God Is Cool Again Reitz Union

There's a proud history of mixing comedy with religion – just ask Monty Python, or Bill Hicks, or Tim Minchin. So, every bit someone who can sing Tom Lehrer's "Vatican Rag" off by heart, when I saw Radio four had a sitcom about a University Christian Clan struggling to remain relevant in this apathetic age, I was intrigued.

God Team follows UCA president Sophie, cheese-loving theologist Phil and evangelical hardliner Kat fighting over the soul of their college social club. Outsider Dan – a swanky eco-activist who does yoga in the multi-religion chapel – enters and shakes things upwards. His actual level of faith is questionable ("Late nights with my twin poisons: Hitchens, Dawkins – shot, attorney"), merely while Phil and Kat have their doubts about the newcomer, Sophie is convinced Dan is the answer to making Christianity absurd again. In a plot development clearly borrowed from Life of Brian, UCA splits between the Modernisers and the True Believers, and hilarity ensues.

Or rather, it doesn't. God Squad trundles along with a narrative reminiscent, ironically, of a student sketch show. The jokes are painfully obvious – Phil gets his foot stuck in a mop bucket, for case, purely and so that Kat can exclaim "Forget your wet shoes, at that place'due south a more than important soul at pale here" (soul/sole – geddit?). The climax might have been vaguely amusing ("I'm Protesting! I am, afterwards all, a Protestation-pismire!") if we'd been given some reason to care about whatsoever of the characters.

Everyone is so terrified of causing offence – either to Christians or to those who observe religious zealotry distasteful – that they tin't make up one's mind whose side they're on. Are we meant to laugh at the fundamentalists, or see them as loveable misfits staying true to their beliefs? God Squad doesn't know. There is definitely something witty to be written on student attitudes to religion – nigh naivety and intolerance and the blind faith nosotros all take that our earth-view is correct – but this isn't information technology. If your punchline is a pun on the pronunciation of Jesus in Spanish, you should probably stop now.

God Squad
BBC Radio 4, 29 October, 11.30am

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This commodity appears in the xx Oct 2021 issue of the New Statesman, Twilight of the W

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Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/radio-podcasts/2021/10/bbc-radio-4s-god-squad-has-borrowed-from-life-of-brian-but-left-behind-the-laughs

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