Comedians play a complicated role in modern culture. They get up on public stages to talk about nothing in particular, with no expertise. They go out of their way to put their flaws, failures, and shabbiness on display. They break social taboos and orchestrate their own persecution. And through it all, they seem to be touched with a kind of spiritual charisma. Sometimes they seem like prophets, speaking truths that no one else would dare. Sometimes they seem like children, wide-eyed and innocent. We can’t stop listening to what they have to say.

In God’s Fools, Jason Crawford tells the stories of these strange figures. He ranges over a motley crew of modern comedians, from the pioneers of early cinema to the provocateurs of contemporary stand-up. But he also follows the story of the comedian further back, into a surprising history of holy fools, wild prophets, and mischief-making saints. In his account, comic performers from Charlie Chaplin to the present mingle with older figures like Francis of Assisi, Symeon the Fool, the laughing martyrs Perpetua, Lawrence, and Akiva, and the weird hermit Thecla of Iconium. As he uncovers the through-lines that connect these ancient lives to the world of modern comedy, Crawford asks how comedians still fashion themselves as prophetic and sacred characters. He explores the things comedy shares with sacred experience: how jokes are like prophecies, and how comic resolutions are like apocalyptic visions. And he finds new ways of understanding the power of comedy in our own moment.