In the beginning was the punching nun puppet. Not to mention the Amish and rabbi punching puppets. And business is good. This past Hanukkah, favorite pets munched on dreidel-shaped dog biscuits.
Religious kitsch is out there, from the sort-of sacred to the seriously goofy.
The papal globe and the guy in the frog suit descend directly from 1800s pottery busts of John Wesley and teapots covered with Bible scenes. But what's new, if not improved, about these products is how widespread their sales are and how willing some of the merchandise seems to be to make fun of religion. Not everyone is laughing. Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities at Virginia Tech and has helped edit the journals International Popular Culture, the Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of American Culture. Sales of knicknacks that make fun of religion are evidence of a decline of respect for serious matters of faith, he said.