figures are shown in a situation that is relevant to one theistic principle or another. The

Varieties of humorous irreverence 149 chosen article of faith is then illustrated, usually involving a cartoon figure of God and his sidekick, Jeffery (a pesky little angel sporting a cannabis leaf over his privates), and ultimately invalidated (see Figure 4.2). The premise that weaves like a running joke through this series is the argument that if God really existed, he would have to be an ignorant, malevolent, and vulgar bully. Compared to God, who is depicted in a very unflattering light, God’s little sidekick-demon voices enlightened, rationalist views that are ultimately shown to be ethically superior. In a sense, Jeffery serves as the conscience which God lacks, and his “rebellion” is, therefore, justified. There are dozens of animated episodes on the DarkMatter2525 YouTube channel, bringing theological disputes to a new level and to a new audience. Using irony, wry humor, and occasionally sarcasm, these clips demonstrate that theology need not be a stuffy affair for aged sophists. Indeed, there is something Socratic about these videos that even Socrates would find provocative. The episodes are not only entertaining but highly intelligent as well, combining the liminal elements of irony, defamiliarization, and paradox in order to subvert specific religious teachings.

Figure 4.2  God with conspicuous bloodstains, accompanied by his “sidekick” Jeffery Source: Still from DarkMatter2525 (YouTube channel) Note: The author of the videos operates anonymously and cannot be reached. Image used on a “fair use” basis.

150  Christian humorous comedy The episode I  want to focus on here, “The God of Paradox,” satirizes all of God’s central theistic attributes. The opening sequence of the episode shows an awkwardly adolescent Jesus attending his dad’s graduation from “God School” (“It takes a lot to go back to school as a single parent,” says Jesus). After Poseidon (god of the seas) and Aphrodite (goddess of love) have stepped up to the podium to collect their diplomas, it is Yahweh’s turn. His divine assignment, as printed on the diploma, is “God of pastries,” but Yahweh had tampered with the diploma, crossing out “pastries” and writing in “everything.” The God School administrator handing out the diplomas cannot approve of this change in Yahweh’s assignment, so he sends him to the school’s principal to sort things out. In the principal’s office, Yahweh demands the theistic powers of omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, as well as eternality and spacelessness while requesting to spar eternally with a powerful adversary. These are, of course, the real attributes of the monotheistic deity. At first, the principal of the God School tries to convince Yahweh that his plan is unworkable, since it entails “multiple severe paradoxes.” When Yahweh insists on his demands, the principal grows exasperated: “He wants to be everywhere all at once, yet reside beyond space and time and interact with the universe; he wants to have a plan that will play out exactly as he wants while allowing everyone to do exactly as they choose; he wants to be perfectly good, yet requires an abundance of evil, suffering, and sacrifice to fulfill his wishes. This guy wants to be all-powerful and yet he wants to have enemies that rebel and try to defeat him” (DM2525 “Paradox”). At this point, a masked figure steps up to the principal’s desk and announces that all the paradoxes and contradictions that had just been enumerated could be easily resolved by attaching a supplemental form titled “supernatural” to the paperwork of Yahweh’s application to be “god of everything.” The mysterious stranger goes on to explain his thinking: “The supernatural is not bound to any form of reality with which anyone will ever be familiar. It can be created, destroyed, or be eternal. It has never been sampled or measured in any way, shape, or form; its existence is entirely unverifiable and therefore any characteristics of it are eligible to be invented by anyone, on the spot. Any and all problems with the concept of God or any of its assertions can immediately be cured by attributing them to the supernatural. This can completely nullify any and all arguments. . . forever.” “But  .  .  . surely,” [asks the principal] “nobody is ever going to be satisfied with that?” “You’d be surprised,” [answers the masked visitor]. (DM2525 “Paradox”) The “supernatural solution” is presented as a scam that will allow God to get away with all kinds of contradictions and imperfections inherent in the

Varieties of humorous irreverence 151 theistic conception of an almighty God. In this way, DarkMatter2525 links hilarious situation comedy with analytical satire, even as it combines vulgar speech with sophisticated philosophical and theological reasoning. A break-down of the “God of Paradox” episode reveals four subversively comical premises: 1 Yahweh cusses like a human, and he speaks in an idiom that betrays human characteristics like peevishness, arrogance, and ignorance. This petty, vulgar God is certainly not worshipful. 2 There is a “God School” from which all gods graduate (including the monotheistic God). This comical premise suggests that gods are subject to the same processes of apprenticeship, studying, test taking, and graduating as humans. 3 Yahweh was originally assigned the function of “god of pastry,” and he has to persuade a power greater than him (the principal of the God School) to be promoted to “God of everything.” 4 Yahweh is given his powers as monotheistic deity after going through a formal bureaucratic application process, including assembling the requisite forms and getting the necessary bureaucratic validations. How relevant are these premises? Apart from premise 1, which presents viewers with a straightforward comical incongruity, each of the other three premises has theological implications that bear closer scrutiny. First, the video is correct in suggesting that Yahweh did not appear at once on the scene as a full-fledged monotheistic God. Granted, Yahweh’s original role did not include the function of “god of pastry”; but a deity by the name of Yahweh was worshipped in Mesopotamia as a “specialized” God responsible for warfare. Canaanite tribes only gradually promoted Yahweh to become a singular, supreme deity. Richard Wright traces the development of monotheism and the promotion of Yahweh to sole deity out of a religious matrix of polytheism that existed in ancient Mesopotamia. According to Wright, one of several Canaanite gods gradually rose in prominence to become the one-and-only God of the Israelites and, hence, the Almighty deity of Jews and Christians: “At the end of the Bronze Age, on the eve of Israel’s birth, [there] is a divine council. And the god most often depicted as its chief – a god named El (pronounced ale or el) – bears a curious resemblance to Yahweh.  .  .  . Yahweh, even in that early appearance as a warrior god, was driven by his compassion for the Israelites” (110). Portraying Yahweh as lining up with other deities to pick up his graduation papers is merely a fanciful graphic way to illustrate that Yahweh was originally considered to be one of several gods, competing for supremacy with other Mesopotamian deities like Baal, El, and Asherah. Next, the divine attributes that Yahweh demands from the principal of the God School are the correct basic attributes of the theistic God: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, being eternal and spaceless,

152  Christian humorous comedy while eternally warring with a powerful adversary. The video cleverly leverages the internal conflict between different components of this set of attributes to expose the numerous paradoxes that this catalogue entails. Finally, the recourse to “supernaturalism” as a fix-all solution to silence skeptics and reconcile apparent contradictions within the monotheistic belief system is indeed a patent solution often resorted to by the faithful. When people invoke God’s inscrutable will or maintain that he works in mysterious ways, they are appealing precisely to the “supernatural principle” to prevent disconfirmation of their belief. The humor of these DarkMatter2525 videos is almost entirely ­liminal, with a strong emphasis on the “hard,” subversive Liminal 2 kind of humor. Of course, there are merely incongruous, playful aspects involved as well, such as when Eve uses profanity in the presence of God or when Adam and Eve are shown as awkwardly copulating. But the main force of the comedy is of the “hard” liminal sort, as theistic premises are deconstructed using humor to demonstrate the incoherencies at the core of certain theistic faith claims. Entrenchment humor is not prominent in these videos, and if stereotypes and generalizations are at all involved – notably, stereotypes directed against atheists – then the videos typically expose such generalizations as spurious distortions. In fact, DarkMatter2525 consistently delivers anti-entrenchment comedy, using ­laughter to ­undermine collective religious judgments against gays, women, ­dissenters, etc. The same goes for the series’ anti-religious impetus. Instead of employing superiority humor to mock theists or simply jeer at pious people, DarkMatter2525 uses wit, irony, and skeptical logic to comically subvert specific faith claims, quoting scriptural references to support the arguments. This is, then, a highly sophisticated form of irreverent satire, a satire that attacks religion liminally at its root by deconstructing the very concept of theism as such, and by exploiting the incongruities built into scriptural teachings. This is religious comedy in the tradition of Aristophanes, Lucian, and Mark Twain. The videos are debates framed in the form of Socratic dialogues whose humor serves two main purposes: They facilitate the transfer of skeptical, anti-theistic ideas because the arguments are conveyed in an entertaining form. Second, in a fashion that recalls Kierkegaard  – except more irreverently so – DarkMatter2525 demonstrates that the fundamental humor mechanisms of incongruity are inherent to religion. What these videos set out to do is to peel back the veils of reverence and belief that cover up comical aspects inherent in religion. By effortlessly revealing what is inherently funny in religious beliefs, this sort of comedy fulfills the strongest possible subversive function. The effect of this on the viewer may well be to generate new levels of doubt and skepticism toward religious explanations and, ultimately, a partial or full loss of faith. In this sense, DarkMatter2525 is pure anti-theology – an

Varieties of humorous irreverence 153 exercise of theological reasoning designed to undermine central tenets of the Judeo-Christian creeds. Humor is used as leverage to dislodge major articles of faith and to fan the fire of rational doubt. Rowan Atkinson, Robin Williams, Steve Carell, and Steven Colbert are in my final group of pop-culture humorists who address religious topics. In contrast to the three Christian comedians discussed at the start of this chapter, this group of mainstream comedians does not openly profess their religious faith; even Stephen Colbert, who is a practicing Catholic, does not let his faith dictate the topic, delivery, or style of his comedy. At the same time, all four comedians have a strong hold on public perceptions of religious humor. Indeed, Googling the term “religious humor” brings up their names near the top of the list of results. Not surprisingly, when students in my honors seminar on religious comedy were asked to give presentations on a religious comedian of their choice, they were drawn toward these very figures. One reason why my students chose the likes of Stephen Colbert, Robin Williams, and Rowan Atkinson for their presentations was that their religious comedy seemed to be mild and harmless. Indeed, all but one of my 18 students were religious, some of them deeply so. Thus, their choices of religious comedians tended to favor the performers of “clean,” soft humor. Or so they thought. . . . After reviewing the comical material that they used for their presentations, I encouraged them to dig a little deeper and ferret out the less obvious and potentially far more subversive aspects of these supposedly “clean,” harmless religious comedy performances. Let us take a closer look now at some of the specific routines that my students saw as examples of “clean” religious comedy:

Rowan Atkinson This classical Atkinson skit, viewed millions of times on YouTube, shows the comedian standing at a rostrum robed in full clerical regalia, looking solemn and sanctimonious (see Figure  4.3). Even for those who are not familiar with Atkinson’s work, it should be quite clear that he is not sincerely sermonizing. But he is not particularly breaking new ground, comedically speaking. Indeed, this form of parodic entertainment has a long history with roots reaching all the way back to the late Middle Ages. In the 12th and 13th centuries, mainly in Italy, so-called clerici ribaldi (Lindvall, KL 863) were plying their trade going from place to place. In the words of Terry Lindvall, “these tonsured sophomores parodied everything sacred. As traveling theology students, they . . . took licentious delight in the wine cup and subverted sacred and romantic ideas with coarse and cheerful irreverence” (Lindvall, KL 868–870). These Goliards (named after a figure of legend called Golias) were young clerics turned traveling entertainers. In the “goliardic tradition of mixing the sacred and the profane” (Giles 7), these

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Figure 4.3  Rowan Atkinson as a vicar Source: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock

young men would roam the countryside performing ribald inversions of pious church sermons in praise of drunkenness and debauchery. Compared to these riotous performances, Atkinson’s skit is much more restrained and intellectual, but it follows the same tradition, and by parodying the Wedding at Cana (from the Gospel according to John), it also involves partying and alcohol. At first, it appears that Atkinson remains faithful to the biblical text (John 2:1–12), but the parodic aspect of the performance is soon established when he pronounces certain words in an exaggerated fashion and uses archaic diction. For instance, he would say that the steward at the wedding in Cana “knew not whhhence it [the wine] had come” (exaggeratedly aspirating the “h”). The comedy gathers momentum when Atkinson begins to deviate wildly from the gospel script without changing his priestly demeanor at all. Although the steward at the wedding in Cana did not know where (“whhhence”) the wine had come from, “the servants did know  .  .  . and they said unto the Lord: ‘how the hell did you do that?’ ” (Atkinson). The juxtaposition of vulgar language with the elevated register of scriptural diction creates a humorous incongruity. Moreover, to invoke hell as an expression of surprise at something Jesus did is unorthodox, to say the least. From here, Atkinson gradually pushes the boundary of devotional discourse to reach for plain absurdity, like reporting that the servants wanted to know

Varieties of humorous irreverence 155 whether “Jesus does children’s parties” (Atkinson). The thought of Jesus as a birthday clown would be cringe-worthy for many Christians. It is all in jest, of course, but the skit encourages us nevertheless to consider whether there might be a parallel between a performer doing “magical” tricks and Jesus turning water into wine. If we agree with Brent Plate that “blasphemous images have to do with an impure mixing” (44), i.e. when a sacred idea or belief is suddenly thrust into profane territory without any proper mediation, then we can conclude that Atkinson’s liminal humor – deliberate mixing the sacred and the profane – has blasphemous implications. People watching this skit are exposed to the subversive idea that believing in religious miracles is not much different from children mistaking tricks for real magic. The crossing of the profane-sacred boundary in Atkinson’s mock sermon is heightened, when Jesus does indeed pull a magic trick. Atkinsonas-priest tells us that Jesus grabs a piece of vegetable from the kitchen counter, saying: “ ‘behold this, for it is a carrot,’ and all knew that it was so, for it was orange.” At this point the audience is truly amused because cumbersome biblical rhetoric is invoked to describe an utterly mundane object. And when Jesus subsequently turns the carrot into a rabbit, even though the language to describe this corresponds to the language of the gospels, the audience realizes that Jesus is just performing commercial magic. Atkinson here deflates the sanctified language of the Bible in an application of “negative” Liminal 2 humor. This is done in the same spirit as the medieval mock sermons, where fake preachers would “corrupt the liturgy by dragging the Word of God down to the level of the world and its sinners” (Giles 4). By clouding the distinction between the supposedly genuine miracle related in the Gospels and the act of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Atkinson’s humor sows seeds of skepticism. Of course, compared to blatant forms of blasphemy, this is a comparatively mild form of sacrilege. Still, in the back of our minds, there now exists a little germ of doubt: What if sacred language is nothing more than normal language that sounds archaic? What if miracles are in fact only tricks performed by crafty magicians? What if Jesus was just a mortal with a knack for make-believe? Although we may momentarily enjoy the playfulness of these boundary-challenging ideas, over time and through repetition they may grow into more serious doubts, perhaps joined by other micro-doubts, and together they can then begin to erode the edifice of belief by “infecting” us with skepticism. Interestingly, my students – and presumably many more viewers of Atkinson’s skit – did not pick up on the underlying subversive message that was conveyed through the humorous rhetoric. Of course, it is not the case that such subliminal doubts will inevitably lead to a collapse of faith in the long run. To say so would only provide ammunition to those who would like to curb irreverent humor. One can also turn the argument the other way around and say that despite the seeds of doubt that religious comedy sows in people’s minds, religion has not ceased to be a vital and important aspect in the lives of millions of comedy consumers.

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Robin Williams Atkinson is not alone in making comedy gold out of religious miracles. Nor is he the only one to revive medieval precedents in a contemporary performance. Another popular YouTube video (filmed in New York City in 2002) shows Robin Williams rising lots of laughs on account of gospel narratives. Like Atkinson, Williams triggers incongruity laughter by bringing sacred contents – in this case the miracle of the immaculate conception – into contact with profane ideas and common language. Specifically, Williams reimagines the confrontation that might have happened between Joseph and Mary after the former finds out that his wife is unexpectedly – and suspiciously  – pregnant. This is not in itself an original move. Many medieval religious plays also contain scenes of broad comedy centering on an imagined quarrel between Joseph and Mary after he finds out that she is pregnant. According to one scholar, “the English [medieval] plays generally present Joseph as the typical comic, cuckolded and complaining elderly husband” (Muir 97), a role that Williams impersonates with aplomb. The medieval plays featuring a quarrel scene were inspired by apocryphal texts like the Pseudo-Matthew (one of the “Infancy Gospels”), which describe Joseph’s distress at finding Mary to be pregnant. And while these comical episodes were not intended to unsettle reigning orthodoxy vis-à-vis the mystery of Mary’s miraculous conception, one scholar attributes subtly subversive effects to such theatrical treatments: “When Joseph is accused of impotence, the action seems to be designed to make the orthodox theological point that their marriage was a spiritual not a carnal one, and that he and Mary did not have sexual relations. But the lesson is undermined by being presented as comedy so effective that it constitutes a counterdiscourse” (Waller 75). This counter-discourse resonates with the suggestion that, perhaps, the Virgin Mary was not sexually inexperienced, and that, perhaps, she was simply looking for an excuse to cover her adultery. The resulting incongruity between holiness and carnality creates a matrix for humorous transgression that the medieval mystery plays could not resist. As Gary Waller writes, “Medieval drama’s lack of any ‘fourth wall,’ its constantly drawing attention to itself as theater through the use of historical anachronism, and its location at once ‘here’ and ‘there,’ both in the world and transcending it, represented a liminal space in which multiple perspectives could interact, for ‘staging’ not only ‘faith,’ but faith’s contradictions” (68). The very liminality invoked by Waller here is the principal humor mechanism at work in Williams’s skit. Indeed, liminality is not only present in the form of impersonation, with Williams speaking in the voices of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, but it is also manifest on the semantic and logical levels. Williams twists logic anachronistically when – in the persona of Joseph – he exclaims “Jesus Christ!” after learning that his wife is pregnant. In a further twist, Mary deftly turns that exclamation to her own benefit: “You’re right! Such a great name,

Varieties of humorous irreverence 157 Joe!” (Williams). The use of Jesus’s name as an expletive long before Jesus even stepped into the role of messiah (the prerequisite for using his name as an oath) is the height of liminal playfulness. Once the news that Mary is expecting has settled in, Joseph ejaculates another oath: “Holy mother of God!” Again, the oath’s anachronism is shrewdly repurposed by Mary in the interest of self-defense: “You’re right!” she shouts excitedly. Irony is also apparent in Mary’s answer to Joseph’s “How did it happen?” to which she replies “Oh, it was immaculate,” a claim which prompts Joseph to say sarcastically “It better be immaculate!” (Williams). In this way, Williams’s skit highlights the contradictions embedded in miraculous religious narratives, and it does so in a manner that is unrestrained and unapologetic. Williams does not provide a follow-up to take the sting out of the suspicion that Mary is an adulteress and Jesus her illegitimate child. The boundary between the sacred and the profane, between the spiritual and the carnal levels, has been momentarily weakened by humorous innuendo, thus allowing for the “impure mixing” of blasphemy. Williams’s skit continues to skirt sacrilege when he suggests that Jesus’s name might as well have been any other appellation, including “Jim Bob.” To illustrate just how this would sound, Williams breaks into hymnal song – “Praise to Him, Jim Bob, who fixes stuff and gets me a job, Jim Bob!” (Williams). Playing with holy names is not new of course. In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin commented on the late-medieval popularity of profanities and oaths desecrating the name of Christ and the saints, a practice he saw as a staple of the era’s “free carnival atmosphere” (16–17). But Williams is not exactly “swearing” in the name of Christ but rather more subtly toying with the believer’s sense of divine providence. By substituting a pedestrian appellation for Christ’s hallowed name, he suggests that holy names are not divinely ordained but simply man-made constructs. Endless repetition through devotional practices over the course of time can make anything seem inevitable and holy, including a ridiculous name for a god or, to extrapolate from this argument, the idea of an “immaculate” conception. This is a subtle point, but it contains a seed of skepticism about the truth of divine revelation, substituting mere circumstance for providence. To judge this as “clean” humor without subversive implications would be naïve. Likewise, it would be mistaken to assume that medieval audiences at ecclesiastical plays containing humorous scenes – whether it be the Second Shepherd’s Play, the Mary Play, or any other theatrical piece from the various religious drama cycles – remained completely unaffected by the destabilizing effects of comical liminality. Gary Waller wrote that the scene enacted [of Joseph and Mary’s quarrel]  .  .  . enables, without forcing, the audience to take a critical stance toward the theology. Joseph is not simply a pious symbol, but one of the great comic figures of frustration and confusion in drama. He grumbles about his impotence and the humiliation his wife’s obvious pregnancy brings him. . . .

158  Christian humorous comedy His language to Mary is crude, direct, and continually draws attention to the physical details of the sexual act. (75) Arguably, Robin Williams builds on this medieval tradition of mixing the sacred and the profane for comical effect, but he takes the humor further than the writers of medieval ecclesiastical drama would ever have dared to go. While the medieval theater singles out Joseph and the shepherds, as well as the general human proclivity to folly and error, Williams aims his comedy more squarely at the substance of the religious doctrines themselves. He really is poking fun at the immaculate conception and he really is making light of the notion of God become man. If transported by time machine back to the Middle Ages, it is likely that Williams would attract the attention of blasphemy hunters and get into serious trouble with the ecclesiastical courts. By causing the audience to laugh along with him, Williams could be accused of encouraging a softening and doubting of supposedly fixed dogmas. The performance aspect of this liminal comedy is crucial to its subversive effect. According to Waller, the kind of subversion encoded in performance . . . does not necessarily provide instantaneous opposition, but operates rather at a level that may influence later thinking and action. By the very nature of theatrical performance, members of the audience may have immediate reactions very different from those “intended” (always a question-begging concept with staging a play) and may develop quite different responses after the performance. (69) As a conceptual moving target, an ironic religious performance’s true meaning cannot easily be pinned down. This was brought home to me when I realized that my students had classified Robin Williams’s skit as an instance of harmlessly soft comedy. But Williams’s skit also activates the potentials of hard humor, enacting subversive Liminal 2 comedy that nudges our imagination to transgress official doctrines and wander into the borderlands of heterodoxy and doubt. This is not meant as a critique or condemnation of such irreverent humor. Rather, it goes to show that, once again, comedy – especially religious comedy  – has a tendency to veer off into irreverence. Even medieval devotional plays, written and performed during the “age of faith” show aspects of what today’s theologians of laughter would have to admit is part and parcel of the “negative” registers of humor.

Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell The third example of religious comedy deemed harmless by my students is a small satirical masterpiece performed by Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell

Varieties of humorous irreverence 159 in 2003. In this skit, Carell plays a Muslim zealot while Colbert pretends to be a Christian fundamentalist. They are facing off to determine which faith is the true faith and, hence, which God is the true God. Although delivered in a mocking manner, the dialogue between the two comedians mirrors real disagreements between the two world religions. Specifically, the skit mocks exclusivist religious claims, it ridicules biblical literalism, and it pokes fun at the underlying “logic” of belief. Colbert starts out by declaring condescendingly, “this debate is about religion; let’s discuss it rationally. Now think about it, if you were God, would you manifest your divine glory to a shepherd in a cave in Saudi Arabia in the seventh century or as the son of a carpenter in a manger in Judea in the year zero? Come on, use your mind” (Colbert and Carell). What is being mocked here is the built-in exclusivism of the two religious systems. Going by what Colbert says, there really is no difference between Muhammad and Jesus on the face of it, and only religious belief manufactures the difference, claiming religious supremacy by reasoning backward. Of course, two can play at this game, and Carell readily turns the scales on Colbert: “Stephen, what part of ‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet’ don’t you understand? Let’s assume for the sake of argument that your god is the one true God. That would mean that Allah is not the one true God, which we know he is. Don’t you see your logic eats itself?” (Colbert and Carell). The skit not only exposes the incompatibility of multiple monotheistic frameworks regarding the one “true God,” it also serves as an object lesson in what John Stuart Mill called the “infallibility argument.” This argument, which serves to delegitimize and silence people holding different viewpoints, poses a serious threat to free speech. Regarding the conflicting truth claims of religious believers, Nigel Warburton writes that they base their whole lives on this alleged knowledge. But the different gods of the different religions can’t all exist: many are mutually incompatible. Monotheism and polytheism, for instance, can’t both be true. This is a point of logic: Nor can the Christian God and the God of the Muslims both exist; not unless these religions have seriously misunderstood the nature of their god. Yet Christians and Muslims may equally have feelings that they genuinely know that a particular god exists. (26–27) Warburten uses this example to illustrate the necessity of refraining from claiming infallibility in matters of belief, whether religious, political, philosophical, or cultural. Although ostensibly an amusing comedy skit, the exchange between Colbert and Carell thus highlights humor’s ability to assist understanding, promote reason, and ultimately boost social harmony. Further, the skit invites us to consider as potentially arbitrary all kinds of other distinctions that underpin absolutist claims about religious “truths.” Once again, the humor plays subversively with boundaries, in this case the

160  Christian humorous comedy boundaries between supposedly “true,” and “false” beliefs. From the Islamic point of view, Jesus is merely a prophet, not a God, while from the strict Christian belief, Muhammad is a false prophet. Is either of these positions “true”? Faced with that question, the wrong answer would be to follow the infallibility principle and promote just one viewpoint while silencing the other. Arguably, the only solution commensurate with a free and open society is to adopt a kind of universalism, declaring that we can all pray to our own true God (or to no God at all) without the need to privilege one God at the exclusion of another. It should be noted, though, that traditional monotheists would consider such a universalist proposition to be heretical. Besides targeting religious exclusivism, the skit further aims its comical barbs against scriptural literalism. By claiming to set the debate on a rational foundation, Colbert ironically reinforces the questionable nature of absolute truth-claims made in the name of religion: “First off, Steve, it’s not my logic but God’s logic as written in the Bible, every word of which is true. And we know every word is true because the Bible says that the Bible is true and as you know from the earlier part of this sentence, every part of the Bible is true” (Colbert and Carell). Again, these are not far-fetched statements in the context of religious controversies. The comical illogicality of Colbert’s circular reasoning implicates other Bible literalisms as well. This train of thought may well encourage other skeptical reassessments: God created the world in six days? Preposterous! Adam was the first human being? Laughable! Noah and his family were the only humans to survive the Great Flood? Give me a break! And so on. Exploiting religious literalism is a comical strategy based on Liminal 2 humor. Exposing the gap between what is written and what is meant implies that anything can be read into scriptures or that the truth-claims of the Bible are unreliable. Although this may not be the first time people are exposed to the irrationality of Bible literalism, it may well reinforce an already extant skepticism in many viewers who laugh along with the rest of the audience at the absurdity of Colbert’s self-insulating truth claims about his championed religion. The end of the skit is painfully relevant from a socio-political perspective: Jon Stewart, the mock moderator of this mock religious debate, exhorts the two opponents to find some common ground. After pondering this request for a moment, both Carell and Colbert agree that they have indeed one thing in common: anti-Semitism. On that basis they high-five each other and behave as best friends, although just a minute ago, they had feuded over whose religion was truer. This is a sad reminder that common bigotry can unite the most bitter of foes; moreover, it suggests that even the most ardent defenders of Christianity and Islam are susceptible to anti-Semitism – not exactly a suggestion inspiring much confidence in the ethical superiority of each (or either) religious faith. This punch line hits pretty hard: if the claim that religion provides people with a moral compass is true, then the unethical ending of that skit puts a dent into that claim. Of course, we are in the realm of comedy, not serious philosophical debate; but once again,

Varieties of humorous irreverence 161 the seeds of skepticism sown by the skit’s subversive liminal humor have the potential to cause some cracks to form in the pillars of belief, cracks that might widen by repetition and therefore, ultimately, weaken the edifice of faith. All four mainstream comedians considered in this section, though apparently delivering “clean” harmless religious comedy, actually utilized “hard,” especially Liminal 2 humor techniques to question supposed certainties and to undermine credos in ways that can be seen as having subversive and blasphemous implications. Rowan Atkinson’s humor zooms in at the boundary between sacred and profane language and the gray zone between magic and miracle, suggesting that the two are not mutually exclusive. As a result, worshipful reverence for Jesus is subtly undermined by presenting him as being on the same level with a clown or a magician. Robin Williams’s humor even more sacrilegiously muddies the distinction between supernatural and profane levels of reality by suggesting that Jesus is an illegitimate child and that the Virgin Mary is a crafty adulteress who turns Joseph’s exclamations of dismay to her advantage to cover up her affair. The whole concept of reverence, built on the clear distinction between the sacred and the mundane realms of existence, is undercut in that boundary-crossing skit. Moreover, in suggesting that religious beliefs are man-made constructs that have become naturalized by endless repetition, Williams promotes a skeptical secular stance. Finally, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell exploit the absurdity of taking religious teachings literally. Moreover, they expose to ridicule the doctrine of monotheistic exclusivism, showing the logical and ethical impasse that results when the three monotheisms’ claims to the possession of the only true God are taken seriously. None of this means that there is anything objectionable in such subtly heretical religious comedy. But my analysis demonstrates once again that humor, when it comes into contact with religion, tends to take on a subversive liminal character, even when it appears superficially to be perfectly harmless. In fact, my students evidently had not noticed that the comical skits they had chosen harbored any such anti-dogmatic, critical dimensions. This chapter showed that while secular or agnostic comedians worked more strongly and consistently in the subversive register of Liminal 2 humor than their Christian counterparts, they went light on Entrenchment 2 humor. In the skits by Atkinson, Williams, and Carell/Colbert, there is hardly any aggressive superiority laughter, except perhaps at the end of the Carell-­Colbert skit, when it is suggested that the only thing stronger than the Muslims’ and Christians’ mutual dislike of each other is their shared anti-Semitism. This bit of generalization, however, is almost wholly implied and milder than the resentment-driven entrenchment humor used by the Christian comedians Lowry and Stine. Both Lowry and Stine gave out the message that atheists are pitifully ignorant creatures, while Stine additionally characterized liberals as “wusses,” using the full force of negative entrenchment humor to cement stereotypes and confirm prejudices. Thus,

162  Christian humorous comedy when it comes to aggressive and tendentious Entrenchment 2 humor, some Christian comedians are outdoing their secular counterparts. Certainly, it cannot be said that being inspired by Christianity prevents certain comedians from engaging in “hard” forms of humor. As Barry Sanders has said, “laughter proves difficult if not impossible to corral, for it behaves in such an unruly fashion” (70). Thus, demanding that one stick to one kind of humor while avoiding another – corralling l­aughter – is a losing proposition. Not only are explicitly Christian, so-called clean comedians quite capable of delivering “negative,” entrenching, and even heterodox kinds of amusement, but the seemingly benign religious comedies of secular mass culture comedians like Rowan Atkinson and Robin Williams are actually spiced with mildly subversive contents that highlight inconsistencies of religious dogma while introducing doubt and skepticism, using laughter as leverage to loosen or unhinge normative beliefs. But humor not only stirs the mind to unruly thoughts; it can stimulate valuable insights and catalyze understanding. Openly irreverent, subversive religious comedy like that delivered by DarkMatter2525 can serve as a vehicle for legitimate religious explorations, advancing theological knowledge, and sharpening critical thinking. Even the most absurdist and sacrilegious religious comedy like South Park can raise valid questions about contemporary conundrums such as the competing interests of protecting free speech while protecting religious sensibilities. Furthermore, South Park can be theologically astute, as when it riffs on the free will theodicy or when (in “Fantastic Easter Special’) it playfully revisits the Grand Inquisitor episode in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. This goes beyond the “ignorant familiarity” that David Feltmate accuses South Park of trotting out. Therefore, I suggest to stop fixating on the dichotomy of positive versus negative humor. Likewise, it would be myopic to condemn or censor aggressively irreverent comical works like certain episodes of South Park because they may offend people who hold the beliefs that are being mocked. Instead, we should consider the possibility that comedy and religion are mutually attracting phenomena that engage each other in multiple ways. Not only is it impractical to rule the aggressive forms of entrenchment humor out of bounds, but it appears that all forms of liminal and entrenching humor are apparently so valuable that both their producers and consumers hailing from all segments of society are consuming them, including self-declared Christians.2 Since religion involves so many boundaries and since creeds, doctrines, and orthodoxies invariably draw lines of many kinds, the operations of comedy that inspect, challenge, or reinforce these boundaries are well-nigh impossible to suppress. Whether it is Rowan Atkinson’s mildly subversive version of Jesus or South Park’s blatantly irreverent depiction of Christ, to condemn such comical performances would be hasty and counterproductive. I will enter into a longer discussion of the free speech

Varieties of humorous irreverence 163 implications of irreverent humor in the Conclusion, hoping to shed further light on this issue from historical, philosophical, and ethical perspectives.

Notes 1 A reference to Special Agent Anthony DeNozzo, a womanizing, chauvinistic male in the TV series NCIS, portrayed by Michael Weatherly. Weatherly is the same actor who plays Jesus in Silverman’s skit. In an ironic twist, both Jesus and Silverman binge watch NCIS in the skit. 2 See Schweizer and Ott, “Does Religion Shape People’s Sense of Humour? A Comparative Study of Humour Appreciation among Members of Different Religions and Nonbelievers.” Journal of European Humor Research, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018.

Conclusion

I would rather, a 1000 times over, live in a climate of derision of the sacred, which never lasts long . . . than in a climate of terror – which has a way of enduring tenaciously. – François Boespflug

Religion and humor make for odd bedfellows: although suspicious of each other, they are quite inseparable. While humor does not normally contribute to heightened reverence, it can serve as catalyst of transcendental insight (e.g. in Zen Buddhism) or function as a conduit to a counterworld (the essence of holy foolishness). Beyond those intersections, I  maintain that humor and religion share a fundamental trait, i.e. their liminal propensity. Both are involved with conceptual and symbolical borderlines, both engage the gap between appearance and reality, high and low, physical and spiritual. Hence the argument of some Christian theologians that humor can actually serve as an extension of religion. Conversely, it’s easy to see why religion’s concern with the unseen orders of existence might strike some as funny, while drawing rigid lines of virtue and sin can lead to comical effects of hypocrisy and inconsistency. Humor is a “dweller on the threshold,” testing, subverting, and occasionally strengthening any number of symbolical, social, and conceptual boundaries, even as humor stretches the limits of good taste and orderliness to the breaking point. When we “crack up” at a joke, we metaphorically express humor’s tendency to challenge norms and push boundaries until they fracture or break. In some ways, then, ecclesiastical authorities were quite right to worry about the unpredictable and unruly qualities of humorous laughter, especially when brought into contact with religious doctrines and ecclesiastical rules. But the persistent Christian injunctions not to laugh (or only to laugh moderately) ultimately went for nothing, as humorists could not refrain from joking about ecclesiastical institutions, rituals, and dogmas, or poking fun at priests and even at God. What is significant, in my view, is the degree to which Christianity has yielded, more or less willingly, to the forces of humor, no matter how irreverent, mocking, and subversive they were.

Conclusion 165 This book contrasts with previous discussions of the relationship between humor and religion because it sidesteps both the confessional and the morally prescriptive approaches. The prescriptive view has a long pedigree, going back to Plato and Aristotle. Both philosophers thought of laughter primarily as an expression of superiority and malice, and they reasoned that the pleasure obtained by laughing was morally suspect. In Plato’s Philebus, we read that “When we laugh at what is ridiculous in our friends, our pleasure, in mixing with malice, mixes with pain, for we have agreed that malice is a pain of the soul, and that laughter is pleasant, and on these occasions we both feel malice and laugh” (97). Such mixing was incompatible with Platonic idealism. Similarly, Aristotle warned in the Nicomachean Ethics that “Most people enjoy amusement and jesting more than they should. . . . A jest is a kind of mockery, and lawgivers forbid some kinds of mockery – perhaps they ought to have forbidden some kinds of jesting” (4, 8). The contemporary Christian theology of laughter does not go that far, but its proponents still uphold an essentially Platonic viewpoint by condemning “hard,” mocking, caustic humor as “destructive” and therefore objectionable. In this view, only funniness that affirms our common humanity, that is innocuously playful, and that renews our joyful connection with God is commendable (Martin, Kuschel, Arbuckle). Incidentally, this kind of laughter is the only type of mirth sanctioned by the Koran as well (see Epilogue). Such a righteous view of laughter occasionally arises in secular approaches to religious comedy as well. For instance, Terry Lindvall’s treatment of religious satire in God Mocks: A History of Religious Satire From the Hebrew Prophets to Stephen Colbert (2015) leans toward moral prescriptiveness in ways that invoke the theology of laughter. In Lindvall’s view “satire can often be misconstrued or misused. It can dwindle down into sounding like mere mocking and scoffing. But wedding wit to moral concern makes for the most blessed, fertile state of satire” (Lindvall, KL 164–166). In this spirit, Lindvall approvingly quotes one of the leading theologians of laughter, Conrad Hyers, who had insisted that “Laughter without faith leads to cynicism and despair” (quoted in Lindvall, KL 5339), and he concludes that “the closeness of satire to slander is dangerous” (Lindvall, KL 5537–5538). In an even more neo-Platonic vein, critic David Feltmate’s approach to popular comedy programs is based on the premise that irreverent comedy hurts the polity. In Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in “The Simpsons,” “South Park,” and “Family Guy” (2017), Feltmate objects to these irreverent TV programs because “Their humor reduces complexity, dismisses theology, and reinforces their own ideology” (KL 4084–4085). In this view, programs like South Park not only gratuitously offend certain religious constituencies, but they also hinder cross-denominational understanding by drawing on “easy stereotypes” and promoting “ignorant familiarity” to fuel laughter. Using prescriptive language, Feltmate urges that satire “[should] be able to overcome divisive difference by recognizing the basic humanity reflected in the creation of other unseen orders, learn the legitimations that justify those

166  Conclusion ways of life, and engage in intelligent criticism based on comprehending others and accepting the fact that there may be fundamental reasons for differences between varying human groups” (KL 4245–4248). The sentiments underlying such a concern for outreach, cross-cultural understanding, and civic harmony are certainly commendable. However, I feel they are misplaced when applied to comedy, a genre that thrives not on sensitivity but on transgression, experiment, surprise, exaggeration, and even insult. If South Park were to offer nuanced theological commentary and sensible sociological exposés whenever it addresses topics that touch on Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, or Scientology it would appear to parody itself. And if the program could be compelled to satisfy Feltmate’s demand “to consciously own the legitimations that comprise the plausibility structures undergirding our unseen orders” (Feltmate, KL 4243–4245), then that would undermine the first principle of satire, i.e. its recourse to irony, not to mention that it would take the fun out of it. The ironic underpinnings of satire make it precisely indispensable that the satirist’s “unseen order” remain implied, slippery, and indeterminate. As much as I respect the prescriptive impulse to bolster fellow feeling, strengthen mutual sympathy, and improve cross-denominational understanding, it is an impulse that ultimately cannot be fully squared with the wild, unpredictable, and transgressive nature of genuine comedy. Of course, this does not mean that unfettered religious comedy is always good comedy or that it’s wrong to feel offended by irreverent jokes. However, in this matter I side with Rowan Atkinson’s principle that “the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended” (Guardian). In a recent interview, Atkinson emphasized that “anything is fit to be joked about. In my view, the freedom of speech is at the core of a functioning and confident democratic society. . . . This freedom includes my right to joke about whatever I choose to poke fun at, including matters of faith and religion” (“Interview”). Certainly, we can agree with Atkinson that sensitivity is not the go-to item in the comical tool box. Irreverent comedy has a long history, being around since at least the fifth century BCE when Aristophanes composed edgy, bold, and utterly irreverent comedies like The Birds and Lysistrata; in the second century CE, Lucian pulled no comical punches when he mocked deities and skewered religious beliefs in his True Story; and during the 15th century, Boccaccio in Italy and Chaucer in England gave literary expression to widely popular stories that encouraged laughter at the expense of religious rituals and holy personages. My historical survey of Christian religious comedy in Chapter 3, spanning the gamut from Dante to David Javerbaum, supported an understanding of religious comedy as a phenomenon closely tracking the steady secularization of Western societies since the Renaissance. Evaluating the nature and the type of religious targets that humorists have singled out since the time of Dante, we notice a progressive encroachment of the comical spirit upon domains once deemed too sacred to laugh at. The sweeping overview represented in Table 5.1 below allows us to take in at one glance the gradual

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Boccaccio 14th Cent.

Erasmus 15th/16th C.

Rabelais 16th Cent.

Voltaire 18th Century

Twain 19th Century

France 20th Century

Hašek 20th Century

Morrow 20th/21st C.

Currie 21st Century

Javerbaum 21st Century

(X)

Lower clergy, monks

(X)

Individual believers, lay people

Specific Targets

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Higher clergy, pope

Anti-Clerical humor

Dante 14th Cent.

Raillery

Humor Category

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Church, ecclesiastical institutions

Anti-Ecclesiastical humor

X X

X

X

X

X

X

Scripture (Bible)

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

(X)

Christian articles of faith

Sacrilegious humor

X

X

X

X

X

X

Deity (Trinity)

Blasphemous humor

X

X

X

X

X

X

Religion in general

Anti-Theistic humor

Table 5.1 Progression of Christian religious comedy since Dante, indicated by the range of separate religious targets addressed by each literary humorist. Horizontally, the headings indicate the categories of religious targets, organized from lower-order (left) to high-order targets (right). Vertically, the table is ordered chronologically, listing the names of literary authors from Dante to Javerbaum.

168  Conclusion sea change that occurred in the way humor has been brought to bear on Christian thematics over the last seven centuries. As we can see, writers from Dante onward targeted ever higher-order religious topics for comical treatments, finally even reaching the point of caricaturing God himself and satirizing religion in general. Looking at the above schema, it would appear that Twain was the first humorist to open up the whole range of religious topics to comical treatment, hitting every possible type of religious target, from low to high.1 After Twain, there followed one hundred years of full-frontal, all-out comical assaults upon all aspects of Christianity, from Anatole France to Jaroslav Hašek, to James Morrow, leaving no stone of piety unturned and sparing no religious sanctity. But it appears that this “golden” (or, depending on one’s viewpoint, “leaden”) age of comprehensive religious comedy is drawing to a close. Today, high-brow religious comedy by writers like David Javerbaum or sophisticated cartoons by Ruben Bolling are mainly targeting the pinnacle of the spectrum of comical targets, i.e. religion itself, God, and central doctrines. For such artists, the traditional, lower-order butts of jokes (silly believers, corrupt friars, hypocritical priests, arcane Church rituals) have lost their appeal. However, popular forms of contemporary religious comedy still do engage the lower-order targets of comedy. In fact, the distribution of comical targeting in today’s pop culture entertainment sector almost looks as if the entire history of religious comedy since Dante had been compressed and recapitulated (see Table 5.2).2 In other words, a snapshot of today’s popular religious comedy roughly maps over the entire history of comical targeting from Dante to Javerbaum. As Table 5.2 shows, some comedians are attracted mainly to the lowestorder religious comedy targets. Tellingly, these are the self-declared Christian comedians like Mark Lowry, who don’t deliberately joke about higherorder religious topics. However, as indicated by markers set within brackets (X), qualified expressions of comedy targeting higher-order themes can be found even among the practitioners of today’s Christian brand of comedy. Brad Stine is borderline blasphemous in his description of God as a voyeuristically inclined, football-watching male. Anthony Griffith’s dramatization of pious churchgoers violently disciplining their children, even inside the church, subversively undermines the claim that morality is founded upon religion. Still, overall, the Christian comedians focus mostly on the silly little things that believers (and non-believers) do, without venturing far into ridiculing Christianity, the Almighty, Jesus, or Scripture. Table 5.2 also reveals that contemporary popular culture features comedy programs like South Park that attack the entire spectrum of religious targets. Finally, a noticeable trend among famous stand-up comedians indicates that they are drawn toward the higher-order comical targets dealing with Christianity. Surveying the course of religious comedy in Western Christianity from Dante to Javerbaum indicates just how problematic it is to discredit so-called

X

X

X

X

X

X

Stine

Griffith

Monty Python

South Park

DarkMatter 2525

Williams

Carell/ Colbert

Atkinson

X

Individual believers, lay people

Specific Targets

Lowry

Raillery

Humor Category

X

X

X X

X X

X

(X)

Church, ecclesiastical institutions

Lower clergy, monks

Higher clergy, pope

Anti-Ecclesiastical humor

Anti-Clerical humor

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Christian articles of faith

Sacrilegious humor

Table 5.2 Distribution of religious targets that contemporary performers aim their comedy at

X

X

X

X

X

X

Scripture (Bible)

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

Deity (Trinity)

Blasphemous humor

X

X

X

X

X

X

(X)

(X)

Religion in general

Anti-Theistic humor

170  Conclusion negative – i.e. subversive, mocking, and irreverent – forms of humor. To follow the recommendations of Christian theologians of laughter like Gerald Arbuckle, Karl-Joseph Kuschel, Richard Cote, Conrad Hyers, and others who condemn the harsher, more offensive kinds of humor would mean to sacrifice practically the entire canon of great religious comedies, including works by Boccaccio, Rabelais, Voltaire, Twain, and Morrow. A table correlating the names of authors with the corresponding humor modes that they most strongly invoked reveals at a glance that so-called negative, even potentially offensive modes of comedy have been widely utilized in literature since the Middle Ages.3 To disqualify works because they use subversive or heavily entrenching forms of comical discourse would be a dubious undertaking. Moreover, it is simply not practicable to promote the “soft” kinds of humor while cordoning off the harder modes. As Table 5.3 shows, most writers of religious comedy are practicing both the soft and the hard forms of humor. This indicates just how difficult – if not impossible – it is to limit or regulate humor according to pre-determined judgmental categories. Humor is likely to leap over such boundaries, making a travesty of them. What stands out in Table 5.3 is that, contrary to the historical panel in Table 5.1, no historical trajectory can be observed with regard to the four humor modes. Thus, while the content of religious comedy changed significantly over time (as measured by the steadily expanding range of comical targets), the form did not change dramatically since the Renaissance. It is not the case that one humor modality went out of favor over time or that either “soft” or “hard” forms of religious comedy were significantly strengthened across the centuries. There simply is no obvious correlation between humor modes and the time period in which the religious comedy was created. In other words, both “soft” and “hard” modalities of humor have always been in use. My argument throughout this book and specifically again in this conclusion is that all kinds of humor, including “hard,” entrenching, and blasphemous modes are permissible. I am aware that this is not always an easy Table 5.3  Correlation between literary authors and the principal humor modes activated by them “Soft,” clean, playful modes of humor

“Hard,” subversive, aggressive modes of humor

Liminal 1 (affirmation, play) Boccaccio, Rabelais, France, Morrow, Javerbaum

Liminal 2 (subversion, critique) Erasmus, Rabelais, Voltaire, Twain, France, Hašek, Morrow, Currie, Javerbaum

Entrenchment 1 (parody, selfdeprecation) Boccaccio, Rabelais, France, Morrow

Entrenchment 2 (aggression, stereotyping) Erasmus, Rabelais, Voltaire, Twain, Hašek

Conclusion 171 argument to make nowadays. Why would we want to protect jokes that not only demean certain religious expressions but also offend certain groups defined by their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.? The reason that we need to permit humor that offends is the same that urges us to permit speech that is stupid, untrue, and resentful. If we say yes to curbing speech that is offensive politically, racially, sexually, or religiously, then we open the gates to curbing any kind of speech that one group or another objects to. But it takes a totalitarian system to curb speech based on its disfavored message. In his article “Taking Humour (Ethics) Seriously, But Not Too Seriously” (2014), David Benatar considered various reasons for restricting jokes on the basis of ethical scruples. But he ultimately reached the conclusion that public outcries against offensive jokes are in most cases an over-reaction, based in part on overblown confidence in discerning the comedians’ intentions, or on an undue certainty about the actual harm done by jokes. Benatar considered a wide range of potentially offensive jokes and the corresponding calls for censorship that were triggered by them, only to conclude that “all ­versions of the view that humour is wrong because it causes offense are problematic” (39). Like other humor scholars, Benatar rejects the ­premise – most famously advanced by Ronald de Sousa – that anyone peddling or enjoying a joke involving (harmful) stereotypes is a bigot. Not so, says B ­ enatar, insisting that “jokes turning on racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes are not always tainted by flaws in the person recounting or enjoying them” (30). Benatar sees significant benefits in joking, even joking in an offensive register, not only because of the pleasure that laughter gives but also because he recognizes humor’s function as a coping mechanism, providing a source of relief and serving as a vehicle of criticism. Benatar tries out all sorts of protective humor rules, like the one that offensive jokes can only be told by members of one group to others in the same group, but he ultimately dismisses all such rules. Most important for my present purpose, Benatar does not favor censorship of religious jokes perceived as blasphemous: “Arguments that a particular type of humour is always wrong because it is blasphemous is deeply controversial, This is because they rest on highly contested premises. . . . Atheists, of course, will deny the basic assumption of God’s existence, and the other assumptions fall like dominos in consequence” (32). Attempts to impose legal checks on blasphemous speech are efforts to enshrine in law a specific confessional worldview, thereby subtly undermining the secular enlightenment principles on which democratic systems rest. In this regard, I stand with François Boespflug, who stated unequivocally: “I declare myself . . . opposed to any repression of laughter and of any policing of images, because it is a vain enterprise and an exhausting game of catand-mouse” (215). He concludes “if one had to choose between freedom of expression and derision, even at the risk of caricaturing the sacred, or the unconditional respect of the sacred, even at the risk of thwarting liberty and threatening blasphemers with death, I would opt without a moment’s hesitation for freedom of expression and would defend it to the end, and also the

