In the Simpson household, prayer most frequently takes the form of blessings at mealtimes, including grace over take-out fast food and, on at least one occasion, in a restaurant. Often, the prayers are perfunctory, as in Bart’s “Rub a dub, dub, thanks for the grub” or Homer’s equally succinct but barely more reverent, “Good drink, good meat, good God, let’s eat.” On one occasion, Bart seems to speak the unspeakable: “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.” In the early 1990s, the young child of a member of Willow Creek Community Church, the megachurch in South Barrington, Illinois, offered a version of this grace at the family table, shocking his father. The man complained to a minister, Lee Strobel, saying that the child was prohibited from watching The Simpsons but had picked up the prayer from a commercial advertising an upcoming episode.
Strobel, a former journalist at the Chicago Tribune who became a teaching pastor at Willow Creek, used the incident to introduce a sermon titled “What Jesus Would Say to Bart Simpson.” Strobel explained that the episode’s grace was “an exaggerated look at life from a kid’s perspective, with a kernel of truth at its core.” Because Bart is so uninhibited, he
says things that other people only think. When he prays, “Why should we thank you, God—we bought this ourselves,” people recoil in horror. Yet isn’t he just expressing a sentiment that a lot of people secretly harbor? They’d never say it, but don’t many people live their lives with the attitude that they’ve earned what they’ve received and that God really had nothing to do with it? So, in ways, Bart is merely more honest than most.1
Grace at mealtime is far more common than prime-time television would suggest. A 1999 Gallup survey found that 51 percent of Americans says a blessing over food always or frequently. In The Simpsons, such prayers can express a larger gratitude, beyond simple sustenance. Next door to the Simpsons, at the home of the evangelical Flanders family, father Ned prays, “Dear God, thanks for Ziggy comics, little baby ducks, and ‘Sweatin’ to the Oldies’ volumes one, two, and three.”
The Simpsons are “a family where God has a place at the table,” said Robert Thompson of Syracuse University in a newspaper interview.2 Homer gives thanks for his job. One evening he takes the opportunity to thank God “most of all for nuclear power, which has yet to cause a single, proven fatality, at least in this country.” And at Thanksgiving he prays, “We especially thank you for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is, except solar, which is just a pipe dream.” Yet the family sometimes acknowledges during grace that its blessings are mixed and, this being The Simpsons, things simply spin out of control. After one particular Thanksgiving turns into a disaster, Homer loses it, offering thanks “for the occasional moments of peace and love our family’s experienced . . . well, not today. You saw what happened. O Lord, be honest! Are we the most pathetic family in the world, or what?” (His sister-in-law Selma comments, “Worst prayer yet.”) By the conclusion of the episode, the conflicts are resolved and, as the soundtrack plays “We Gather Together,” the family eats turkey sandwiches. “O Lord,” Homer says, “on this blessed day, we thank thee for giving our family one more crack at togetherness.”
On another occasion, Homer gives way to exasperation. “Dear Lord, thank you for this microwave bounty, even though we don’t deserve it,” he says. “I mean . . . our kids are uncontrollable hellions. Pardon my French, but they act like savages! Did you see them at the picnic? Of course you did; you’re everywhere, you’re omnivorous, O Lord! Why did you spite me with this family?”
As in all aspects of faith, belief, and religion, Homer has a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of prayer. Beginning a contest with his neighbor, he notices that Ned has his hands folded and his eyes closed. “Hey, Flanders,” Homer shouts, “it’s no use praying. I already did the same thing, and we can’t both win.” Yet on another occasion, Homer muses, “God does so much for me, and he doesn’t ask anything in return.” Usually more in tune with the Word, Marge can also get a little wobbly about prayer. When a series of family cats die, Marge loses her temper at one of the funerals, saying, “Lord, you better stop killing our pets.” She explains her threats to God to her family by saying, “There’s only one way to deal with a bully.” In another episode, she says, “If I believe hard enough, sometimes God cuts us a break. After all, we pay his salary.” (Homer and Marge give thanks before marital sex, even though they acknowledge in their prayer that God will be watching.)
