As if we needed further proof that devout Christians are terrible at making quality entertainment, here’s “The Real Housewives of the Bible,” a DVD that you can purchase online if you find Tyler Perry movies too racy. Created by religious sexpert Ty Adams, the series retells Bible stories to help modern women with their lives and marriages.

“If you want to find out about love, you go to the original manufacturer, you go to the blueprint. God himself is love and he understands relationships more than any of us and he understands how love operates more than any of us because he is love,” Adams added. “God is not as far away from your experiences and will understand. I think it’s an excellent opportunity for people to see how the Bible actually relates to everyday life.” [Fox News via Gawker TV]

My favorite Biblical wives are Lot’s wife (who got turned into a pillar of salt for looking over her shoulder) and Job’s wife, who God killed to test Job and then later replaced with a new wife. The everyday lessons for modern women: (1) obey or be turned into a condiment, and (2) your husband will be just as happy with a new wife. The Bible rules.

Earlier this week, Matt wrote about how the Mormon-owned KSL-TV NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City will refuse to air “Playboy Club” when it premieres in the fall. It’s either because they really hated Amber Heard in Drive Angry or, more likely, they believe they’re too pure to be associated with the Playboy brand.

But this isn’t the first time a religious group has gotten righteous and holier-than-thou over a TV show, and it certainly won’t be the last. Click through for ten other examples of TV versus religion. WHO’S YOUR MESSIAH NOW?

1. “Naked News”

I haven’t thought about “Naked News” since roughly 2005, when I discovered the Internet had free porn. But it’s still around (on TV now) causing trouble for some, and not just for those who are looking for an in-depth jouranlistic report on what happened in New Zealand’s bush rather than…never mind. According to South African website Channel 24, “Family Policy Institute said in a statement that certain Church [organizations] have committed to encourage church alliances and congregations in South Africa to boycott e.tv until it cancels the controversial “Naked News” [program] and all other pornographic content from its broadcasting schedule.” Supposedly, millions of people joined the boycott, but “Naked News,” which is produced in Canada, continues to air and has been so popular that a South African version is in discussion.

2. “Willing Willie”

A Filipino game show called “Willing Willie” sounds so honest and respectable, certainly not conjuring images of little children named Willie getting sodomized. While there was no pedophilia involved, there was a crying six-year-old boy named Jan-Jan being forced to do a sexy “macho dance” to Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” in front of a laughing audience and tens of thousands of viewers. The show’s host, Willie Revillame, egged him on, saying, “He’s even crying. That’s how hard life is. Of course he will dance like a macho dancer despite his age for his beloved family.”

When the clip went viral, the sh*t hit the proverbial fan and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines condemned “Willing Willie.” According to Father Edwin Gariguez, executive secretary of the National Secretariat for Social Action, Justice, and Peace (the church’s “social development arm”), “The management and host of the show brought shame not only to (the boy) and his parents but to media practitioners in general.” In April, “Willing Willie” went on hiatus due to an exodus of advertisers — before returning in May with a new name, “Wil Time Bigtime.”

3. “NYPD Blue”

In 1993, the American Family Association, led by Reverend Donald Wildmon (whose last name is false advertising), targeted Steven Bochco’s “NYPD Blue” as a potential threat to the American way. Meaning he was scared of Dennis Franz’s ass and still bitter that “Cop Rock” had been canceled after only one season. Unlike the rest of the country, who just decided to look away, Wildmon did something about it: he took out full-page ads in newspapers, called the show soft-core porn, convinced a fourth of ABC’s affiliates to not air the premiere, and predicted the show would be gone in two months. The pilot still managed boffo ratings (probably because of the controversy), affiliates quickly caved in, knowing that they stood to lose millions by not airing the show, and “NYPD Blue” ran for 261 episodes. Twelve years later, Wildmon’s son, Tim, admitted that the eight week prediction was “wrong” and that “NYPD Blue” “started the trend toward more sex, violence, and profanity on television, and has led to the downfall of television overall,” which explains “Raising the Bar.”

Mark Burnett, who established himself as the biggest name in reality television with hits like “Survivor” and “The Voice” (not to mention “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”), will shift his focus to scripted TV with a ten-hour miniseries for History that will tell different stories from the Bible.

The series will have five two-hour parts, Mr. Burnett said, and each will probably contain two or three biblical stories. He and his team are selecting the stories for the series, he said [translation: they're reading the Bible for the first time], which will be in production through next year and shown in 2013.

“Some of the stories are obvious,” Mr. Burnett said, like Noah’s Ark, Exodus and accounts of the birth and death of Jesus. But the project will also cover stories that Mr. Burnett said he was unfamiliar with. [NYT]

Well, Mr. Burnett, I’d like to take this opportunity to familiarize you with the official version of Sodom and Gomorrah. Did you know that people used to have sex with rocks painted to look like God’s face?

Anyway, I guess it’s about time Hollywood warmed up Cecil B. DeMille’s work and served it to us. After this does awesome ratings, maybe Burnett can get God on board for a Rapture-themed reality show: twenty sinners compete to change their ways and repent, but only one will get to Heaven. Tentatively titled “Who Will Save Your Soul?”

Below is a local news report from ABC’s Houston affiliate that investigates a Christian-themed pole-dancing class in Old Town Spring, Texas. It’s just like a regular pole-dancing class, except students dance to Christian music instead of Def Leppard or Pussycat Dolls.

“God gives us these bodies and they are suppose to be our temples and we are suppose to take care of them and that’s what we are doing,” instructor Crystal Dean said… ”I do feel a spiritual connection whenever you have the music on and it’s singing about lifting you up and being closer to God. You do feel that,” she said.

