During the summer months, while watching the latest underwhelming attempt to find the Last Comic Standing, I witnessed a noteworthy stand-up routine. It wasn’t that it was particularly funny. (That hasn’t been the case since the reality show’s first season.) What caught my attention was that it attacked the Catholic Church, in particular, as well as Christian beliefs in general. I don’t use the word “attack” to designate some personal offense to my own over-sensitive ego. The comedic profession has always harvested material from widely recognizable figures, mundane observations, and current events that can then be half-heartedly teased and mulled over for humorous effect. The jabs are not especially judgmental or, if they are, they are delivered while the performer is in character, the intention being to point out the absurdity of such judgments. Acts that “attack” racial groups, for instance, must be heard in light of the fact that they (often) serve the purpose of exposing the ridiculousness of certain stereotypes.
It is sobering to realize that those that attack Christian—not religious in general, but purely Christian—subjects, do so with an altogether different motive. This brings me back to Last Comic on NBC. As the comic presented his Christian material, the audience laughed, as would be expected. But there was something venomous in the laughter. If it was too subtle to be recognized at first, it was confirmed by the cheering that followed after it. The assembled audience was validating the caricatured depiction of Christians, taking it as profound (rather than profane), and agreeing with the harsh words delivered against the faith.
If it can be granted that these funnymen professionals concoct their material to cater to the modern worldview of their audience, then it follows from that audience’s reaction that this comic had correctly gauged that the average individual harbors deep-rooted anti-Christian animosity. This in itself should come as a shock. At a sold-out, HBO-sponsored theater performance by Bill Mahr, one might come to expect such God-directed hate mongering and the wildly approving reaction of the throng. What is far more telling is that a similar reaction could be elicited from a randomly selected, diverse group of people come to witness an unknown comedian with no foreknowledge of the nature or the flavor of his comedy.
Popular conceptions of Christianity as an intolerant religion that has been made obsolete by modern science, and its adherents as uptight and irrelevant members of a dwindling sub-culture, have given today’s comedians license to treat them intolerantly in turn and to forego the implicit niceties afforded to the targeted groups of other “offensive” humor.
It is not my intent to make whining complaints on behalf of Christians treated unfashionably, but to draw attention to how the faith has been so easily and so widely misrepresented, and how something life-giving can be construed to be so contemptible, and how ready and eager the unbelievers are to agree with one another and to consort with every false assertion. It appears as though, even when overhearing some new slander against God not previously considered by them, they lend to it an immediate plausibly, if only because it is opposed to the faith that they mutually despise. And to that faith itself, they give not a moment’s consideration.
I’ve been vague with regard to the substance of the comedy that I’ve referred to here; I know that I have been short on examples. Watching this broadcast via television has given me occasion to take careful notes on future instances of how the media is endorsing the misrepresentation and degradation of Christian beliefs (I am not now concerned with the bandied-about term “values”, but specifically beliefs).
Lastly, I recall that I earlier referenced this comedian as launching his assault against Catholicism. While the routine began this way, it then went on to mock beliefs held sacred by all of orthodox Christendom. I feel that it is important, for we that may not be Catholics, not to dismiss criticisms of Catholicism as being somehow more deserved, since, as I strongly suspect, the ordinary unbeliever in dismissing Christian beliefs does not make denominational distinctions or, if he is aware of some doctrine peculiar to one denomination, when making his case he is apt to apply it to all of Christianity indiscriminately.
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