Religion Follow-Up: How to Write Religious Satire
I received some great feedback from my readers about my previous post on writing respectfully about race and religion. Be sure to check it out. Today I want to talk about the other side of the coin — writing satirically about religion, and still doing it in a thoughtful way that is respectful of the practitioners. So, without further ado:
Satirizing Religion — Respectfully
It sounds like an oxymoron, right? The purpose of satire is to tear down conventions, to be irreverent. But with a mine-field topic like religion, it’s important to satirize only what you mean to criticize, and not what you don’t.
It’s the institution, not the practitioners. Satire is, granted, about attacking something. But it isn’t about the practitioners; it’s about the institutions, the systematization of spirituality that can result in disaster, like mob movements, mass conformity, suppression of natural human behaviors, etc. Whatever element of some religion you’re attacking, be sure to be precise where you’re aiming the gun. Satire is also about precision; you’ve got to hit the bull’s-eye in your attack, or else you will end up launching a vague, amorphous cloud of bitterness at a great number of undeserving people.
After the jump: anyone can get pulled in.
Anyone can get pulled in; believers aren’t any more stupid or gullible than you or me. A lot of satires, even the good ones, make a crucial mistake when it comes to depicting “the masses:” they make them idiots. What’s so dangerous, powerful, and frightening about institutions like religion is that anyone, even an intelligent, cynical, detached person like you or me can “fall prey” to belief. Christianity, for example, has endured because it is a very powerful and compelling idea. No one is an idiot for believing, and no one is a deluded fool, either. What’s so interesting about religion is how perfectly rational people are sometimes willing to suspend their sense of reason in order to believe in something irrational. Write about that interesting phenomenon, not about how stupid people are for “falling for it.”
For most of the people on the planet, faith is real, meaningful, and not something to be mocked. It’s also important to remember that faith alone is powerful, redemptive, and often a very positive force in people’s lives. The problem is when faith is twisted and distorted into hatred or self-righteousness. So again, satire is about lining up your targets and hitting them with precision. I personally think that when looking at religion satirically, one of the main questions to ask is, how could something with such high purposes go so bad? Who’s to blame? Can an institutional religion actually work as a concept without causing in-group-out-group contention and conflict? Can spiritual truths ever be achieved by following the diagrams of others, or is it only a personal process?
These are just a few questions to keep in mind when turning a critical eye to religion. For me, it’s one of the most interesting things to study and simultaneously critique, but always respectfully. I’m not inherently smarter or better than the many religious people in the world. The only things to critique are when religious institutions foster hatred, discrimination, or undeserved shame of the self. So remember; there is enough positive and revelatory material in the world’s religions for us all to coexist peacefully. If only people were able or allowed to see it!
“What’s so interesting about religion is how perfectly rational people are sometimes willing to suspend their sense of reason in order to believe in something irrational.”
I like how you put it. It’s OK for intelligent people to suspend their sense of reason as long as its understood that the belief is somewhat irrational – why not call it faith. I think it plays to our extremely powerful sense of imagination, coupled with our hopes and dreams for a better world, a yearning for order and for our lives to have a purpose.
Thanks for the reminder to respect such people (god knows they’re all around – immediate family, work…). I’m learning to distinguish between a personal faith in a supreme being who created us, and religion as an institution (i.e., church government).
Yet I have to say that some people will believe just about anything, like the rapture will occur in 2007; it’s hard not to call them suckers.
Before you write anything about religion and about its “irrationality,” study it. And I don’t mean study by the book. I mean, ask yourself a series of fundamental questions and use logic to answer them. And don’t touch the topic of faith until you answer them all in coherent and satisfactory manner. Make sure that your answers don’t contradict. Fools are not those who believe, but those who stay indifferent about the most important questions in life. Those that have the attitude: “Just enjoy your life and don’t bother.” or “Just be good.” How can anyone say that without ever wondering: “What is life?” and “What is good?” So how would you answer the following questions:
1)Did God create everything or did everything appear by a series of fortunate coincidence?
2)In the light of the first answer, does good and evil exist?
3)If so, then what is good and what is evil?
4)If they do exist, how did they come about?
5)If they don’t exist, then life must be a mere chain of cause-outcome or action-reaction events. Then why do we have morals? And what was the first action that wasn’t triggered by anything?
6)Is there fate or do we determine our paths?
7)Is there justice or reason in life?
8)Is there a purpose in life? If so, what is it?
I wish this was a dialogue because I think it would turn out very interesting for both of us. Maybe you could respond to me in an email?
Interesting post but the link to the other one doesn’t appear to be working right (at least not for me). I’d rather like to read it so could you have a look and see if it’s correct please.