Nov/Dec 2004

Controversial Christian Comedy

By Bob Liparulo

Brad Stine is in your face, shoving his moral values down your throat ... so why are you laughing?

The last time a guy like Brad Stine came into your church, he was probably booted out. Unless, of course, he was Brad Stine, in which case he undoubtedly got in-your-face about some of the really stupid things Christians fall for, about being intellectual in your faith and courageous in spreading the good news. And what did you do? If you're like the majority of people who've seen him in action, you laughed until your side ached and gave him a standing ovation. Oh, and another thing: You went away with a greater understanding of God's will and your place in it.

Stine is a stand-up comedian and a rare one at that. Not only is he extremely funny, but he's also a steadfast Christian whose faith permeates his humor. At 44, he has the energy of four 11-year-olds. He uses it to gesticulate wildly onstage and give his audiences a rapid-fire litany of Seinfeld-ian observations.

There's his (tongue-in-cheek) take on today's stringent auto standards: "Airbags make cars too safe. When I was a kid, the dashboards were made out of metal. You got in a wreck, you paid for it. You were weeded out, so the good drivers had more room."

And his (unsanitary) views on personal hygiene: "How have we survived as a species without the antibacterial wipe before now? .... We don't let enough germs get inside our kids so their body can learn to fight them off the way God designed it to do. If you really love your kids, the next time they drop a sucker in the dirt, pick it up, blow it off and shove it back in their mouth, the way we had to do! My antibacterial wipe was mom spitting in a Kleenex and wiping my face."

Picture the physical antics of Robin Williams, the loopy vocal delivery of George Carlin, the egghead wit of Dennis Miller and the spiritual sensibilities of C.S. Lewis--there's Stine in a nutshell. Best of all, his shows contain no crude language and lots of God-talk.

"God's a big part of my show because He's a big part of me," he says. "And I miss Him. He's not in our culture enough. I want to do something about that."

He wasn't always that way. For 20 years, Stine plied his craft in the secular comedy circuit. Did pretty well, too. He performed with the best of them on MTV, Showtime, HBO and Evening at the Improv. Then, three years ago a church asked him to perform at an outreach event.

"Something clicked," he says. "I felt God telling me to minister to His people."

As a show of obedience, he pulled up his Los Angeles tent stakes and hammered them into Nashville soil, where he now lives with wife Desiree and kids Maycee and Wyatt.

A Christian since the fourth grade, Stine's act was never vulgar, but he started peppering his show with statements of faith ("Suddenly, I was telling audiences, 'I am a theist. I love Jesus.'") and performing routines that Christians, especially, would appreciate.

At one point onstage, he impersonates an evangelist before the advent of the printed Bible, walking with an armful of huge scrolls, using his entire body to open a scroll for a look at Habakkuk. These days, he gets up before a secular audience "only now and then." When he's not performing in front of 15,000 guys at Promise Keepers events, he's packing them into houses of God.

Funny Business

Don't let the church venues fool you. Stine has all the career trappings of any popular comedian.

He gives media interviews on his cell phone between meetings. He's got a slick Web site (bradstine.com), slick press kit, slick BMW, slick new CD and DVD called Put a Helmet On! He's got managers, publicists and agents. Want to book him? Gotta call secular top dog the William Morris Agency.

It's all part of the machinations of a career in entertainment, even one divinely ordained. "God has called me to do what I do," he explains. "I don't want to do it in a box."

Unless that box is television. He would love regular work on a sitcom or, better yet, to star in his own.

"What comic wouldn't?" he says. "But would I be willing to play the Christian neighbor whose faith gets ridiculed in every episode? No way. Would I play a gay guy or someone living with his girlfriend? No. I think there's room on the networks for a character with Christian values. And he doesn't have to be boring or preachy or the butt of all the jokes. Hey, bring on a liberal character and let's bounce ideas off each other. Let's laugh at our differences without ridiculing them."

That said, it's hard to imagine an entertainer who's more challenging to Christians than Stine is. His sharp comedy often cuts both ways, taking aim at the church as well as the world-at-large. Nothing riles him like hypocrisy or legalism.

Fortunately, he filters most of his frustration through his gift of gag.

On the fundamentalist backward-masking frenzy of his teenage years: "If you start playing your records backward, perhaps you deserve to hear a message from Satan. He's probably just giving instruction: 'It's going the wrong way!'"

