Religious Satire in the Era of New Atheism: Do You “Seriously Believe That” After 9/11

Religious Satire in the Era of New Atheism is a short book that analyzes post-9/11 comedy through the lens of religious satire. Jerry C. Jaffe argues that since the 9/11 attacks, we have seen a new wave of stand-up comedians who do not simply poke fun at religious beliefs but openly criticize religious claims in ways that were previously unimaginable. Tying this to the emergence of the new atheist movement that publicly denounces religious beliefs and their influence in American life, Jaffe argues that humor’s dialogic nature enabled comedians to undermine post-9/11 religious authority.The book’s strengths are both its brevity and its basic typologies of antireligious comedians. The doubting Thomases who sow misgivings about religious certainty are joined by act-outs of religious figures (namely, God) and comedians such as Marc Maron and Bill Maher who go to religious sites and confront religious believers with their disbelief. Jaffe embraces a Bakhtinian approach to the dialogic nature of meaning in his account, emphasizing the idea that all statements are open to multiple interpretations and that comedians are engaged in the play of taking what religious authorities say and do and offering alternative interpretations of what these authorities likely intended. For example, Maron assumes the role of a doubting Thomas who undermines creationism during his visit to the Creation Museum by expressing his incredulity at the museum’s claims about dinosaurs and humans living together in the Garden of Eden, an idea that museum curator Ken Ham cannot force Maron to accept. For anybody studying religion and humor, this is a good example of how humor can challenge the common assumption that religious statements are not subject to rational critique.Jaffe embraces the spirit of the new atheists who question the logic of religious dogmas and force religious claimants to defend themselves in an arena of empirical evidence and rational discourse. He does a good job of showing how satire serves the purposes of those looking to unsettle religious dogmas in the post-9/11 environment. In his analysis of Louis C. K.’s routine from 2011’s Live at the Beacon Theater about global warming, he argues that C. K. lampoons “the potential contradiction between believing ‘that god gave you the earth’ but then refusing to ‘to [sic] look after it’” by “acting out the character of God discovering the earth in a spoiled state and being very angry about it.” “In the voice of God,” Jaffe explains, “C. K. bellows, ‘Come over—did you fucking spill this?’” (42). The comedic concept of the act-out is a very useful analytic tool that more scholars of religious comedy should consider using in their work because it helps facilitate humorous discussions about religion in people’s lives.The weakness of the book is the way Jaffe frames his argument, failing to provide enough background regarding American religious dynamics from the late 1980s to the present day (this is not a book about other countries, even if he quotes comedians like Eddie Izzard and Jeff Jefferies who are not Americans). Without a consideration of, for instance, the rise of evangelicalism and fundamentalist Christianity during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, the resurgence of Christianity as a driving neoconservative force during George W. Bush’s administration, the political polarization reflected in church dynamics by the mid-1980s, the political Islamic movements that were able to strike at American hegemony starting with the Iranian revolution, the justification of foreign interventionism through the demonization of Muslims after 9/11, and the secularization of American culture that has only become apparent in statistical analyses over the last decade, Jaffe’s contextualization of religion in the post-9/11 environment reads as a thin caricature of religion.For example, in describing Maron’s visit to the Creation Museum, Jaffe fails to point out that there are millions of American Christians who see the kind of religiosity the museum embraces as childish and foolish. He does not address the internal diversity of American Christianities or spell out why Maron goes after such low-hanging fruit in taking aim at the museum, given that not only atheists but also nonatheist antifundamentalist Protestants might enjoy humor targeting it. A short history detailing how fundamentalist Protestants staged a comeback after their ostensible defeat in the 1925 Scopes trial following their role as a key demographic group fueling Ronald Regan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election and subsequently became a major political force, politicizing the teaching of evolution in public schools as not fairly “teaching the controversy” because courses did not also include “intelligent design” would have been helpful. Religion in the United States is shaped by major political divisions and comedians’ jokes are as much about these political divisions and the lampooning of political others as stupid as they are about the religious. In failing to engage the cultural fissures and divisions within the American religious landscape, Jaffe also fails to make clear the stakes of critiques such as Maron’s.In Jaffe’s defense, the people he studies also tend to lump all Christians in with dogmatic fundamentalists and all Muslims in with the most virulent terrorists. But while the failure to distinguish between liberal and conservative Protestants and the tendency to take the actions of Catholic clergy to be representative of Catholicism writ large are common rhetorical tactics in comedy, they are not errors that scholars should make because they are well-documented fault lines in identity politics and in theological developments within those larger Christian traditions. In short, Jaffe assumes the caricatures in his source materials are true instead of turning the dialogic analysis back on them and asking why comedians were confident these caricatures would resonate with their audiences at those specific moments in time. As more scholarship continues to be produced on humor about religion, Jaffe’s book will no doubt stand out as an acceptable model of satire but as a weak model for understanding religion.Nevertheless, this book is worth reading. I would happily add it to the bibliography for a comprehensive exam in religion and humor because of its brevity, making it an easily manageable read for anyone curious about the subjects, and because Jaffe’s theory of satire will attract the interest of other scholars of religion and satire. I will be engaging with this book in my own research, which is the best compliment that I can make about any piece of scholarship. It is worthy of engagement for a host of reasons, good and bad, but it is not worthy of dismissal. If you are interested in religion and humor, add this book to your collection. If you are only interested in humor studies, it is worthwhile to have this in your university library for reference.