What would you ask, if you had one question?

This song, pondering a God with all the troubles of his creations, is kind of a throw-back to the Greeks' view of their Gods and their human foibles. Opinions vary if it was elevatory, celebratory or derogatory.

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that
you would have to believe
in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints
and all the prophets

"Worship that?"

Sometimes in our fiction we put our most atheistic ideas in the mouth of a supernatural being, here a NSFW kinetic typographic excerpt from "The Devil's Advocate."

Missing The Boat

jpg via Biblical Christianity blog

Biblical Christianity blog has a few comic panels on the extinction of dinosaurs, the top one is my favorite, but see Far Side's and Bizarro's takes. Blogger Dan Phillips takes his faith seriously but not so seriously as to prevent him from see humor in its applications in the world around him. He's got some general interest pop culture stuff going on and some random liberal-bashing politics and he can get a little overwrought, for example a post on "Soul Surfer", the movie about the surfer who lost an arm to shark and is sustained by her faith, is stuck into a jeremiad of "why doesn't Hollywood represent good people of faith" -- similar points made on Know Beliefs here and here -- but is compelled to ascribe the worst motives:

"... part of it is simply that Hollywood blends well with the world-system, and the world hates the real Jesus and His people, period.

More charitably, I've simply wondered whether none of the big wigs and creative minds knows any actual practicing, card-carrying Christians."

And despite that charity it is, of course, absurd. How could 80(ish)% of America not be a majority of the entertainment industry too?
SOURCE:

Q: "How Does A Mormon Screw In A Light Bulb?"A: "That's Not Funny"

It may seem to those who look back at our religions that the older they are, the more willing its adherents are likely to have a sense of humor about it. Regarding that, compare Jews with Scientologists, for example.

In the context of the Broadway musical "The Book Of Mormon," while reading this guy's defensive defense of Mormons in Africa, I could not help of think of Bill Cosby's Noah routine and the hooey Cosby got about it at the time. His response was something to the affect of "People who are secure in their faith aren't offended at all." That digression aside, it's a lot to ask of people who believe that they have invested their eternity in something to then go ahead be OK with it being ridiculed. And this writer isn't dissuaded by non-Mormons calling it harmless or fellow Mormons who have "blogged about it seem to have gone out of their way to show how they can take it."

But he's not aghast:

Sure, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pushes back when the record needs correcting or when legal rights need defending, but the world of popular entertainment is more likely to be met with a collective shrug than by placard-waving Mormon protesters.

We'll just glance over the issue of legal rights of gays taken under California's Prop. 8, which the LDS Church supported since we're talking about something as shruggable as popular entertainment.
PREVIOUSLY: Here, and Here
SOURCE: by Michael Otterson on The Washington Post's On Faith blog.

Two Songs About One Thing

Our popular music is filled with overt references to faith, and few pop tunes are more religious than "Get Happy," here by Judy Garland from "Summer Stock."


In contrast, "It Ain't Necessarily So" from "Porgy and Bess" is unique from its time to question the veracity of the Bible. Worth seeing for the irony are this version by a choir [LINK], and this concert version by Marion Ross in Jerusalem.

Swimming With Sharks

Every poll says a vast majority of Americans are believers, yet this tale of making a movie about a person of faith getting resistance by the people who want the movie to be successful but who are reluctant about expressions of faith -- is both baffling and understandable. Maybe in 50,000 years, when someone looks at us the way we look at Neanderthal fire pits, the pottery shards of our culture will make sense.

jpg via CNN by NoahHamiltonPhoto.com

A shark took Bethany Hamilton's arm while she was surfing and now "Soul Surfer" is the second movie about her path back into the water, the other being a documentary.

"Sony (Pictures, the film's producer) was afraid to throw in the word Jesus. They said you can have God but not Jesus. They were worried about that," said Kevin Sorbo, who plays Holt Blanchard, the father of Hamilton's best friend, in "Soul Surfer."

Sorbo said Sony wanted to take out another scene in which Hamilton wakes up the hospital. Her father, played by Dennis Quaid, is shown reading a Bible. He reads to her from Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through him who gives me strength." Sorbo said the Hamilton family, which was on set every day, fought to keep that in the movie. 

SOURCE: by Eric Marrapodi on CNN.com Belief Blog

It Sure Sounds Silly, By George

Archeologists in the post-religious society that will dig through this society will not do much better to view things like this to explain the paradoxes of religious rhetoric. Sure, this is really just a shallow view, but even deep investigation doesn't mitigate the issues here.


Because this is George Carlin, of course the audio is NSFW

If Moses Tweeted, OMG Would Really Mean Oh My God

What Would They Call The Sequel?

We called them "movies" wherein we told fanciful stories:

This week saw the release of the Blu-Ray edition of Cecil B DeMille's "Ten Comandments." Yet, in many ways, the animated "Prince of Egypt" was a much better film.

A quiz asks how much you know about the "Ten Commandments" ... the movie, not the Biblical laws.
SOURCE: on Belief.net

There'd Be Less Outrage If They Called It "Jacob's Ladder Dancing"

Not only do some people think their faith is about not having fun, they think it's about no one else having fun either.
The Pole Dancing For Jesus exercise class was the news "brightener" for a day and the news video went viral:

But the feedback has been profound:

The coverage on MyFoxHouston has raised some confused and very critical eyebrows, with commenters comparing her to Satan and calling pole dancing "a vehicle for sins of the flesh," but Dean doesn't mind and defends herself with her faith.