Prayer at the Simpsons’ is fervent in the face of disaster, like a hurricane or a comet bearing down on their cartoon town. It often comes in the form of a bargain: “Dear God, this is Marge Simpson. If you stop this hurricane and save our family, we will be forever grateful and recommend you to all of our friends”; likewise, during a nuclear meltdown begun at Homer’s workplace, Marge prays, “Dear Lord, if you spare this town from becoming a smoking hole in the ground, I’ll try to be a better Christian. I don’t know what I can do. Ummm . . . oh, the next time there’s a canned food drive, I’ll give the poor something they actually like, instead of old lima beans and pumpkin mix.” In desperation, Homer can even forget the exact nature of the divine: “I’m not much of a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman.” And the Simpsons are not unique in this respect. In the face of these and other imminent disasters, all of Springfield is seen praying, in church, at the nuclear power plant, and even on a hillside where a divine apparition seems to have appeared. In a fantasy sequence about the Puritans’ voyage to America, Reverend Lovejoy is the chaplain who thanks God for the abundant wind and rain, in an obsequious and transparent effort to abate a storm that is buffeting the Mayflower. It has no effect, so he gives up. “Kissing your ass is getting us nowhere,” the minister says to God. Even lesser primates pray. When Mojo, Homer’s abused pet monkey, is dropped off at the Animal Assistants Program, he frantically taps out on a keyboard the message: “Pray for Mojo.”
Intercessory prayer is rare in the series. Characters pray directly to God for what they want. Imprisoned in the Tower of London for insulting Queen Elizabeth II while on a family visit to England, Homer prays for release, which comes in the form of a secret passage out. Between the extremes of grace for meals and appeals for physical survival come appeals for some of the simple—sometimes trivial and absurd—things for which most people pray. Bart promises to build a church if God will stop Homer from embarrassing him. When the Simpsons’ television reception goes out, Homer prays, “Dear God, just give me one channel!”
When God responds favorably to pleas like these, there is often a twist. Larry Dossey explores this issue in Be Careful What You Pray For . . . You Just Might Get It. He discusses the notion of “toxic prayer,” which can do damage to the petitioner or others. For example, Homer and Marge approach the houseboat of a judge he has been feuding with. Homer tosses a large chunk of concrete, praying, “Lord, guide this cinder block.” Homer wants a hair-restoring formula to work: “Dear God, give the bald guy a break!” It does work, but only for a time, and it turns Homer’s life upside down. Desperate to attend the big football game, Homer prays, “God, if you really are a God, you’ll give me tickets to that game.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, the doorbell rings and it is his next-door neighbor, Ned Flanders, whose company he does his best to avoid. Ned has tickets to the game and asks Homer to join him. Homer slams the door and cries out, “Why do you mock me, O Lord?”
In another episode, Homer is jealous when Ned’s prayer at a WNBA game enables him to win $50,000 in a contest for making a half-court shot at halftime. Flanders announces he is going to donate the money to “Bibles for Belgians,” an act of charity that prompts the town’s rich Texan to give Ned another $100,000. “How come all the good things happen to Jesus H. Nice,” Homer asks, “by which I mean Flanders? He’s got some secret, and I’m going to find out what it is.” Always willing to share his faith, Flanders explains that his secret is prayer. Homer is doubtful, but the next day, while searching for the TV remote and on his knees anyway, he gives it a try. Praying for divine direction, he spies the remote sticking out from under the couch. He is quick to draw the wrong—or at least the exaggerated—conclusion: “From now on, I’ll pray till my hands are chapped and bleeding.” At work, he sets up a prayer station, complete with votive candles, pleased to know that prayer is not only for professional athletes and Grammy winners. On his console, Homer has one of those pictures that changes when tilted, a version of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, and is tickled at the way it alternates between the images of a vengeful God and a loving God.
Driving home from the nuclear plant, he prays for “a delicious new taste treat,” clapping his hand as if commanding some genie. He also closes his eyes, causing a collision between a tanker carrying fudge and another truck loaded with precooked bacon. Again, he assumes that the fresh, hybrid bounty is the result of divine intervention. Increasingly carried away, Homer prays at the kitchen table for help for Bart and his homework, as organ music plays. Marge, the voice of sanity, cautions her husband, “God isn’t some sort of holy concierge. You can’t keep bugging him for every little thing.” Homer disregards her, kneeling at the clogged sink. Nothing happens, so Marge calls the plumber. As nimble as any medieval theologian, Homer interprets this, too, as divine intervention, “working through Marge, thy imperfect vessel.” His wife retorts, “Most people pray silently,” to no avail. The plumber is no help either, and, in fact, sets off a chain of destructive events that renders the Simpsons’ house uninhabitable.
