For all the good religion does, it also does a lot of bad when it's twisted for evil, profit-making or just plain pompous or stupid ends. Any halfway intelligent critic can find more than enough to criticize, and criticism done right can cause believers to ask questions that might lead to meaningful reform.
Covering religion for the Journal, I saw a lot of the good and the bad of religion, but not enough serious, even seriously funny, criticism of it.
When the criticism is done wrong, it flops as bad as a boring sermon. The message gets lost.
Such is the case with comic Bill Maher's new satirical documentary, Religulous (the title apparently comes from a combination of religious and ridiculous). The guy gives all the good atheists and agnostics out there a bad name. His smug tone -- just as self-righteous in its own way as that of any fiery fundamentalist -- only gives those fundamentalists all the more reason to distrust the liberal left and the intelligentsia and retreat to their own corners, leaving us without any real insight into their beliefs.
That's a shame, because a lot of answers are needed about the major religions Maher tackles -- Christianity, Islam and Judaism -- especially in regard to extremists in each of those religions and the fragile wall between church and state in America.
And it's a shame because a lot of thought-provoking laughter can be gleaned from religion. Maher, who unwittingly paints himself as the stereotypical lapsed and angry Catholic, can be funny. Such as when one evangelical basically tells him he can try to fill the void in his soul with drugs, alcohol and sex, but nothing will work until he puts God in there. Maher, putting on a look of altar-boy earnestness, asks if he can't at least try the other methods.
There are other funny moments, such as when a Bible-thumping U.S. senator from Arkansas doesn't know the difference between literally and literacy. But for the most part, Maher's cheap shots, often at people who've gone to the trouble to set aside time for an interview with him that turns into an ambush, aren't funny.
He's not Mike Wallace, and these aren't mobsters. You can sympathize with a plain-spoken guy early in the film, at a North Carolina spot called the Trucker's Chapel, who says he can see where the questions are headed and walks out of the interview. (The film, directed by Larry Charles, says the chapel is in Raleigh. But the Raleigh News & Observer recently reported that the chapel is really in Charlotte.)
If only the guy who walked out of the interview had been hip enough to have seen Real Time, Maher's show on HBO, he'd know that such tactics are business as usual for Maher. On that show about politics, Maher and a few liberal guests typically skewer the one token conservative selected for any given show. You can't help but laugh, but you have to wonder why the conservative even showed up.
Politics as usual. Culture as usual in these United States.
The far left rages, and the far right rages. Long gone are the days when lofty leaders could fight like crazy over principles, then put aside their differences to play, and yes, even pray together.
It's much easier to keep fighting like kids on a playground than to search for common ground.
We dig our trenches and don't ask the hard questions of ourselves and our religion, culture and politics that we should.
Bill Maher adds to that climate with Religulous, which he obviously hoped would stir up controversy. That's not happening to any great degree.
The far right is as entrenched in its bunker as he is in his. And he's encouraged them to dig their hole a little deeper.
■ John Railey writes editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at jrailey@wsjournal.com.
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