"It's a good thing. It reminds me that we're all human," she said. "I think most of the people who criticize it are ignorant about the history of the pole."

Like many Christians, she will tell you that God reigns over every area of her life and that everything in this world can be used to his glory, including activities we don't usually think of as religious.

"It is the center of my life and everything I do, it all is centered in Christ," said Deans, a mother of three whose family has attended Houston Northwest Church for six years. "My business would not be possible without God. I know people don't get it or think it's a gimmick, but it's an opportunity for me. I have people's attention."

SOURCE: from the Houston Chronicle's Belief column by Kate Shellnutt
Be sure to read the comments. This is a highlight:

I like watching pole dancing and like Jesus, so it sounds like a great combination to me!

My next venture may be the evangelical tractor pull for Jesus!

And if pole dancing isn't too secular to be Christianized -- this might to be (use any definition of "tea-bagging" you want)

jpg via ebroodle.typepad.com

Coffee Cups In Hell

Who ever gets the odious task of wading through the detritus of our culture after we destroy it will be a little confused to discover that atheists don't really hate people of faith-- unless they are in large groups, chasing them down the street.
NYTimes columnist Maureen Dowd offers her review of the "Book of Mormon" by the trio of creators responsible for "South Park and "Avenue Q":

The Mormons in the musical are depicted just as Mormons on “South Park” were — naïve but nice.

There is one song called “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” featuring Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, Johnnie Cochran and a couple of Starbucks coffee cups in hell. (Mormons can’t have caffeine.)

The raunchiness is offset by traditional tropes. There’s an odd-couple pairing of two 19-year-old missionaries, Elder Price, a golden goody-goody, and Elder Cunningham, a schlubby boy with a penchant for lying; and a cultural collision between white-bread missionaries and Ugandans plagued by AIDS, warlords, maggots and female genital mutilation.

“Africa is nothing like ‘The Lion King,’ ” a befuddled Price says. “I think that movie took a lot of artistic license.”

In the end, she's positive on it:

In the end, the message is not against Mormonism but literalism: that whatever our different myths, metaphors and rituals, the real purpose of religion is to give us a higher purpose and a sense of compassion in the universe.

“The moral,” the writer Andrew Sullivan observed on opening night, “is that religion is both insane and necessary at the same time.”

Previously: (Book By Joseph Smith) SOURCE

Book by Joseph Smith

"The Book of Mormon" (NYT advance story on musical that opened Thursday) is the work of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the duo behind "South Park,"and Robert Lopez of "Avenue Q," is a critical success based on a round-up of reviews, including from the Hollywood Reporter:

the team has "created one of the freshest original musicals in recent memory." The show "packs plenty of blissful profanity, sacrilege and politically incorrect mischief," but its "defining quality ... is its sweetness."

SOURCE: LATimes Culture Monster blog

Closer To God

I always suspected this Indigo Girls song (as catchy as any song about angst and despair could hope to be) was, at its roots, religious. Commenters at SongMeanings.net think it's about coming out of the closet (both bandmembers are gay), among other things. Many apply their own messages to this metaphor-rich passage:

"Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable

And lightness has a call that's hard to hear"

The writer Emily Saliers (a "PK"*) says on SongFacts.com that it's a little less specific:

"... about not beating yourself up too hard to get your answer from one place. There's no panacea, that in order to be balanced or feel closer to fine it's okay to draw from this or to draw from that, to draw from a bunch of different sources. So it's about being confused but looking for the answers, and in the end knowing that you're going to be fine. No seeking just one definitive answer."

Saliers and Amy Ray's song won the Best Contemporary Folk Grammy in '89 and the Indigo Girls were nominated for Best New Artist Grammy as was Milli Vanilli, which didn't work out for either group.

*Pastor's Kid

Pretty Big Love

Some species in the distant future discovering our society might well ask if faith were really so important why doesn't our art reflect it, except in these fringe examples:

The End Of Days Show (25mins of summary and recap)

Forgive them their soap opera melodramatics, their hyperbolic angst and their self-righteousness, but the just-ended "Big Love" was the only show on TV where lead characters wrestled with issues of faith in the face adversity and recrimination. The show never really got into the "why" of polygamy (besides "because") but that gap allowed group marriage to serve as a metaphor for any niche belief trying to endure under the tyranny of majority. Thus, the dramatic arc of having multiple wives could serve as a stand-in for Universalism, Baha'i or Voodoo.

The last program to do anything like that was "Kings" on NBC (videos available til mid-Oct) -- a modern allegorical retelling of the King David saga -- and that never found much of an audience despite Christian advocacy pundits demanding that television represent people of faith in a positive light; see a trailer via Belief.net

There is "Sister Wives" on TLC,  an unscripted program showing plural marriage lifestyle, but I haven't seen much on faith.

Animism As A Narrative Device, But Inverted For Movie Plot

Amid this essay about a cinematic trend of animals as metaphor, it's not just cute animals acting like humans.

“Rango,” so thoroughly saturated in references to well-known, non-beast-centered stories, practices a kind of reverse animism. Animism is a set of beliefs emphasizing the power of local spirits: creatures, plants, rock formations and other objects of nature. In “Rango,” though, the “spirit of the West” turns out to reside not in a mesa, a cactus or a coyote but rather in a person, a ghostly cowboy rendered by computers (and the voice of Timothy Olyphant) into the spectral likeness of Clint Eastwood.

SOURCE: By A.O. Scott in the NY Times