172  Conclusion right to laugh” (215). The right to laugh at anything is a hard-won privilege that we chance at enormous cultural and social risks. Policing offensive speech opens the doors to pointless and exhausting social acrimony. Restricting potentially offensive humor not only kills the fun of participating in a wide-ranging and unfettered humor culture, but more dangerously, it is a form of speech control that is anti-democratic and inherently authoritarian. Humor depends on having a considerable elbow room to maneuver in freely. In exercising this prerogative, laughter will always rub up against limits of good taste and violate one taboo or another. That is the nature of humor as a mental state and a rhetorical mode that plays with, reinforces, or overturns all kinds of real and symbolical boundaries. Humor’s inherent tendency to offend some people while pleasing others has been repeatedly made the subject of public debate. Aggressive entrenchment humor – personally offensive, tasteless, or sick joking – gives rise to strongly divergent reactions. Indeed, so divergent are the reactions to offensive jokes that they defy prediction. As I have shown in Chapter 2, when demographically homogenous study populations were asked to judge highly irreverent jokes, the percentage of participants rating the joke as “offensive” rarely reached 50% and generally oscillated between 20% and 40% (Table 2.2). That means, no consensus exists over whether or not a given joke is perceived as offensive, even if a provocative joke targeting Christ is assessed by practicing Christians. But while many study participants were not offended by jokes that were quite tasteless or irreverent, others were offended by jokes that seemed perfectly innocuous. Most study populations were not offended by this joke: “How did you get out of Iraq? Iran.” Strangely, though, Hindus reported being offended at a surprisingly high rate by this. Again, predicting offensiveness, and even more so, acting on that “prediction,” is a fool’s game. The conclusion we can draw from this is that offensiveness is far too complex, unpredictable, and probabilistic a phenomenon to be used as a basis for any legal or policy action to curb aggressive humor. It is better to let audiences decide what is or is not funny to them, individually and as a collective, and to allow comedians to take responsibility for the funniness (or lack thereof) of their jokes. According to Steven Gimbel, if a joke “kills” (i.e. if it stirs the audience to laughter), then it is a good joke, no matter how offensive its content may be. The goal of comedy is amusement, not moral progress, edification, or manners. This view obviously has major ramifications for the free speech implications of humor. Indeed, as an instance of “non-serious discourse,” a form of play, or an “as if” linguistic performance, joking and comedy are always more or less indeterminate forms of communication whose content is far less explicit than straight-up insults, threats, or defamations. Those condemning tasteless and insensitive jokes make two errors: First they assume that making a joke with, say, a racial theme must be a sign of racism. Both Steven Gimbel and David Benatar vigorously reject this absolutist premise. Making a race-based joke can indeed

Conclusion 173 be an indication of the joker’s underlying racism but it does not have to be so. One can make a joke (or laugh at it) containing stereotypical race, gender, or age implications out of familiarity with the stereotype in play rather than because of an actual belief in it. Conversely, one can make a joke that on the surface looks like a stereotype-driven joke, whose butt is actually the stereotype itself rather than the person or group being stereotyped. Second, it is not true that stereotype-driven, aggressive jokes are only harmful when addressed from a superior to a subaltern group. In fact, nothing offends the high and mighty more than laughter directed at them from below, indicating that dictators derive subjective “harm” from the laughter of their subjects. There is a third way of looking at supposedly harmful, offensive jokes. What if the butt of the joke is neither a person above or below oneself but the joker herself? Self-deprecatory humor, i.e. when people denigrate their own ethnic group or themselves individually, has been argued to be psychologically detrimental, constituting a form of self-harm by undermining selfesteem and sabotaging confidence. But here, too, consensus is hard to come by: while some argue that self-deprecatory humor has a harmful tendency (e.g. Duke University psychologist Mark Leary), others found that selfdeprecatory humor enhances psychological well-being (e.g. researchers at the University of Granada).4 This is another indication of just how complex and ultimately intractable the question of humor’s harmful effects really is. The difficulty of assessing the real or imaginary harms of words not only applies to joking but also to hate speech. As Nadine Strossen has argued, “social scientists concur that it is difficult to pinpoint the contributory role of any speech, including constitutionally protected ‘hate speech,’ to [emotional] kinds of harms” (47). The processing of semantic transactions is so subjective, so context dependent, and overall so complex in nature that it is quite impossible to determine any real (as opposed to merely intuited) harmful effects flowing from words. Indeed, “there is little good research evidence of [such] harm,” writes Strossen (124). Social psychologists like Pamela Paresky have even argued that it is the fear of sustaining harm from words that may be what causes the psychological harm rather than any inherent harmfulness of speech itself: “Students who believe that hearing certain words or listening to certain speakers can harm them may . . . succumb to a self-fulfilling prophecy. . . . It is the belief that words can do harm that causes the harm, not the words themselves” (quoted in Strossen 126). Of course, nobody argues that harm never flows from words or that all forms of speech must be allowed without any qualification. As Nadine Strossen has emphasized in Hate: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018), words that pose a specific, imminent, and serious harm are not protected by the First Amendment. I.e. those uttering such words can be (and indeed have been) prosecuted. It should be clear, though, that jokes simply cannot fall under the “emergency rule” of threatening someone with specific, imminent, and serious harm. By definition, joking is a nonserious discourse. How many times has somebody said “I’m going to kill

174  Conclusion him if he does that one more time,” and nobody lost any sleep over that remark? Humorous statements are marked by intentional irony, incongruity, playfulness, pretense, exaggeration, and incongruity, and they simply cannot pass the “emergency test” of causing specific, imminent, serious harm (which is the standard under which speech is not protected under the First Amendment). That words may cause milder forms of distress is beside the point. Similarly, taunting chants by members of an opposing football team may cause discomfort to those addressed, just as being scolded by someone may hurt the person being dressed down. But such subjective psychological responses are no basis for silencing speakers of teasing, scolding, and, indeed, joking words. Still, the question remains what actually happens when a joke such as Roseanne Barr’s ill-considered tweet insulting Valerie Jarrett creates such a backlash against the comedian?5 The first thing Steven Gimbel might say is that if nobody laughs (or only a few do), then that signifies Barr’s joke has flopped, and the reason for this, likely, is that she failed to wrap her joke in a thick-enough “playframe.” A “playframe” is the more or less subtle, explicit or implicit, signal to an audience that the comedian has activated a pretend-mode and that what is being said or laughed about is an expression of play, not part of serious discourse. That’s why preachiness does not mix well with amusement because a preachy tone dissolves the playframe of an utterance. The more potentially offensive a joke, the “thicker” the playframe needs to be for it to be generally amusing. For instance, when a comedian makes a daring joke about a tragedy within a short time after it happened, he may salvage the situation by saying “too soon, is it?” which is simply a means of padding the playframe. When Barr’s “joke” hit the public sphere in May  2018, it’s minimal playframe was easily pierced by the resentful racial implications underlying her tweet. As a result, the “joke bombed,” which to Gimbel is the only culpability a joker should be charged with. By contrast, jokes that “kill,” says Gimbel, are good jokes even if their content could plausibly be construed as offensive. In this view, the “cognitive virtues” involved in humor – including openness to ambiguity, mental flexibility, playfulness, and aesthetic appeal – override the potential negative effects that jokes might have. Hence, from a semantic, logical, philosophical, psychological, or social perspective, no persuasive case can be made in support of censoring offensive humor. My position in the debate over offensive humor is to support the fool’s privilege and to tolerate whatever gets laughs, whether it is brilliant, hackneyed, daft, or even malicious. Some of the best jokes in circulation are malicious jokes aimed at corrupt or despotic leaders. And even if some jokes are simply tasteless, their role in sparking debates over the unruly nature of humor is not to be dismissed. Such debates engage both the opportunities and the challenges of the principle of unfettered comedy and free speech. In the words of Michael Pickering and Sharon Lockyer, “Free speech entails open debate about the ethics of humour as well as enjoyment of its often anarchic aesthetics, for we are all reduced by attempts to close down such

Conclusion 175 debate rather than pursue the moral and political issues that it necessarily involves” (7). Ultimately, the quality of a joke depends on how cleverly it engages with the boundaries that it upholds or subverts. If a community decides that making racist jokes is not funny, then that kills the joke for most people. If a given society decides that a joke involving the severed head of a sitting president is no laughing matter, then that says as much about the society as it does about the joke.6 In this sense, humor serves like a litmus test of prevailing social mores, and it takes the temperature of sociocultural moods: if the audience deems a joke not to be funny, then that is the comedian’s direct punishment, often followed by financial consequences in the media market. The relationship is dialectic: while comedians tend to stretch and modify our sense of what are legitimate topics to make fun of, the public reception of comic material operates as a feedback mechanism, sending the signal to the comedian just about how far he or she can stretch her material, and what boundaries are in play. This understanding of comedy affirms the idea that in most cases humor is not a change agent. In the words of Christie Davies, “Jokes are a thermometer, not a thermostat” (Humor and Protest 300). In other words, jokes do not usually alter the climate of opinion or cause actual political outcomes, but rather they indicate collective moods and diagnose prevailing attitudes. Indeed, any optimism about the supposedly subversive, anti-authoritarian, liberal power of humor is likely wishful thinking, just as the conviction that humor has reactionary, illiberal effects is probably overstated. After the 2016 presidential election in America, many liberals, deeply uneasy about the prospect of a Trump presidency, temporarily put their hopes in comedy as a means of opposing and delegitimizing the president. A nearly endless parade of satirical skits, cartoons, and jokes aimed at Donald Trump was publicized in liberal circles, without having any verifiable impact on the course of the Trump administration’s political direction. As we have seen throughout this study, comedy can be subversive, but it does not have to be so. Only one of the four separate humor modes is distinctly subversive, and even under the sign of subversive humor (Liminal 2), comedy need not actually affect any change of affairs in one way or another. Much of the rest of comedy is either preaching to the choir (as is often the case with Entrenchment 2 humor), while another segment serves as a vehicle for mild relief and bonding (Entrenchment 1); finally, good-natured humor of the Liminal 1 type has no other purpose than to delight us with play, clowning, and surprises. It is by over-estimating the effectiveness of humor as a change agent or, alternatively, when one thinks of it as posing a real threat to power that one is likely to erode the foundation of the comical spirit by putting in place restrictive regulations and fun-killing moral standards. To thrive, the spirit of comedy needs the freedom to stretch and break boundaries as well as the liberty not to fulfill any expectations that people may have about its presumed benefits or dangers. Since this book is based on the thesis that humor is invariably attracted to religious topics, the most natural course would be to let humor express

176  Conclusion its interest in religious matters and to give it free reign to engage with the boundaries that are at play in relation to religious thought and practice. History has shown that societies don’t break apart because of insolent comedy. Conversely, to keep humor resolutely away from religion requires a deliberate censorial effort that is likely to cause significant collateral damage, notably restricting open reflection, suppressing independent thought, and contracting artistic creativity. Here I return again to the central argument in Steven Gimbel’s book Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy (2017), namely, that humor carries distinct cognitive virtues such as metaphor-creation, open-mindedness, attention to detail, and creativity, all of which are benefits regardless of whether the audience recognizes and appreciates the humorist’s intention to be funny. In other words, humor is an end in itself. Thereby, Gimbel radically parts ways with those (like the theologians of laughter) who would want to moralize humor. Instead of dividing humor into positive or negative, good or bad categories, Gimbel sorts them according to their cognitive and aesthetic virtues: If a joke is clever, original, and well constructed and if it “lands” with an audience (i.e. if it triggers laughter), then it is good joke, no matter what its content is (134). Of course, this does not mean that jokes are objectionable if they fall flat or are perceived to be offensive. This is where free speech must be resolutely defended. For audiences to know what a good joke is – i.e. one that “lands” – unsuccessful jokes that “bomb” must also exist. The collateral damage of legislating and limiting humor is far too big to be risked. Societies in which humor in general, and religious comedy in particular, are regulated or deemed illegal will experience significant levels of unfreedom and conformity, with the result of breeding intellectual timidity, hampering innovation, and damaging open civic discourse. In this sense, religious humor is not so much a driver of liberalization than a canary in the mine – it thrives best when there is lots of oxygen of freedom combined with low levels of the toxic gases of fundamentalism, authoritarianism, and intolerance.

Notes 1 This statements comes with the proviso that Twain did not prepare The Mysterious Stranger (as well as other highly corrosive polemics against Christianity) for publication during his lifetime. Thus, arguably he could be so caustic because he did not have to fear the public’s outcry. 2 Naturally, I am not claiming finality or inclusiveness regarding these humorists’ total output. I only list here the comical targets that were actually singled out in the specific performances or episodes that I analyzed. 3 The same names appear in more than one field if the author displayed strong affinity with more than one humor mode. 4 See “Self-deprecating humor promotes psychological well-being, study reveals.” University of Granada, February 9 2018. https://medicalxpress.com/news/201802-self-deprecating-humour-psychological-well-being-reveals.html 5 In May 2018, Roseanne Barr tweeted “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”; she was referring to Valerie Jarrett, one of Barack Obama’s former advisors, who is African American.

Conclusion 177 6 On May 30, 2017, the US comedian Kathy Griffin posted an image on Twitter which showed her holding up a fake severed head, which conspicuously looked like Donald Trump’s, accompanied by a text that read “there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his . . . wherever.” The caption lacks humorous appeal until it becomes clear that it is a direct quote from Donald Trump himself. During the presidential campaign in 2016, Trump had used these words to discredit TV anchorwoman Megyn Kelly after she had directed some tough questions at him during a debate. Trump’s words suggested that Kelly was suffering from pre-menstrual symptoms.

Epilogue Beyond Christianity: humor in other religious traditions

The ludicrous makes a travesty of the sacred; when for a short while, laughter sweeps away the holy cosmos, the divine order is exposed as an arbitrary construct. – Ingvild S. Gilhus

This book focuses mainly on the functions of religious humor in Western Christianity since the late Middle Ages. Here I want to provide some insight pertaining to the role of humor in other religious traditions. While I do not pretend to provide a comprehensive account of humor’s manifold roles over the course of history in non-Christian religious traditions, I hope to provide informed glimpses at the phenomenon of laughter in Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. As I  do so, I  acknowledge that using generic group labels for these religious traditions comes with some caveats. In fields like qualitative sociology of religion and in religious studies, the use of identity categories such as “Muslim,” “Christian,” or “Jew” is frowned upon. The argument runs that people are not principally defined by one single identity marker, but that other contextual factors including gender, race, class, and region need to be considered when dealing with real people in real places. My use of generic religious categories does not imply that I  think people are entirely defined by such macro-identity markers. Nor does it mean that I  presume people do not affiliate with more specifically defined religious categories like Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Southern Baptist, Methodist, etc. Similarly, among Muslims, individuals’ principal identification may well be that of Sunni, Shia, or Alawite. But against a strictly particularistic model of social and religious identity, I hold that religious cultures are pyramidal and that the foundations of faiths like Islam, Christianity, or Hinduism form a cohesive basis. Sunnis and Shia may fight each other to the death over doctrinal disagreements, but they are not doing so over the question who their God is, whether the Koran is their central scripture, and how many times per day a true Muslim should pray. These matters are so fundamentally ingrained in the faith as to become a hegemonic and, therefore, largely invisible, foundation of the faith. Similarly, whether you

Epilogue 179 are a Buddhist following the Mahayana or Theravada tradition matters less than your acceptance of the Buddhahood of Siddhartha Gautama and his teachings. To put it simply: not every Christian is a Baptist, but every Baptist considers himself to be a Christian. Naturally, I am mindful of both the common humanity that unites people across all religious (and non-religious) categories and of the rich tapestry of different religious sects, schools, and competing denominations separating people within the major religious traditions. Having said this, I think the distinctive features that make up the major religious traditions justify looking for patterns in the way religions shape their followers’ outlooks and behavior, including their attitudes toward humor. Thus, my intention is not to tease out differences in humor appreciation within the major religious traditions, but rather to try to separate out some salient differences between the traditions themselves. In this, I simply follow the precedents set by Peter Berger, John Morreall, Ingvild Gilhus, and other sociologists and historians of humor, whose work similarly conceptualizes the functions of humor on the level of macro-religious categories.

Buddhism Foreign visitors to Asian countries often notice that monastic life there is carried out quite differently than in the West. Notably, members of the religious orders seem to be possessed of a cheerfulness that contrasts with the stern demeanor of Christian monastics. Ingvild Gilhus observed that “Buddhas and [Buddhist] monks have always smiled and laughed” (122). On my travels in China and Tibet, I often saw Buddhist monks joking with each other, laughing, and occasionally horsing around, and I  never gained the impression that such behavior was considered a breach of decorum. On a visit to the Tiantai Buddhist temple in Zhejiang Province, China, I  was struck by numerous statues of arhats (enlightened ones) in the main hall that were sculpted in various attitudes of mirth. Some of the arhats were visibly cracking up at a joke they had just heard. One of the saints was laughing so hard, he dropped his begging bowl (see Figure 6.1). This is not to say that Buddhism was originally conceived as a comical religion. Not only are scholars of Buddhism unsure whether the historical Buddha laughed, but Siddhartha Gautama is quoted as asking rhetorically “How can anyone laugh who knows of old age, disease, and death?” (Buddhacarita 4.59). Another source quotes the Buddha as wondering “How can there be mirth or laughter when the world is on fire?” (Dhammapada 146). The Buddhist focus on suffering as the foundation of human existence and as the horizon beyond which salvation must be sought, would seem to stand in the way of embracing the lighter side of life. Yet despite the Buddha’s reservations about laughter, Siddhartha Gautama is also associated with episodes that validate humor. For instance, in the “Flower Sermon” episode, the Buddha is reported to have addressed a large assembly, but

180  Religious comedy and Christianity instead of giving a sermon, he simply held up a Udambara flower, looking at it intently for a long while. People in attendance were not sure what to make of this, but then one monk suddenly broke into a wide smile, upon which the Buddha said that this smile bespoke wisdom beyond words. This episode is key to Chan Buddhism, and the smiling monk is considered the founder of this school. Scholars and practitioners alike are convinced that Chan Buddhism actively values humor. As Buddhism migrated from India to China (and

Figure 6.1 Statues of Buddhist sages (arhats) in attitudes of hilarity at Tiantai monastery, Zhejiang Province, China Source: © Bernard Schweizer

Epilogue 181 later to Korea and Japan, where it became known as Zen), it adopted an appreciation of paradox, irony, and humor. Peter Berger explains that “Ch’an/Zen is precisely a modification of Buddhism in the spirit of Taoism. And its monks are famous for their raucous laughter” (Berger 42). In Zen Buddhism, laughter is considered a legitimate expression of understanding and a symptom of spiritual insight. Thus, it is not unusual to see monks “with open mouths roaring loudly with laughter” (Gilhus 123). Zen Buddhist masters would train their acolytes by giving them riddles, koans, that have no rational answer (the most well known, of course, being “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”). Many commentators have singled out the centrality of koans as an indicator of Zen’s pro-humor tendency. Peter Berger noted that “The most characteristic exercise in Zen monasteries is what in Japan is called the koan. A koan is a parable or riddle exchanged between a master and his disciples, but the solution is never a straightforward or rational one. Identically worded solutions may be deemed correct or false.  .  .  . Many instances of the  koan  can be described as jokes. The purpose is always to deconstruct reality and thereby to attain liberating enlightenment” (Redeeming Laughter 42). Similarly, John Morreall wrote, “Zen is especially famous for its use of humor to break up our attachment to logical thinking. As long as our thinking is going smoothly, we tend not to question the nature of thought and of ourselves, just as when our car is running smoothly, we tend not to look under the hood. But humor throws a monkey wrench into our thinking, and thus prompts us to question it. Koans like ‘What did your face look like before your parents were born?’ ” and ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ force us out of our mental ruts, much as stand-up comics often do” (Comedy, Tragedy, and Religion  60). Koans are meant to expose the limitations of language and to entice students into breaking through everyday rational frameworks of mind in order to access levels of cognition not available to normal daytime consciousness. Oftentimes, the absurd dimensions of koans – both as riddles and answers – trigger laughter as an indication of a truth beyond the realm of conventional knowledge. Conrad Hyers acknowledges the “dimension of humor visible in such enigmatic koans” (“Ancient Zen Master” 3), but he significantly widens the scope of the argument, concluding that “In no other tradition could the entire syndrome of laughter, humor, comedy, and ‘clowning’ be said to be more visible and pronounced than in Zen, where the comic spirit has been duly rescued from those miscellaneous and peripheral moments to which it is so commonly assigned and restricted” (Laughing Buddha 14–15). Buddhism is based on the principle that we falsely attribute solidity and durability to the phenomena of the material world. I.e. what is commonly considered to be real is in actual fact merely “maya,” illusion. The world of mere appearances and deceptive “reality” is a colossal hoax that our senses play on our minds. As long as we are moored in deceptive reality and attached to the sense of our autonomous, desiring self, any momentary

182  Religious comedy and Christianity recognition of the illusory nature of what we commonly take to be “real” can prompt the laughter of recognition. This is what Lee Siegel has in mind when he says, “Comedy might be gnosis” (15). In this sense, taking the world all too seriously would quite literally be a joke, and the Buddhist student who understands this central paradox is likely to respond with a smile or even laughter. What seem solid attachments, desires, wishes, possessions, and so on, are mere chimera, and when we live in pursuit of such insignificant shadows, we really participate in a kind of ongoing comedy of errors. Another way in which East Asian Buddhism manifests its pro-humor bias is by the importance it attributes to the figure of the holy fool. In their discussion of humor in Eastern religious contexts, Gardner and Davis emphasize a distinct tradition of holy foolishness in Chan/Zen Buddhism: Throughout East Asia, Chan/Zen teachers or figures, be they historical or legendary, often exhibited the behavior of clowns or fools. In China, the “foolish” figures Hanshan and Shide are well-known both in paintings and tales about them. In Japan, Zen figures such as Ikkyū, Ryōkan (whose name means “great fool”), and Hakuin were known not only for their foolishness but also as self-consciously embracing the role of fool. The Japanese Zen master Harada Sogaku (1871–1961) even elevated the Buddha himself to the status of fool. (Gardner and Davis) Conrad Hyers, in The Laughing Buddha: Zen and the Comic Spirit, quotes Zen master Harada Sogaku as saying “Be a Great Fool! You know, don’t you, that there was a master [Ryōkan] who called himself just that? Now, a petty fool is nothing but a worldling, but a Great Fool is a Buddha. Sakyamuni and Amitabha are themselves Great Fools, are they not?” (quoted in Hyers 43). Now, although medieval Europe has seen its share of holy fools in the realm of Christendom, none of them has really been elevated to a central figure in the religious tradition. Francis of Assisi is probably the closest to a canonized holy fool that Christianity has, but depictions of him are not usually emphasizing mirth, and he is more commonly associated with mysticism and an eccentric love for animals rather than with laughter and hilarity. The situation is quite different in Buddhism, where the folk figure of Budai (or Pu-Tai) – also referred to as the “Laughing Buddha” – is a fixture of Buddhist religious culture. Historically, Budai is said to be based on an itinerant Chan Buddhist monk living in the early part of the tenth century who moved around China with a few belongings wrapped up in a satchel. Budai was poor but content (and, apparently, well fed). Other versions of the legend depict Budai’s sack as a Santa-like receptacle filled with goodies, which he loved to distribute among poor children all the while grinning from ear to ear or laughing outright. This legendary character has merged with an important figure in Buddhism, i.e. the future Buddha, or Maitreya.

