One thing that I’ve noticed about South Park is that the default religion in the town is Roman Catholicism. Every one of the regular South Park boys (Cartman, Stan, Kenny, Butters) except for Kyle is explicitly shown to be at least nominally Roman Catholic. The only non-Catholics in town appear to be Jewish, mostly Kyle’s family. Other than the occasional episode where there is a religion du jour (e.g. the Scientology episode or the episode where the boys become tent revival preachers, or the Mormon episode) where that faith is forgotten for the rest of the series, why are there no characters regularly associated with other faiths? Are there any regular or recurring (not one shot) characters who live in South Park that follow any sort of Protestant faith, either on a nominal or devout basis? I think there were one or two episodes where there were Muslim characters in South Park, but those characters were forgotten one-episode guests. The Mormon family that appeared in the Mormon episode disappeared afterwards and was apparently never seen again on the show.
When the series began, South Park was supposed to be a really small town, so it wasn’t too strange for there to only be one church. It probably ended up Catholic because there were more weird news stories involving Catholicism for them to make fun of.
Christianity is Catholic. I’m sure someone on the internets has done some cross reference where they determine some character or another is never seen at Mass and not Kyle thus must be Protestant.
I like how the Simpsons handles it: everyone in town is Presbylutheran, but are Catholic or some other religion if they are ethnic stereotypes (Luigi, Fat Tony, maybe Willie?). Exceptions exist, e.g.: Disco Stu. And Bart and Homer almost, but they were saved from that spiritual damnation.
The episode “the Ring” covers Purity Rings, which are almost exclusively an evangelical Protestant thing. I don’t think it portrays any adults as involved, though. And of course, one episode has atheism and another “Strict Agnostics.”
Protestants are too skinny?
Have you been to, say, Mississippi?
Have you seen, say, South Park?
When I was a tween in a not-all-that-small suburb everybody I knew was Catholic, Lutheran, or Episcopalian. I married the first Methodist I knew.
Trey and Matt go for maximum shock value and Protestants aren’t the best vehicle for that in the U.S. Protestants aren’t one thing either, there are dozens of different denominations that can be very different from one another. They could have picked say, Southern Baptists to mock but there aren’t that many of those Colorado so it wouldn’t make sense. Moderate Protestant denominations like Episcopalians and Methodists just don’t have that much comic value. Catholics and Jews are both minorities in the U.S. but still common enough that it is plausible a whole town is dominated by them. There are plenty of news stories and drama coming out of both that they could twist into comic value.
Matt Stone (the co-creater) is Jewish (through his mother) but his father is Irish and presumably Catholic. That probably had a lot to do with the choices as well.
Or boring?
Catholics are a minority only if you dump every single Protestant denomination into a single bucket. Once you start separating, it turns out to be the largest denomination: that’s one weird definition of minority if you ask me, it’s not as if the people in that other bucket agree in much more than “Jesus was God” and “the Pope isn’t the boss”. Actually, not even that, since there are denominations where the first isn’t a requisite. Having a “generic Protestant” is not very easy; picking specific denominations carries its own connotations. The “Universal” Church is easiest to fit about anybody into.
If any of you rotten bastards cry “CITE!” I am going to have a hell of a job on my hands digging it up, but . . .
On the “Commentary Mini” on one of the episodes on one of the DVD sets, Matt and Trey specifically address why Catholicism became the default religion in South Park. They say that neither of them were raised religious so didn’t have specifics to draw from in creating church details. The one person on their staff who was actually an active church-goer was a Catholic- I don’t remember who they said it was but I remember it was a woman, possibly a writer.
So Catholic was the only on-staff input they had from which to draw specifics. After rolling with the Catholic thing for a while it became their comfort zone as they learned more about the Catholic Church from that staff member as well as now through their own research.
I was buying the DVD sets regularly up to about Season 8 or so, and I always listened to the “Commentary Minis” they would do. It is definitely from one of the DVD sets that I got the above info.
I would think they know something about Mormons, too, these days.
Wow, you really walk on the wild side, dontcha?
I thought Cartman was some sort of conglomerate Evangelical.
~VOW
And that’s a damn shame. Protestants need ridicule, too.
That makes sense. They seem to know fuck-all about Catholicism. Like one episode, I think one of the “Go God, Go” ones, where a “strict Catholic” was angry that his kids were being taught evolution. :rolleyes: Could’ve picked a religion that, ah, actually doesn’t teach evolution in their schools.
That reminds me. In one episode (two-parter?) , Cartman became a huckster fire and brimstone preacher. And in another he formed a Christian rock band, Faith + 1. Both obviously Protestant outlets, although in Cartman’s case both were cynical money-grubbing attempts.
Maybe I’m projecting stereotypes unto the characters, but I always thought Kenny’s family was some sort of born-again Protestant, maybe even Pentecostal.
Wasn’t that occasioned by the kids discovering Father Maxi having sex in the confessional? One could argue that their response (to corruption and hypocrisy within the Church) is itself analogous to Protestantism.
Even very small towns in the US (or at least in PA) tend to have more than one church.
Yeah, one church to go to, and one church to look down on the people who go there.