Humor is a
20th-century addition to the visual world of American religion. Whereas signs outside a
church in the 19th century told passersby what type of worship occurred inside the
building, in the 20th-century churches began to use signs with movable letters to convey a
message. The first messages were still in informational nature--who the pastor was, when
services met, and what text would be preached on during the coming Sunday, together with,
in some churches, a title for the minister's sermon. As advertising and car culture both
grew in their social impact throughout the 20th-century, commercial advertisers used signs
to to glean the attention of potential consumers. From the barns whose roofs read
Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco
about cheap cigarettes to a series of small humorous signs adding up to a
pitch for Burma Shave, the American landscape was fast becoming a place where people with
something to sell used entertaining words and images to gather an audience. By mid-century
American Protestant churches were using their signs to make clever word plays designed to
entice people into attending their fellowships. The featured object of the month is a
church sign with one of the most popular word plays of all-time. It reads, "WHAT IS
MISSING FROM CH CH? UR" the opposite side of the same sign, also shown, has a more
contemporary plea for church attendance: "NOW TAKING RESERVATIONS, SMOKING OR
NON-SMOKING." In this case, the messages were featured on the sign of a Baptist
Church in River Falls, Alabama in September 1999.
Return to the objects page
Return to the project home page