I really enjoy your satire pieces but I think this might be my favorite of your posts. You've captured exactly why I feel so meh about so many aspects of "Christian" comedy. It's such a hard line to walk but I think that if people of faith want to make good art then we need to at least try to walk that line and not take a slow boat around it.
I don't pay for very many publications on substack, but this is a great example of why you are one of the few writers I want to support. Christians absolutely need to laugh more, and we need to get 100% more comfortable with laughing at ourselves and taking jokes from non Christians. I grew up in one of those "relevant," "not-your-grandma's" churches. We flattered ourselves in thinking we were edgy, and therefore, "authentic." But I've since come to resent that kind of pretense, because so often it proves to simply be pretense. We felt made fun of, so we either a) try to imitate the secular "cool kids" in the milquetoastiest ways possible, or b) we cloister and make obsessively insular, "Us vs Them" media. I've grown to resent both attitudes.
Christians interpret jokes at our expense (good faith and bad faith jokes alike) as persecution, when we could just choose to interpret them as affection and fun. Also, rarely are we made fun of for our faith - usually we're made fun of for the same reasons anyone gets made fun of: we're silly and conceited and hypocritical, just like everyone else. It's so our souls good to lighten up some and not take ourselves too seriously.
I think you're one of the few who can hold us all accountable to that end, Matthew. Thank you for helping us to laugh at ourselves and to take the cultural "punches" with a little more grace and a better sense of humor. After all, someone smarter than me once said, "the ability to take a joke, not necessarily make a joke, is the real proof of a good sense of humor"
I distinctly remember in my very short lived Hillsong career being puzzled by the simultaneous iconoclasm of evangelical Protestantism and the whole industrial production of ‘Christian’ art. It always struck me as little better than propaganda, because the message was central and imagery was not to be trusted and confined to the obvious message. None of it was created with a real understanding of ancient artistic and musical traditions of Christianity. I am a cradle Catholic (going through an atheist/agnostic phase circa 2005). My mother was an artist and a master iconographer in the Byzantine tradition. My Dad is a borderline boomer with excellent taste in film and music. My house was FULL of high quality religious/devotional art and ‘secular’ art. We listened to a lot of classical music, including the explicitly religious stuff like Bach’s St Matthew’s gospel (sublime) and the aching boomer cries of classical rock and roll like the Who, Cat Stevens, the doors etc into Van Halen, Prince, Led Zeppelin (not the nude kind) etc.
My Dad introduced us to quality movies, (a lot of Mel Gibson, Frank Coppola and Martin Scorsese) and taught us how to read them. My mum’s taste in music is.. terrible. She listens to bad Christian pop and made us to watch bad Christian films at least until God is Not Dead which was SO blatantly terrible propaganda that she gave up on them.
It seemed utterly bizarre to deliberate settle for propaganda instead of art. And that’s the problem I see with “Christian art” is that is basically propaganda (some of it is not) but it is enormously difficult to push back on the mindset that pervades a rejection of ‘secular’ art. I dispute that art can be divided so neatly into religious or secular, given that beauty is a transcendental. A beautiful painting of a sunset can give just as much glory to God as a perfectly written icon of Christ Panokrator, whether the artist realises it or not. And humour is the same. Something, even if it is vulgar, can be supremely funny, and since God is the author of all creation including the vulgar parts, a perfectly executed fart joke gives just as much glory to God as the best ‘Christian comedian’ who never drops an ‘f-bomb’.
All of this is to say, I wholeheartedly agree with your take on Church Lady. I would also encourage every Christian here to watch the funniest Christian movie ever made: *Monty Pythons: Life of Brian*.
If you need a primer: John Cleese himself has said in making the film, they spent a month reading the entire New Testament and a bunch of other material about the time period. After a week of deep reading they all came to the conclusion that you can’t make fun of someone who says profoundly true and beautiful things like the sermon on the mount. But the people at the back who might not hear properly and draw the wrong conclusion: FAIR GAME and the premise of the whole movie.
