Conflicts Based on Humor and Religion

Abstract

This article is devoted to the topic of humor and religion collision, which becomes trending. Increasingly, jokes, memes, caricatures are in the center of religious scandals, criminal cases and even terrorist acts. The history of relationships between laughter and religion is full of contradictions and raises many questions. For a long time, people underestimated the positive qualities of laughter and phenomena associated with it. They considered laughter, associated with sin and vice, only from the standpoint of critical, moralizing tonein no small part thanks to the medieval theology. However, starting around the end of the 19th century, there is a gradual change in the attitude of society towards the phenomena of laughter and humor. This trend affects all spheres of social and cultural life, including partly theology. However, the traditional religious worldview is still characterized by a significant degree of distrust towards laughter, fun, play, and humor. The presence of a hidden confrontation, between the religious attitude to these phenomena and the general trend of their positive reassessmentcan add additional tension in situations of offensive humor or humiliation by humor. Conflicts, which are based on dissatisfaction with specific examples of humor, on the one hand, are no different from conflicts occurring based on works of art for example. On the other hand, humor can provoke the inclusion of additional risks for one of the parties to the conflictprimarily reputational ones.