Boring Religious Service

Whether it's long sermons about sin and The Day of Reckoning and readings from the Bible or interminable chants, hymns and pipe organ solos, a religious service can be a long and boring affair. Sometimes the pastor's dry, monotone delivery is part of the problem. For some characters, like kids and teens, every activity they're forced to do is deemed to be boring. It may prove to be Nap-Inducing Speak, and family members may need to nudge them awake. Some characters might simply let their mind wander away entirely and have a Delicious Daydream about lunch.

May overlap with Only One Finds It Fun, if only one person enjoys or is actually paying attention to the service, like the stern Church Lady in the front. Some older, more conservative characters might feel that it's only fitting that religion proves to be unexciting, given that Good Is Boring.

Can also overlap with Forced into Their Sunday Best. Compare Windbag Politician for another authority figure who bores their listeners to death with lengthy speeches.

Contrast Inspiring Sermon and Suspiciously Specific Sermon.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Anya's Ghost: Anya describes Orthodox church as "long, boring and full of Russians" who never bothered learning English, and tries to make excuses not to go whenever she can; she's skipped for two months. It's also hinted that the deeper reason she hates church is that the elders always tell her she's too fat "while their ankles are spilling over their orthopedic shoes" and because she is expected to spend time with Dima, who she dislikes.
• Be Prepared: Vera doesn't quite get the Russian Orthodox church liturgies or what she's saying when she recites in church (and once gets caught fidgeting and reprimanded by an elderly woman next to her). She's especially annoyed at outdoor church service at camp, which is held rain or shine. That said, she does love the icons of the church, and has an image of the saint she's named for above her bed at home.

Comic Strips

• Beetle Bailey has several gags that revolve around Chaplain Stainglass's services being boring. One Sunday strip shows that his speeches in general are so dull that even animals fall asleep.

Films — Live-Action

• Keeping Mum: The Reverend Walter Goodfellow is well-meaning but boring, and presumably gives boring sermons, until he learns to be funnier. When Grace arrives, he says a particularly long prayer, until his wife Gloria interrupts him with "Amen".
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Just before the holy hand grenade scene, there is a long reading by Brother Maynard. John Cleese says in the DVD commentary that this was reminiscent of school assemblies.

Jokes

• A vicar tells his wife "I don't take offence if the congregation glance at their watches during my sermons ... just when they hold them to their ears and shake them".

• A priest dies and goes to Heaven. After spending some time there, he notices that a taxi driver is being treated with much more respect than he is, so he goes before God to ask why.
  Priest: Lord, why is that man being treated so much better than me? I dedicated my life to teaching others about you, but all he did for a living was drive a taxi.
  God: When people came to your church, were they always alert and paying attention to you?
  Priest: No. In fact, sometimes they fell asleep during my sermons.
  God: Well, that man was a taxi driver in New York City. And not only were the people he drove very wide awake, but they were usually praying.

Literature

• Adrian Mole is occasionally made to go to church by his grandmother. He considers the service to be "dead boring", and throughout the series is convinced that God does not exist anyway, because of wars, famines, and motorway crashes.
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Chapter V has a sermon given by the minister of the local church. It is so dry, monotonous, and droning that the audience's heads begin to sleepily nod during it.
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.: Margaret has a Christian mother and Jewish father but was raised without an affiliation to either religion. She attends two Christian services with friends and one Jewish service with her grandmother, but Margaret finds the services boring and hard to follow (as she doesn't know the songs or the meanings of anything) and spends the time counting hats.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg finds church services boring, and is annoyed that his parents always bring lots of toys to keep his little brother Manny occupied when they never did that for him at the same age.
• According to his letters, a particularly dull sermon is what inspired C. S. Lewis to write The Screwtape Letters.
• The Sopranos (Warner): While Father Ardlui drones on at morning mass, Kylah tries to pass the time by counting the number of tiles in the chapel.
• In Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn, British-Nigerian Yinka finds it hard to pay attention during her mother's long prayers, and during services at the church most of her family attends. She prefers the Anglican services she's started attending on her own.

