Comedy is always about throwing the listener a little off-balance, about pushing against something — the status quo, stereotypes, expectations. Religion, on the other hand, is about "a sense of self and a sense of meaning," says Michael E. Nielsen, a former Utahn who teaches psychology of religion courses at Georgia Southern University. "You put your heart and soul into it." Not surprisingly, sometimes people feel offended when they think their religion has been mocked. People may say "Oh, lighten up," but that's often hard to do "if someone's cut you to the core," Nielsen says.

His Web site features religious jokes, with a disclaimer at the top of the page: "The humor you'll read may delight or it may offend, so venture forth at your own risk."

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Here's a joke that Lisa Geduldig sometimes tells: "Jews aren't supposed to eat pork. But there's a small, unknown clause in the Torah that if it's wrapped up in a wonton, it's OK."

In "A Muslim, A Mormon and A Jew Walked Into a Bar," Geduldig is the Jew. She likes to poke gentle fun at her Jewishness — but sometimes she tells the non-Jews in her audiences, "OK, you can't repeat anything I've said here." In the first place, she doesn't want to incite anti-Semitism, she explains. But also, she knows that the same joke told by a religious insider somehow sounds different — has a meaner edge, maybe — when it's told by an outsider.

That's why Mormons might joke among themselves about LDS undergarments, coming up with slang nicknames, but might feel offended if someone else makes the same joke. Some Mormons who have laughed at Salt Lake Acting Company's annual satire "Saturday's Voyeur" — with its jokes about missionaries and Mormon influence at the Legislature — stopped laughing when SLAC dressed its actors in LDS garments on stage.

Some comics have lines they won't cross. Others, like Bill Bronner, say there's nothing they wouldn't make fun of — it's how you do it that's crucial.

Bronner once ran the Comedy Oasis in Salt Lake City and now lives in Los Angeles, where he runs the "Free Speech Show" and the newly launched comedynation.com. As an agnostic, he says, telling jokes about religion is his way of "striking back" at people who tell him he's going to hell because he drinks.

"You're a little self-righteous if you think your religion is above ridicule but you're willing to stand in judgment of everyone else," he says.