If you haven’t seen it, I’d love to see ETP’s review of it. 🤣
I love the idea of a fart joke bringing glory to God 😂 There are a lot of weird and funny aspects of humanity, you gotta wonder about God's sense of humor
Insightful, Matthew. I've wondered similar things about Christian art--why do evangelicals seem so inept at creating lasting works of art? How are the people close to God not able to create things that are true/beautiful/good? Generally, I think they're living out of fear and legalism instead of confidence and peace.
I know art is inherently subjective and superlatives are always up for debate, but I have thought/felt for a while now that mainstream movies are head and shoulders better than movies produced by the Christian entertainment industry. Secular movies are better at portraying the messiness and raw emotion of life. This is probably revealing my bias, but I don’t recall a Christian movie that came close to effectively portraying trauma, tragedy, heartache, etc. As Pierce says: in Christian movies, “even if Bad Things happen, it is always in service of The Message. “
We have a 12-year-old daughter with pretty significant special needs. One of the most impactful movies I have seen in the last decade is CODA. This movie does an incredible job of portraying the loneliness associated with having a disability or having a loved one with a disability. It has a few scenes that are probably not appropriate for someone under 14 or 15. But on the whole, the movie is just so damn good.
I think about this movie a lot, and about how the Christian entertainment industry could never have made this movie. I think one reason why is that Christian popular culture sees unanswered questions or unresolved heartache as a threat. If it doesn’t result in some greater good, then it undermines the gospel. But this is not consistent with real life. There is never a good answer for the loneliness and isolation that exists for a family with a loved one with a significant disability. If Christians made CODA, I think they would have tried to portray the church as providing a solution to the loneliness. But it just has rarely been my experience that the church does this consistently.
I think one problem with this is that often in life the biggest traumas and tragedies are not easy to connect to a larger message. There may be redemption, or hope, or reconciliation on the other side, but my experience has been there often aren’t clear answers.
A while ago I happened to find a video on this megachurch that puts on a stage musical for Easter every year. It's almost always based on a Hollywood blockbuster, and always converts it into a Passion play. So you get a version of Back to the Future where Marty dies on the clock tower and rises again; or where Loki crucifies Tony Stark. I couldn't even finish the entire video; it was to bizarre for me.
It left me with the sense that one of Evangelical culture's big problems is that it sees secular entertainment as its main competition. So it tries to do its own pop culture in response, and instead of a fine wine, it's sugar-free grape juice.
At least, that's my impression. Having gone from Catholicism to the Episcopal Church to Orthodoxy, most of this is simply alien to me, even growing up in the South.
In 2004, Robert Smigel wrote a Saturday TV Fun House where Santa skips the red states and acts increasingly smug until he is chastised by a blue state child for being bigoted against Christians. It was actually mocking smug liberals but Christians took the first part of the sketch literally and took great offense: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/tv-funhouse-blue-state-santa/2751169
What you are describing is not Christian art. It is BAD art. The Pieta is Christian art. The Passion was Christian art. The great cathedrals and their great legacy of music were Christian art. Trash is just trash, no matter who is producing it.
God is the giver of gifts, not men. Either you have it or you don't. If the Lord wanted a person to write, He would give them everything they needed to do it spectacularly without offending Him. But even then, the writer could choose instead to squander what they had, and write garbage anyway, because the writer has a free will choice between heaven and hell. If they choose a lifetime of poisoning souls for cash, it isn't Christ they're following.
But if a good artist writes like a Christian, you won't miss the trash. More likely, you'll find other books ruined for you, for having discovered what good art looks like without it.
Everyone has already said what I would say. Thanks for being a kind but provocative voice on the topic of The Culture (<- imagine scaryish font) and The Church (<- Zapfino font).
