I wanna get down on my knees and please Jesus

I wanna feel his love all over my face

With remarks like “aren’t you a bit old to be watching that stuff?” and “why are you watching cartoons made for teenagers?” Mrs Mac subtly conveys her disapproval of South Park. One of the more obscure channels is repeating the early series from ten years ago and every episode has several laugh out loud moments which more than offset a dose of bemused contempt.

Religion is a recurring theme. I’ve not done a scientific study but more than half the episodes have plot elements which involve the church, synagogue, God, Satan, religious practices or types of religious thought. By spooky coincidence on the day that the programme was generating publicity as the result of death threats from the wilder fringes of Islam in the US Lovefilm sent me the DVD of The Passion of The Jew. One episode depicts Mel Gibson as a masochistic, deranged anti-Semite willing to strip to his Y-fronts at the slightest opportunity; another tells how Cartman forms a Christian rock band. The lyrical fragment above is an example of his work. God, as so often happens, appeared to him in a dream and commanded that he record a platinum selling album. Arguing with characteristic brio against his doubting friends young Eric works out that even though Christian rock is “lame” it has a massive guaranteed audience.

South Park’s god is an interventionist deity. Given the lengths they appear willing to go to for the purpose of giving offence to religious believers – portraying John Paul 2 as a decrepit wreck; showing a Vatican synod at which only Father Maxi, South Park’s parish priest is willing to take action against paedophila to say nothing of the recent kerfuffle, you might assume that the show’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were using it as a popular culture platform to propagate atheism in the United States.

The opposite is the case. In the paedophila episode the town’s adults become atheists as a reaction to the widespread abuse. In order to win a bet Cartman had begun consuming food through his anus to prove that he could defecate through his mouth. He was successful. I don’t know what the current medical consensus is on the technique but in the show before long it’s proven to have real health benefits. Before long all the adults in town are doing it. You get a sense of why Mrs Mac sneers but bear with me.

While all this is going on Father Maxi is in Rome trying to change the Vatican’s rules on raping children. To find out just how it happens rent the DVD but he manages to destroy the whole hierarchical bureaucratic edifice and permits the reassertion of “real religion”. Seconds later South Park’s adults both stop being atheists and excreting through their mouths. Not very subtle.

That’s just one example. Over and over again for more than a decade Parker and Stone have lampooned what they judge to be intolerant forms of religious practice but, just like a liberal Anglican vicar, they make a case for a kinder type of faith. Even the great provocateurs of South Park draw the line at overt godlessness in the United States.