I see Al Franken is getting criticized for some his religiously offensive comedy. Apparently, he compared communion wafers to chips and guacamole and said God has his head “up his ass.”
Yep. For a Senator, pretty darn offensive. The only question is whether he’s going to get dispensation for things he said as a comedian.
This reminded me of Beliefnet’s interview with Franken in which he talked about his own spirituality and attacked the religious right. Excerpts below.
You’ll also want to check a comic book excerpt we ran called “Supply Side Jesus,” which he intended as a way of illustrating that Jesus probably wouldn’t love the political platform of most religious conservatives. Asked why he wasn’t healing lepers, Supply Side Jesus declares, “If people knew I was healing lepers there would be no incentive to avoid leprosy.”
Here are a few chunks from the interview:

The first line of the book is, “God chose me to write this book.” Now why would He go and do a thing like that?
Because He’s pissed off at Bush, whose friends have been going around saying he felt he was chosen at this time to lead the nation, presumably by God. God actually chose Al Gore, and got him the popular and electoral vote, which is usually sufficient.
So God asked me to write the book.
In another part of the book you argue that Jerry Falwell is “a nut” because, while he said the Anti-Christ is a living Jewish male, he has not yet fingered Marvin Hamlisch.
Well he actually said he didn’t know if it was Hamlisch or not.
So he was hedging?
Yeah, I thought you could rule out Hamlish. I thought a sane person could say Marvin Hamlisch is not the Anti-Christ. Why would the Anti-Christ write Chorus Line? Why would the Anti-Christ write The Way We Were?
Other than that, what’s wrong with the religious right?
They sometimes forget we don’t live in a theocracy. They can be in the public square and express their opinion but to expect other people to alter their behavior to say that, for example, that homosexuality is immoral because it says so in the Bible…I mean it also says you can’t eat pork. I don’t see a lot of orthodox Jews saying people who eat pork shouldn’t be allowed to get insurance benefits.

I mean there’s stuff in the Bible how about how to sell your daughter. They kind of are pretty selective about what is important and what isn’t. I think slavery is ok in the Bible. It’s stupid! It’s like the dumbest thing that they want to proscribe other people’s behavior based on their belief.
Conservatives have made the argument that the civil rights movement was very influenced by black preachers and in general the liberal church movement.
Yeah, that was great!
Isn’t that a case of religion being brought into the public sphere to change laws?
Yeah, that was good! That was good, let me tell you why: segregation was wrong.
[So are you saying] it’s ok to use religion in the public sphere as long as you agree with it?
In that case it was brought in because the preachers said “This is immoral.” And it’s immoral because it’s wrong – it’s just wrong on its face. But on its face, [it’s clear that] people don’t have the right to stick their penis somewhere you don’t want them to stick their penis? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Do you think hell exists and if so, who is there?
I think hell exists on earth. It’s a psychological state or it can be a physical state. People who have severe mental illness are in hell. People who have lost a loved one are in hell. I think there are all kinds of different hells. It’s not a place you go to after you die.
I don’t know what happens to you after you die. I’m not banking on there being like a heaven.
More of the interview with Al Franken here.