Joking, prophetically: the use of humour in Mormon leaders’ sermons

Abstract

The use of humour in sermons may seem incongruous, or distracting, since the traditional sermon’s function is seriously didactic. Nevertheless, and unusually perhaps for a ‘new’ minority Christian denomination whose members have a reputation for being ‘rather dour and pious’, there exists a strong tradition in the Mormon¹ Church for sermonic humour. Indeed, this tradition is officially sanctioned and modelled by Church leaders, who - regarded by the membership as modern-day prophets and apostles - thus lend the tradition ecclesiastical authority endorsement. This paper seeks to contribute to the emerging area of research into minorities and humour, by presenting the results of an analysis of Church leaders’ sermonic humour. To study one religious minority’s sermonic humour, is to add to our wider understanding of minorities’ humour practices, suggesting how they might intersect with each other in an increasingly multicultural-multireligious community such as the USA.

Keywords:

• Humour
• mormon
• religion
• sermons
• minorities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The original data-working set can be made available on request through an email to the author.

Notes

1 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is more commonly known as the Mormon Church, or the LDS Church. For brevity, and because of the Church’s officially stated preference, this paper uses ‘the Church’ in most instances.

Additional information

Funding

There is no funding to declare.

Notes on contributors

Adrian Hale

Adrian Hale (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at Western Sydney University, Australia. His research and teaching areas are: Linguistics, Academic English, Discourse Analysis, Linguistic Studies of Humour, and Mormon Studies, especially for Humour, LBGQT + and Policy.