Undeterred, Homer remains hooked on prayer. As the family walks into church on Sunday morning, he is so distracted by his devoted praying for a new place to live that he stumbles into a shallow hole being built for the congregation’s nativity display. Lying in the dirt, his leg broken, Homer looks up to see that an ambulance-chasing lawyer has walked by, which he interprets as another sign from heaven. Folding his hands, Homer replies to God: “That’s your answer. I’ll sue the church.” Marge is opposed, fearing the congregation will make fun of her husband in the church bulletin. But as Homer points out, it wouldn’t be the first time. Near him, in the hole, is a crumpled bulletin from the previous week, with a picture of Homer on the cover, asleep and drooling, sprawled on a pew. The headline reads, “Jesus Died for This?” Despite Ned’s pleas, Homer sues the church and is awarded a million dollars. “We don’t have that kind of money,” Reverend Lovejoy says, then adds with typical ecumenical sensitivity, “We’re not a synagogue.” Instead, Homer gets the deed to the church, which he insists is an answer to his prayer. Lisa suggests it might be the work of Satan, whom she doesn’t normally believe in.
In a scene reminiscent of the episode of the golden calf in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, Homer moves into the church and turns it into a scene of abject debauchery, possibly the most blasphemous portrayal in the series’ history. He drinks beer from the Communion chalice and plays air guitar with a large cross that once hung on the wall. (Al Jean, the season’s executive producer, later told a college audience at the Museum of TV and Radio in New York that Fox censors objected to the air guitar sequence and insisted that several seconds be cut.) The Alcoholics Anonymous group is expelled from the church’s outreach center to make room for the Simpsons’ dog; Marge observes that this does not seem very Christian. Homer says he will make it up by throwing a combination beer bash and housewarming party, welcoming guests at the door in the minister’s robes and serving popcorn from a wicker collection basket, as the hymn “Bringing in the Sheaves” plays. Increasingly disturbed, Marge leaves as the party begins to attend ad hoc services at the bowling alley, which is providing a home for the displaced congregation. Dodging stray bowling balls and gibes from nearby teams, Reverend Lovejoy urges the faithful to keep their hearts pure, but he soon concludes that there is no place for him in the community. He loads his station wagon outside the alley and drives off with his wife. “Looks like God packed up and left Springfield,” Marge tells Ned.
The minister’s departure is worthy of a local television report, at least on an admittedly slow news day, as anchor Kent Brockman intones, “Local Bible nut leaves Springfield.” Brockman then asks a correspondent how the town is coping with the spiritual vacuum. Just fine, apparently, is the answer. At the former church, Homer’s party is into its second day and is still going strong. From a distance, Ned surveys the scene through binoculars and declares that revelers have broken every commandment but one—which is unnamed—although it is then apparently broken. Flanders prays with his two young sons in the backyard, before a cross made of two pool cues tied together. “Wherever we are,” he prays, “you’ll have your church”—that is, wherever two or three are gathered. Rod and Todd begin speaking in tongues and rolling on the ground, “slain in the spirit” in a way not typical of a mainline congregation. But Ned is proud of this expression of Pentecostal fervor. “What great kids,” he says.
Back at the church, a steel beer keg comes flying out of the sanctuary, crashing through the upper reaches of a large stained glass window and interrupting an all-male, outdoor game of strip poker around a picnic table. Nearby, Homer, Lenny, and Carl are roasting raw steaks on sticks, over a roaring bonfire and under a clear blue sky. Naturally, the talk turns theological and, very quickly, sacrilegious. “It’s hard to believe that one God came up with all this,” Lenny marvels. His friend Carl agrees. “There’s probably a lot of gods.” Lenny thinks that some of these deities must be women, and Carl speculates that at least one must have “a thousand boobs.” Lenny says that’s the one he’d worship, while Carl prostrates himself in the parking lot before a stuffed deer’s head in the back of Lenny’s car. Clearly, without the discipline of organized religion, it’s a slippery slope to paganism in Springfield. Dark smoke from the bonfire wafts up, mingling with black storm clouds, as ominous music plays.