There are those who just can’t get past the stigma. ”In Gods eyes, it wouldn’t be attractive,” said nineteen-year-old Eric Purgason. Purgason’s family runs Lord and Nature, a Christian gift shop neighboring the Christian pole dancers. [ABC Local]

The Christian gift shop is next to the Christian pole dancers, across the street from the Christian organic food market, and caddie corner from the Christian taxidermy shop. It’s the heart of the Christian district.

Personally, I like to pretend that Golgotha was the first strip club. “Gentlemen, put your hands together! Please welcome to the center cross… JESUS OF NAZARETH!” And then Jesus comes out in his little loincloth to Nine Inch Nails. ….I’m going to hell, aren’t I?

Uh oh, somebody ate at Taco Bell.

Discovery Channel is teaming up with the Catholic Church to create a reality show about exorcisms. With real exorcists. It’ll be kind of like “Ghost Hunters,” but approved by the Vatican. It’s always nice to get the official Catholic Church stamp of the approval, a pleasure that gays and abortion clinics will never know.

The Exorcist Files will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes access into the Vatican’s case files, as well as interviews with the organization’s top exorcists — religious experts who are rarely seen on television.

“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think,” says Discovery president and GM Clark Bunting. [Inside TV]

Yeah, don’t try to tell people what to think, television! That’s religion’s job!

Morning news shows are the absolute best. Whether they’re f*cking chickens or missing bridge implosions, they always have a looseness to them that tells viewers, “Give us a break, the B team here has three hours to fill.”

That may help explain why this old clip from “Good Morning Mississippi” exists. It’s just three young dudes rocking what appears to be some approximation of hip-hop dancing to what sounds like Christian rock’s approximation of hip-hop music. It is positively HYPNOTIC. And just when I thought it was a looped video of the same moves that would never end, they actually dance out a pantomime of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (see the 2:20 mark). I bet those dudes get mad trim to abstain from.

At the end of the video, there’s some unnecessary editorializing from the YouTube uploader. It’s like, dude, you don’t need to lecture us about Mississippi’s education system. I mean, here’s the website for “Good Morning Mississippi.” If the local ABC affiliate is getting its coding from the Geocities graveyard, I can probably connect the dots myself.

[The Clearly Dope]

Oh, Janine Turner. She was such a lovely footnote to the ’90s: she had a charming role in a successful TV show (brassy pilot Maggie O’Connell in “Northern Exposure”), and she played the love interest in one of the less-sucky Sylvester Stallone movies of the decade (Cliffhanger). And while she returned to respectable television in one season of “Friday Night Lights,” this is what’s become of her since: a poor man’s Lisa Rinna shilling for something called “Christoga.”

What’s Christoga, you ask? It’s Christian yoga (“yoga-filled body, Christ-filled soul”), and it’s a necessary development because regular yoga secretly spreads blasphemous Hindu teachings.

I guess it goes without saying that she’s part of the Tea Party movement, huh? Great. It’s getting impossible to enjoy a little ’90s nostalgia without some wacko broad opening the door for a political flame war. I guess I’ll toss Janine over here in the crazy pile with Victoria Jackson and Christine O’Donnell.

The chalkboard gag from last night’s “Simpsons” episode is actually generating some buzz on the Internet, which is more than I can say about any episode of “The Simpsons” in the last seven or eight years. It refers, of course, to the ongoing circle of intimidation/fear/censorship that’s been going on over at Comedy Central with “South Park’s” satire of religious icons.

“In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind,” South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote on their Web site. “We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.” [Raw Story]

Anyway, I’ve never liked it when “South Park” or “The Simpsons” or “Family Guy” tried to poke fun at each other, so a little show of solidarity is cool to see. Although it’d be a lot cooler if every TV show just added a Muhammad character to piss off righteous religious fanatics. Seriously, everybody, you can do whatever you want with Muhammad’s image. If we all get in on this together, Revolution Islam will be way too backlogged with making veiled threats to ever back them up.

(image from Internet Today via BuzzFeed)

I’m getting pretty tired of everyone coming down so hard on Revolution Islam, the group that warned Trey Parker and Matt Stone that they were probably in danger because “South Park” denigrated the image of the Prophet Mohammed. Last night, Jon Stewart spent ten minutes talking about freedom of speech and censorship on “The Daily Show” that culminated in a crude epithet towards the Muslim group (see video below), and this morning the Revolution Islam website was hacked (inset).

Revolution Islam did NOT threaten Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They merely used their own freedom of speech to warn Stone and Parker of dangerous religious zealots, while at the same time standing up for a revered icon in their religion. As an act of solidarity, I created the most respectful image of Mohammed I could imagine. You’ll note that the prophet has taken the mighty form of Godzilla, and he’s firing lasers from his eyes and mouth to destroy the godless hedonists at the Rehab pool party in Las Vegas, America’s most prominent symbol of sin. Whatever your feelings about Islam, you have to admit, Godzillahammed is pretty sweet.

Man, it feels good to stand up for what’s right. And since Revolution Islam and I are both based in New York, I welcome them to thank me in person.

So a priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a Buddhist monk walk into a room with 10 atheists… No, seriously.  It’s a new game show called “Penitents Compete” proposed by Turkish TV station Kanal T in which converts would win a trip to either the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca, or Tibet.  This sounds amazing to me.  Of course, if you can find something awesome, you can look outside and there’ll be religious people picketing:

But religious authorities in Muslim but secular Turkey are not amused by the twist on the popular reality game show format and the Religious Affairs Directorate is refusing to provide an imam for the show.

“Doing something like this for the sake of ratings is disrespectful to all religions. Religion should not be a subject for entertainment programs,” High Board of Religious Affairs Chairman Hamza Aktan said.

Yeah!  Making religion entertaining cheapens what religion’s all about: judging other people and bombing them for their beliefs.