On a church in New Mexico hosting a Harry Potter book burning: "Let's face it, nothing makes people come to the doors of a church like a good old-fashioned book burning, huh? A good rule of thumb is: If Hitler tried it, maybe go another direction."

On animal-rights activists: "They cry, 'Oh, the dolphins are getting caught in the tuna net!' Yeah, what about the tuna getting caught in the tuna net? They don't care because tuna are ugly."

Stine's style of comedy--nonstop, fast and directly into your pressure points--have some calling him the Kung Fu Comic. "Protestants see Satan everywhere," he says in his show. "Oh, Satan's in my radio. Satan made me lose my job! No, your incompetence made you lose your job." Hiyah!

On Stine's DVD, a close look at the guy cracking up in the front row reveals just how universal his brand of cutting humor is. It's uber-conservative Jerry Falwell.

"He doesn't mind getting controversial in order to jar people into thinking," Falwell explains. "But he's so gracious in the way he does it that even those who disagree with him don't get angry."

Stine has found that once he's got people laughing, they're receptive to just about anything he wants to say--humorous or not. After illustrating America's obsession with self-esteem, for example, he points out that Sigmund Freud was an atheist and we'd all be better off looking to God and not ourselves, "because when the Creator of matter says that you matter, then you have purpose and then you have self-esteem."

The freedom to talk about serious topics is the secret power of comedy, he says. "When people start laughing, their hearts open up. Their defenses go down. It's too bad so many funny and hugely successful comedians apparently have no use for morality; they bring people to that place where they're listening, really listening, and they pour garbage into them: sleeping around is fun, it's normal! Drugs make you feel happy!

"I mean, George Carlin is a brilliant comic, but I don't want to hear his language; I don't want to hear the stupid things he says. What I want to do is pour truth into those open hearts. I want to say, 'There is a God and here's why you should believe in Him.'"

But Seriously, Folks ...

No one who's seen Stine perform would argue that he's not an enormously gifted communicator. Who else can hold your rapt attention while babbling out terms such as "Epicurean," "borrowed capital" and "cultural signifiers"?

People of all ilks are noticing: A flattering Associated Press article about him was picked up by 276 newspapers, including some of the largest in the country. He was featured in the August 9 and 16 issues of The New Yorker magazine. Conservative radio and TV commentator Sean Hannity invited Stine to appear on his program and called him "a great comic and a great friend."

"I take these opportunities very seriously," Stine says. "God's opening these doors not so the world knows Brad Stine, but so the world knows Him."

Heavy stuff for a funnyman. Speaking with him, you get the sense that maybe there's a "tears of a clown" thing happening inside.

"I think he's driven by a godly sorrow for the world," says friend Marty Magehee, of the Christian musical group 4Him. "He doesn't go around moping about things, and he's not constantly trying to make people laugh. He's serious about serious things. He knows what Christians need to hear, and he has a great way of saying it."

So what is it Christians need to hear?

The importance of personal responsibility, for one thing. "We're very good at pointing fingers," Stine says. "It's easy to condemn what other people are doing, but we need to recognize that we, as Christians, have contributed to the problems.

"How can we say that something like gay marriage is wrong and expect people to listen when we don't have an alternative that's worked for us? The breakdown of traditional marriage, of what defines a family, is not the result of gay marriage or gay adoption. It started when Christians joined the rest of society in saying infidelity and divorce are OK. Aren't we the ones who should be saying: 'That's not right. Marriages can last. Look at mine'? We're the ones who know God's will and can call on His strength, right?"

A child of a broken home himself, he knows the pain divorce inflicts on everyone involved. And he thinks churches have not done enough to discourage the "easy out." In his book, Being a Christian Without Being an Idiot, he writes: "Maybe it's time to take a new long look at how we respond to those in our churches who are in the process of getting divorced and perhaps even take a radical position of vehemently denouncing their decision as, gee, let me think, A SIN!!"

All right, that's not funny. But these are the issues that God has laid on Stine's heart. True to form--and contrary to most entertainers who are acutely cautious about offending potential fans--Stine is not afraid of saying precisely what he believes. And by the time they make it into his act, you can bet that he'll have found just the right lead-in, the perfect nuance to make them palatable.

Says Stine: "I don't expect people to agree with everything I say. If they did, then I'm doing something wrong. Truth is divisive. I only want the chance to say it. To get them thinking. Making people laugh gives me that opportunity."

Bob Liparulo, author of Comes a Horseman, promises not to laugh at your e-mails. Write him at apparizione@bigfoot.com.