Lessons to Secular Community: Take on Dogma With Humor

The South park creators step up their game - I like it!

http://www.alternet.org/story/151354/le ... ith_humor/
Lessons to Secular Community from 'The Book of Mormon' Musical: Take on Dogma With Humor
How is it possible that a play can convey a crippling blow to religious dogma and authority without alienating anyone except the most puritan and devout?
June 20, 2011

“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have done something unthinkable: made a piece of art about religion that both adamant skeptics and “traditional-values” apologists can enjoy. The Book of Mormon is a show that undermines the very foundations of religious beliefs while acknowledging that many believers are trying their darndest to be good people--all with more cussing and blasphemy than Broadway has ever seen. It’s quite a winning formula, entertainment-wise, but it’s also instructive to the secular community in its methodology for taking on religion, using absurdity rather than anger.

The Book of Mormon musical, which just cleaned up nearly all the major awards at the Tonys and already has the highest-debuting musical soundtrack in history, is a touch more subtle and clever than “South Park.” And unlike the cartoon’s equal-opportunity iconoclasm, the play has a fairly coherent message, which is, basically: “Religion is essentially nonsensical myth and has the same moral validity as Star Wars... but if you recognize this and you don’t take it literally and you don’t use it for bad reasons, then go ahead and believe.”