The moment of reckoning is coming, and at least one person at the party senses it. “Aren’t you afraid you might be—I don’t know—incurring God’s wrath?” Marge asks her husband, who is still blithely sipping brew from the sacred cup. He insists that “God’s cool,” but she disagrees. “I don’t know that he is,” Marge says. “In the Bible, he’s always smiting and turning people into salt.” Just then a pelting rain begins to fall. Homer insists it is just a little shower, and he jumps up on the picnic table, thanking God for the much needed rain. Then he takes one step too far, telling God to turn the rainwater into wine. Homer is in the wrong testament for what is coming: a prolonged lightning strike that lifts him off his feet and sends everyone else fleeing in terror into the church. As the waters rise, Flanders recognizes the impending, earth-cleansing flood. He pulls out of his driveway, pulling his boat loaded with pairs of animals. The deluge has forced people onto the church roof, and the rain shows no sign of abating. Homer is again on his knees, praying, but frankly perplexed at the extent of God’s wrath. “Surely this has proved whatever point you had,” he pleads. Apparently not, as the water continues to rise. “Oh, God’s ignoring me,” Homer wails. Bart has an intriguing theological suggestion: “Dad, maybe you should stop praying. See if that makes it happy.” Others on the roof are less conciliatory. Sideshow Mel denounces Homer as a heretic who has doomed them all. Moe the bartender suggests the crowd, which by now is transforming itself into a mob, skin Homer alive and set him on fire, which Carl agrees should appease God.
From above, a voice booms: “Leave that man alone!” It is not the Almighty but God’s (imperfect) man on earth, Reverend Lovejoy, using a loudspeaker while perched in the door of a hovering helicopter. The minister calls on his congregation to pray. “Lord, please spare this sinful town,” he says. “They were misled by a demon in blue pants,” a clear reference to a cringing Homer. Suddenly, the rain stops, the clouds part, and a dove flies by with an olive sprig in its beak, as the floodwaters suddenly recede and the congregation cheers. “I guess I learned something here,” Homer says. “God is capable of great anger and great mercy. But mostly, great anger.” The lesson, of course, is not to confuse plausible (or even implausible) coincidence with answered prayers—as some believers do in real life. Or to become so intoxicated by prayer that divine supplication becomes a demand.
This illustrates a fundamental and very thorny theological issue presented by The Simpsons. For hundreds of years, Jewish sages have debated whether a God who is truly kind and compassionate would grant prayer requests that are not in the best interests of the petitioners. “What limitations or controls does God put in place to prevent us from experiencing our destruction?” asks Rabbi Sholom Dubov of Maitland, Florida. “Faith drives an inner mechanism.” But in the Judeo-Christian tradition that has free will at its core, there is no guarantee that faith will not drive human beings in the wrong direction. The Roman philosopher Juvenal, a pagan, wrote of “enormous prayers which heaven in vengeance grants.” Thus, Bart gives spontaneous thanks to God “for all the bad things adults do, which distracts attention from the stuff I am doing.” (His protective mother, overhearing, adds a postscript: “He’s also thankful for your bounty, Lord.”) When the boy discovers a cache of lethal police equipment in a closet while playing at the home of the chief’s son, Bart voices gratitude “for this bounty I am about to receive.” Why thank God? Would a merciful God put murderous paraphernalia in the hands of children? Bart has it right when he voices his appreciation for discovering the keys to the school’s steam tunnels: “Thank you, Satan.”
On several occasions, characters ask for things so clearly beyond the pale that they are called on it. Bart prays for God to kill his nemesis and tormenter, Sideshow Bob, only to have Marge separate his praying hands and explain that such a prayer is wrong. When it comes to tasks like that, his father tells him, “you do your own dirty work.” In another episode, Homer and Bart hatch a typically hare-brained money-making scheme to steal a load of kitchen grease from the elementary school kitchen. As the two are preparing to pump out the grease, Homer pauses to recognize the power of the Almighty. “All right, son,” he says, “we’re about to embark on a most serious mission. Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Dear Lord, if you help us steal this grease tonight, I promise we’ll donate half the profits to charity.” To which Bart responds, “Dad, he’s not that stupid.” Homer agrees but is undissuaded from his course. “Screw it,” he says. “Let’s roll!”
