Alaina Hirschi stands on a stage in Provo, Utah, ready to film her first-ever comedy special.
Even on her home turf, she's a bit nervous.
Hirschi was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are commonly known as Mormons. Like many Mormons, Hirschi served as a missionary overseas.
"I served my mission in El Salvador," she tells the crowd. "If you're not familiar, El Salvador is extremely dangerous. And I personally cannot imagine a group of people less equipped to live in a violent gang-run country than Mormon teenagers.
I had never seen an R-rated movie before, and the church was like, you're gonna be in one now."
The story gets big laughs, but Hirschi is cautious about how much she draws on her former faith for humor, especially in Utah, where crowds contain a mixture of former and current Latter-day Saints.
"You'll have ex-Mormons, and you'll have active, believing Mormons. It's always felt a little bit dicey to me, like, I don't want to offend the audience."
Religion has been a source of comedy since the Bible's Book of Genesis. Comedians like the late George Carlin and very much alive Jim Gaffigan have found a wealth of humor by mining their Catholic roots. Alaina Hirschi, Taylor Tomlinson and Dina Hashem are newer voices shining a spotlight on their religious upbringings.
Caroline Matas is an expert on religion and media at Princeton University who wrote her dissertation on humor in evangelical media. She says these comedians have spent years observing the quirks of their religion, from modern gender dynamics to ancient traditions.
"I think part of what being an insider-outsider combo brings in terms of comedy is being able to reflect on the absurdity or the gap between what you believe now and what you were taught," says Matas. "These comedians deliver their jokes in a way that doesn't necessarily feel like just an attack, because it's also sharing your past. "
"Sometimes I wish I was still Mormon," Hirschi laughs. "Because I'm sure I'd be getting crazy material every week at church."
In Prodigal Daughter, Taylor Tomlinson's February 2026 Netflix special, Tomlinson sometimes sharply criticizes her strict Christian upbringing. Wearing a cross around her neck, the comedian says she understands why her siblings are now agnostic about religion. "When you grow up with something that hurts you as a kid, you don't really want it in your Barbie Dream House as a grown-up." Other things she keeps out of her grown-up Barbie Dream House: wooden spoons and belts. As the audience laughs, Tomlinson seems almost relieved that they got the joke. "Oh, thank God, we were all lightly abused," she jokes.
Tomlinson says she has used comedy as a tool to work through her complicated feelings about faith. "When I write a joke about something, it forces me to figure out how I feel about it," Tomlinson says. "They're things that I'm working through or interested in. So it's not so much that standup is therapy for me anymore, but it is definitely inevitably a way that I process things."
Dina Hashem, a two-time, Emmy-nominated former writer for The Daily Show, grew up in a Muslim household in New Jersey, where she struggled in the gulf between her family's beliefs and the wider culture.
"I really didn't have any appreciation for it because it was taught to me as something I had to do. It was kind of shoved down my throat."
Hashem draws on those experiences when she writes her comedy shows. "I talk about this in my act, where, like, maybe there's a world where if I had learned it in a different way and it didn't feel so punitive to me, then maybe I could have felt differently about it."
One of her bits is about the aftermath of 9/11, when, as a teenage girl, she felt a kind of comic alignment with, of all people, former President George W. Bush.
"Every day he was like, 'Those people hate our freedom.'
I was watching that as a seventh-grade girl, like, 'Preach, George W. Bush! They don't want us to date boys. They don't want us to have sleepovers? Why do they hate freedom?'
I think it's really nice that I was probably the one Muslim in the world after 9/11 that was like, 'George Bush gets me.'"
Religion isn't the only topic Hirschi, Tomlinson and Hashem cover in their sets. They offer sharp observations on life, dating and politics. But Tomlinson says there's something universal that ripples across demographics.
"What I love about great standup is when it can help facilitate conversation and hopefully inspire whoever's watching it to be brave enough to talk about things that maybe they weren't comfortable talking about before.
These three comics prove that faith and a sense of humor aren't mutually exclusive. Their shows and humor create space for audiences to reflect, laugh, and maybe even find a little common ground. One punchline at a time.
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