CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS SCHOLARS AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMEDY IN CONTEMPORARY NIGERIA: AN ETHICAL APPRAISAL OF THE USE OF RELIGIOUS TEXTS

Abstract

The moral landscape of contemporary Nigeria is complex and multifaceted, with the country's pluralistic society compounding ethical dilemmas across various facets of human endeavour. The emergence of comedy utilizing religious texts in Nigerian society has sparked critical ethical concerns, particularly among Christian religious scholars. This paper conducts an ethical appraisal of the use of religious texts in comedy, examining the moral implications of this trend. Employing a qualitative research approach, the study analyses comic content and its use of religious texts, arguing that justifying comedy for its own sake is insufficient without critically evaluating its contextual use of sacred texts, especially within the Christian circle on social media. The paper contends that a critical analysis of the use of religious texts for content creation by Christian comedians on social media is essential in assessing the ethical implications of comedy in contemporary Nigerian society. Hence, this paper selected a comedy content that used religious texts to evaluate the ethical implications.