On the heels of a worldwide opening-weekend box-office take of 168 million dollars, as well as great reviews, it’s clear that The Simpsons Movie is reaching well beyond the long-running TV show’s fan base. Like the small-screen version, the movie incorporates many elements of faith, spirituality and divine intervention. And this is just the latest manifestation of the impact The Simpsons and other animated comedies are having on the way young Americans are encountering religion.

For example, when The Simpsons’ bad boy Bart drifts from his family’s Protestant faith, mother Marge knows exactly what to do. She scoops her son up and spirits him to a Christian rock festival. Parents will accept just about anything if they think it will keep their kids in the fold: hip-hop, skateboarding, baggy clothes, watch caps, paintball battles, tattoos, piercings, soul patches—as long as somebody calls it “Christian.” But Bart is steadfastly unmoved. “What’s wrong?” his mother asks. “You love youth culture.” The boy explains that it takes more than some over-the-hill rockers who turn religious to jump-start their sagging careers to revive his faith.

Is it surprising that some of the sharpest critiques of contemporary Christian music can be found in commercial television’s cartoon comedies? It shouldn’t be. Serious discussions of faith, spirituality and religion now take place regularly on Fox, Comedy Central and Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim. For the first time in history, young Americans seem to be learning more about religion—their own and others’—from TV than from their own worship traditions. And why shouldn’t they? They spend far more time sitting in front of the small screen than sitting in church.

Faith gets a sympathetic and understanding ride on The Simpsons, and it has for the past two decades. One of the chief gifts of the long-running, award-winning series is that the characters’ fundamental beliefs are animated but not caricatured. Sincere belief is not questioned. God is not mocked, nor is God’s existence questioned. (When He appears, usually in a dream, as in the Bible, God doesn’t have four fingers like other cartoon characters since Disney, but five. And His countenance is never revealed.) More than any other show on commercial television, The Simpsons mirrors the faith lives and practices of most Americans. The family says grace at meals, goes to church on Sundays and reads and refers to the Bible. They pray aloud and believe God answers their prayers. Their next-door neighbor, Ned Flanders, has become the best-known (and loved) evangelical in the country, at least among young people. Still, no one would mistake Homer Simpson and his family for saints. In many ways, in fact, they are quintessentially weak, well-meaning sinners who rely on their faith—although only when absolutely necessary. True to its reputation, The Simpsons is consistently irreverent toward organized religion’s failings and excesses, as it is with most other institutions and aspects of modern life.

And Bart is still Bart. He is not the youngster of which the prophet Isaiah said “a little child will lead them” (11:6, TNIV); with Bart, it is literally a case of “suffer the little children” (Mark 10:14, KJV). As a borderline pagan, Homer’s grasp of theological complexity is, at best, fuzzy. Asked by Bart what the family’s religious beliefs are, he answers, “You know, the one with all the well-meaning rules that don’t work in real life. Uh, Christianity.” Inexplicably, Unitarians have been the butt of most denomination-specific jokes (“If that’s the one true faith, I’ll eat my hat,” Homer cracks), although Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses come in for stray shots. As Tony Campolo—an admittedly old evangelist but a young-at-heart Simpsons fan—puts it, the show “can easily be mistaken for an assault that ridicules middle-class Christianity. It is not! What the show is really depicting through the antics of The Simpsons is the character of some of the people who are in our churches, and the ways they choose to live out their faith ... As an evangelical Christian, I find that The Simpsons provides me with a mirror that reflects my own religious life.”

The Simpsons Movie does not disappoint those—like me—who seek and find belief and spirituality. Homer’s contempt for and misunderstanding of Christianity are front and center, as is Flanders' essential goodness and faith. There is a Pentecostal moment in the First Church of Springfield, and a divine light points to the town’s salvation. At the same time, this is religion with a light touch. If you are not looking for religion in this movie, you won’t find it.

The TV show, however, has informed and influenced at least three generations of Americans who have grown up with the show. Beliefs and practices of Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and even cultists (but not Muslims) have been showcased on the program.

The Simpsons has made it safe—and funny—to build whole episodes around these kinds of serious issues. Consider just a few: The nature of the soul. Heaven and hell. How the Ten Commandments should be observed today. Why God wants us to worship Him. The pitfalls of blind faith. The Christian missionary experience in the third world. Preacher burnout. How to love your neighbor, especially an irksome one. Catholic-Protestant tension. To be sure, The Simpsons is not a television show about religion, these episodes and numerous references notwithstanding. It is a domestic situation comedy about modern life that includes a significant spiritual dimension, and because these weighty matters are coming from cartoon characters, viewers with no particular interest in faith are willing to accept them. Why is this important? From my experiences lecturing at high schools and college campuses since my book, The Gospel According to The Simpsons, was first published, I have found that when young people sit in a sanctuary or a lecture hall to consider faith and religion, a veil of skepticism descends in their minds. Yet, sitting in the comfort of a living room or commons room, watching cartoon characters in a half-hour comedy, they are willing to consider these issues with a more open mind.