Epilogue 183 In a somewhat incongruous manner, the fat-bellied, happy-go-lucky Budai is linked with the fifth Buddha, i.e. the hypothesized future incarnation, a messiah-like successor of the “present” (the fourth) Buddha, i.e. Siddhartha Gautama. Maitreya is anticipated to bring the pure dharma (Buddhist teachings) at a time when the world has all but forgotten the wisdom of Buddhism. In this sense, Buddhist eschatology is far different from JudeoChristian teachings about the end times. In Buddhism, eschatology is literally a cheerful matter, as the demise of Buddhist spiritual knowledge is followed by glad tidings of a pleasant, laughing messiah to reconnect the world to enlightenment through cheerful salvation. Interestingly, the Budai figure is not only spreading good cheer, legitimizing laughter, and sanctioning the pleasures of a sweet tooth, but in some depictions he is even shown as validating material wealth. The version of this figure that I encountered at a temple in the South Korean mountains was a fat-bellied, grinning Budai cheerfully hoisting a huge gold ingot, the traditional East Asian symbol of wealth, above his head. In a rather unlikely inflection of Buddhist teachings regarding detachment, this Budai celebrates physical things, bodily pleasures, and monetary accumulations, as if providing a sort of “comical relief” from the austerities built into the Buddhist philosophy of non-attachment, illusion, and self-denial. The naturalness with which smiling and laughter come to great Buddhist masters cannot be better illustrated than by reference to the current Dalai Lama. Indeed, Tenzin Gyatso is almost always seen smiling or laughing outright. When I  met the Dalai Lama in a private audience in 1987, I  was struck by his upbeat demeanor and free laughter. The Dalai Lama seems to appreciate the many incongruities we encounter on a daily basis, and he is disposed toward a humorous view of life. Given the reality of his status as the exiled leader of an occupied and dispossessed people, one may go so far as to consider his antics in the face of such adversity a form of holy foolishness. Rather than projecting a somber or even morose personality such as might be said of Pope Benedict XVI, the Dalai Lama is not afraid to project a lighter sense of eminence, and he can often been seen indulging a hearty laugh (see Figure 6.2). This cheerful disposition has endeared the Dalai Lama to countless contemporaries, both Buddhists and adherents of other religions, or unbelievers. In his own writings, the Dalai Lama validates laughter. My Spiritual Journey (2010) gives the following reason for being cheerful: “I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher” (23). The Dalai Lama appreciates a wide range of humorous expressions including smiling: “I  love smiles, and my wish is to see more smiles, real smiles, for there are many kinds – sarcastic, artificial, or diplomatic. Some smiles don’t arouse any satisfaction, and some even engender suspicion or fear. An authentic smile, though,

184  Religious comedy and Christianity

Figure 6.2  Laughing Dalai Lama - The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso Source: dpa picture alliance/Alamy Stock Photo

arouses an authentic feeling of freshness, and I think the smile belongs only to human beings” (29). This comment is noteworthy for its inclusive appreciation of many different reasons for smiling, thus avoiding the prescriptive approach that dogs the Christian theological approach to humor. Specifically, the Dalai Lama also makes room for a smile from “sarcasm,” even though his own preferred modes of humor clearly are the “soft,” playful, and mildly self-deprecating forms of comedy. The philosopher John Morreall has written insightfully about the deep connections between humor and Eastern religious philosophy: “The experience of amusement is enjoying a conceptual shift as the punchline of a joke. Amusement at jokes, in fact, is strikingly similar to Hindu and Buddhist descriptions of enlightenment” (54). Although Morreall considers both Buddhism and Hinduism as congenitally similar in their offered solutions to the problem of suffering, he also acknowledges the distinctive features between the two religious philosophies. Notably, he credits Hinduism with the unfettered “celebration of biological life,” concluding that “As in the comic vision, bodily functions like eating and sex are considered healthy. . . . In a way that can make puritanical Westerners uncomfortable, sexuality is celebrated in Hinduism” (55). This distinctive pro-life, sensual element is not the only aspect that justifies a separate treatment of Hinduism here. Indeed, social and cultural differences between the two Eastern religions

Epilogue 185 mark Hinduism off as even more in favor of laughter and more comprehensively pro-comical than Buddhism.

Hinduism The existing literature on the topic of humor and Hinduism confirms the view that Hindu culture favors the comic spirit. As one scholar put it: “In Hindu history, humour is not an underground counter-current against a dour orthodoxy but has full citizen’s rights” (Elst 35). The Hindu openness toward expressions of humor includes irreverent comedy. Again, Koenraad Elst: “Generally, mockery and worship go together [because] . . . ordinary Hindus . . . don’t mind acknowledging the lighter side and taking a laugh at the same gods whom on other occasions they sincerely venerate” (37). Hinduism’s liberal attitude toward laughter has a religious background, with important deities in the Hindu pantheon being explicitly linked to laughter. Krishna is a playful God with an easy laugh, who is not averse to fooling around. Kama, the deity of erotic love, not only makes fools of anyone smitten by the desires he inflames, but he openly promotes the pleasures of sex and laughter. Ganesha, too, has a special relevance to humor. Here is a pot-bellied man with an elephant trunk for a nose and flapping ears, who travels around on a rat as his “vehicle.” When I came across a large statue of Ganesha in the outskirts of Bangkok, I could not help smiling at this display of a truly incongruous godhead (see Figure 6.3). As a deity who is associated with intellect and the arts, Ganesha stands for the very qualities that wit depends on; moreover, as the remover of obstacles, he resembles the trickster figure, whose attraction to boundaries aligns the trickster forever with the deepest foundations of humor. Laughter is further central to the scriptural tradition of India, with the sacred Mahabharata containing a number of hilarious episodes (Elst 38). Then, there’s the aspect of “yogic humor”: “A humorous disposition is a touchstone for discerning an accomplished yogi from time-servers and wannabes: a true yogi is cheerful and communicates that mood to his audience. . . . There is no such creature as a depressed yogi” (Elst 49–50). Based on the existence of laughter-connoted deities, of hilarious scriptural passages, and of cheerful yogis, we can deduce that Hinduism at its core appreciates and even celebrates comical laughter. But the phenomenon goes deeper than a cultural appreciation of and a general religious openness toward humor. As Lee Siegel has argued in Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India (1987), in the field of Sanskrit literature, the Aristotelian binary opposition between the tragic and the comic does not apply: “In terms of Western categories there is only comedy in India – the plays inevitably end happily – ‘life goes on.’ The comic sentiment is not understood in India as a dichotomous principle in relation to a tragic one” (8). Siegel attributes the comic spirit in India to a pervasive mood of parody, a mood exemplified by the fourth-century Indian

Figure 6.3  Worshippers at a statue of Ganesh, outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand Image credit: © Bernard Schweizer

Epilogue 187 playwright Bhasa, who demonstrated that “the comic sentiment could arise out of a mockery of any of the sentiments. . . [because] the depiction of the emotions which correspond to the aesthetic sentiments – courage, fear, sorrow, love, and the others – are not real or appropriate” (9–10). In addition to a cultural preference for parody, Siegel cites the erotic undercurrent of laughter as a powerful motivating force behind Indian laughter: “Kama, the god who is sexual desire, is a comic power, a perverse and laughing deity, a sly trickster who makes fools of all beings. He can make Brahma, Visnu, and Siva – the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe – laughable” (10). Of course, the force unleashed by Kama is not a uniquely Hindu phenomenon. When Kama “fills those highest gods with lowly lust for Anasuya and . . . makes ridiculous objects of laughter out of the greatest deities” (10), he recalls the Greco-Roman god Eros, who fulfills a similar role in classical antiquity, making Apollo, Zeus, Ares, and Aphrodite slaves of their sexual desires, with comically irreverent effects. There is a subversive satirical impulse behind all this, as Kama’s laughter is directed at “all sorts of ascetics and puritans, a lubricious laughter insinuating the hypocrisy of any attempt at renunciation” (10). Again, this is not necessarily an exclusively Indian phenomenon, and when Siegel reminds us that “the lusty ascetic appears throughout Sanskrit comedic literature” (10), we are instantly reminded of the stock figures of the lusty monk and the lecherous friar so frequently featured in the comical works of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Rabelais, not to mention in the medieval fabliaux. Human hypocrisy has forever and across cultural boundaries elicited censorious laughter, and sexual hypocrisy is a favorite topic of bawdy comedy: “the hypocrisy of those who try to hide their sexuality is, through satirical unmasking, a source of laughter” (Siegel 11). Likewise, both in the East and West, the man who acts as a romantically inept lover is a common butt of jokes, when “the comic arises out of a mimicry and failure of the amorous sentiment” (Siegel 11). Hence, in the West we have the popular genre of Romantic comedy, just as in the Indian context, the sincere but bumbling amorous hero is a common stock figure of Sanskrit comic literature (Siegel 11, 27). While we can detect some universal elements in the comical appeal of Sanskrit literary characters like the foppish lover, the cowardly soldier, or the lusty monk, the early appearance of comical irreverence in Hindu literature is remarkable. As Elst and Siegel demonstrate, it is not considered indecorous or blasphemous to depict members of the Hindu pantheon in a laughable light. As Siegel reports, “in later Vaisnava devotional literature, Radha and Krsna intentionally dress in each other’s clothes and the comic incident is transformed into a symbol of the ultimate unity of Radha and Krsna” (Siegel 31). Such unproblematic, almost naturally irreverent attitudes toward members of the pantheon would not be duplicated as easily in a Christian context. A hypothetical scenario with Jesus cross-dressing,

188  Religious comedy and Christianity using Mary Magdalene’s wardrobe, might be suitable to a skit by Monty Python, but it would be considered grossly out of place in a pious Christian context. The medieval mystery plays which also sported some hilarious interludes like Adam and Eve walking around in ridiculous get-ups, suggesting nakedness without showing much skin, were generally a thorn in the eye of religious authorities. Not surprisingly, the medieval Church looked askance at such forms of religious entertainment, and ultimately the performance of folksy miracle plays was banned by the ecclesiastical authorities. By the middle of the 16th century, these plays had all but disappeared, and pious Christians had to look elsewhere for the pleasure and relief that hilarity can bring. By contrast, it does not appear that irreverent religious comedies were ever directly suppressed or outlawed in the context of Hinduism, where religious humor seems to be an intrinsic part of the cultural fabric. As I have shown elsewhere,1 Hindus display a high degree of tolerance toward humor that treats deities, gurus, and religious authorities irreverently. For reasons outlined above, this should not be all too surprising. But there might be an additional explanation for the Hindus’ uncommon level of appreciating religious humor, namely, the culture’s long-standing tradition of literary satire. This satire even comes with a mythological pedigree, as the sons of Bharata, India’s fabled national ancestor,2 are considered the founders of farcical storytelling, the precursor to satire: “Every satirist is a bastard son of Bharata, a fallen angel of ridicule, and all satiric laughter rings with a primordial abusiveness” (Siegel 57). After many decades of neglect by cultural historians and scholars of Indian literature, Lee Siegel has unearthed a vast canon of Sanskrit literature that is replete with irreverent satires. Spanning more than 1,000 years, from the 5th to the 18th century, this rich seam of Sanskrit literature includes dozens of works delivered in different formats, including monologues, farces, and narrative satires (Siegel 75). Siegel has sorted these works further into three thematic clusters, i.e. satires of manners, social satires, and religious satires (Siegel 73). With an entire class of satires devoted to religious topics, the Hindu tradition may well sport one of the world’s largest (and oldest) corpuses of satirical works thematizing religion. They are not “polite satires” either – if such a thing ever existed – but satires bursting with vulgarity, obscenity, and profanity. According to Siegel, it is just this earthy, “X-rated” quality that has kept these satires out of reach of Western audiences, although Indian readers were well aware of the tradition: Obscenity is a quality, not a fault, in satire, an achievement, and a strategy for the transformation of the amorous sentiment into the comic. It is a method of shocking, baiting and ridiculing Divine Sages. And yet it is because of their obscenities that the Sanskrit satirical farces have been largely ignored. They have been censured and dismissed as meritless. While the genre was always traditionally popular, and while a vast

Epilogue 189 number were written and performed throughout the history of Indian theater, very few have been printed, edited, or even catalogued. (Siegel 69) In this view, Sanskrit satire constitutes a popular, vastly influential genre although “polite” Indian society is keeping it at arm’s length, and Orientalists and foreign scholars of Sanskrit literature have ignored or suppressed it entirely, considering it as below their worth to engage with such works of coarse, subversive, “negative” humor. It is not far-fetched, therefore, to think that the long history of earthy, indecent, outspoken Sanskrit satire has primed Indian audiences in such a way that Hindus are quite prepared to take irreverent, blasphemous, even sick jokes dealing with religious topics without registering overtly indignant reactions. Perhaps one can go one step further and say that Hindus view laughter not as oppositional or antagonistic to matters of faith but rather as an integral part of a boundary-transcending phenomenon that has both sacred and profane implications. In India, those who register their indignity with regard to satirical vulgarity, attempting to censor the offending contents, are themselves made targets of ridicule: “In modern India, plagued as it has been by censorship, the censor is a frequent object of satirical derision” (Siegel 71).

Judaism I his book The Haunted Smile (2008), Lawrence Epstein documented the astonishing rise of Jewish humor in 20th century America. According to Epstein, this “embarrassingly rich crop of American Jewish comedians defies common sense” (40). In 1979, he reports, “Time estimated that whereas Jews make up only 3% of the American population, fully 80% of American professional comedians are Jewish” (40). A glance at the long list of prominent Jewish-American comedians, including Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry Davis, Roseanne Barr, Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, Mel Brooks, the Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, Ben Stiller, and many more, confirms this trend. In Epstein’s view – and he is not alone – American comedy has been profoundly shaped by Jewish comedians, whose humor did “travel far from the homey folksiness of a Mark Twain or Will Rogers” (67). Many explanations have been offered to account for the prevalence of humor in Jewish communities. One of the explanations that regularly surfaces makes a connection to the Talmud, the Rabbinic compendium of instructions and commentary related to matters of spirituality, ethics, rituals, and the law. Not only does the Talmud contain humorous passages and amusing vignettes, but its archaic, laconic style and its method of pushing the abstract implications of purely hypothetical and paradox scenarios to the last consequence can have an absurd feel to it. This Talmudic model, according to which all possible angles of a proposition, no matter how

190  Religious comedy and Christianity far-fetched, should be looked into, has put its stamp on Jewish culture and likely contributed to its characteristically disputatious style. Such argumentativeness is only taken seriously up to a point. Part of the nature of Jewish argumentation is that it is partly done in an ironic or self-deprecatory tone. What seems to underlie much Jewish argumentativeness is the idea “let’s pursue this line of thought just for the sake of the argument.” In other words, those getting involved in arguments are not always taking themselves all too seriously, and they don’t mind playing devil’s advocate, either. This, of course, is one of the fundamental aspects of the comical attitude, i.e. not to take oneself too seriously and to play with ideas, to the point of ironic inversion. Hershey Friedman concludes that “parodies of Talmudic reasoning are the basis of numerous Jewish jokes” (God Laughed 26). Another frequently cited root cause of Jewish humor is its role as a coping mechanism. It hardly needs repeating that for long stretches of their history, Jews were oppressed, persecuted, and relentlessly stereotyped. For Jews, humor was a form of resistance and a defense against systemic and lasting forms of discrimination: “It is a common understanding that humor appealed to Jews in Eastern Europe as a form of therapy, a way to manage the stresses of daily life. . . . Comedy, therefore, played a psychological, even political, role in helping the Jews deal with majority cultures” (Epstein 169). Humor enabled Jews to relativize their difficult condition, rise above their oppressors, and gain a new vantage point or at least triumph in discourse over their adverse circumstances. Often, joking about a situation will give the joker a degree of control and self-determination, since the joke turns suffering into a pleasurable emotion while demonstrating intellectual superiority over adversarial forces. Wit can displace an intolerable situation from a physical, practical unto the intellectual, abstract level. Humor thus creates a free space in the mind where the forces of oppression cannot reach and where the humorist can cultivate a sense of freedom and separation from the actual conditions of her existence. A third commonly heard explanation to account for Jewish humor is philosophical. On the one hand, Jews consider themselves God’s chosen people; on the other hand, they have historically been chased across the face of the earth, displaced, uprooted, and discriminated against. This creates a powerful contradiction in the mind of Jews, a contradiction or incongruity that finds expression in an existential worldview of cosmic absurdity. A devout people constantly faced with proofs of their historical victimization must necessarily wonder about the wisdom of God’s plan for them. Out of this sense of incongruity and absurdity, Jews argue with God: “It is a common tradition, for example, to question God’s ways. . . . If God is allowed to be challenged, then it is understandable, and even expected, that less powerful forms of authority (parents, bosses, societies) can also be questioned. Such a challenge to authority is a hallmark of Jewish humor” (Epstein 160–162). The view that the man who argues with God takes God seriously

Epilogue 191 is a quintessentially Jewish idea. Elie Wiesel gives this idea a rather startling twist by saying that “God comes in here and there in my books. I oppose him. I fight him. I quarrel with him” (Conversations 87). Of course, arguing with the Almighty is in itself an absurdity, and the Jewish worldview thrives on this incongruity. A frequently mentioned source of Jewish humor, too, is the tradition of folk stories revolving around the fictional village and community of Chelm. This proverbial town of fools is at the center and focus of much Jewish humor and constitutes a motif in numerous funny stories. Memorialized in the work of writers like Sholem Alaichem, the village of Chelm has acquired mystical status as a fount of specifically Jewish humor. In these jokes, the “wise men” of Chelm like to show off just how smart they are when, in fact, they merely put their ignorance on display. One such joke features a man from Chelm claiming that if it takes a carriage drawn by one horse four hours to get to its destination then it should take the same carriage drawn by two horses only two hours to cover the distance. Another man chimes in, saying that if the carriage were drawn by four horses, the trip would be done in no time at all. But while this kind of ridicule at the expense of a targeted group may look like superiority laughter, it is not really so. Not only does the community of Chelm merely exist in people’s imagination, but it is populated by members of the same group, i.e. Jews, who are thus both the authors and the butts of these jokes. The jokes about Chelm are ultimately a form of self-deprecatory humor because they give Jews an outlet to poke fun at weaknesses among their own kind rather than exercising arrogant superiority humor in order to denigrate an external group. Thus, the stories about Chelm are suffused with Entrenchment 1 humor. Finally, an often repeated explanation for Jewish humor is the Hebrew Bible, specifically parts of the Torah. The name of Isaac, one of Israel’s patriarchs, literally means “he laughed,” ostensibly a reference to his mother’s disbelieving (or is it embarrassed?) laughter when God tells her at age 89 that she will conceive a son with Abraham, her 99-year old husband. Laughter is more strongly associated with the story of Esther and, specifically, through the tradition of Purim. During Purim, Jews put up short plays (“shpiels” in Yiddish) to re-enact and celebrate Haman’s downfall at the hands of Esther, who thus saved the Jewish people in Babylon from coming to a bad end. The story of Esther and Haman, though pretty serious in essence (we’re dealing with a plot to commit genocide) does offer some material for comic treatment. For instance, there is the story’s ironic tendency to have the evil schemes that Haman plots fall back on his own head. This is most dramatically shown when the extravagant gallows he had designed for the king’s Jewish counselor, Mordecai, is the one from which Haman himself hangs at the end. But into the superiority laughter over the way the villain gets tricked in the end there is mixed in the laughter of relief that the Jews were saved from slaughter. Traditionally, Purim has not only

192  Religious comedy and Christianity been a time of humorous playacting and comical skits, but also a time of general levity and carnival atmosphere. At that time of year (early March), Jews would dress up, play pranks, and generally make merry. This festival is so deeply rooted in Jewish identity and tradition that is has put its stamp on the Jewish humor culture.

Islam Discussions about humor and Islam in today’s world need to address – but should not be restricted to – the violent responses carried out in the name of Islam against irreverent comedians, especially cartoonists, since the turn of the century. As is well known, in early 2006, riots broke out throughout the Muslim world in the wake of the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten’s printing of cartoons depicting the Prophet in various guises. As Giselinde Kuipers and others have observed, “protests against the cartoons were often cited as proof of Muslims ‘having no sense of humor’ ” (“Politics of Humor” 64). Ten years later, Islamic terrorists stormed the editorial offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and gunned down editors, writers, and cartoonists to avenge the periodical’s mocking treatment of religious figures, including cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad. This further cemented a view in the West that Muslims are lacking in a sense of humor. Keeping in mind such views, it will be interesting to consider what the Islamic scriptures, i.e. the Koran and Hadiths, actually say about laughter and comedy. The first striking observation about references to laughter in the Muslim holy texts is that Muhammad quite obviously had a sense of humor. Although some passages suggest that he favored quiet smiles, others show him laughing openly: ‘A’isha, the wife of the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him), reported: I  never saw Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him)  laugh  to such an extent that I  could see his uvula  – whereas he used to smile only. (Sahih Muslim Book 4, Hadith #1963) Another Hadith passage concurs with this assessment: Simak b. Harb reported: I said to Jabir b. Samura: Did you sit in the company of the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him)? He said: Yes, very often. He (the Holy Prophet) used to sit at the place where he observed the morning or dawn prayer till the sun rose or when it had risen; he would stand, and they (his Companions) would talk about matters (pertaining to the days) of ignorance, and they would laugh (on these matters) while (the Holy Prophet) only smiled. (Sahih Muslim, Book 4, Hadith #1413)

Epilogue 193 Although this passage advocates smiling rather than outright laughter, other passages present a different scenario. Here is an example of the Prophet actually laughing: Hadhrat Abu Dhar reported “I  indeed saw the Messenger of Allah laugh till his front teeth were exposed.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith #365) And there is more: A man broke his fast (intentionally) during Ramadan. The Messenger of Allah commanded him to emancipate a slave or fast for two months, or feed sixty poor men. He said: I cannot provide. The Apostle said: Sit down. Thereafter, a huge basket of dates was brought to the Messenger of Allah. He said: Take this and give it as sadaqah. He said: O Messenger of Allah, there is no one poorer than I. The Messenger of Allah thereupon laughed so that his canine teeth became visible and said: Eat it yourself. (Sunan Abu Dawood, Book 2, Hadith #2386) I would call this a medium-strength laugh. Showing one’s canines while laughing is a good sign of genuine amusement. But showing one’s molar teeth is more in line with true feelings of hilarity, as when the Prophet discovered that his wife, Aisha, kept a winged toy horse: When the Apostle of Allah (pbuh) arrived after the expedition to Tabuk or Khaybar (the narrator is doubtful), the draught raised an end of a curtain which was hung in front of her store-room, revealing some dolls which belonged to her. He asked: What is this? She replied: My dolls. Among them he saw a horse with wings made of rags, and asked: What is this I see among them? She replied: A horse. He asked: What is this that it has on it? She replied: Two wings. He asked: A horse with two wings? She replied: Have you not heard that Solomon had horses with wings? She said: Thereupon the Apostle of Allah (pbuh) laughed so heartily that I could see his molar teeth. (Sunan Abu Dawood, Book 3, Hadith #4914) Quite obviously, it cannot be said that Muhammad had never laughed. In terms of giving vent to mirth, Muhammad differs from both Jesus, who is never reported as having laughed, and the historical Buddha, who is said to have only smiled. Now, although laughter can be a response to a range of different stimuli, amusement being only one of them, it seems quite certain that Muhammad’s laughter was the result of genuine amusement. At other times, the laughter recorded in the Koran signifies scorn, and in that sense the Koran conforms to the meaning of laughter in the Hebrew Bible. Gladness is another

