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The Church Of The Comic Spirit: Including The Bear Lake Scrolls

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The cover art for Paul Wiebe's parody of the Old Testament, The Church of the Comic Spirit, strange though it is, reveals a lot about what lies within. It depicts a short basketball player (David) rising for a jumper in the snarling face of a defending Goliath. If you appreciate wacky, surreal storytelling, can suspend disbelief enough to accept the infusion of modern devices into ancient settings, accept irreverence as a high virtue, and are the sort who has viewed Monty Python movies multiple times, this book will be a gift from on high. Otherwise, you may find Wiebe's brand of absurdist humor a little forced at times and some of the twelve scrolls more amusing than others.

The funniest part of the book, for me, was actually the introductory portion, recounting in a tongue-in-cheek voice how Father Lecher was visited by angels, came upon the Bear Lake Scrolls, and launched the titular Church of the Comic Spirit. The parallels between the dubious origins and motives of this Church, and our more established religions, are dead-on. I also enjoyed the depiction of God as a somewhat hapless creator in "First Person Omniscient," the bawdy "Miss Holy Land," and the David-Goliath showdown on the hard court in "The Big Man in the Middle." Other scrolls, like the soap operatic "Playing God" were less engaging, although the genius of Wiebe's shifting narrative styles and creativity continued to shine through.

Overall this is a book that's worth giving a shot (whether or not you're well-versed in the Bible), written by an author with a true talent for religious parody and gift with words.

This novel is a comic masterpiece pure and simple. It brims with inventive characters. And after he's created them Wiebe puts them into the most absurd situations his supercharged imagination can concoct. In the first "Scroll" Eve is created by God as a playmate but later decides she wants a young stud and tricks him into creating Adam. There's also Enoch, who "walks" (read: jogs) at the Christian Country Club with God, who doesn't quite know what to do when things go awry. In maybe the funniest story David and the Marx Brothers square off with Goliath and his fellow Philistines in a basketball game that more or less follows the script of the Bible story. The list goes on and on. It includes Alazon Lecher, the discoverer and translator of the twelve Scrolls, and his four disciples, who help him interpret them and then set up The Church of the Comic Spirit and its theme park.

This is a character-driven novel but it has a subtle plot that runs like a thread throughout the Biblical dozen stories in of all places the footnotes. Each of the stories has its own plot of course. Without giving anything away let's just say that as the author hints in the Preface it involves a murder mystery.

Adding to the fun and originality of the book is that Wiebe is master of many styles and genres, eight to be exact. There are 5 short stories, a film script ("Miss Holy Land"), a series of newspaper reports ("The Tragedy at Sodom/Gomorrah"), a journal ("Moshe's Diary"), a series of letters to the editor, the transcript of a basketball game between the Gath Philistines and the Jerusalem Godfearers, a soap opera synopsis and interview with one of the actors and a set of greeting cards written by Solomon the Wise.

What kinds of readers will enjoy this novel? Not just the literary crowd or the Bible scholars. It's accessible to anyone. But it helps to know the Biblical texts it parodies. If you don't know them or can't remember them you'd do well to read those stories which the author helpfully cites in his introductions to the individual Scrolls.

This novel is not for all beliefs. The pious will complain that this gentle satire is the work of the Devil - which is close to the mark, being as how the author is some devilish writer.