I think more Christians should have to spend a week making only very silly and nonsense jokes, and avoid the "oh gotcha" ones and the responses to pop culture they refuse to admit they have consumed but still somehow have a *clean alternative* to a couple years late. That week might be watching a bunch of Silly Songs and then writing some jokes modeling that absurdity, or maybe taking an improv class with some Christian college kids who avoid pop culture references but also are forced to build on absurd suggestions from Jeff on the football team or Kelly in the science department.
I watched an old Skit Guys video (because that was the era I was raised in) the other night, after mentioning it to someone in an older generation. I had that whole video memorized back in the day. It was so funny to me at age 12. Now at age 30...doesn't really hit anymore. Kinda smirked at a few moments, but nothing made me laugh for real. Yet I can find humor in the absurdity of a fellow congregant trying to open a mint quietly during a prayer, and that can build into a 10 minute sketch without any trouble. But if we are silly and absurd, we don't want to be perceived that way, so we go for the safe joke.
This is a good one, Matthew, thanks for making an exception to the serious voice to make this point.
A good friend of mine was at our house for a dinner party last year, enjoying the music I was playing and asked "Who is this?" It was the Doors. I have adult kids, and got them into Indie music , since I love it, and since it's 100x less slutty than mainstream pop, but I always felt the "cloistered virtue" of Christian culture was little help to growing up following Christ. They don't really follow God so maybe I was wrong in the end. Who knows.
I'm definitely for more humour in our Christian milleu. In fact, I remember the time when Babylon Bee actually made fun of Christian culture in an in-joke kind of way. Humour is one of the ways that we fight back against the powers that be when they do the wrong thing, including at church.
As for non-Christians poking fun an Christianity, we should always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have. But, as you said, often what's being laughed at is not Christianity per se, it's the hypocrisy etc. I think too often Christians get defensive when the criticism is legitimate:)
I really enjoy your satire pieces but I think this might be my favorite of your posts. You've captured exactly why I feel so meh about so many aspects of "Christian" comedy. It's such a hard line to walk but I think that if people of faith want to make good art then we need to at least try to walk that line and not take a slow boat around it.
thank you amy. i look forward to disappointing you with my next article, which will be incredibly adolescent
I don't pay for very many publications on substack, but this is a great example of why you are one of the few writers I want to support. Christians absolutely need to laugh more, and we need to get 100% more comfortable with laughing at ourselves and taking jokes from non Christians. I grew up in one of those "relevant," "not-your-grandma's" churches. We flattered ourselves in thinking we were edgy, and therefore, "authentic." But I've since come to resent that kind of pretense, because so often it proves to simply be pretense. We felt made fun of, so we either a) try to imitate the secular "cool kids" in the milquetoastiest ways possible, or b) we cloister and make obsessively insular, "Us vs Them" media. I've grown to resent both attitudes.
Christians interpret jokes at our expense (good faith and bad faith jokes alike) as persecution, when we could just choose to interpret them as affection and fun. Also, rarely are we made fun of for our faith - usually we're made fun of for the same reasons anyone gets made fun of: we're silly and conceited and hypocritical, just like everyone else. It's so our souls good to lighten up some and not take ourselves too seriously.
I think you're one of the few who can hold us all accountable to that end, Matthew. Thank you for helping us to laugh at ourselves and to take the cultural "punches" with a little more grace and a better sense of humor. After all, someone smarter than me once said, "the ability to take a joke, not necessarily make a joke, is the real proof of a good sense of humor"
Thank you, JSP. I plan to disappoint all of you with a horribly adolescent article this weekend
I distinctly remember in my very short lived Hillsong career being puzzled by the simultaneous iconoclasm of evangelical Protestantism and the whole industrial production of ‘Christian’ art. It always struck me as little better than propaganda, because the message was central and imagery was not to be trusted and confined to the obvious message. None of it was created with a real understanding of ancient artistic and musical traditions of Christianity. I am a cradle Catholic (going through an atheist/agnostic phase circa 2005). My mother was an artist and a master iconographer in the Byzantine tradition. My Dad is a borderline boomer with excellent taste in film and music. My house was FULL of high quality religious/devotional art and ‘secular’ art. We listened to a lot of classical music, including the explicitly religious stuff like Bach’s St Matthew’s gospel (sublime) and the aching boomer cries of classical rock and roll like the Who, Cat Stevens, the doors etc into Van Halen, Prince, Led Zeppelin (not the nude kind) etc.