194  Religious comedy and Christianity common cause of laughter. The scenes described in two Hadith passages below include such “gladness” laughter: Narrated Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-’As: A man came to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) and said: I came to you to take the oath of allegiance to you on emigration, and I left my parents weeping. He (the Prophet) said: Return to them and make them laugh as you made them weep. (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 14, Hadith #2522) Narrated Ali ibn AbuTalib: Ali ibn Rabi’ah said: I was present with Ali while a beast was brought to him to ride. When he put his foot in the stirrup, he said: “In the name of Allah.” Then when he sat on its back, he said: “Praise be to Allah.” He then said: “Glory be to Him Who has made this subservient to us, for we had not the strength, and to our Lord do we return.” He then said: “Praise be to Allah (thrice); Allah is Most Great (thrice): glory be to Thee, I have wronged myself, so forgive me, for only Thou forgivest sins.” He then laughed. He was asked: At what did you laugh? He replied: I saw the Apostle of Allah (pbuh) do as I have done, and laugh after that. I asked: Apostle of Allah, at what are you laughing? He replied: Your Lord, Most High, is pleased with His servant when he says: “Forgive me my sins.” He knows that no one forgives sins except Him. (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 14, Hadith #2596) The latter Hadith explicitly translates “laughter” as “being pleased” with someone, thus signifying social approval rather than amusement. Still, the Prophet’s laughter in this scene appears to have been of an indirect kind, prompting Ali to ask what it meant. In this scene, laughter indicates a bursting forth of vital forces whose significance is not self-evident beyond indicating a surplus of positive mental energy. This affirmative psychological dimension of laughter is again indicated in the following scene: It has been narrated on the authority of Umm Haram (and she was the aunt of Anas) who said: The Holy Prophet (may peace be upon him) came to us one day and had a nap in our house. When he woke up, he was laughing. I  said: Messenger of Allah, what made you  laugh? He said: I saw a people from my followers sailing on the surface of the sea (looking) like kings (sitting) on their thrones. I said: Pray to Allah that He may include me among them. He said: You will ship among them. He had a (second) nap, woke up and was laughing. I asked him (the reason for his laughter). He gave the same reply. (Sahih Muslim, Book 20, Hadith #4700) Here, we see the Prophet waking up with a laugh, which may well be interpreted as issuing from the disorientation between waking and dreaming

Epilogue 195 and thus constituting a liminal experience that brought out the laughter response. While laughter as reported in the Hadiths usually signifies either amusement or gladness/satisfaction, the few mentions of laughter in the Koran have a somewhat different meaning, for instance signifying contempt, as illustrated in the following verses: “Those in sin used to laugh at those who believed. . . . But on this Day the Believers will laugh at the Unbelievers” (83d Surah [Al-Mutaffifin], verses #29 & 34). This could be paraphrased as follows: “Sinful people (unbelievers) laugh contemptuously at believers at this moment, but on the day of reckoning the believers will in turn scorn them.” The entire Koran contains only a handful of verses explicitly mentioning laughter (either six or eight verses, depending on what translation one uses). Interestingly, neither Allah nor his Prophet is depicted as laughing scornfully (something that Yahweh does repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible). Indeed, the Koran generally associates superiority laughter with unbelievers or generally with sinful people: “Let them laugh a little: much will they weep as a recompense for the (evil) that they do” (9th Surah [At-Tawba] verse #82). In this verse, the meaning of laughter is “jeering” or being overconfident, a kind of laughter that comes before the proverbial fall. Another well-known Koran verse warns against superiority laughter in general: O you who believe! Let not some men among you  laugh  at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor let some women laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used of one) after he has believed: And those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong. (49th Surah [Al-Hujurat], verse #11) This passage of the Koran explicitly discourages superiority laughter, warning that those mocking others thereby reveal their inferiority, suggesting that it is morally reprehensible to laugh down at others. Significantly, this verse goes on to warn specifically against sarcasm and name calling, thus discouraging against humorous put-downs, naughty carnival laughter, or joking at the (supposed or real) weaknesses of others. While the above passage from the Koran condemns only superiority laughter, some Hadith passages appear to go further, targeting levity in general: O followers of Muhammad! By Allah! If you knew that which I know you would laugh little and weep much. (Sahih Bukhari, Book 18, Hadith #154) Here laughter is associated with ignorance, especially ignorance in an eschatological sense – those who laugh are short-sighted, lacking knowledge of

196  Religious comedy and Christianity the final reckoning. This puts one in mind of Buddha’s admonition “How can anyone laugh who knows of old age, disease, and death?” (Buddhacarita 4.59). Another Hadith specifies further objections to laughter: Narrated Mu’awiyah ibn Jaydah al-Qushayri: The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) said: Woe to him who tells things, speaking falsely, to make people laugh thereby. Woe to him! Woe to him! (Abu Dawud, Book 43, Hadith #4972) This Hadith could well be invoked to discredit a wide range of humor. After all, the requirement that all humorous expressions be truthful and accurate would at a minimum eliminate such forms of comedy as satire and parody, both of which thrive on exaggeration, irony, and innuendo. Taken together, these passages from the Koran and the Hadiths can be seen as formulating a prescriptive catalogue of rules about laughter: 1 Do not laugh excessively; the Prophet only smiled (although this claim can be countered by some Hadiths that do show him laughing out loud) 2 Do not jeer at others or laugh at them out of a sense of arrogance and haughtiness (ruling out superiority laughter) 3 Do not poke fun at others by using crude nicknames (eliminates rude or obscene humor) 4 Do not evoke laughter by means of sarcasm, irony, and parody (“speaking falsely”) (ruling out satire) 5 The Muslim may, however, laugh out of gladness, joy, and relief If implemented, such a laughter “policy” would eliminate up to three-thirds of the humor modes. Of course, there would still be plenty of non-humorous laughter despite these rules, including laughter from joy or surprise. But as far as humorous laughter goes, this informal Islamic law severely curtails the range and variety of humorous expression. Aggressive Entrenchment 2 humor is targeted in prescription 2, which eliminates the whole category of ridiculing and mocking out of a sense of superiority laughter. Rule 3 can be seen as discouraging both subversive Liminal 2 humor, which often employs obscene language, and Entrenchment 2 humor, which also thrives on crude expressions against its targets. Rule 4, finally, appears to be squarely taking aim at Liminal 2 humor, especially in the form of satire, which is replete with “double-talk,” indirect discourse, parallel worlds, and destabilizing ironic discourse. Rule 4, against “speaking falsely,” can also be taken as addressing good-natured Entrenchment 1 humor because even gentle parody and self-deprecating humor involve doses of irony and exaggeration, which can be construed as a form of “speaking falsely.” Still, some mild Entrenchment 1 joking and tongue-in-cheek imitation may just about pass under rule 4, depending on the strictness of interpretation. This largely leaves only one fully acceptable category of humor  – the “soft” Liminal 1 form, i.e. jokes

Epilogue 197 and amusements based on playfulness, mild incongruity, word games, and clowning. Naturally, the field of comedy would shrink dramatically if one eliminated all “hard” forms of humor and limited Entrenchment 1. As we have seen throughout this book, many of the most creative and lasting religious comedies are based strongly on Liminal 2 (satire), and some of them also activate the aggressive form of Entrenchment 2 humor. To proscribe those “hard” forms of humor would quite impoverish the richness of comical discourses and reduce the range of topics to laugh about. The censoring knife would cut two ways: while paring off insensitive, aggressive, and stereotyping forms of comedy, it would also eliminate the keenest, most provocative, and activist forms of amusement. In the bigger picture, although the Prophet himself is depicted as smiling at situations that strike him as funny, while laughing out loud on some occasions because of gladness or epiphany, on the whole the passages from the Hadiths and the Koran that address laughter delineate a fairly restrictive sense of humor. Indeed, in conversation with Muslims, I  have heard the terms “permissible laughter” and “impermissible laughter” used quite naturally. And when it comes to explicitly irreverent religious humor, it is very clear that it would not be tolerated in majority-Muslim countries. Of course, banning “hard” forms of humor and never using them in private settings are two different things, and humor scholars familiar with the topic of Muslim attitudes to humor have reassured me that in private Muslims can be found to laugh out of derision or insult  – both forms of laughter technically banned by the Islamic views on humor. But despite some leniency regarding the observance of Islam’s restrictive humor code in private, that code is likely to render it impossible to cultivate a vibrant public humor culture, including performances on mass media and in comedy clubs that include any significant degree of subversive, offensive, derisive, or irreverent contents. And this restrictive atmosphere will extend to the production of cartoons and movies, poems and novels. The problem here extends from the discouragement of sassy comedy to the issue of freedom of expression in general. As Timothy Garton Ash has noted, when it comes to freedom of speech, much of the Islamic world has seen a gradual reduction. One example of this is the jailing and sentencing in 2017 of Jakarta’s Christian governor, Tjahaia Purnama, on the charge of blasphemy. What was his offense? Purnama had suggested that the Koran did not require Muslims to answer only to Muslim political leaders. His interpretation may or may not be heterodox, but it should not lead to a two-year prison sentence. What is worrying about this case, too, is the breadth of the head judge’s sentencing rationale, as reported in the Atlantic Monthly: “As part of a religious society, the defendant should be careful to not use words with negative connotations regarding the symbols of religions, including the religion of the defendant himself” (Bendix). Can anybody imagine joking about aspects of any religion under such stringent

198  Religious comedy and Christianity conditions? Indonesia has heretofore been considered a moderate Muslim nation, but in this current climate, even mildly daring religious comedy would not be able to flourish there, let alone more outspokenly irreverent forms of humor. In my view, this is a grave problem for a civil society and a cultural loss. What would Christian culture be if it were purged of Erasmus, Rabelais, Voltaire, Twain, Hašek, and other irreverent geniuses? Surely, it would survive and possibly flourish in some ways. However, if I could elect to live in a culture where irreverent, blasphemous, and wickedly funny comedians can have a stage and an audience, I would most definitely want to live in such a culture. In contrast to Christianity’s progressive liberalization toward expressions of irreverent humor, the Muslim world appears to be caught up in a lowering of standards of religious tolerance toward unfettered expressions of comedy, combined with attacks on freedom of speech, especially speech touching topics critical of any aspect of Islam. According to the Pew Research Center, “14 of 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa criminalize blasphemy” (Theodorou). In 16 Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, and others, apostasy (falling off from the Islamic faith) is a criminal offense, and in several of these countries it carries the death penalty. Under such conditions, practicing freewheeling religious humor can be hazardous, if not impossible. Islam’s strict law of aniconicity acts as a brake on some humor practices, and that is understandable. It is well known that visual representations of Allah and his Prophet are strictly banned in all major branches of Islam. This is done to prevent idol worship, the same rationale that underlies the ban on depictions of the deity in the Hebrew Bible. Since depictions of Allah are virtually unthinkable in the Islamic world, and since Muhammad, too, is rarely depicted, Muslims are highly offended by the visual representation of either of these holy figures. Interestingly, while the Koran forbids visual representations of Allah, it does not explicitly say that the Prophet cannot be depicted; the more sweeping ban on depictions of both Allah and his Prophet is based on various corpuses of supplemental teachings based on the sayings and reported events involving Muhammad and his associates. The prohibition against depicting Muhammad is most strictly enforced in the Sunni branch of Islam, where it still is a major transgression and an instance of blatant blasphemy to depict Muhammad, even if the depiction is flattering and well intended. Some artists have tried to go around this ban by depicting Muhammad with a veil drawn across his face, so as not to reveal his actual features, but such compromises are rare. From a Sunni perspective, a cartoonist producing a funny drawing of Muhammad is culpable of double blasphemy  – first for depicting the Prophet at all, and then for depicting the Prophet in a disrespectful, mocking light. Still, a different outcome than the harsh treatment of comical blasphemers by enraged Muslims can be envisaged: Reza Rumi, a Pakistani writer

Epilogue 199 accused of blasphemy in his home country wrote “The ironic thing is that in the Quran, there is no punishment for blasphemy at all. It is a political law, based on what Islamic jurists said many centuries after the prophet” (quoted by Trofimov). This does not stop Islamic authority figures from justifying the punishment of supposed blasphemers on religious grounds and to call for Western societies to enact blasphemy laws on a par with those observed in the Islamic world. Hamza Mansour, secretary-general of Jordan’s main Islamist group, the Islamic Action Front, is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that “Religion has its sanctities and those who offend them should be punished. We demand that” (quoted by Trofimov). How this principle looks like in actual reality can be demonstrated with reference to the Pakistani penal code, section 295C, which reads as follows: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine” (Abbas 149). And Pakistan is not alone in cracking down on blasphemy, as Timothy Garton Ash has reminded us: “In many other Muslim-majority countries, both blasphemy and apostasy carry fierce punishments in law” (Ten ­Principles, 254). This stance is incompatible with the primacy given to the freedoms of expression, conscience, and religion in Western constitutional democracies. From that point of view, it is inexcusable to bring violence against those accused of blasphemy or, for that matter, against anybody who says or writes something another person or group disfavors. All this has a significant bearing on the question of religious humor, since humor needs a large degree of freedom and a generous elbow room to operate in. Importantly, humor also needs to have the freedom to offend if it is to be true to its boundary relevant nature. Without the freedom to harden, challenge, disrupt, or move boundaries of taste, politeness, piety, tradition, and habit, humor is severely shackled. But if we promote an open stage for humor to operate in, free from religious or any other restraints, something more fundamental than the chance to have a few good laughs is at stake. Freedom of expression is so central to the functioning of open, modern, liberal societies that such societies should consider to protect blasphemy like any other form of speech. According to Eward Tabash, “Blasphemy is a human right” (11). He elaborates on this as follows: If free expression works properly, no adherent of any type of belief system, by it religious or otherwise, has any special right to silence a critic, even if the critic resorts to ridicule. . . . An integral part of freedom requires that any one be permitted to express views that are deeply offensive to someone else’s belief. Those whose feelings are hurt are entitled to strike back verbally. The believer has a legal right to say that nonbelievers will burn in hell forever. The nonbeliever has a legal

200  Religious comedy and Christianity right to say there is no God in the first place, and thus no hell in which anyone will every burn. (Tabash 11) This is not an isolated opinion among secular humanists. French intellectual Alain Bouldoires similarly advocates a “right to blaspheme” all across Europe. In his view, a right to blaspheme is justified because, first, it would avoid favoring one religion over another, and, second, it would “effectively end the blasphemy debate,”3 something Bouldoires welcomes. In his compendious book Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World (2016), Timothy Garton Ash similarly argues against calls for protecting believers’ self-esteem and shielding sensitive deities from the effects of unfettered speech. Ash clarifies that religious believers must not be allowed to compel respect for their faith from all members of the human race. Rather, he proposes that we should “respect the believer but not necessarily the content of the belief” (251). In other words, let us guard against slanderous defamation of individuals, but let us not outlaw poking fun the religious dogmas that believers stand by. Ash provides an example of this by paraphrasing some articles of belief from the Church of Scientology, calling these doctrines “infantile poppycock” (260) and denying that such nonsense should have a right to be protected from disrespectful speech. But if we agree not to protect Scientological articles of faith from being ridiculed, then to be consistent we must equally refrain from protecting Christian, Muslim, or any other religious principles from being mocked. Ash argues that especially in modern, cosmopolitan, multicultural, and multi-religious societies, legally protecting the sensibilities of certain groups by outlawing offenses directed against them would tear at the fabric of a free and open society: “Religions have such a large influence over both individual lives and the ordering of whole societies that if we were not free to challenge their claims and commandments, vast tracts of human life would be removed from free debate. The more religions there are in a given society, the more no-go areas there would be” (261–262). It is therefore essential that we resist any and all attempts to tamper with the definition of blasphemy, changing it from signifying a “victimless crime” (i.e. “insult to a divinity”) to rebranding it as a form of hate speech (and thus making it legally actionable in many countries) or as an incitement to violence. Nigel Warburton has put it succinctly: “The suggestion that creative artists and others should tiptoe around the wide-ranging religious sensitivities of Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and others, and that religious beliefs should be held as sacrosanct and immune from criticism is unacceptable in an open democracy” (54–55). The United States has remained steadfast in its refusal to give in to pressures to criminalize offending speech or to redefine blasphemy as a legally actionable offense, and it therefore deserves the special respect of all those interested in the maintenance of liberty and

Epilogue 201 democracy, and it merits the gratitude of aficionados of unfettered comedy, be it of the South Park or the David Javerbaum variety. With its First Amendment, which the courts have widely and inclusively upheld in the past, the United States offers one of the few (near) unambiguous bulwarks against intolerance, fundamentalism, and fanaticism in today’s world, a boon not only for the freedom of expression in general but for comedy in particular, no matter how reverent or irreverent.

Notes 1 See my co-authored article “Does Religion Shape People’s Sense of Humour? A  Comparative Study of Humour Appreciation Among Members of Different Religions and Nonbelievers.” Journal of European Humor Research, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018. 2 Bharat is the official Hindi name of India. 3 For the complete interview, see http://freespeechdebate.com/en/media/blasphemylaws-in-europe/

Key terms and definitions

Blasphemy S. Brent Plate characterizes blasphemy in terms of boundaries: “blasphemy is about an impure crossings from one side of the sacred-profane divide to the other; about juxtaposing the sacred and the profane in times and places where they are expected to be kept separate; of twisting the profane so that it appears sacred, or making the sacred appear profane” (60). This is one of the reasons why blasphemy often goes hand in hand with humor. Just as humor erupts at conceptual, social, psychological, and cognitive seams and boundaries, so it equally plays at the border between the sacred and the profane. Plate consistently employs this analogy when theorizing blasphemy: “The borders of blasphemy are moveable, changing from religion to religion, culture to culture, specific situation to specific situation,” and he concludes that “through socio-religious history, various people have challenged the given structure, and thereby put themselves in further jeopardy by rethinking the lines between the sacred and the profane” (125). This notion of the fluidity of the concept of blasphemy, i.e. its existence as a construct that is socially negotiated and re-negotiated and that, accordingly, changes its nature and position over time, is extremely important. There is no absolute blasphemy, only blasphemy according to a given historical and theological definition. This has vast implications for processing and evaluating religious humor since both blasphemy and humor share this crucial liminal quality and both are social transactions that occur at the leading edge of larger social and cultural developments. Opinions diverge on whether blasphemy should be treated as hate speech or not and whether, therefore, it can be proscribed in countries with hate speech laws. In my view, blasphemy is a “victimless crime” which falls squarely under free speech protection. Eward Tabash said that “Blasphemy is a human right” (11), and I  agree with that. Tabash elaborates on this notion: “If free expression works properly, no adherent of any type of belief system, be it religious or otherwise, has any special right to silence a critic, even if the critic resorts to ridicule. . . . An integral part of freedom requires that anyone be permitted to express views that are deeply offensive to someone else’s belief. Those whose feelings are hurt are entitled to strike back

Key terms and definitions 203 verbally. The believer has a legal right to say that nonbelievers will burn in hell forever. The nonbeliever has a legal right to say there is no God in the first place, and thus no hell in which anyone will ever burn” (Tabash 11).

Comedy/comical I use this term loosely to mean situations and expressions that give rise to a humor response or that are intended to trigger laughter. Thus, comedy does not refer exclusively to actual comedies in the formal sense of a play, text, or movie classified as comedy. Rather, the comical is an attribute of any joke or humorous representation that leads to amusement.

Laughter and humor Laughter arises from many different causes. People laugh when they are physically tickled; there is laughter from nervousness, laughter that signals goodwill and no-threat in social settings, the shrill laughter of excitement during a roller coaster ride, the laughter (or smile) of joy at seeing one’s child succeed, and the laughter from humor. Unless otherwise indicated, whenever I use the term “laughter” in this book, I am referring to laughter as a response to a humor stimulus. That humor stimulus can be of different kinds: it can be an image or a cartoon, it can be a funny situation or a prank, it can be a witty remark or a joke, it can be a wordplay or a pun, and it can be a sophisticated application of irony or satire. In all these cases, the humor stimulus has a content, and laughter is a response to that content. Other forms of laughter, including impersonal reactive laughter,1 are usually not about something, in the same way as comic laughter is about something, and I  am obviously solely interested in laughter that is about something, notably about aspects of religion.

Laughter, chuckle, smile, and inner amusement I treat these as gradations of amusement, i.e. as reactions to a humor stimulus on a scale of intensity. An inner amusement is the lightest form of humor reaction, with only a slight corresponding physical manifestation; a smile is still a quiet but more physically involved manifestation of amusement; while laughter, obviously, is the most audible and visible reaction to a humor stimulus. In this book I am using an inclusive understanding of laughter, one which may cover all of these manifestations of the humor reaction, from the quiet, inner laughter to the physical belly laugh.

Religious humor Under this term, I subsume all humorous cultural productions (texts, cartoons, movies, plays, and jokes) that have a specific religious thematic. It

204  Key terms and definitions does not matter what religion is the butt of the joke, whether the humorous production is good-naturedly affirmative or aggressively blasphemous, or whether the humor is self-deprecatory or targeting others. If people are made to laugh about a clerical person, a belief, ritual, scriptural passage, or deity, then we are dealing with religious humor.

Satire Satire is category of comedy that relies heavily on irony, is often sharp and disdainful in tone, and has a morally corrective impulse. Satire is intended both to “punish” and correct the follies and shortcomings that it singles out, using laughter as a weapon. It has been said that satire is comedy that teaches. Besides being subversive and critical, satire is typically indecorous and insolent. Despite its often coarse language, satire requires sophisticated cognitive decoding to be properly understood. Because of its reliance on irony and allusion, the values which are held up as superior by the satirist are normally implied rather than explicit. The effectiveness of satire to perform its mocking, punitive, and corrective functions depends on the cooperation of the audience in decoding the true intent beneath the ironic surface message. Readers of Jonathan Swift’s classical satire “A Modest Proposal” who really think he advocates cannibalism are obviously not reading this work in its intended way. Much of satire has been directed against political figures, parties, and ideologies as well as against cultural phenomena (e.g. consumerism) and whole industries (e.g. fashion). Another large swath of satires deals with religion. Although most of the works discussed in Chapter 3 have a more or less pronounced satirical intent, many passages in Boccaccio, Erasmus, France, Morrow, and others are simply funny in order to raise a laugh. So much in these texts constitutes playful comedy, parody, clowning, and other forms of non-satirical fun that to refer to these works uniformly as satires would be unduly narrow. Even the more persistently satirical works like Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel or Twain’s Mysterious Stranger contain many jokes that are not satirical. But just as works of satire can contain non-satirical aspects of humor, so essentially non-satirical works of rollicking fun like Christopher Moore’s The Lamb may contain bits of satirical discourse. Scholars normally divide the bulk of satires into three types: Horatian, Juvenalian, and Menippean. All three names refer to Roman poets. Horatian satire Horace (65–8 BCE) wrote elegant, urbane lyrics on love, friendship, wisdom, patriotism and nature that made him a favorite of Emperor Augustus, and his Odes (poems of praise, including political praise of the ruler) became an enduring model emulated by other poets for many centuries afterward. He also wrote gentle satirical poems. The term “Horatian satire” denotes

Key terms and definitions 205 works of literature that use irony playfully to poke fun at human follies and milder vices like gullibility, narcissism, and laziness. When such shortcomings are targeted in witty Horatian satire, the result is either a smile or goodnatured laughter, although it can have a scornful edge. Parodies are also generally held to be in the Horatian register. Parodies use imitation, repetition, and exaggeration to spoof a whole genre or sub-genre, as when James Bond movie conventions are held up for ridicule in the Austin Powers movie franchise; parodies can target a specific work like Milton’s Paradise Lost in Anatole France’s Revolt of the Angels; or parodies can target individuals, as when Saturday Night Live’s Alec Baldwin imitates Donald Trump. Juvenalian satire Juvenal, after whom this type of satire is named, was a Roman poet living between the first and second centuries CE. Not much is known about him, and the biographical details remain sketchy. His satires, for which he is exclusively known, are distinguished by their sharp, impatient, cutting quality. Juvenalian satire is attack satire. Its targets are specific and often personal, and its tone is angry and pessimistic. Juvenal also subjected various human shortcomings to withering satirical criticism, and several of his satires take aim at human brutality, corruption, greed, and intrigue among Rome’s leading society. A similar sense of outrage at human shortcomings and folly can be found in modern works, e.g. Mark Twain’s wrathful Letters from the Earth (1909) or the grimly satirical Good Soldier Švejk (1923) by Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek. The laughter produced by Juvenalian satire is sarcastic, scornful, and punitive, and therefore generally qualifies as “negative” Entrenchment 2 humor, although a subversive liminal quality can also be associated with Juvenalian satire. Menippean satire Menippean satire is named after the third century BCE Cynic named Menippus of Gadara. This type of satire differs from the Juvenalian form insofar as its targets are not primarily individuals or specific organizations but rather widely shared ideas and beliefs. Menippean satire uses clever mockery and ridicule to attack certain mental attitudes and ingrained cultural or religious ideas. Menippean satire has traditionally included humorous criticisms of mythological narratives or religious worldviews. Menippean satire is further distinguished from Horatian satire by presenting a mix of light and serious tones, weighty and frivolous subjects. In fact, many Menippean satires serve as vehicles for delivering quite serious concerns and for developing issues of considerable profundity. Although leaning in style more in the direction of good-natured Horatian satirical entertainment, it can at times deliver quite stinging, acerbic, if not angry, satirical stabs against stupidity and blind faith. Among examples of Menippean satire are Lucian’s True Story, Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, and James Morrow’s Blameless in Abaddon.

