I will show in the next section (see A History of Censorship) that humorous
treatments of Christian motifs and practices have not been welcome in recent centuries by either ecclesiastical authorities or the community of faith. Historically, however, this was not always so: there is a rich tradition of including the ludic in practices of faith within Christianity, and the ethos behind it largely parallels the reasoning behind the
contemporary practices that are the subject of this dissertation.
The producers and consumers of Christian humor in digital space are allying themselves with a cultural moment in which people understand that “the line that divides
orthodoxy from heresy is more ambiguous than commonly assumed” (Beaudoin 1997). Ergo, they are comfortable working within a register in which the idea that the “burlesque of the sacred is often itself a form of the sacred” (Willeford 1969) makes sense and feels appropriate within the contemporary moment. The particular line of argument adopted by the producers of Christian humor may be a critique of what they perceive as overly simplistic, overly ecclesiastical, or (as in the case of “Hater Jesus” [see page 173]) militaristic forms of religiosity, or it may just be a way of presenting the traditions of their faith in a way that feels accessible and fresh. The device of presenting Jesus, other Biblical characters, and church figures past and present as “holy fools” gives viewers who appreciate irony a way to look beyond the ludic material’s nominal meaning (e.g. mockery of the motifs of Christianity, satire of Christians themselves) to find a deeper, potentially spiritual message.
The presentation of Christianity by way of the ludic is a strategic choice that taps into a long Christian tradition of the holy fool that began with Jesus and the Apostle Paul. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul wrote: “If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a fool so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” (1 Cor. 3:18–19). This Pauline ‘fool in Christ’ or ‘fool for Christ’s sake’ tradition was later developed into a spiritual
discipline and became an important feature of monasticism (Phan 2001). As Saward argues, “all monks are called” into this sort of folly “because it strikes at the black heart of the world’s sin—egoism and pride” (1980). The tradition of the holy fool was
particularly strong in Eastern Orthodoxy and especially in Russia, where “fools for Christ’s sake” (yurodivyi) walked naked through the streets, slept with dogs, and
associated with prostitutes and other sinners, thereby scandalizing the “righteous” with their “compassion for the morally reprobate” (Saward 1980).
Holy fools in the Christian tradition challenge shallow and egocentric forms of spirituality by reminding the faithful of Christ’s divine humility and the mystery of the Incarnation (in which the Divine chose to be born as a mortal man to the family of a poor carpenter). “This mystery,” according to Berger, “is the self-humiliation of God, the
kenosis, who descends from the infinite majesty of the divinity, not only to take on the form of a human being but one despised, mocked, and finally killed under the most degrading circumstances” (1997). Those degrading circumstances followed a long Roman tradition that preceded Jesus’ crucifixion, wherein fools and madmen regularly played the role of kings at the Bacchanalia, the predecessor of the medieval feast of fools from which Bakhtin later derived his theory of the carnivalesque (Willeford, 1969). Jesus suffered Pilate and the Roman soldiers who crucified him to regard him as a fool. When he failed to deny he was “King of the Jews” he was ridiculed in a manner that was consistent with the treatment of “fool kings” at the Bacchanalia: the Roman soldiers took him and subjected him to a mock coronation.
In the Praetorium, “before the whole battalion,” the soldiers stripped him, put a scarlet robe on him, placed a crown of thorns on his head and a reed in his hand, and “mocked him” (Matt. 27:29; Mark 15:20). On the cross he is derided by the people (Matt. 27:39; Mark 15:20); scoffed at (Luke 23:35) and mocked (Mark 15:31) (Saward, 1980)
“From that time on,” according to Berger (1997), “every fool for Christ’s sake both participates in and symbolizes the kenosis of God that brings about the redemption of the
world”.
Through a variety of grotesque acts holy fools point their audiences toward the “numinous— the indefinable infinitude of God” (Otto 1950, quoted by Huxley 1990) as the most extreme counterpoint to their base and carnal behavior. The revelatory power of the ludic is partially explained by the sacred/profane dichotomy (see page 34) theorized by Eliade wherein only the sacred defines the “real”, and that which is clearly not sacred threatens the order of the universe. As Berger writes: “Holy folly, in its grotesqueness, makes explicit the otherness breaking into ordinary reality, but also the impossibility of containing this otherness in the categories of ordinary reality” (1997).
The holy fool also calls forth the numinous, ironically by suspending the power of the divine by invoking a call to humility. As Stewart (1999) argues: “There are no names, no images, and no attributes which could ever convey more than a fleeting insight into the nature of God. God cannot be defined, categorized, limited, understood, described, assigned gender, or named”. In other words, God (in order to be God) is by definition much bigger and much more complex than we can imagine. Christian humor mocks the simple-mindedness of those who have transformed God from Otto’s figure of “numinous awe” that extends “beyond our apprehension and comprehension” (1950) into a mundane potentate who “lacks any sense of the numinous… [and] fails to extend beyond the finite boundaries of the ego” (Stewart, 1999).
Consistent with the stated intentions/justifications of those who practice Christian humor online, in literature and popular media holy fools often serve a pedagogical purpose (Shouse & Fraley 2010) that is consistent with the historical holy fool who “…teaches people by means of images of sin and he tells them truth disguised behind a
fool’s appearance and behavior” (Heller & Volkova 2003). However, caution must be taken when using this strategy, especially among those who are not familiar with it or its history. As Elizabeth-Anne Stewart writes in Jesus the Holy Fool, to associate Jesus with foolishness is to run “the risk of causing misunderstanding and deep offense” though “The risks involved are warranted [because] to understand the Holy Foolishness of Christ can lead one into a deeper contemplation of the mystery of God” (1999). Those involved with the production and consumption of religious humor in digital space are confronted with this same pedagogical opportunity as well as the very same potential pitfalls associated with negotiating its limits.
This brief review of the holy fool tradition within Christianity demonstrates that the use of religious comedy as a spiritual exercise is by no means a new phenomenon. As a long-standing (though emphasized more in some eras than others) tradition, it is an established part of Christian practice. The digital has hardly inspired a whole new way to express faith. Rather, it facilitates the carnivalesque expression both technically and culturally, and comes at a time in the history of American Christianity when restrictive Puritan modes of observing the faith have started giving way to more progressive modes that recognize an imperative to engage with popular culture and secular means of
exploring/testing ideology.