Last fall, San Francisco comic Lisa Geduldig put together a comedy show called "A Muslim, a Mormon and a Jew Walked Into a Bar: The Comedy of Religion." The title was a nod to those jokes in which, famously, three members of different religions — or, sometimes, three clergy of various faiths — are the set-up for a punch line that pokes gentle fun at one or all three.

The Mormon in Geduldig's trio of comedians is Bengt Washburn, who actually defines himself as an "unaccomplished Mormon," someone who has trouble following his faith's rules about, for example, coffee.

Here's a bit from his act: "Coffee is actually the most logical of all the rules. Think about it. You can't drink, you can't smoke, you can't have sex. Why stay awake?"

He makes jokes about Mormon culture, Washburn explains, but draws the line at making fun of, for example, temple ceremonies of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the first place, non-Mormons wouldn't get the joke, he says. And Mormons would be offended.

What you want to do as a comedian, he says, is to "expose a hidden irony, a truth," to reveal the world in a different light. But cross over certain lines — make fun of what is considered sacred — "and you won't be doing your job as a comic, because you didn't make people laugh," he says. A crowd can sense, he says, when a comedian is coming from an arrogant, condescending place.

"I don't want to destroy religion. But I would like them to take it a little less seriously," he says about people of any faith.

The "it" he wants people to take less seriously isn't theology, he says, but the places where any religion "goes beyond the confines of what faith and God intended."

Provo humorist Chris Bigelow is the creator of The Sugar Beet, a Mormon version of the national satirical magazine The Onion. So he's given a lot of thought, over the years, to the invisible, wiggly line he has tried not to cross.

Like Washburn, Bigelow's first answer about what's on the other side of that line is "the temple." But then he adds that actually The Sugar Beet once pictured the Provo LDS temple as a rocket blasting off. "We thought we were mocking something more cultural, the outside architecture," he explains. "But not everyone saw it that way."

Lampooning the LDS culture is OK, he says, but lampooning sacred practices and beliefs isn't. However, he adds, "it's not always clear where the theology and worship ends and the culture beings."

He soon learned that using the name of a real LDS authority in fake stories made some Mormons upset. For the most part, though, he thinks his satires were received with the tone he intended: affection.