206  Key terms and definitions

Theories of laughter There are five main theories to explain why we laugh, three of which are commonly considered as the principal theories, to which I  add here two complementary theories. Among the principal theories of humor are the superiority theory, the relief theory, and the incongruity theory. The two complementary theories I  want to mention as well are the play theory (which has evolutionary roots) and Bakhtin’s sociological theory of “carnivalesque” laughter. None of these theories alone is capable of explaining all manifestations of mirth. But each theory covers a significant swath of humorous expressions, and taken together they complement each other, so that most manifestation of laughter can be explained by either one or the other of these theories. Superiority theory The superiority theory of humor, which can be traced back to Plato, has the longest historical reach. According to this approach, people laugh downward, i.e. what amuses them is a person, characteristic, or state of affairs that they consider beneath them. There is a degree of haughtiness and arrogance in such superiority laughter, as well as the relief not to be like the being, thing, or circumstance that one laughs at. Thinkers from Plato onward have questioned the morality of such laughter. Plato disapproved of superiority laughter for two reasons. First, he saw in it the result of base instinctual reactions, not of rational considerations: “there’s part of you which wants to make people laugh, but your reason restrains it because you’re afraid of being thought a vulgar clown” (Republic 360). Second, Plato had moral objections to such laughter: “when we laugh at what is ridiculous in our friends, our pleasure, in mixing with malice, mixes with pain, for we have agreed that malice is a pain of the soul, and that laughter is pleasant, and on these occasions we both feel malice and laugh” (Philebus 97). Historically, it appears that people in earlier times naturally assumed that laughter manifested a sense of superiority. In An Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler has pointed out that of the 29 times laughter is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (including the laughter of God), in the vast majority of cases it is a mocking, derisive, superiority laughter (52–53). The model is Psalm 2:4: “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the lord has them in derision.” Using laughter as a weapon was the default position for the Gnostics, who attempted to justify and strengthen their opposition to orthodox JudeoChristian beliefs, making Yahweh the butt of their laughter. Ingvild Gilhus discusses this quality of Gnostic laughter as a weapon against the “false belief” of Jews and Christians: “While the Old Testament god laughed at those who did not realize his almighty power, in the [Gnostic] texts we have discussed, laughter is turned against this god exactly because he lacks almighty power and does not realize it” (132). In other words, in order to

Key terms and definitions 207 demonstrate the inferiority of Yahweh – whom the Gnostics considered a demiurge  – the Gnostics “naturally” resorted to laughter as their attack weapon. Gnostics were so attracted to superiority laughter that they even imagined Jesus to use it, both on his enemies and his disciples: “Jesus mocks those who . . . are blind. His laughter has an aggressive and hostile quality” (Gilhus 127). Compared to this archaic and presumably original impulse to use laughter as a weapon against one’s enemies, self-deprecatory and good-natured laughter as well as the laughter out of incongruity are clearly laughters of a different nature. The superiority theory received another boost from Thomas Hobbes, who saw laughter as erupting at the seam of a power differential. He described laughter as arising from a sense of “sudden glory” when the laughing subject realizes how inferior the thing, person, or circumstance is that he laughs at. In The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1650), he wrote famously: “The passion of laughter is nothing else than sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminence in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly” (quoted in McDonald 36). Another way of putting this is that laughter degrades and debases something or somebody. Like Plato long before him, Hobbes had reservations about laughter because he considered it an expression of malice and, ultimately, of cowardice. Obviously, the superiority theory cannot cover all instances of humor. In Paul McDonald’s words, “humor is not as self-interested as Superiority Theorists suggest; in fact it most often steers us away from ourselves. Also, it often has the effect of humanizing, rather than denigrating its object” (47). Incongruity theory The theory according to which humor arises from a perceived sense of incongruity is perhaps the most influential and enduring theory of humor. As an explanatory scheme, the beginnings of the incongruity theory can be traced to two German philosophers, with Kant stating famously that “laughter is an affection arising from a strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing” (199). This thought was elaborated by Arthur Schopenhauer in the middle of the 19th century. In his book The World as Will and Idea, he states that what our rational mind expects of the world and what our senses actually tell us about it are often at odds with one another and that out of this clash, out of a feeling of defeated expectations (or surprise) can arise a sense of mirth: “The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity” (76). Of course, the operative term “in every case” needs to be relativized, but in essence, Schopenhauer was, as the saying goes, “on to something” when he postulated that what makes us laugh is the sudden realization of a mismatch between an expected outcome and the

208  Key terms and definitions actual outcome. Let’s say a joke containing a word that we hear as “whine” (i.e. making a complaining, annoying sound) actually refers to “wine” (the drink): “What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing, but it let out a little wine.” Given the skillful setup of this verbal “trap” (aka pun), the contrast between the different meanings of the two phonetically identical words “whine” and “wine” strikes most people as funny. In this example, as soon as the mind realizes that it had been fooled (good-naturedly and playfully so), the reaction is a surprise and what follows is laughter. But we need to be mindful that not all incongruities are inherently funny. This is where Elliott Oring’s concept of “appropriate incongruity” helps our understanding of the matter. According to Oring, “Appropriate incongruity depends on the perception of an appropriate relationship of elements from domains that are generally regarded as incongruous.  .  .  . In other words, humor is perceived when something does not quite fit . . . but is nevertheless, at some level appropriate” (59). One of the numerous examples he provides to illustrate this principle is of a woman who goes to a bakery to order a whole cake, insisting that the salesperson only cut it into two instead of four pieces because she is on a diet. On the surface, this logic is ridiculous – the lady is still eating a whole cake. But underlying the unfunny logic there lurks the appropriate reasoning that eating fewer pieces of cake normally equals consuming fewer calories, except that in this case the number of pieces does not alter the fact that the lady still gets to eat the whole cake, indulging in an amusing self-delusion. This theory is useful: incongruities are not funny per se, unless the mismatched elements are endowed with an added quality of a surprising – and at first sight illogical – appropriateness that ties them together in some way. Relief theory The relief theory of humor is both narrow in its application and quite overarching. It is narrow in its connection with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical approach to humor. According to Freud, jokes serve as a safety valve which allows people to deal with repressed ideas in a way that is acceptable, both to them and to the social environment. By joking, people express ideas  – notably of a violent and sexually charged nature  – that are not normally allowed to surface in daily life. In this way, the joke allows people to “let off steam,” or to release the psychic energy that is required to maintain the continued repression of certain taboo contents. Thus, the joke is a defense mechanism that helps maintain mental equilibrium because repressed contents are allowed to escape in a relatively harmless manner, momentarily opening the valve of the psychic “pressure cooker.” In its wider application, as suggested by Peter L. Berger, almost any kind of humorous reaction can be seen as a form of relief. For instance, superiority-based humor is associated with the relief that we are not as awkward, lowly, or degraded as those we joke about. Alternatively, relief may result from the recognition that two

Key terms and definitions 209 contradictory and incongruous experiences are resolved in the punch line of a joke, thereby avoiding a cognitive impasse. Peter Berger further sees a connection between relief laughter and childhood development: “laughter comes later and is rather different in meaning. It is a symptom of relief, of tension overcome” (49). In the progression of humor stages from the childish primal smile to the laughter of “Schadenfreude,” Berger detects aspects of relief throughout: “at each step laughter signifies an experience of relief (Entlastung) both physically and psychologically. . . . An experience of relief is the primary cause of comic laughter” (49). Of course, it would be misguided to try to look for the key to all laughter in one specific mechanism, and Peter Berger would be the last one to endorse a simplistic answer. After all, he stated that “if one fully understood the phenomenon of laughter, one would have understood the central mystery of human nature” (45). Thus, clearly, the explanation of relief is meant to shed light only on an underlying psycho-dynamic aspect of laughter, not to explain all manifestations or causations of the humor response. Play theory The play theory of humor does not have the same prestige as the previously described three humor theories. This is a bit surprising, since it could be considered one of the more overarching theories, from psychological, sociological, and evolutionary perspectives. There are, of course, thinkers who suggested that we should consider play to be at the origin of humor, and I shall refer to a few of them here. With regard to jokes, the British anthropologist Mary Douglas stated that “a joke is a play on form” (151). In her view, the play aspect of humor overlaps with the incongruity aspect, as jokes toy with the relationship of supposedly incongruous elements, which are playfully manipulated to reveal a new, underlying, or invented relationship among them. Psychoanalytical approaches to humor also stress the play aspect of joking. Peter Berger explains that Freud saw humor essentially as a rebellion against reason: “This implies a kind of infantilization, a return to what Freud calls the ‘old homestead’ of childhood in which wishes come magically true and in which playing (including the play with words) makes up much of life. Joking is, in a way, becoming a child again, for a few moments, and that in itself is a source of pleasure” (Berger 56). One of the strongest supports for seeing humor as a form of play comes from evolutionary sociology. In animal behavior, when primates display grinning facial expressions and make guffawing sounds, this is a signal indicating play mood. Gervais and Wilson write that humor-driven “laughter is derived from the primate relaxed open-mouth display (‘play face’) and its associated pant-like vocalization. . . . Rudimentary laughter evolved originally at least 6.5 [million years ago], before the hominid line split from the other moninoids, and most likely resembled the pant-like laughter of chimpanzees” (14). In their paper titled “The Evolution and Functions of Laughter

210  Key terms and definitions and Humor: A Synthetic Approach,” the authors argue that humor driven “laughter appears to be intrinsically linked to the ancient brain circuit that underlies mammalian rough-and-tumble play” and they refer to previous studies which show that such “laughter was already described as having been derived from primate play signals” (11). In other words, primates emit sounds and contort their facial muscles in ways that resemble human laughter when they signal that they are merely acting in a pretend manner, or “as if” mode. “Laughter can also function to recruit playful interaction and fitness-enhancing stimulation.” (12). In all, “laughter (and the joy associated with it) does indeed appear to be linked with play, not only in children but also in apes and human adults. This supports our argument that all genuine laughter-eliciting stimuli share a common evolutionary and mechanistic basis derived from social play in primates” (21). In this view, laughter has roots in communal and cooperative social impulses, which would suggest that the superiority laughter of aggression and arrogance is a more recent function that has been super-imposed over the genuinely social dimension of laughter to promote “group-level functioning” (Gervais and Wilson 21). By contrast to play, superiority laughter is intended to increase the distance between members of different networks, and it is likely to heighten tensions rather than abate them. On the other hand, the incongruity and relief theories of humor harmonize with the view of laughter as expression of play, but for two different reasons: incongruity is cognitive play, while relief laughter involves the psycho-dynamic motivations of laughter when people are in an “as if” mode of pretense and make-believe. Carnival theory Mikhail Bakhtin’s social analysis of laughter in the context of carnival festivities has been hugely influential in literary and cultural studies, and his work is especially relevant to studying humor in a religious context. Bakhtin was fascinated by medieval carnival traditions, when irreverent foolishness would regularly erupt throughout European towns, especially in France, England, Germany, and Spain. The Feast of Fools, which constituted the peak of the medieval religious carnival activities, used to be centered around Christmas and New Year, with principal holidays days being the Feast of the Nativity, the Feast of Circumcision, and the Feast of the Holy Innocents. In modern times, the carnival period has moved up in the calendar and is now universally scheduled before the onset of the Catholic fasting period preceding Easter (i.e. lent). During these periods of merrymaking known as carnival, “Fastnacht,” or Mardi Gras, not only are social mores and sexual taboos relaxed for a limited period of time to make room for a permissive spirit, but figures of authority regularly come in for mockery, while social hierarchies are playfully turned upside down. Everybody has a license to pretend to be a monarch or a cardinal for a few days, with nothing being sacred or off-limits while the carnival lasts. Afterward, things return to “normal.” Although on

Key terms and definitions 211 the surface, carnival looks like an attack on authority or a subversive critique of social orders, the topsy-turvy and eccentric world of carnival may actually serve as a safety valve guaranteeing the smooth continuation of the status quo. In this sense, carnival corresponds to the relief theory of humor, but its implications go beyond individual repression. People resenting the higher-ups and chafing at the controls imposed by laws and regulations can let off steam for a while, letting their pent-up resentment explode in farcical comedy. But after the conclusion of the carnival holiday, they go back to being submissive and pliant for the rest of the year. Yet, although it can be argued that carnival humor ultimately renders hierarchical social relations more bearable while perpetuating restrictive forms of authority, the subversive element of Bakhtinian laughter should not be completely dismissed. Jacqueline Bussie is quite right to insist that “for Bakhtin carnival laughter represents more than just a ‘slight revolt’ in social life – that is, laughter’s inversionary power creates genuine freedom and decentralizes power structures” (16). Bussie, who sees the laughter of the oppressed as a genuine form of self-defense, revolt, and possibly liberation, argues that Bakhtin wants “to inquire into the laughter of the disempowered and to identify their laughter with temporary (carnival) political, social, and ethical revolt” (16). Bussie is not content to view carnival laughter as possibly more than a safety valve to keep the masses contented, but she considers it as having a genuine revolutionary potential. Especially when it issues from the mouths of the oppressed, laughter is seen as inherently subversive: “I argue for laughter’s transformative power as a mode of social critique, theological critique, and means of resistance to oppressive systems – in short, as a phenomenon with lasting repercussions extending far beyond just the culturally accepted day of carnival” (16). While I am not unsympathetic to the view that laughter has subversive and liberating potentials, ultimately I  maintain that laughter can just as well deepen trenches as leap over them, and that it may as well reinforce hierarchical subordination rather than weakening it. Humor is not only instrumentalized by those seeking relief from encroachments of power and oppression, but it can equally well be used by powerful interests and hegemonic forces to reinforce their status.

Theodicy One of the most fundamental issues that any monotheistic theology has to grapple with is the Problem of Evil. At least since the time when the Book of Job was written (the book’s composition is usually dated to the sixth century BCE), people have been wondering why virtuous individuals come to grief in this world while villains can prosper and live to see old age. Moreover, what are we to think of congenital sicknesses, freak accidents, terrorists running amok, or of a stray bullet finding a baby in the cradle? In other words, why is there random evil, undeserved suffering,

212  Key terms and definitions disaster, and mayhem in a world created by an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent, and all-present God? This conundrum appears in philosophically inspired forms of religious comedy like James Morrow’s Blameless in Abaddon, David Javerbaum’s Last Testament, or Ruben Bolling’s “God-Man” comics. To the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the Problem of Evil was the linchpin fomenting a deep-seated skepticism about the existence of divinity. In Epicurus’s logic, if God wants to prevent evil but cannot do so, he is not all-powerful; if he could prevent evil but does not want to, then he is not benevolent; if he neither can nor wants to prevent evil, then he does not deserve to be called God; but if he wants to prevent evil and can do so, then why is the world so full of suffering? Across the centuries, theologians have worked hard to answer the question “if God loves humanity and could prevent suffering, then why is there so much evil happening in the world?” It’s the million-dollar question of monotheism, and nobody has yet devised a wholly satisfactory answer. Although many Christians would beg to differ, each “solution” to the Problem of Evil is more or less unsatisfactory, more or less leaky, more or less offensive to one constituency or another. Think for a moment of Pat Robertson’s reaction to the Haitian earthquake of 2010 which killed as many as 100,000 people. According to his evangelical brainwork, the Haitians were simply reaping their deserved retribution for ­having made a pact with the devil back in 1804, when they asked Satan to help them shake off the French colonial yoke and liberate all the slaves. In Robertson’s fevered logic, the Haitian earthquake is a well-deserved punishment for doing business with the devil. Such callous and offensive reasoning is the product of theodicy thinking. Indeed, Robertson’s argument harmonizes well with one of the six major “solutions” (or “defenses”) to the Problem of Evil, i.e. the “disciplinary defense.” The six principal answers (theodicies) to the Problem of Evil are outlined below: Hidden-harmony defense What appears to humans as unjust suffering and wholly undeserved misery actually makes sense from a higher, divine perspective. Although we grieve when a baby is killed by a stray bullet fired in a shootout between police and drug dealers, in God’s wisdom the baby was destined to die, and it all somehow makes sense, even if we can’t see the sense. “God’s ways are mysterious.” In 2012, the Republican candidate from Indiana for the US Senate, Rupert Mourdock, said in a televised interview “Life is that gift from God that I think even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended do happen.” This is the other side of the hidden harmony defense – it can come across as a callous justification of undeserved suffering made from the safe and comfortable perch of privilege.

Key terms and definitions 213 Ontological defense This is a highly speculative theory, according to which only God is perfect, and thus whatever does not pertain to God is necessarily imperfect. Although God’s perfection spreads throughout the universe, not everything is identical with God. There are pockets of non-God, which means that there are pockets where evil is capable of existing. This is another way of saying that we live in the best possible worlds, as Leibnitz proposed. Indeed, divine perfection predominates, just as cheese predominates in a block of Swiss; but just as there are holes in the cheese, so there are pockets of nonGod, i.e. imperfections implying the existence of evil. In a weird twist, the advocates of this theory even hold that because evil is a “privation of good,” it therefore does not really exist in any practical sense (just as the holes in cheese are truly “empty”). Instead of being something real in itself, evil is merely the “privation” of good. It sounds like something that Voltaire’s Pangloss would come up with, but it is in fact a theory sanctioned by Saint Augustine and further refined by Leibnitz, who combined the ontological defense it with the hidden-harmony defense. Disciplinary defense Human beings are inherently sinful, and original sin still infects the human race, ever since the Fall. Because humans cannot help but sin, even if they are not always aware of it, they must accept some form of punishment for all that congenital disposition to sinning. Suffering and death represent God’s disciplinary rod, both for the inherent sinfulness of humans (original sin) and for voluntary deviations from the straight and narrow path of virtue. Suffering can be visited upon people in retribution for individual crimes and impieties, or it can be meted out collectively, in the manner of Sodom and Gomorrah (or the Haitian earthquake). In this logic, the people of New Orleans during Katrina as well as the man who fell down an open manhole had it coming. Free will defense This is perhaps the most popular theodicy defense in our own time. According to this variant, God made the world all good, but he also gave people free will as a value in itself. Unfortunately, people found ways to abuse their free will for personal (or collective) enrichment, pleasure, and power, inevitably causing suffering to others (or even to themselves) as a result. According to this argument, if God prevented all instances where something could go wrong, then we would no longer have free will. Although very popular, the free will defense is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. If God were really all-knowing, then he would have known that giving humans free will was going to lead to trouble. In his infinite wisdom,

214  Key terms and definitions he could have fathomed a method for linking cause and effect by better means than free will. Secondly, most suffering on earth has absolutely nothing to do with free will and everything to do with chance, accident, and gratuitous misfortune. Third, if God did indeed create the world knowing that free could be abused for evil ends, then he must have deliberately privileged the free will of evil actors. In a direct matchup of “free wills,” the one that usually wins is the agent of evil. E.g. if a terrorist uses his free will to rent a truck, then runs it into a crowd of innocent people strolling down the sidewalk, killing dozens, then the people in his path were not given the free will to escape. In fact, claiming that their fate had anything to do with free will would be a heartless proposition. It appears that God created a world in which the cards of free will are stacked in favor of criminals and oppressors. Soul-making defense According to this theory, suffering is a great educator. We learn to be patient and selfless by helping those in trouble, and we undergo moral growth in the course of facing hardship. Caring for a disabled child makes us a better person, it shapes our soul. I.e., by sending us a child with a birth defect, God ensures that we become more caring, patient, loving people in the process of giving our love to somebody who is completely dependent upon us. Only when there is suffering can there be opportunity to relieve suffering. God allows suffering, so people can practice altruism. This is a particularly objectionable theodicy because it presumes that those who suffer really do us a favor. The child who was run over by a car becomes the instrument of its parents’ development of their souls. It is reasonable to think that the child would rather that his parents remained with their “inferior” soul, while it is allowed to remain alive and develop a soul of its own. Also, the assumption that the parents of the child with the birth defect did not have as good souls before they started caring for their handicapped offspring is a rather callous and arrogant way of thinking. Eschatological defense This defense admits that evil and undeserved suffering are rampant on this earth, but it assumes that the balance will be righted in the afterlife. You may go through much trouble in this life, you may be a born slave or destined to become a victim of a terrorist attack, but at least you will be compensated for all your troubles in the afterlife. Needless to say, this theodicy is predicated upon the actual existence of an afterlife, something nobody has positive proof of. It is very questionable whether accepting defeat in one’s current life while hoping for rich compensation in a speculative afterlife is a valid life option. Another variant of this defense is looking toward the Final

Key terms and definitions 215 Judgment when all debts will be paid by sinners and all rewards reaped by the virtuous. Again, this bargain is based on the dubious proposition that it is legitimate to exchange a present certainty for a speculative future.

Note 1 For a fuller discussion of Plessner’s concept of “reactive laughter,” see Mark Weeks’s article “Abandoning Ourselves to Laughter,” Israeli Journal of Humor Research, vol. 3 June 2013, p. 60.