“Bart Gets an F” offers the most detailed portrayal of the dynamic of prayer on The Simpsons. After the boy blows an oral book report of Treasure Island (which he neglected to read) and fails a test in colonial American history, Marge and Homer are called in and told by the teacher and the district psychologist that Bart is in danger of failing fourth grade. The boy pledges to do better, yet he fails to prepare for the next, crucial test and engineers a reprieve only when he fakes an illness. A makeup test, using cribbed answers, is a disaster. Time runs out the night before the test that will determine whether Bart has to be held back. He squanders his study time and faces a dire future.
At this point, Bart, kneeling by his bed, turns to God. “Well, Old Timer, I guess this is the end of the road,” he says. “I know I haven’t always been a good kid, but if I have to go to school tomorrow, I’ll fail the test and be held back. I just need one more day to study, Lord. I need your help!” (His sister Lisa overhears and scoffs, “Prayer, the last refuge of the scoundrel,” echoing the sentiments of many in recent years who have seen criminal defendants enter the courtroom with their Bibles and newfound faith.) Bart continues, listing God’s alternatives: “A teachers’ strike, a power failure, a blizzard. . . . Anything that’ll cancel school tomorrow. I know it’s asking a lot, but if anyone can do it, you can! Thanking you in advance, Bart Simpson.” And God delivers. After Bart turns out the light, the first flakes of snow begin to fall as the strains of the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah are heard—the series’ standard signal of divine intervention. A deep snow covers Springfield the next morning, prompting the closing of school. Bart, forgetting everything and reverting to type, prepares to head out for a day of carefree fun—until he encounters Lisa. “I heard you last night, Bart,” she says. “You prayed for this and your prayers have been answered.” Bart acknowledges his obligation: “I asked for a miracle, and I got it. I gotta study, man!” Bart passes the test by a single extra-credit point, and he tells his father, “Part of this D minus belongs to God.”
“I like to think that Bart Simpson is in line with Abraham and Moses in that he talks to God directly,” says Robert Thompson.3 In his previously discussed Willow Creek sermon, Lee Strobel deconstructs this exercise and finds that this example is also theologically consistent with the New Testament concept of prayer. In Matthew 6:6, believers are advised, “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” In Philippians 4:6, they are told, “In everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” And Proverbs 28:13 instructs, “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”
Bart does most things a praying Christian should do, Strobel says. He speaks directly and personally to God from the heart. He confesses his powerlessness. He admits his sinfulness. He voices faith in God’s ability and power to grant his petition, and he expresses gratitude before and after it is granted. “Maybe—as outrageous as it sounds—we can come away with a few good ideas about how to notch up our own interaction with God,” says Strobel, taking a lesson from The Simpsons’ bad boy.4
While, as Trammell notes, prayer serves the narrative purpose of exposing characters’ feelings and furthering the plot, “prayers are also used as quick, cheap, dispensable jokes.” Thus Bart also prays to Santa on Christmas Eve: “If you bring me lots of good stuff, I promise not to do anything bad between now and when I wake up.” The boy is a fervent believer in holiday miracles, despite his father’s skepticism. In the original Christmas episode, titled “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” Bart says, “Aw, come on, Dad. This could be the miracle that saves the Simpsons’ holiday. If TV has taught me anything, it’s that miracles always happen to poor kids at Christmas. It happened to Tiny Tim, it happened to Charlie Brown, it happened to the Smurfs, and it’s going to happen to us!”
The mutual hostility between the secular culture and religion—in the context of the national conflict over moral values— pops up frequently on The Simpsons. An inmate performing in a prison rodeo is booed after being identified as having been convicted of erecting a nativity scene on city property. In another episode, Bart’s elementary school teacher excuses two students, obviously Christian, when a sex education film is shown in class. “Ezekiel and Ishmael,” she says, “in accordance with your parents’ wishes you may go out into the hall and pray for our souls.” The authors of a chapter on the show in God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture ask, “Does The Simpsons reflect our attitudes—particularly toward religion—or does it shape them? Does television act as a mirror to show us ourselves as we really are, or as we ought to be? As the reactions to The Simpsons suggest, it is an important debate.”5 How different, for example, is the personal prayer life of characters in The Simpsons from that of most Americans? John W. Heeren, professor of sociology at California State University at San Bernardino, writes that the series is “not a reflection of religious reality, but a pop culture version of religion. As the postmodernists say, it is a ‘copy of a copy.’”6
I am not so sure that when it comes to religion, faith, and prayer that The Simpsons shapes, reflects, or copies our attitudes; it may simply portray our practice. The 1999 Gallup survey alluded to earlier found that 90 percent of Americans pray, and 75 percent pray on a daily basis. Ninety percent said that religion was very important or fairly important in their lives, although that reality is rarely evident in other series on prime-time television. By contrast, a 1994 study that surveyed the portrayal of religion on prime-time television found that it was “a rather invisible institution.” Religion was infrequently the focus of the narrative in the one hundred episodes studied over a five-week period, and fewer than 6 percent of 1,462 characters had a recognizable religious affiliation. Through this fiction, the study’s authors found, religion is “delegitimized” by television.