Live-Action TV

• Anne Frank: The Whole Story: Before they go into hiding, we see Anne and her family attend Shabbos dinner at the home of Anne's friend, Hanna. Otto glares at Anne for fidgeting while Hanna's father recites the Kiddush.
• Cluedo: Lampshaded when the Reverend Green gives a particularly long answer to a question, and Bob Holness says "I wonder how long his sermons last on a Sunday?".
• Father Ted: Apparently, the titular protagonist is heavily prone to delivering hours-lasting, boring Mass sermons such as these. Apparently, they're really popular with nuns (which is a problem for Ted when he has to get through a Mass really quick in order to meet a female writer he fancies). In the Christmas special, Ted, suffering from Acquired Situational Narcissism, tries entertaining a party of fellow priests by watching a long Midnight Mass on TV with them, and all of them immediately decide Screw This, I'm Out of Here! (except for Father Todd Unctious). In the series finale, Tedd and Dougal have just come out of church from doing another sermon, when a Grumpy Old Man called Eugene approaches Ted:
  Eugene: Father, that sermon today... frankly, it —bored the arse off me!
  Ted: Well, Eugene, I'm not here to entertain you! If you want that sort of thing, go and see Jean-Michel Jarre or something.
  Eugene: What the hell was it all about, anyway?
  Ted: Well, it was—
  Eugene: Ah, Jesus! (walks off without even waiting for an answer)
  Ted: What was today's sermon about, Dougal? Do you remember?
  Dougal: Sorry, Ted. I was concentrating too hard on looking holy.
  Ted: To be perfectly honest, I couldn't give a toss.
• Though the Harper family is never actually seen in church in Mama's Family, there are numerous instances of them coming home from services, with the younger members generally complaining about how boring it was.
• Mr. Bean: In Act 3 of the self-titled first episode, Mr. Bean attends a church service that is so mind-numbingly dull that he does everything he can to avoid embarrassing himself by dozing off. This is accentuated by the vicar's sermon, which consists entirely of unintelligible mumbling (also voiced by Rowan Atkinson).
• Rome. To become tribune Marc Antony has to take part in a religious rite lasting several hours, causing him to declare I Need a Freaking Drink.
• The Vicar of Dibley: The first episode shows how the Reverend Pottle has driven away all the parishioners with his dull sermons, save for the parish council, who all struggle on through the service out of obligation. In the first of the seasonal specials, Geraldine falls into a funk after getting dumped, and it falls to Frank Pickle to be lay preacher. At least two older members of the congregation die of boredom, and another shoots themselves, driving the parish council to get the vicar back ASAP.

Stand-Up Comedy

• Bo Burnham: In "Rant", Bo complains a lot about religion; the first verse discusses what it's like at church, and he evidently finds it boring. He claims that it passes "fast as molasses", complains that it's "too early" to read more stories, and is sitting in the back listening to music while the others start to pray.
• Jim Gaffigan: In his comedy special Beyond the Pale, Gaffigan describes the length and tedium of Catholic church. He describes how he just "daydreams in church", checks out the women, and wants it to hurry up because he's "got some sinnin' to do".
  Gaffigan: If you've never been to a Catholic mass... it's still going.
• Standup comedian Richard Jeni frequently made comedy routines about being bored at the Catholic services when he was a child, including the joke that Mass was actually short for "massive head trauma" from all the times his mother smacked him while trying to get him to behave or sit still while he goofed off during the sermon. In one bit he concludes with leaving only to find God standing outside, as God himself was so bored by the service he ran out of patience and had to get away from it.
  God: I couldn't take one more minute of that stuff. I didn't know what eternity was until I walked into that joint!

Theatre

• The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan has the Mikado propose more humane penalties for social crimes, instead of the usual summary executions. A boring religious service would befall windbags and gossips under these new measures: "All prosy dull society sinners / Who chatter and bleat and bore / Are sent to hear sermons / From mystical Germans / Who preach from 10:00 'til 4:00".

Webcomics

• Scandinavia and the World: In Rise and Shine or go to Hell, Norway wakes up Denmark and Sweden in the middle of the night to drag them to a 3:00 AM mass in celebration of Duke Asbjörn becoming a saint after swallowing a splinter from Jesus Christ's cross (the author's notes state that both the deed and the duke were something she made up). As the priest announces that the service will begin with 150 hymns, 5 preaches, and 3 holy communions, Norway is wearing a starry-eyed expression while Denmark and Sweden get out the beer.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons: One of the biggest character flaws of Reverend Timothy Lovejoy is that he is The Bore and he delivers this kind of religious service constantly. It is extremely heavily implied that it's because he is uninspired and tired of being a Reverend (you can blame Ned Flanders for this).
  • "In Marge We Trust" opens with Reverend Lovejoy delivering a particularly dull sermon on "The Nine Tenets of Constancy". When his sermon causes the church attendees to fall asleep, Reverend Lovejoy has to resort to playing a loud bird sound to wake them up. Then after the sermon, we see the Simpson family coming home, with everyone except Marge overjoyed that it's over:
    Marge: Church shouldn't be a chore; it should help you in your daily life!
    Homer: It should, but it doesn't!
  • In "Simpsons Bible Stories", after Homer "contaminates" the Reverend's collection by adding a chocolate bunny to it, the man "holds the entire congregation hostage" by reading them the entirety of the Bible. During the extended "sermon", the Simpsons family begins to daydream they are characters in some biblical stories.
• South Park: One episode has Cartman stuck in church, complaining that it's already 3 PM and taking up one of his weekend days. He then gripes:
  Cartman: Why couldn't this happen on a school day?!
• In Metalocalypse, Murderface tries to find religion, and after trying out many different religions, eventually winds up at the Church of Satan. However, after sitting through yet another boring ceremony full of dull rituals and chants, he concludes that Satanism is just the same as all the other boring religions and goes back to drinking and partying.

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