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218  Bibliography Deb, Sopan. “Trump Jokes Are at a Record Level on Late Night.” New York Times, 5 May  2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/arts/television/trump-jokesrecord-level-on-late-night-tv.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcoreipad&_r=0 De La Vars, Lauren P. “Elements of Dark Humor in Dante’s Divine Comedy.” Dark Humor. Blooms Literary Themes, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Blooms Literary Criticism, 2010, pp. 105–14. Print. Deriabin, Petr, and Frank Gibney. The Secret World. London: Arthur Barker, 1960. Print. De Sousa, Ronald. “When Is It Wrong to Laugh?” The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, edited by John Morreall. Albany, NY: State University of New York P, 1987. Dhammapada. Pali text with an English translation by S. Radhakrishnan. Madras: Oxford UP, 1950. Print. Douglas, Mary. Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1975. Print. ———. “The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception.” Man, vol. III, 1968. Print. Duval, Edwin. “Putting Religion in Its Place.” Cambridge Companion to Rabelais, edited by John O’Brian. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print. Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Collected Poems 1909–1962. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963. Elst, Koenraad. “Humor in Hinduism.” Humor and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities, edited by Hans Geybels and Walter Van Herck. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. Print. Epstein, Lawrence J. The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America. New York: Public Affairs, 2008. Print. Erasmus, Desiderius. The Praise of Folly. Translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin, 1971. Ervin, Andrew. “Review of: God Is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.” Believer, no. 47, 1 Sept. 2007. https://believermag.com/ron-currie-jr-s-god-is-dead/ Evans, Suzie. “Does God Have a Sense of Humor? Two Testaments on Broadway Say Amen.” American Theatre, 15 Jun. 2015. www.americantheatre.org/2015/06/15/ does-god-have-a-sense-of-humor-two-testaments-on-broadway-say-amen/ Feltmate, David. Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy. New York: New York UP, 2017. France, Anatole. Revolt of the Angels. Translated by Wildrid Jackson. Doylestown, PA: Wildside Press, n.d. Friedman, Hershey H. “Humor in the Hebrew Bible.” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, vol. 15, no. 2, Jun. 2000, pp. 1–8. Print. ———, and Linda Weiser Friedman. God Laughed: Sources of Jewish Humor. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2014. Friedman, Sam, and Giselinde Kuipers. “The Divisive Power of Humor: Comedy, Taste, and Symbolic Bondaries.” Cultural Sociology, vol. 7, no. 2, 2013, pp. 179– 95. Print. Gardner, Richard A., and Scott Davis. “Humor and Religion. Humor and Religion in East Asian Contexts.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Encyclopedia.com. 2005. www. encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ humor-and-religion-humor-and-religion-east-asian-contexts

Bibliography 219 Gervais, Matthew, and David S. Wilson. “The Evolution and Functions of Laughter and Humor: A Synthetic Approach.” The Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. 80, no. 4, Dec. 2005, pp. 395–430. Print. Gianatasio, David. “When Sarah Silverman and Jesus Chat About Abortion, Who Could Possibly Be Offended?” Adweek.com. www.adweek.com/adfreak/ when-sarah-silverman-and-jesus-chat-about-abortion-who-could-possibly-beoffended-155150. Accessed 13 Jul. 2016. Giles, Ryan D. The Laughter of the Saints: Parodies of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Toronto: University of Toronto P, 2009. Gilhus, Ingvild Saelid. Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins. London  & New York: Routledge, 1997. Print. Gimbel, Steven. Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. New York: Routledge, 2017. Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. (1798). Edited by Isaac Kramnick. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1976. Print. Gournelos, Ted. “Blasphemous Allusion: Coming of Age in South Park.” Journal of Communication Inquiry, vol. 33, no. 2, Apr. 2009, pp. 143–68. Print. Grynbaum, Michael M., and John Koblin. “For Solace and Solidarity in the Trump Age, Liberals Turn the TV Back On.” New York Times online, 12 Mar. 2016. www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/business/trump-television-ratings-liberals.html?h p&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=firstcolumn-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 Hadith collections: Sahih  al-Bukhari; Sahih Muslim, Sunan  Abu Dawood. http:// hadithcollection.com/ Harmer, Ian. “Churches Up in Arms over ‘Brian’.” Pittsburg Post-Gazette, 21 Sept. 1979, p. 21. Harris, Max. Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2011. Hašek, Jaroslav. The Good Soldier Švejk. Translated by Paul Selver. USA: Stellar Classics, 2014. Kindle Edition. Hastie, Heather. “World War I and the Churches of Europe.” 28 Dec. 2014. www. heatherhastie.com/world-war-one-and-the-churches-of-europe/ Hayes, E. Bruce. Rabelais’s Radical Farce: Late Medieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais. London: Routledge, 2016. Print. Heyneman, Martha. The Productions of Time: Collected Essays. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corp. 2002. Hoover, Arlie J. God, Germany, and Britain in the Great War: A Study in Clerical Nationalism. London: Praeger, 1989. Houlihan, Patrick H. “The Churches.” Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War. http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/the_churches Hyers, Conrad M. “The Ancient Zen Master as Clown-Figure and Comic Midwife.” Philosophy East and West, vol. 20, no. 1, 1970, pp. 3–18. ———. And God Created Laughter: The Bible as Divine Comedy. Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1987. Print. ———. The Laughing Buddha: Zen and the Comic Spirit. Wolfeboro, NH: Longwood Press, 1989. Itzkoff, Dave. “ ‘South Park’ Episode Altered after Muslim Group’s Warning.” New York Times online, 22 Apr. 2010. www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/arts/ television/23park.html

220  Bibliography Izadi, Elahe. “The New Rock Stars: Inside Today’s Golden Age of Comedy.” The Washington Post, 13 Jul. 2017. www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/ lifestyle/inside-comedys-new-golden-age/?utm_term=.525b5fa1749a Javerbaum, David. An Act of God. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2016. ———. The Last Testament: A Memoir by God. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. ———. Interview with George Stromboulopoulos. CBC Television, 1 Dec. 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=15JLyCNx5_8 ———. @TheTweetOfGod. https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod?ref_src=twsrc%5E google%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Jenkins, Philip. The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. New York: HarperOne, 2014. Johnson-Woods, Toni. Blame Canada! South Park and Contemporary Culture. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2007. Jones, Terry, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin. Monty Python’s Life of Brian. S.l.: Paragon Entertainment, 1999. DVD. Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgment. Translated by J. C. Meredity. Oxford, UK: Clarenden Press, 1952. Print Kierkegaard, Søren. Journals & Papers. Vol. 2. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1970. Print. Koestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1964. Krause, Adam. The Revolution Will Be Hilarious. Porsgrunn, Norway: New Compass Press, 2013. Print. Kritzman, Lawrence D. The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. Kindle Edition. Kuipers, Giselinde. “Humor Styles and Symbolic Boundaries.” Journal of Literary Theory, vol. 3, no. 2, 2009, pp. 219–40. Print. Kuschel, Karl-Josef. Laughter: A Theological Reflection. Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1994. Print. Larsen, Egon. Wit as Weapon: The Political Joke in History. London: Frederick Muller, 1980. Print. Leighton, Christopher M. “Humor and Religion, and Introduction.” 25 Apr. 2013. “No Laughing Matter? A  Series on Religion and Humor” hosted by the Institute for Islamic, Christian, Jewish Studies. www.icjs.org/articles/2014/ no-laughing-matter-series-religion-and-humor LeMaster, J. R., and D. James Wilson. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain. New York: Routledge, 2013. Leung, Gilbert. “The Efflorescent Nihilism of Laughter: An Existential Supplement to Satirical Legal Studies.” 2014. http://gilbertleung.net/2014/01/01/ the-efflorescent-nihilism-of-laughter/ Levi, A. H. T. “Introduction.” Praise of Folly, edited by Desiderius Erasmus, translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin, 1971. Lindvall, Terry. God Mocks: A History of Religious Satire from the Hebrew Prophets to Stephen Colbert. New York: New York UP, 2015. Kindle Edition. Lowry, Mark. “Home Depot/Dealing with an Atheist.” Youtube Video. www.you tube.com/watch?v=0kR_XG1DnDs ———. “Recovering Fundamentalist.” Youtube Video. www.youtube.com/watch? v=z2aeDPsrAaQ ———. “Welcome and Denominations.” Youtube Video. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BRCHVWEkOU8

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Appendixes

Appendix A 2015 Survey: Focus on practicing Christians and Atheists1

Table BM.1  Demographics of the 2015 study Religion

Participants

Atheist Practicing Christian Agnostic Other Non-Practicing Christian N/A Non-Practicing Jew Practicing Jew Practicing Muslim Total

62 60 24 18 15 5 5 5 3 197

Table BM.2 Raw data of the 2015 survey. Summary tabulation of funniness ratings, separated by study populations. Joke passages are identified by short phrases. (VF=very funny; F=funny; SS=so-so; HF=hardly funny; NF=not funny) ALL

VF

F

SS

HF

NF

N/A

Joe Pesci Scoundrel Christ Woody Allen Wonderful bargain Christ not Christian Revolt of the Angels Yeshua self-crucifixion Abraham Temptation Corrections Heart of Darkness No pun in ten did Camouflage Nazareth Jonah Listening Eye of a needle Finger paint

43 6 29 23 34 10 16 3 51 4 3 28 23 14 15 39 8 23

72 28 55 56 58 36 32 15 69 12 21 60 50 26 57 70 22 65

31 47 48 41 44 46 46 34 43 39 37 46 60 42 50 46 20 62

24 31 35 35 23 43 47 28 21 34 35 30 29 35 37 28 23 34

23 53 25 39 14 47 47 60 9 72 54 29 25 44 22 13 61 9

4 32 5 3 24 15 9 57 4 36 47 4 10 36 16 1 63 4

ATHEIST

VF

F

SS

HF

NF

N/A

Joe Pesci Scoundrel Christ Woody Allen Wonderful bargain Christ not Christian Revolt of the Angels Yeshua self-crucifixion Abraham Temptation Corrections Heart of Darkness No pun in ten did Camouflage Nazareth Jonah Listening Eye of a needle Finger paint

18 5 11 8 14 2 7 20 1 1 9 7 2 6 11 2 2

23 14 17 21 16 14 9 5 18 4 5 17 13 7 16 20 3 17

10 13 17 12 14 12 12 11 14 12 13 16 21 10 13 11 6 24

8 5 12 12 6 16 14 6 6 14 13 10 11 15 10 15 5 12

3 18 5 9 5 15 15 23 1 19 15 9 7 16 9 5 26 6

PRACTICING CHRISTIAN

VF

F

SS

HF

NF

N/A

Joe Pesci Scoundrel Christ

7 1

19 4

11 10

5 10

16 22

2 13

7 7 3 5 17 3 12 15 1 3 12 8 20 1

Appendixes 229 PRACTICING CHRISTIAN

VF

F

SS

HF

NF

N/A

Woody Allen Wonderful bargain Christ not Christian Revolt of the Angels Yeshua self-crucifixion Abraham Temptation Corrections Heart of Darkness No pun in ten did Camouflage Nazareth Jonah Listening Eye of a needle Finger paint

5 5 6 1 3 1 16 3 2 7 9 5 3 10 3 12

13 10 14 10 9 3 20

15 12 8 10 17 9 7 7 8 9 6 5 9 4 6 9

15 21 5 16 15 11 4 24 15 11 11 12 6 5 11 1

3 2 12 5 2 24

5 23 15 8 22 25 10 22

9 10 15 18 14 12 13 15 13 9 16 14 14 16 8 15

CONTROL

VF

F

SS

HF

NF

N/A

Joe Pesci Scoundrel Christ Woody Allen Wonderful bargain Christ not Christian Revolt of the Angels Yeshua self-crucifixion Abraham Temptation Corrections Heart of Darkness No pun in ten did Camouflage Nazareth Jonah Listening Eye of a needle Finger paint

18

30 10 25 25 28 12 14 7 31 8 11 20 22 11 19 25 9 26

10 24 22 19 15 16 20 11 16 12 11 21 23 18 23 19 6 23

11 16 8 11 9 17 16 13 8 13 14 11 12 15 18 9 12 13

4 13 5 9 4 16 17 26 4 29 24 9 7 16 7 3 24 2

2 12 2 1 5 7 2 16 1 13 15 2 4 8 2 1 21 2

13 10 14 7 6 2 15 12 7 7 6 18 3 9

11 17 1 3 16 6 22 1

Note 1 For comprehensive data presentation and in-depth discussion, consult “Laughter and Faith: Do Practicing Christians and Atheists Have Different Senses of Humor?” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, vol. 29, no. 3, 2016, pp. 413–38.

Appendix B 2016 Survey: Focus on practicing Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Atheists1

Table BM.3  Demographics of the 2016 survey (not all categories reported) Religion

Count Gender

Age

Region

Ideology

Female Male 20-39 40-59 >60 USA Asia Europe Liberal Conserv. Christianity Islam Hinduism Atheist Agnostic Non-pract. Control Other All

153 57 52 80 100 72 254 17 783

57% 29% 31% 40% 47% 54% 45% 78% 46%

43% 71% 69% 59% 52% 46% 55% 22% 54%

60% 95% 79% 68% 71% 54% 67% 56% 68%

29% 11% 89% 7% 2% 5% 0% 50% 41% 3% 19% 2% 2% 97% 0% 25% 7% 87% 5% 7% 22% 6% 97% 2% 1% 34% 9% 81% 19% 0% 25% 7% 86% 12% 2% 44% 0% 78% 22% 0% 25% 2% 79% 12% 3%

46% 60% 64% 78% 76% 63% 64% 65% 63%

54% 40% 36% 22% 24% 37% 36% 35% 37%

1 14 17 35 5 40 33 86 17 8 0 2 8 13 1 16 9 12 6 3

0 20 16 37 6 43 17 42 20 11 0 8 3 7 0 10 5 13 4 2

0 15 9 25 13 39 19 83 26 31 0 2 5 6 1 4 5 21 10 8

2 33 22 32 12 54 35 38 16 11 0 3 10 9 2 20 8 9 5 3

2 9 17 34 13 49 42 63 27 9 0 6 0 11 1 10 10 21 6 2

0 28 24 18 12 24 12 36 10 4 0 10 8 7 1 10 2 6 3 4

0 17 20 22 13 26 17 53 18 8 0 5 5 5 1 10 4 13 5 6

0 32 17 23 11 21 18 27 14 12 0 8 6 7 3 5 2 11 2 5

0 7 4 18 4 13 17 86 44 55 1 0 2 1 3 6 1 24 12 17

0 41 23 23 10 39 16 47 14 5 0 11 8 6 3 14 5 7 5 1

0 31 13 22 13 31 15 45 24 27 0 9 4 3 4 6 3 14 6 7

0 17 19 16 8 33 17 34 16 24 0 5 4 1 2 12 3 10 6 5

0 52 20 26 4 28 25 38 10 4 0 16 8 9 1 5 5 9 2 0

0 37 34 23 5 40 20 27 11 12 0 10 6 9 7 8 6 5 5 2

0 23 17 27 11 40 24 69 26 18 0 4 4 5 3 20 4 17 5 6

0 37 15 12 5 13 3 11 4 7 0 11 1 4 1 5 1 3 1 4

1 32 14 32 8 39 15 43 6 10 0 13 6 5 1 11 5 10 2 4

2 38 24 49 14 40 20 38 7 3 0 12 11 5 5 10 4 7 3 4

1 41 26 29 6 28 21 55 11 19 0 10 3 6 0 11 5 12 6 6

0 45 20 35 13 30 23 39 12 8 0 7 4 11 1 10 6 12 4 4

0 21 7 28 10 33 25 58 24 36 0 3 2 11 0 8 7 12 7 13

0 30 13 21 10 45 25 63 25 17 0 6 9 6 4 10 6 15 5 5

1 30 15 36 9 39 21 60 21 11 0 9 4 6 2 16 3 20 5 4

(Continued)

1 29 20 32 12 37 21 36 15 11 0 14 4 6 2 8 3 10 5 2

Question Response Counts Not Offended Response Q02 Q03 Q04 Q05 Q06 Q07 Q08 Q09 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20 Q21 Q22 Q23 Q24 Q25 Q26 Q27

Control NA 269 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Non-practicing NA 72 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Populations

Table BM.4 Raw data of the 2016 survey. The number of respondents is tabulated in rows for each Question (Qnum) separated into two main categories based on the offensiveness of the question (“Not offended” and “Offended”). The respondents are grouped by religious self-identification and the counts are enumerated for each response (1 [not funny]–9 [Hilarious], and empty [NA]). Jokes, cartoons, and memes are identified by numeric markers.

0 6 9 18 0 24 10 24 5 3 0 10 8 12 3 14 4 19 3 5 0 6 9 15 7 24 14 54 10 8

0 8 10 12 4 15 9 17 6 1 1 9 4 11 4 6 4 20 5 3 0 13 15 12 4 26 7 20 9 1

0 9 8 11 6 19 13 27 5 2 0 7 5 15 4 11 9 10 10 6 0 3 5 17 2 20 18 47 18 16

0 19 13 16 4 25 6 11 4 0 2 14 13 9 2 14 9 7 6 3 0 8 16 26 8 27 15 30 8 1

0 2 9 14 8 18 14 26 5 3 1 3 7 19 4 11 8 18 6 3 0 4 14 11 13 27 23 35 15 6

0 20 11 2 6 4 7 6 7 2 0 15 4 5 4 8 2 12 3 7 0 25 13 11 3 5 5 12 7 1

0 21 4 8 3 10 9 27 9 1 0 9 4 12 5 15 6 14 5 8 0 9 9 12 4 14 5 17 5 7

0 18 3 5 6 10 5 21 8 7 0 8 7 5 4 7 5 13 10 10 0 16 10 9 5 12 3 7 3 4

0 4 3 9 3 6 11 32 14 16 0 3 2 6 1 8 13 20 12 14 0 4 1 9 0 15 10 34 25 35

0 12 9 5 5 15 7 18 16 6 0 5 4 3 3 8 4 23 14 10 0 32 9 13 5 21 5 7 3 1

0 6 4 8 4 17 9 24 10 10 2 7 1 7 3 9 8 18 13 8 0 24 10 14 3 17 8 26 11 14

0 14 7 7 3 12 6 24 8 7 1 10 5 4 3 13 6 15 6 14 1 10 7 9 2 17 7 9 4 3

1 18 6 11 2 16 4 11 6 0 0 20 7 8 1 11 5 6 2 3 0 34 11 16 3 16 3 14 4 3

1 12 9 13 5 15 8 11 4 7 0 14 4 7 2 15 8 10 7 3 0 15 14 15 6 23 9 24 7 4

0 6 10 15 4 19 9 20 7 5 0 10 6 14 1 11 8 9 9 10 0 12 8 27 2 24 9 38 13 10

0 19 6 5 2 10 1 4 2 5 0 15 7 4 3 6 3 2 2 5 0 11 5 6 0 1 2 2 2 2

2 9 4 13 5 11 10 16 10 10 0 8 2 8 3 6 10 18 9 8 0 21 13 12 4 9 4 8 4 2

0 17 17 10 6 18 9 13 2 0 0 20 10 12 4 5 6 9 5 2 0 32 18 19 7 18 6 18 7 4

0 19 5 8 5 13 6 25 4 6 0 17 4 6 3 8 7 19 6 5 0 30 8 22 2 14 9 22 8 13

0 10 4 15 4 23 6 14 2 9 0 13 6 8 3 13 4 16 10 5 0 19 16 16 7 19 8 18 5 11

0 3 3 11 6 14 9 21 10 16 0 7 6 8 4 5 1 19 10 13 0 6 8 21 9 8 7 38 11 19

0 8 3 11 1 21 14 28 7 3 2 9 6 4 2 13 9 15 6 7 0 10 12 26 7 29 7 29 10 11

0 11 10 19 6 7 11 17 3 2 0 13 7 10 4 7 14 10 3 2 1 31 15 20 8 15 10 14 9 8

0 8 5 12 4 19 8 23 11 5 0 9 8 9 3 11 4 17 10 5 0 13 8 25 8 23 8 31 12 13

Question Response Counts Not Offended Response Q02 Q03 Q04 Q05 Q06 Q07 Q08 Q09 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20 Q21 Q22 Q23 Q24 Q25 Q26 Q27

Agnostic NA 100 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Atheist NA 80 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Christian NA 153 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Populations

Table BM.4 (Continued)

  Muslim 57 Participants

Hindu 52 Participants

NA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

0 3 0 2 0 14 4 14 4 3 0 2 3 4 4 7 4 16 3 5

0 3 0 5 0 8 2 7 6 0 0 5 1 3 0 4 3 18 1 4

0 0 0 2 0 5 2 16 7 11 1 1 4 2 3 7 3 17 8 4

0 0 2 2 2 10 3 10 3 3 0 6 3 3 2 6 2 16 2 5

0 1 0 2 0 11 4 15 6 2 1 1 6 5 4 6 8 13 3 4

1 0 0 2 2 3 4 13 6 5 0 4 2 3 2 3 5 13 3 4

0 1 1 1 0 3 2 3 5 4 0 5 3 3 2 2 6 6 2 5

0 1 0 2 3 7 1 10 1 2 0 3 2 4 3 3 1 10 1 3

0 0 0 3 0 5 4 9 2 11 0 0 0 2 2 7 2 19 4 8

0 0 1 3 0 11 3 12 3 4 0 2 2 6 3 7 4 11 1 5

1 4 1 2 1 5 5 5 3 3 0 4 2 1 0 4 2 4 2 3

0 1 1 1 0 6 5 11 3 4 0 3 4 2 3 3 7 14 0 1

1 1 3 2 1 11 4 11 6 0 1 5 1 5 2 5 1 10 2 4

0 0 2 2 1 5 6 11 4 5 0 4 4 3 3 2 3 4 0 3

0 2 1 4 0 8 1 10 7 7 0 4 5 3 3 7 5 13 1 5

0 2 1 1 1 3 1 7 6 2 0 5 1 1 1 5 2 4 0 3

0 3 4 3 0 5 5 9 2 3 0 4 3 6 1 7 1 8 0 3

0 2 1 4 1 5 3 14 7 4 0 6 2 7 3 7 1 14 0 3

0 7 2 0 0 5 3 12 4 6 0 3 0 6 0 7 1 9 3 5

1 3 0 4 4 5 2 10 3 5 0 4 1 4 1 2 4 6 1 3

0 1 0 2 1 9 1 13 5 6 0 2 3 3 1 9 6 9 3 7

0 1 2 5 3 6 2 15 4 1 0 3 2 4 4 6 3 13 5 5

0 0 0 4 5 8 4 12 7 2 0 0 6 5 2 8 3 10 3 3

(Continued)

0 2 0 1 1 13 2 13 7 2 0 4 1 2 3 4 8 4 2 2

1 5 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

1 4 3 1 0 1 0 4 0 1 0 1 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0

0 5 0 0 0 2 1 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2

0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 54 8 4 1 3 0 0 3 1 0 12 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

2 31 9 7 1 5 0 3 1 4 0 11 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1

0 39 6 7 0 5 0 5 0 0 0 14 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 4 0 2 0 1 0 5 1 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 13 1 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 20 4 0 0 3 2 3 1 2 0 4 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0

0 52 11 4 2 4 3 2 0 1 0 18 1 2 0 0 1 0 0 0

0 2 1 0 1 3 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 32 8 5 1 1 1 2 1 1 0 6 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0

0 1 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 74 12 2 2 4 1 3 0 3 0 24 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1

0 37 7 2 1 1 2 2 0 0 0 6 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 7 1 2 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 17 2 6 0 1 0 1 2 0 0 5 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

0 13 1 4 0 0 2 4 0 0 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0

0 0 0 1 0 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

1 7 0 2 1 3 2 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0

0 5 2 1 0 3 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Question Response Counts Offended Response Q02 Q03 Q04 Q05 Q06 Q07 Q08 Q09 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20 Q21 Q22 Q23 Q24 Q25 Q26 Q27

Control NA 269 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Non-practicing NA 72 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Populations

Table BM.4 (Continued)

Agnostic NA 100 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Atheist NA 80 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Christian NA 153 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 1 0 0 1 1 1 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 1 1 2 0 1 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

0 15 2 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 8 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 40 8 2 1 0 0 0 0 1

0 3 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 40 8 3 0 3 1 2 2 2

0 8 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 49 3 2 2 3 0 4 1 2

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 1 0 1 0 5 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21 1 1 0 1 1 2 0 1

0 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 4 2 0 0 1 2 0 0

0 8 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 51 6 7 4 3 4 3 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 3 0 0 0 0

0 11 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 5 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 20 4 3 1 1 0 2 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

1 11 3 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 5 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 72 4 0 1 0 0 2 1 3

0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 41 5 2 0 1 0 3 1 2

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0

0 5 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 1 2 1 0 1 0 0 0

0 7 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 0 1 1 0 2 1 2 0

0 3 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 9 3 2 1 2 1 3 0 2

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 1

(Continued)

0 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0

0 1 0 1 0 2 1 2 0 1 0 6 2 2 1 1 2 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

0 1 1 1 0 3 1 1 2 1 0 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 0 0 0

1 2 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 4 0 4 0 1 2 0 0 1

0 4 1 3 2 4 3 2 1 1 0 8 2 1 2 1 0 0 0 0

0 2 1 0 0 2 4 5 2 1 0 8 2 3 0 2 1 1 0 1

0 0 0 1 1 4 2 4 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 0 0

0 0 0 0 1 0 2 1 0 1 0 3 1 0 0 3 2 0 0 0

0 3 1 1 0 3 0 3 2 0 0 14 5 0 1 2 0 1 0 1

0 6 0 0 1 1 0 2 0 0 0 9 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 1 1 3 1 1 0 2 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 0

0 2 0 0 0 2 0 3 1 0 0 14 3 0 3 0 0 1 0 2

1 1 0 0 0 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 1 0 1

0 7 2 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 12 1 2 0 1 0 3 0 0

0 2 1 1 0 3 1 3 0 0 0 6 4 1 1 2 2 1 1 0

0 2 0 1 0 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0

0 4 0 0 0 3 0 0 1 0 0 10 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

0 0 1 0 0 6 1 2 0 0 0 15 2 1 0 4 0 0 2 0

0 2 0 0 1 0 1 3 0 0 0 1 2 0 1 1 0 2 1 0

0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 1 0

0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 9 1 1 0 3 1 1 0 1

0 2 0 2 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

Question Response Counts Offended Response Q02 Q03 Q04 Q05 Q06 Q07 Q08 Q09 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20 Q21 Q22 Q23 Q24 Q25 Q26 Q27

Hindu NA 52 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8   9 Muslim NA 57 Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Populations

Table BM.4 (Continued)

Appendixes 237

Note 1 For comprehensive data presentation and in-depth discussion, consult “Does Religion Shape People’s Sense of Humour? A Comparative Study of Humour Appreciation Among Members of Different Religions and Nonbelievers.” Journal of European Humor Research, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018.

