Is Religulous Sacriliculous?

Bill Maher is a brilliant person, which is why I’m scared of him getting killed by religious fanatics, but that’s a risk he’s willing to take with his movie Religulous, that certainly tickles people’s sensibilities the wrong way… even, god-forbid, liberals. Bill, like Michael Moore, editorializes with comedy to communicate his point. And I must say, satire is one of the most effective ways of doing this. Getting a political joke implies a level of literacy that, unfortunately, many people cannot achieve. It is not easy though, to fit actual facts and historical context inside your brain when you are too busy watching Entertainment Tonight, while playing with your friends your favorite phone game, “Who’s my baby daddy.”

First off, I understand people getting offended, the same way parents of retarded children hate it when their kids are called… well, retarded. But something very important is the power of context. I think we all agree we don’t call real retards, retards. We only say it to people who aren’t really retards. Like Kathy Griffin, we must say it to people’s backs (it is the polite thing to do). And although, it is true we cannot use words like fag or nigger, it is only a matter of time until it is OK to use them again in a funny context. I predict that after we have our first black, invalid AND lesbian president, we’ll be able to call each other “niggers,” the same way we already call each other “bitch,” “whore,” and “cracker” without getting offended. It is all about reclaiming things… and religion is one of those things we need to reclaim. Yes, it will be a long bumpy road… but we need to learn to roll our eyes at people who depict “the prophet” in comic strips without setting them on fire. Same way liberals roll their eyes at religious zealots who come to Gay Pride in San Francisco to make a scene. I just cannot imagine gay people doing the opposite, storming into a Christian town, wearing angel wings, and glittered short-shorts carrying torches, hungry to kill all of those who think opposite to them. In fact, people who disagree with conservatives try to stay away from their towns as much as possible…. unless they are recruiting them for blowjobs, of course.

The film touches religion in many different contexts. My favorite being the historical one. It talks about some of America’s founding fathers being outspoken advocates against religion, in specific, Christianity. They were cosmopolitan people who promoted change, the same way the world’s greatest people have brought progress by adopting revolutionary thoughts that are often in direct opposition of what is previously established as the norm. Again, I’m not saying they were atheists, but they were certainly not part of the United States current evangelical revival.

Bill Maher interviews all sorts of people, from crazy anti-zionist Jews, to secular Catholic priests, from Muslims in denial, to scientific folks. Doing a good job at trying to get as varied and outrageous a pool of thought as he could find. Well, he left out all the New Age / Zen type of folks. He said he wanted to argue with religions that we can identify with, but I bet the main reason is because people with yoga mats are not the fish he’s after. Contrary to what some might think, he was quite respectful of people, specially the ones who were relatively regular folks, or the people who were in the smarter end of the religious pool. It definitely is not like Borat, that goes for the kill with complete ball-baring disrespect. Bill teases, but quite often even without the person noticing.

A very memorable moment is when they interview Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, the Hispanic guy in Florida who claims he’s Jesus. The guy says he got the “call” when two angels spoke to him and told him he was the Messiah. Bill notes how interesting it is how every religious revelation seems to come to people in secret and it involves making someone your indisputable leader, no questions asked.

The bottom line of Religulous could be that, for us, our religion makes sense because of context. We grew up listening to specific mythic stories that are so familiar to us, making our bodies feel warm and fuzzy inside. And as absurd as Mormon and Scientology beliefs might sound to you and me, the same goes for outsiders who hear about Christianity for the first time. When we understand that things have a meaning in context, we’ll be able to stop treating religion as taboo and, not only add it to our list of things to joke about, but add it to that part of us that can evolve and improve throughout time.

It is true that religion is inspiring for many folks, but it is also a mechanism many people use to justify their wrong actions and imperialistic tendencies in front of the masses. It is as if religion (along with science when it claims to know it all) would be one of the answers to the multiple choice test of life that people use when they don’t know the solution to a specific problem they are faced with. But if instead of answering that question wrongly, we leave it blank, or treat the answer as a placeholder, maybe, perhaps just maybe, someday we’ll be able to pass that test.

-Alex