Religious Jokes

[Thor Smash]

I'm finally starting to get back into stand up, it's been almost 8 months and I just wanted to know what the boundary on religious jokes may be. I know it depends on the audience, but sometimes I feel I can go too far with things. I was thinking of something alone the lines of, "Hey Jesus, how's it hanging," or, "Jesus, just because you died for our sins doesn't mean you have to be cross about it." or even, "I saw this bumper sticker that read, "Once again, God is speaking through a Bush." Does that mean that he was and always was a giant pussy? That would explain why he couldn't kill the heathens in the Crusades, we had to." And so on and so forth (needs tweaking, but you get the idea.)

As always, your comments are appreciated.

[funnyclown]

I'm no prude, but some of that material was very offensive.

[Vercetti]

I think those are relatively light for religious jokes. I say do them and see what happens. I wouldn't worry too much about offending people with those.

Honestly, anytime you do a joke and you don't get murdered after wards should be considered a victory on some level.

[James Smann]

Those are a good basis to start from; though not really breaking any new ground, if you know what I mean. How's it Hangin? did make me laugh though. It'd make a good running bit of like "Things you should never say to Jesus Christ."

[@JameySuede]

I'm no prude, but some of that material was very offensive.

If that offends you, you definatley ARE a prude sir!
thats as tame as it comes. its not like he said something like, you'd better accept Jesus's second coming, its full of protein (hacky yes, but off the top of my head)

lighten up there.

[funkyrhino]

Depends on where you do it and in front of whom. In Nashville TN you may be boo'ed or stoned. In Provo Utah you may be met with blank stares. In front of the brothas you'd hear "get this mu****cka off the stage" Everywhere else you should be fine.
If you have real balls you'd do muslim jokes in selected areas of NYC.

[SoSure]

This is the closest thing to a religion joke I have right now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-8_LtR1UMQ

I'd rather make this kind of subject personal to my experience than just talk shit about the very idea of believing in something supernatural. I don't think I'd do aggressive well, so it's more about "Can you see where I'm coming from?" than "You guys are dumb if you think this." Though I enjoy the latter when it's done well.

[nixonjames]

i do a lot of things that i think walk the line of offensiveness re race and religion and one thing i try to do in terms of how i approach it is not to attack anyone for having beliefs.

i like to try to undermine or display ingrained prejudices/silliness w/out saying 'you're dumb for thinking god cares about you'

by no means have i gotten it figured out but i find that it's more likely to get consistent responses if it's attacking from an angle rather than head on

[Thor Smash]

How about something like God is no longer perfect because of man, he forgot to cut off our foreskin. And it goes on to say that he's lazy because he doesn't fix the problem, he has the Jews do it, all opposed walk the desert for forty years "Yar, mutiny, and thee be walking the desert." then he goes political and gives it a pretty name, "bris" and after that, the problem still isn't fixed, so he cuts corners and he makes it a sin to not wear pants. And that's why we had to get rid of the Native Americans, not one of them owned a decent pair of Wranglers. (This following bit will work for me, in MN) Where was Brett Favre on that one, he was around. Obviously, this isn't the whole joke, but it's a summary of what I, a lot like George Carlin and Bill Hicks believed was wrong with a lot of religious beliefs.

[Thor Smash]

Are you saying black people would hate me for not having balls about those jokes? If you can't tell, I'm a white boy, so, playing to a black crowd may be quite hard for me.