The popular image of fundamentalist faith — whether Jewish, Muslim or evangelical Christian — is humorless, intolerant and angry, unhesitant to cast the first stone, sometimes literally. The words "whimsy" and "orthodoxy" do not often appear in the same sentence.

Yet humor is a way of explaining religion — to its adherents and to others. Increasingly, believing members of orthodox faith traditions are able to joke about their foibles and shortcomings before an audience of their community — if only in the safe, sheltered environs of a mosque social hall, an Israeli comedy club or a sold-out Apostles of Comedy concert at a central Florida megachurch.

In other words, Campbell is in good company when it comes to having a little fun with fundamentalist faith. "Today's religious comics aren't afraid of proclaiming their ethnicity, nor are they desperate to apologize for who they are," says Simcha Weinstein,an Orthodox rabbi and author of Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st Century."They are being themselves for better or worse and have the confidence to laugh about their frailties."

Gentle jokes

Brad Stine is an angry, braying stand-up comic whose best-known venues are Promise Keepers rallies that have drawn thousands of evangelical Christian men to coliseums. He once admonished conservative churches that were burning Harry Potter books: "Here's a good rule of thumb: If Hitler tried it — maybe go the other way." His first book was titled Being a Christian Without Being an Idiot: 10 Assumed Truths That Make Us Look Stupid.

Shazia Mirza, a British stand-up and practicing Muslim, has taken the greatest risks.

"Last year, I went to Mecca to repent my sins, and I had to walk around the black stone," she told one audience. "All the women were dressed in black; you could only see their eyes. And I felt a hand touch my bottom. I ignored it. I thought, 'I'm in Mecca, it must be the hand of God.' But then it happened again. I didn't complain. Clearly, my prayers had been answered."

For the most part, however, the emerging cohort of male Muslim stand-ups — some of whom have appeared in the comedy documentary Allah Made Me Funny — have found it safer to riff on their shared immigrant experience and the excesses of the anti-terrorism hysteria. Though they are reluctant to joke about their faith directly in mixed audiences, as Mirza does, some do poke gentle fun at Muslim fundamentalism in venues in the Islamic world.

Such self-deprecating humor is a mark of theological maturity — and I'm not joking. But it can be a tricky business as well, giving tacit permission to members of the culture at large to laugh at someone else's faith in an acceptable way. Yet if non-believers, outsiders, told some of the same jokes on national television, vociferous protests would no doubt follow. Like those that greeted the mean-spirited cheap shots in Bill Maher's movie Religulous.

As with racial, ethnic and, most recently, immigration status, religious humor operates on two tracks: internal dialogue and external conversation. Stine is a good example, as are others like him who appear on the DVD comedy revue series Thou Shalt Laugh. On one level, his routine is based on shared hostility by evangelicals toward the majority culture — and its toxicity: We're blessed and they're damned. But the jokes can also look inward for flaws and inconsistencies, such as Stine's Harry Potter riff and his book title.

There might come a time when a religious comedian will be able to cross over with a somewhat diluted version of his or her old act. So far, there have been no breakout, mainstream comedians from the Muslim or evangelical communities who have enough heft to merit a primetime network sitcom.

Logan Sekulow would like to change that. Sekulow, the son of national Christian legal advocate Jay Sekulow, is the creator of The Logan Show,an evangelical cross between HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Larry Sanders Show. In it, Logan is the host of a late-night talk show that is bounced from one religious network for not being "Christian enough." This actually happened to him.

A younger crowd

Disarming and self-deprecating humor could also account for the rise of younger, suburban, megachurch pastors such as California's Rick Warren and Florida's Joel Hunter.Both are Bible-believing evangelicals who are known for being able to laugh about themselves.

"The more seriously we take God, the less seriously we need to take ourselves," says Hunter, of Northland Church in suburban Orlando. "Self-deprecating humor not only reduces the intimidation factor, it personifies the possibility of success of people with flaws. Pastors who can joke about their own shortcomings are paradoxically making the ideals of religion seem more possible by putting them in a common human experience."

Humor is the final frontier of broad cultural acceptability and, yes, integration. When an imam and an evangelical preacher walk into a bar with the classic setup's more familiar trio of a priest, a minister and a rabbi, it won't matter that the newcomers don't order drinks. The important thing will be that they are in on the joke.

Mark I. Pinsky, former religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, is author of The Gospel According to The Simpsons and A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.