My Dad introduced us to quality movies, (a lot of Mel Gibson, Frank Coppola and Martin Scorsese) and taught us how to read them. My mum’s taste in music is.. terrible. She listens to bad Christian pop and made us to watch bad Christian films at least until God is Not Dead which was SO blatantly terrible propaganda that she gave up on them.
It seemed utterly bizarre to deliberate settle for propaganda instead of art. And that’s the problem I see with “Christian art” is that is basically propaganda (some of it is not) but it is enormously difficult to push back on the mindset that pervades a rejection of ‘secular’ art. I dispute that art can be divided so neatly into religious or secular, given that beauty is a transcendental. A beautiful painting of a sunset can give just as much glory to God as a perfectly written icon of Christ Panokrator, whether the artist realises it or not. And humour is the same. Something, even if it is vulgar, can be supremely funny, and since God is the author of all creation including the vulgar parts, a perfectly executed fart joke gives just as much glory to God as the best ‘Christian comedian’ who never drops an ‘f-bomb’.
All of this is to say, I wholeheartedly agree with your take on Church Lady. I would also encourage every Christian here to watch the funniest Christian movie ever made: *Monty Pythons: Life of Brian*.
If you need a primer: John Cleese himself has said in making the film, they spent a month reading the entire New Testament and a bunch of other material about the time period. After a week of deep reading they all came to the conclusion that you can’t make fun of someone who says profoundly true and beautiful things like the sermon on the mount. But the people at the back who might not hear properly and draw the wrong conclusion: FAIR GAME and the premise of the whole movie.
If you haven’t seen it, I’d love to see ETP’s review of it. 🤣
I love the idea of a fart joke bringing glory to God 😂 There are a lot of weird and funny aspects of humanity, you gotta wonder about God's sense of humor
Insightful, Matthew. I've wondered similar things about Christian art--why do evangelicals seem so inept at creating lasting works of art? How are the people close to God not able to create things that are true/beautiful/good? Generally, I think they're living out of fear and legalism instead of confidence and peace.
I know art is inherently subjective and superlatives are always up for debate, but I have thought/felt for a while now that mainstream movies are head and shoulders better than movies produced by the Christian entertainment industry. Secular movies are better at portraying the messiness and raw emotion of life. This is probably revealing my bias, but I don’t recall a Christian movie that came close to effectively portraying trauma, tragedy, heartache, etc. As Pierce says: in Christian movies, “even if Bad Things happen, it is always in service of The Message. “
We have a 12-year-old daughter with pretty significant special needs. One of the most impactful movies I have seen in the last decade is CODA. This movie does an incredible job of portraying the loneliness associated with having a disability or having a loved one with a disability. It has a few scenes that are probably not appropriate for someone under 14 or 15. But on the whole, the movie is just so damn good.
I think about this movie a lot, and about how the Christian entertainment industry could never have made this movie. I think one reason why is that Christian popular culture sees unanswered questions or unresolved heartache as a threat. If it doesn’t result in some greater good, then it undermines the gospel. But this is not consistent with real life. There is never a good answer for the loneliness and isolation that exists for a family with a loved one with a significant disability. If Christians made CODA, I think they would have tried to portray the church as providing a solution to the loneliness. But it just has rarely been my experience that the church does this consistently.
I think one problem with this is that often in life the biggest traumas and tragedies are not easy to connect to a larger message. There may be redemption, or hope, or reconciliation on the other side, but my experience has been there often aren’t clear answers.
The rap song went hard
A while ago I happened to find a video on this megachurch that puts on a stage musical for Easter every year. It's almost always based on a Hollywood blockbuster, and always converts it into a Passion play. So you get a version of Back to the Future where Marty dies on the clock tower and rises again; or where Loki crucifies Tony Stark. I couldn't even finish the entire video; it was to bizarre for me.
