Since Mike Warnke is coming to Calgary:

Mike Warnke is one of the most famous figures in American Christianity. However, unless you're a Christian, a Satanist, a scandal fiend, obsessive internet troll, or a vinyl collector, there is still a good chance you don't know his tale. Mike Warnke is a stand-up comedian. A Christian stand-up comedian. And despite a scandal-ridden career that would put Jim Bakker to shame, Warnke alone is responsible for what has turned into an enormous multi-million dollar industry - Christian stand-up comedy. Kinda nutty, ain't it?

In reality the Mike Warnke story has been recounted several times over the past decade and, yes, we're about to go through it again. This piece is more than that, however. It is a history of Christian stand-up comedy, from its roots in ventriloquism to its modern day standing as perhaps the wealthiest of all weirdo subcultures.

Christian stand-up comedy is a relatively new phenomenon, the start of which can be pinned down to the nineteen seventies. Prior to that point there existed plenty that could have been considered Christian entertainment but none of it was particularly (at least intentionally) funny. The nineteen fifties were an era of the staid and stuffy Christians, the schoolmaster stereotype, the real life Margaret Dumonts, the types that Warnke once described in his act as "look[ing] like they were baptized in vinegar."

In the late fifties a new theory on how to sway children to Jesus swept the culture and has survived for almost fifty years against all odds. Ventriloquism....

The show business phenomenon that was spawned by the deceitful marketing genius of Mike Warnke is both an enormous and uniquely American format. There is of course the chance that if "for Christian comedy ... the eighties are now," then it could experience the same crash that secular stand-up went through at the end of that decade. Perhaps Brad Stine will find himself performing for the rest of his life at a casino named after him in Branson, Missouri - the new Yakov Smirnoff.

As for Mike Warnke, he ignored the accusations that ambushed him fourteen years ago and stands by his discredited biography. He still scores steady gigs - although you have to admit they are strange gigs, like performing for the United States Navy in Japan or a convention of Canadian Christian business men in Northern Alberta. Most in the Christian comedy scene don't consider him part of the scene at all, but instead, a lone entity unto himself, who holds interest as novelty value only. Regardless of his tainted name, surely he must look on at the Christian stand-up comedy world of today with a feeling of pride knowing so much of it is because of him. What a country!

[via WFMU's Beware of the Blog]