As with all things demographic in the United States, the trend toward prayer was strongly influenced and accelerated by the baby boom generation. By the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, increasing numbers of the generation that believed it would be, in Bob Dylan’s words, “forever young” were coming face-to-face with mortality, if not their own then that of their parents. And—some would say at long last—they began to shift their attention from themselves to their children, the generation that will succeed them. This happened to me in much the same way as it has to others of my peers. During one Jewish High Holiday service, around the time my son was three and my daughter was an infant, our rabbi at Temple Israel in Long Beach, California, Howard Laibson, suggested in his sermon one small way to get in touch with the divine: reciting the Sh’ma (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is my God, the Lord is one”) each night with the children before bed. When I heard those words they took me back to my own childhood when I would say the prayer with my parents and my younger brother. From that day on, evening prayers became a part of our home life. In religion, one thing has a tendency to lead to another. Some years later, at the suggestion of my wife, Sallie, we began to observe the arrival of the Sabbath on Friday evening, lighting the candles and blessing the braided challah bread, which she learned to bake herself. More recently, we have added grace before dinner, holding hands while we recite the Hebrew blessing for breaking bread and sing a simple Girl Scout grace my wife sang with her own family at dinner (“For health and strength . . .”).
Something seismic was at work in this look to the heavens by Americans, and I believe, at a deeper level, that “something” is reflected in the way the supernatural is portrayed in The Simpsons. Season after season, the Simpsons have continued to pray, especially Marge. Despite a “No Praying” sign in her husband’s hospital room, she asks for divine intervention. Faced with the latest in a never-ending series of sanity hearings endured by family members, she calls on God (in a soft but audible voice) to help her as she pleads her case to three psychiatrists. They ask her if she is praying, and she acknowledges that she is. Concerned by what they consider obvious evidence of mental instability, they inquire whether she thinks God is in the room. She replies that, yes, He’s pretty much everywhere. Case closed: Marge is certifiably nuts.
Of course, there is a downside to this new spiritual consciousness and openness to the supernatural that is also reflected in the series. New Age beliefs are consistently mocked and disparaged. But two green, slimy beings from another universe (the planet Rigel-4), Kang and Kodos, visit Springfield from time to time in Halloween fantasy episodes for typical alien undertakings: either to abduct, breed with, or probe Simpson family members, or to conquer or destroy the earth. The aliens’ presence in The Simpsons universe is as “real”—which is to say as unquestioned—as that of God. Characters on the show have no difficulty accepting both unconditionally.
Books such as Joel Achenbach’s Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe and Wendy Kaminer’s Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety explore this puzzling coexistence of belief in God and UFOs by many Americans. “No religion can simply be trusted to balance faith with reason,” Kaminer writes, “but regular social rituals, like attending church or New Age lectures, and private rituals, like prayer, or maybe watching Touched by an Angel once a week, can provide people with the opportunity to compartmentalize their beliefs, so as not to be consumed by them.”7
Unlike the regular characters on Touched by an Angel, the extraterrestrials on The Simpsons are in no way divine. To a degree, the difference between the irrationality of faith and the irrationality of extraterrestrials in Springfield is quantitative. Prayer and appeals to God are a much more routine and regular part of the Simpson family’s life and the lives of their friends than are the appearances of Kang and Kodos on the show. In one episode, the two extraterrestrial siblings reveal that they too are creatures of faith (sort of): They identify themselves as “Quantum-Presbyterians,” but only because Homer mistakes them for Mormons.