Faith & Reason: Christian advertising with hilarious results - or a silly own goal?

There are, in contemporary language, certain phrases guaranteed to make the heart sink. Think "local artist", "committed Christian", "keen golfer", "drum solo", "boot sale", "amateur dramatics" and you get the idea. To these groan-inducing locutions could be added another: the Churches Advertising Network.

This loose affiliation of practising admen (I'd put money on there being no women involved) exists to promote churchgoing through the most excruciating of billboard campaigns. This week they excelled themselves in naffness. They were unveiling their Christmas poster which, it's hoped, will swell seasonal congregations up and down the land. Its more likely effect, however, will be to make actual worshippers raise their eyes heavenwards in incredulity and dismay and prompt non-churchgoers, or intermittent ones, to remember why they stopped going in the first place.

The poster itself features a 16th-century Flemish oil painting of the Nativity which has been digitally enhanced with, as desperate copywriters used to say, "hilarious results". Not so this time, I fear. What we have is Gerrit von Honthorst's depiction of a radiant Madonna, bathed in candlelight, looking lovingly into the eyes of her infant son, the Saviour Jesus, who has been dressed up to look like - wait for it - Father Christmas, complete with Santa-style Babygro and pointy red cap. Goodness knows how many hours - and a large slice of a reported £250,000 - were squandered on this. Yet leaving aside its sheer vulgarity, just what is the doctored image trying to say? That Santa and Jesus are the same? That believing in Christ is just like believing in Father Christmas?

No, no, irony, old boy. Don't you see? We're trying to say precisely the opposite - that the two are not the same.

But that really won't wash. The trouble with irony is that it relies on sophisticated levels of prior knowledge which, when it comes to what the Incarnation truly signifies, large swathes of the population simply do not have. Without that background knowledge, the proper effect of the irony is lost and the image is simply meaningless at best and misleading at worst. Indeed the very same, "humorous" image and even caption ("Go on. Ask Him for something this Christmas") could have been produced by the most militant secular atheist to imply that it doesn't matter which of the two fictions you believe in (Santa Claus or the Son of God), they are both equally illusory. For stable read grotto, for Holy Family, ox and ass read industrious elves and Rudolf. Both stories are fairy tales to be read to the credulous or the needy.

No, no, they'll say, that's not what's meant at all. We were saying that believing in the Incarnation is going to bring you better and more durable gifts than any that could be brought in Santa's sack. You've simply misunderstood what we were trying to say. But surely the first rule of advertising is to present an idea simply and clearly enough to avoid any possible misunderstanding. Having to explain the image, and to correct a "mistake" once the "wrong" interpretation has been made defeats the object of the whole exercise.

To all this, the Churches Advertising Network might simply say; look, it's a joke, aren't you getting carried away a bit here? Well, I'm all for jokes, and some of my best friends are humorous. But anyone who actually finds this poster funny - and you may have guessed that I don't - has got to be outside the faith. For those within it, the idea of tampering with an image of the Christ Child (whether with a funny hat or snaggle teeth) comes dangerously close to poking fun at their deepest, most precious beliefs. And the faithful will inevitably find that deeply offensive. Even the (very funny) Life of Brian, which made fun not of Jesus but of flawed human beings - from the dopey Magi who went to the wrong stable to the gullible masses who were prepared to follow bogus messiahs - made me feel decidedly uneasy with the final crucifixion scene.

The inescapable fact is that you cannot (though I wouldn't stop anyone from trying) make a joke about the deepest mysteries of faith without giving offence to someone. Of sex Woody Allen once famously said, "It's the most fun you can have without laughing." There is in that an implicit recognition that some things do not mix. You can have awe (or sexual communion) and you can have laughter, but you cannot have them both together. Which is not to say you cannot poke fun at the church or the clergy. The Vicar of Dibley is funny because it smiles at the foibles of religious people, yet is clever enough to stay well clear of the religious core and thus offends no one.

If advertisers want to boost church attendance through humour, they'll have to be a lot smarter than this to succeed. They might even try taking copywriting lessons from the bright spark at a south London church I saw the other day. At a fraction of the cost of a mainstream advertising budget someone had come up with a neat, clear, and, for once, satisfyingly ironical slogan. The billboard simply read, "Open Sundays". Now, it may not boost attendance, but at least it is funny.