Index

Alighieri, Dante see Dante Allah 102, 122, 159, 192 – 196, 198 anti-theism 87, 152 Arbuckle, Gerald A. 30, 31, 32, 38, 165, 170 Aristophanes 152, 166 Aristotle 1, 5, 165, 185 Ash, Timothy G. 197, 199, 200 atheism 128, 130 – 131, 133, 134, 137; and humor 42 atheists see atheism Atkinson, Rowan 7, 39, 153 – 156, 161, 162, 166; and blasphemy 155; and Goliards 153; and Jesus 154 – 155; and Liminal 2 humor 155; mock sermon of 154 – 155; and subversion 39, 155 Augustine, Saint 1, 30, 31, 104, 123, 213 Bakhtin, Mikhail 4 – 5, 101, 102, 157, 210, 211; and carnivalesque humor 5, 157; and Rabelais and His World 5, 157 Baldwin, Alec 13, 205 Banatar, David 11, 171, 172 Basil 1, 29 Berger, Peter 2, 5, 28, 35, 59, 80, 94 – 95, 179, 181, 208 – 209; and counterworld 80, 82, 94; and holy foolishness 94 – 95; and spirituality of laughter 2 Bible, The 1, 28, 113, 116, 117 – 120, 123, 130, 154, 160, 191, 193, 198; and humor 31, 33 – 37, 40; and laughter 1, 28 – 29, 34, 193; and mirth 1, 28 – 29; parody of 154 Blake, William 77, 84, 87 Blameless in Abaddon 48, 99, 102 – 108, 110, 205, 212; and Book

of Job 102 – 105; and Liminal 1 humor 104, 108; and Liminal 2 humor 104, 108; and Rhetoric of Folly 105 – 108; and theodicy 104 – 105; and Yeshua (Jesus) 105 – 107 blasphemy 8, 63, 89, 96, 99, 107, 111 – 112, 117, 119, 121, 123, 124, 134, 135, 138, 139, 144, 155, 157, 161, 170, 171, 197 – 199, 202 – 203; and boundaries 121, 202; definition of 134, 155; and freedom of speech 8; and hate speech 200, 202 Boccaccio, Giovanni 2, 6, 48, 51 – 59, 60, 64, 115, 166, 170, 187, 204; see also Decameron, The Boespflug, François 164, 171 Bolling, Ruben 168, 212; and God-Man comics 212 Book of Mormon, The 3, 7, 148 Budai 182 – 183 Buddha see Siddhartha Gautama Buddhism 7, 178, 179 – 185; and humor 164; and laughter 7, 179, 181 – 183 Bussie, Jacqueline A. 30, 37, 43, 211 Byron, Lord 77, 87 Campbell, Charles 2, 5, 30, 105 – 108 Candide 48, 70 – 75, 90, 91, 98; censored 70, 73, 98; and Entrenchment 2 humor 73, 74; and Liminal 2 humor 73, 74; mocking philosophical optimism 71 – 72; and Problem of Evil 71, 73; as satire 70 – 74 Carell, Steve 153, 158 – 161; and Liminal 2 humor 160; and religious exclusivism 159 – 160; and scriptural literalism 160

Index  239 carnivalesque humor see Bakhtin, Mikhail Catholicism 26, 143, 145, 153 censorship 5, 20, 121, 143, 144 – 145, 162, 171, 173, 176, 189 Ch’an/Chan Buddhism see Zen Buddhism Chaucer, Geoffrey 2, 52, 60, 115, 166, 187 Christ see Jesus Christian Church: and military 91, 93; and opposition to laughter 1, 3, 4, 6, 26, 28 – 29, 31, 51 Christianity: and humor 18, 28, 41 – 42, 105, 164; and incongruity 25, 73; and opposition to laughter 30 – 32, 164; and teachings on laughter 6, 26, 28, 30 Christian stand-up 128 – 138, 161 – 162; and negative humor 138 Chrysostom, Saint John 1, 29 – 30 Cilliers, Johan 5, 30, 105 – 108 Clemens, Samuel see Twain, Mark Clerici Ribaldi see Goliards Colbert, Stephen 5, 13, 148, 153, 158 – 161; and Liminal 2 humor 160; and religious exclusivism 159 – 160; and scriptural literalism 160 Comedy: and boundaries 19 – 26; burlesque 52, 83, 94, 112, 123, 140; carnivalesque 63, 64, 94, 95, 96, 192, 210; clean 4, 7, 39, 128 – 129, 135, 153, 162; and conservatism 18, 26; definition of 49; and exaggeration 19, 71, 166, 174, 196; farcical 5, 65, 66, 71, 89, 94, 96, 107, 117, 123, 188, 211; grotesque 50, 63, 64; and heresy 4; and ideology 2, 21 – 26; irreverent 58, 135, 152, 197; and liberalism 12, 18 – 19, 26; preachy 133; as relief 98, 108; and resistance 5, 13, 14, 190; and reverence 3; as safety valve 14, 15; subversive 4, 5, 14, 70, 78, 135, 158, 175; transgressive 166; unclean 59 Cote, Richard 1, 29, 30, 31 – 32, 35, 36, 38, 170 Critchley, Simon 38, 43, 44n6 Currie, Ron, Jr. 6, 48, 110 – 116, 122; see also God is Dead (novel) Dagnes, Alison 5, 12, 18 Dalai Lama 183 – 184; and laughter 183 – 184

Dante 6, 47, 48 – 51, 59, 108, 109, 116, 124, 146, 166, 168 DarkMatter2525 7, 117, 148 – 153, 162; and “The God of Paradox” 150 – 152; and Liminal 2 humor 152; and satire 151, 152; and subversion 149, 152; and theism 148, 150 – 152; and theology 149, 151, 152, 153; and Yahweh 150 – 151 Davies, Christie 15 – 16, 43, 175 Decameron, The 48, 52 – 59; and bawdy humor 52 – 55; and Entrenchment 1 humor 58; and friars 52, 57, 58; and laughter 55; and Liminal 2 humor 58 Divine Comedy, The 48 – 51, 108; and humor 50 – 51 divine humor see humor, divine Douglas, Mary 5, 12, 209 Easter Laughter 3, 51, 106 Ecclesiastes 1, 28 Elst, Koenraad 185, 187 Epstein, Lawrence 189, 190 Erasmus, Desiderius 48, 59 – 63, 64, 68, 122, 198, 204, 205; see also Praise of Folly Eternal Footman, The 99, 108 – 110; and Entrenchment 1 humor 108; and parody 108; and post-theistic world 108 – 110 fabliaux 51 – 52, 53, 64, 65, 187 Family Guy, The 117, 122, 144 Feast of Fools 2 – 3, 51, 95 – 96, 210 Feltmate, David 20, 146 – 148, 162, 165 – 166 Festum stultorum see Feast of Fools four-factor humor model 5, 6, 20 – 21, 26, 128, 170 France Anatole 4, 48, 83 – 91, 93, 98, 99, 168, 204, 205; and satire 86; see also The Revolt of the Angels freedom of expression see freedom of speech freedom of speech 3, 6, 7, 8, 44, 121, 128, 139, 144 – 145, 159, 162, 172, 174, 176, 197 – 199, 202 Freud, Sigmund 19, 115, 208, 209 friars 52, 57, 64 – 66, 70 Friedman, Hershey and Linda 35 – 37, 44n1, 44n4, 190

240 Index Gargantua and Pantagruel 48, 63 – 70, 98, 204; and Entrenchment 1 humor 70; and Entrenchment 2 humor 64, 65, 70; and friars 64 – 66, 70; and Liminal 1 humor 70; and Liminal 2 humor 70; and the pope 66 – 70; as satire 66 – 70 Gilgamesh, Epic of 108, 109 Gilhus, Ingvild 4, 19, 178, 179, 181, 206 – 207 Gimbel, Steven 172, 174, 176; and joke playframe 174 Gnosticism 85 – 86, 205 – 206; and Sethian creation myth 85, 86 God 2, 25, 26, 33, 35 – 37, 49, 56, 58, 60, 71, 73, 75 – 76, 79 – 80, 81, 84 – 91, 92 – 94, 99 – 110, 111 – 113, 115, 116 – 123, 134 – 135, 145 – 146, 149 – 152, 159, 212 – 214; capriciousness of 35, 80, 81; death of 99, 109 – 110, 111 – 112; humor of 31, 33, 35 – 37; laughter of 33, 206 Godhead Trilogy 99, 110, 111; see also Blameless in Abaddon; The Eternal Footman; Towing Jehovah God is Dead (novel) 48, 111; and Liminal 1 humor 116; and Liminal 2 humor 116; and post-theistic world 112, 113 – 114; and sacrilege 116; as satire 112 – 113, 114, 115, 116 Godwin, William 84, 87 Goliards 51, 140, 153 – 154 Good Soldier Švejk, The 48, 91 – 99; and Entrenchment 2 humor 96; and holy fool 94 – 95; and Liminal 1 humor 98; and Liminal 2 humor 96, 97; and liminality 94 – 95; public reception of 97, 98; as satire 91, 93, 98 gospels 105, 135, 142, 155, 156; see also New Testament Griffith, Anthony 136 – 138, 168; and Entrenchment 1 humor 138; and hypocrisy 137; and Liminal 2 humor 136, 137; and religious hypocrisy 137; and self-deprecating humor 136, 138 Hadiths 192 – 197; and laughter 194 – 195; and smile 192 Harris, Max 1, 2, 96 Hašek, Jaroslav 4, 48, 91 – 99, 167, 198; and anarchism 92, 97; see also The Good Soldier Švejk Hebrew Bible see Old Testament

heresy 63, 67 – 68, 69, 79, 122, 141, 146, 161 Hinduism 7, 17, 116, 178, 184, 185 – 189; and humor 41, 185, 188; and irreverent comedies 188, 189; and laughter 7; and parody 185 – 186; and Sanskrit satire 188 – 189 Hindus see Hinduism holy fool 2, 94, 105, 164, 182, 183 holy foolishness see holy fool humanism 88, 109, 110, 115, 148 humor: and absurdity 66, 79, 110, 111, 115, 181, 190; aggressive 37, 39, 40, 43, 61, 63, 73, 83, 98, 147, 162, 172, 197, 204; anti-clerical 52, 56, 59, 70, 71, 99; appreciation 5, 16 – 17, 40; and authority 5, 11 – 12, 14 – 16, 23, 176, 190, 210; bawdy 52 – 55, 84; blasphemous 4, 6, 38, 39, 43, 58, 69, 111 – 112, 115, 123, 138, 170, 198, 204; and boundaries 6, 11, 19 – 20, 22 – 26, 48, 54, 78, 79, 94, 98, 111, 115, 116, 135 – 136, 155, 159 – 160, 164, 176, 189; as change agent 14; clean 39, 40, 157; cognitive benefits of 124, 171, 174, 176; and conservatism 5, 11, 12, 16 – 18, 20, 23 – 26; cosmic 25, 106; dark 43, 50, 53, 71, 74, 78, 111, 136; divine 3, 34 – 37; and dogma 19; entrenching 5, 20 – 23, 25 – 26, 37, 38, 42, 48, 73, 78, 81, 82, 97, 116, 131, 134, 147 – 148, 161, 162, 170, 175, 196; and faith 4; and free speech 6, 44, 121, 128, 162 – 163, 172, 174; and fundamentalism 2, 31; hard 21 – 23, 26, 58, 63, 74, 81, 82, 86, 96, 98, 115, 121, 130, 135, 138, 143, 152, 161 – 162, 169, 170; and ideology 11, 16 – 18, 24 – 26; inoffensive 16 – 17, 41, 128 – 129; irreverent 6, 70, 94, 98, 101, 116, 121, 123, 124, 138, 152, 153, 155, 158, 164, 187, 197 – 198; lewd 51 – 52, 99, 102, 128, 162 – 163, 189; and liberalism 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 16 – 18, 20, 24 – 26, 28, 175; liminal 5, 19, 20 – 26, 37, 38, 42, 48, 59, 64, 74, 78, 79, 80, 82, 90 – 91, 94, 101, 106, 110, 120 – 121, 134, 140, 142, 148, 149, 152, 155, 157, 158, 161, 162, 196, 205; mocking 4, 6, 11, 13, 60 – 61, 74, 99, 138, 152, 164, 198, 204, 205; and morality 6, 11, 26, 32, 37, 38 – 39, 160, 164, 170, 176;

Index  241 negative 6, 7, 21, 32, 37 – 39, 42, 43, 73, 74, 78, 129, 138, 143, 148, 158, 162, 170, 176; offensive 16 – 17, 20, 37 – 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 61, 74, 123, 133, 148, 171, 197; and piety 2, 51, 115, 128; playful 20, 22, 25, 32, 58, 80, 83, 98, 101, 106, 155, 157, 176, 184, 190, 204, 208; political 12, 18; positive 7, 20, 32, 37 – 39, 42, 43, 129, 131, 138, 162, 176; and power 12, 15, 20, 23, 35, 43, 69, 74, 97, 98, 175, 207; and religiosity 1 – 2; ridiculing 4, 60 – 62, 205; sacrilegious 43, 100, 148; self-deprecatory 129, 136, 173, 184, 190, 191, 204, 207; soft 21 – 22, 58, 70, 78, 128, 135, 138, 142, 143, 170, 184; and stereotypes 65, 121, 138, 173, 197; subversive 2, 11, 15, 16, 39, 43, 58, 64, 65, 66, 73, 74, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 94, 97, 98, 101, 110, 115, 116, 117, 123, 130, 134, 135, 137, 148, 151, 152, 153, 155, 161, 162, 164, 175, 187, 188, 205; therapeutic 37, 190; topsy-turvy 54, 74, 82, 85, 94, 211; and well-being 33 humor quadrant see four-factor humor model Hyers, Conrad 2, 30, 32, 165, 170, 181, 182

TheTweetOfGod 116 – 117; see also The Last Testament Jerome 1, 30 Jesus 25, 94, 97, 105 – 107, 121, 122, 130, 145 – 146, 150, 155, 157, 160; as holy fool 105; as jester 4, 106; as magician 155; never laughed 1, 29; as trickster 105, 106 Job, Book of 35, 71, 72, 99, 102 – 104, 122, 211; parody of 102 jokes 208, 209; anti-clerical 52, 56; bawdy 52 – 55, 59; blasphemous 43, 189; clean 42; inoffensive 16 – 18, 42; and Nazism 14; offensive 6, 16 – 18, 40, 42, 171; as resistance 15; sacrilegious 38; and Soviet communism 15; and stereotypes 21, 23, 58, 143, 147, 152, 161, 165, 171, 173; subversive 12; unclean 42 Judaism 7, 148, 151, 178; and Entrenchment 1 humor 191; and humor 189 – 192; and laughter 7 Jyllands Posten 144, 192

Ialdabaoth 85, 90 incongruity 25 – 26, 54, 55, 58, 73, 130, 146, 151, 154, 174, 183, 190, 207 – 208, 209; and Christianity 3, 25; and humor 2, 20; and laughter 3, 146, 207 – 208; see also theories of laughter irony 20, 59, 62, 63, 74, 79, 81, 82, 83, 90, 97, 104, 105, 113, 120, 149, 152, 158, 160, 190, 204 Islam 7, 101, 116, 122 – 123, 124, 143, 148, 159 – 160, 166, 178, 192 – 199; and aniconicity 101, 144, 198; and blasphemy 197, 198 – 199; and freedom of speech 197 – 198; and humor 7, 42, 197; and humorlessness 7, 192; and laughter 7; and rules of laughter 7, 196 – 198

Last Testament, The 47, 48, 117 – 123, 212; and blasphemy 119, 121, 122, 123, 124; and Book of Revelation 118; and Hinduism; and Islam 122 – 123; and Liminal 1 humor 121; and Liminal 2 humor 120; and psychotic God 117, 119 – 120; as parody 117; as satire 120 Laughing Buddha see Budai laughter: of absurdity 53; aggressive 38; cynical 11, 32; and devotion 3; and dogma 4; and ideology 5; irreverent 25, 26; and joy 11, 31; liberating 5, 74 – 75, 82, 211; mocking 4, 11, 106, 124, 205, 206, 210; and morality 205; negative 6, 11, 32, 73; opposition to 1, 3, 4, 6, 26, 28 – 29, 31, 51, 164; of the oppressed 19, 37, 42, 211; positive 6, 11, 32; and prayer 4; profane 32, 124; of relief 20, 191; of resistance 43, 99, 211; and spirituality 31; subversive 1, 2, 5, 12, 58, 211; superiority 20, 65, 82, 152, 165, 191, 206 – 207; and

Javerbaum, David 6, 47, 48, 116 – 124, 166, 167, 168, 201, 212; and the Daily Show 117; as equalopportunity offender 122; and

Kierkegaard, Søren 3, 4, 25, 105, 152 Koran, The 165, 192, 195 – 197; and laughter 193, 195 – 196 Kuipers, Giselinde 20, 192 Kuschel, Karl-Joseph 1, 30, 31, 37, 38, 165, 170

242 Index theology 5; unholy 97; as weapon 1, 15, 38, 82, 204, 207; see also Buddhism; Christianity; Hinduism; Islam; Judaism Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm 71, 72, 74, 213 Leighton, Christopher M. 11, 19 Letters from the Earth 75 – 76, 205 Life of Brian 7, 138 – 143, 148; and blasphemy 139; as burlesque 140; and critique of religion 141 – 142; and Entrenchment 1 humor 142 – 143; and Entrenchment 2 humor 143; and Liminal 1 humor 142; and Liminal 2 humor 142, 143; protests against 139; and Second Shepherd’s Play 140; and Sermon on the Mount 140 – 141; and subversion 140, 141, 142, 143 Lindvall, Terry 153, 165 “Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, The” 108 – 109 Lowry, Mark 7, 129 – 131, 134, 137, 138, 161, 168; and Entrenchment 1 humor 129, 130; and Entrenchment 2 humor 130 – 131; and Liminal 1 humor 130; and Liminal 2 humor 129, 130 Lucian 91, 152, 166, 205 Martin, James, SJ 30, 31, 32, 38, 165 McDonald, Paul 11, 207 mendicant monks see friars Merziger, Patrick 14, 15, 23 Middle Ages 51, 124, 153, 158, 170, 178 Milton, John 84, 86, 87, 88, 205 misotheism 76 – 77, 105 monotheism 151, 159, 160, 211, 212 Monty Python 4, 122, 138 – 143, 187 – 188 Mormonism 116, 145, 148, 166 Morreall, John 2, 35 – 36, 179, 181, 184 Morrow, James 48, 71, 99 – 110, 111, 113, 122, 168, 170, 204, 205, 212; see also Blameless in Abaddon; The Eternal Footman; Towing Jehovah Muhammad 144, 159, 192 – 193, 198; and laughter 192 – 194, 197; sense of humor of 192; and smile 192, 196, 197 Muslims see Islam mystery plays 51, 139, 188 Mysterious Stranger, The 1, 48, 77 – 83, 84, 90, 204; and

Entrenchment 2 humor 83; and Liminal 1 humor 83; and Liminal 2 humor 83; and misotheism 75 – 77; as satire 77 – 81, 83; and trickster figure 77 – 78, 81, 82 Nazis 14 – 15, 16, 23 – 24; and humor 14, 23 New Testament 31; and humor 33 – 34 Old Testament 206; and humor 33 Oring, Elliott 118, 208 Ott, Karl-Heinz 17, 26n2, 44n2, 44n7, 163n2 paganism 60; and laughter 29 Paradise Lost 84, 86 – 89, 205 parody 43, 84, 88 – 90, 97, 102, 105, 106, 108, 153, 185, 187, 204, 205 pastiche 117, 118 Plate, S. Brent 134, 155 Plato 1, 165, 206, 207 political correctness 24 – 25, 39, 131 Praise of Folly 48, 59 – 63, 205; and Entrenchment 2 humor 60, 61, 62, 63; and irony 59; and Liminal 2 humor 63; as satire 59, 60 – 62 Problem of Evil see theodicy Pseudo Dionysius (the Areopagite) 146; celestial hierarchy of 84 Rabelais, François 48, 63 – 70, 170, 187, 198; see also Gargantua and Pantagruel Revelation, Book of 84, 89, 118 Revolt of the Angels, The 48, 84 – 91, 99, 205; and Entrenchment 1 humor 84, 86; and Gnosticism 85; and Ialdabaoth 85, 90; and Liminal 1 humor 86; and Liminal 2 humor 84, 86, 91; and parody 84, 86, 88; and Satan 87 – 91; as satire 86, 88 – 89, 91 rhetoric of folly 105 – 107, 113 risus paschalis see Easter Laughter sacrilege 43, 67, 97, 100, 102, 106, 107, 116, 135, 139, 146, 148, 155, 157 Sanders, Barry 5, 37 – 38, 47, 124, 162 sarcasm 36, 43, 73, 74, 93, 96, 149, 183, 184, 205 Saroglou, Vassilis 1 – 2 Satan 75, 77 – 83, 87 – 91, 92, 106 satire 23 – 24, 37, 43, 56, 58, 59, 60 – 62, 64, 65 – 69, 77, 78, 79, 80,

Index  243 81, 83, 84, 86, 88 – 89, 91, 92, 93, 98 – 99, 112 – 113, 114, 115, 116, 120, 124, 133 – 134, 141, 146, 147, 148, 152, 187, 188, 204 – 206; Horatian 204 – 205; Juvenalian 60, 62, 205; Menippean 62, 99, 205; in Nazi Germany 23 – 24; political 19; religious 56; Sanskrit 187 – 189 Saturday Night Live 5, 13, 14, 148, 205 Scientology 143, 144, 145, 148, 166, 200 Shelley, Percy B. 77, 84, 87 Siddhartha Gautama 178 – 179, 182, 183, 195 – 196 Siegel, Lee 185 – 189 skepticism 74, 77, 102, 152, 155, 157, 160 – 161 smiling 29, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 189, 192, 193, 196, 197, 203, 204, 209 South Park 7, 117, 122, 143 – 148, 162, 201; and censorship 143, 144 – 145; and irreverence 146 – 147; and Islam 143 – 144; and Jesus 145 – 146; and Mohammed 144 – 145; and theodicy 146 statistical humor research 16 – 18, 33 – 4, 36, 40 – 1, 44n3, 44n7 Stewart, Jon 12, 117, 160 Stine, Brad 7, 131 – 136, 137, 138, 161, 168; and Entrenchment 2 humor 131, 133, 134, 138; and irreverence 134, 137; and Liminal 2 humor 133, 134; and satire 133 – 134 Strossen, Nadine 173 superiority laughter 20, 65, 82, 152, 165, 190, 205 – 206 Švejk see The Good Soldier Švejk Tabash, Edward 199, 202 – 203 Talmud: and humor 189 – 190 Tenzin Gyatso see Dalai Lama theodicy 38, 71 – 72, 76, 77, 102, 104 – 105, 122, 146, 211 – 215; disciplinary defense 212, 213; eschatological defense 214 – 215; free will defense 146, 162, 213 – 214; and Gnosticism 85; hidden harmony defense 71, 212 – 213; ontological defense 71, 213; soul-making defense 214 theologians: and opposition to laughter 28, 51

theology of laughter 4, 6, 21, 26, 28 – 34, 74, 121, 128, 129, 135, 143, 147, 158, 165, 170, 175, 184; and biblical humor 33 – 45; and negative humor 21, 74, 121, 129, 143, 147, 158, 165; and positive humor 21, 135, 138; and prescriptive approach to laughter 21, 32, 38 – 39, 42, 135, 165 theories of laughter 20, 206; carnival theory 210 – 211; incongruity theory 20, 207 – 208; play theory 20, 209 – 210; relief theory 20, 208 – 209, 211; superiority theory 20, 206 – 207 Towing Jehovah 99 – 102, 108, 110, 113; and divine anthropomorphism 100 – 102; and sacrilege 100, 102; and theology 101 trickster 77 – 78, 81, 82, 97, 185, 187 Trump, Donald J. 5, 12 – 13, 14, 117, 148, 175, 205 Twain, Mark 1, 4, 15, 48, 75 – 83, 84, 86, 91, 93, 98, 113, 115, 152, 168, 170, 189, 198, 205; and blasphemy 75; and misanthropy 81, 83; and misotheism 76 – 77; see also Letters from the Earth; The Mysterious Stranger Voltaire 48, 69, 70 – 75, 84, 86, 93, 115, 170, 198, 213; see also Candide; “Earthquake in Lisbon” Wharburton, Nigel 47, 200 Wiesel, Elie 102, 190 – 191 Wilkinson, Signe 13, 14 Williams, Robin 7, 39, 153, 156 – 161, 162; and blasphemy 157, 158; and irreverence 158; and Jesus 157; and Joseph 156 – 157; and Liminal 1 humor 158; and Liminal 2 humor 158; and liminality 156; and Mary 156 – 157; and medieval plays 156 – 158; and subversiveness 39 wit 33, 62, 123, 152, 165, 185, 190 Yahweh 84 – 87, 90, 117, 119, 122, 146, 150 – 151, 195, 206 – 207; see also God Young Satan see Satan Zen Buddhism 180 – 182