It left me with the sense that one of Evangelical culture's big problems is that it sees secular entertainment as its main competition. So it tries to do its own pop culture in response, and instead of a fine wine, it's sugar-free grape juice.
At least, that's my impression. Having gone from Catholicism to the Episcopal Church to Orthodoxy, most of this is simply alien to me, even growing up in the South.
This is really good. Also, Church Lady for ever :)
In 2004, Robert Smigel wrote a Saturday TV Fun House where Santa skips the red states and acts increasingly smug until he is chastised by a blue state child for being bigoted against Christians. It was actually mocking smug liberals but Christians took the first part of the sketch literally and took great offense: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/tv-funhouse-blue-state-santa/2751169
I wrote about some of the legacy of SNL in a recent post: https://ryanclarkself.substack.com/p/why-did-snl-pull-its-punches-on-biden
that's a good one. smigel is a smart dude
What you are describing is not Christian art. It is BAD art. The Pieta is Christian art. The Passion was Christian art. The great cathedrals and their great legacy of music were Christian art. Trash is just trash, no matter who is producing it.
God is the giver of gifts, not men. Either you have it or you don't. If the Lord wanted a person to write, He would give them everything they needed to do it spectacularly without offending Him. But even then, the writer could choose instead to squander what they had, and write garbage anyway, because the writer has a free will choice between heaven and hell. If they choose a lifetime of poisoning souls for cash, it isn't Christ they're following.
But if a good artist writes like a Christian, you won't miss the trash. More likely, you'll find other books ruined for you, for having discovered what good art looks like without it.
Everyone has already said what I would say. Thanks for being a kind but provocative voice on the topic of The Culture (<- imagine scaryish font) and The Church (<- Zapfino font).
I think more Christians should have to spend a week making only very silly and nonsense jokes, and avoid the "oh gotcha" ones and the responses to pop culture they refuse to admit they have consumed but still somehow have a *clean alternative* to a couple years late. That week might be watching a bunch of Silly Songs and then writing some jokes modeling that absurdity, or maybe taking an improv class with some Christian college kids who avoid pop culture references but also are forced to build on absurd suggestions from Jeff on the football team or Kelly in the science department.
I watched an old Skit Guys video (because that was the era I was raised in) the other night, after mentioning it to someone in an older generation. I had that whole video memorized back in the day. It was so funny to me at age 12. Now at age 30...doesn't really hit anymore. Kinda smirked at a few moments, but nothing made me laugh for real. Yet I can find humor in the absurdity of a fellow congregant trying to open a mint quietly during a prayer, and that can build into a 10 minute sketch without any trouble. But if we are silly and absurd, we don't want to be perceived that way, so we go for the safe joke.
This is a good one, Matthew, thanks for making an exception to the serious voice to make this point.
The homeschool crew was moved by this but I don't know man Obadiah walked out. I think he's scared of what his mom would say.
A good friend of mine was at our house for a dinner party last year, enjoying the music I was playing and asked "Who is this?" It was the Doors. I have adult kids, and got them into Indie music , since I love it, and since it's 100x less slutty than mainstream pop, but I always felt the "cloistered virtue" of Christian culture was little help to growing up following Christ. They don't really follow God so maybe I was wrong in the end. Who knows.
A great resource for exploring faith and art for me has been With All Its Teeth by Josh Porter
https://a.co/d/7se9B0P
This article is on point!
I'm definitely for more humour in our Christian milleu. In fact, I remember the time when Babylon Bee actually made fun of Christian culture in an in-joke kind of way. Humour is one of the ways that we fight back against the powers that be when they do the wrong thing, including at church.
As for non-Christians poking fun an Christianity, we should always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have. But, as you said, often what's being laughed at is not Christianity per se, it's the hypocrisy etc. I think too often Christians get defensive when the criticism is legitimate:)