Legendary Christian singer Pat Boone has accused NBC and Saturday Night Live of "taking Satan's side" following a recent skit which mocked the faith-based film "God's Not Dead 2."
In "God's Not Dead 2," Melissa Joan Hart plays Grace, a public school teacher who is persecuted after answering a student's question about Jesus.
In the controversial SNL parody, Beth, a bakery owner, is sued by two homosexual men because she won't bake them a cake. The gay men threaten to get their "Jewish lawyer" involved in the case, and want the baker to admit that "God is gay." In court, Beth instead calls out "God is a boob man!"
The skit also pokes fun at several high-profile legal disputes involving American Christians whose religious beliefs about marriage have gotten them in legal trouble.
"They say we're bigots, but Christians are the most oppressed group in this country," Beth says to a black coworker, who doesn't appear to be convinced.
In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter on Monday, Boone, 81, who also stars in "God's Not Dead 2", insisted SNL would never have made such jokes about Islam out of respect for Muslims. He called NBC "cowardly" because executives and creative talent know they can target Christians without fear of reprisal.
"This skit was outright sacrilege," Boone told the outlet. "They know if they did this to Muslims they'd have to be put into the witness protection program. There's nothing sacred at SNL - except maybe the words 'Mohammad' or 'Allah.' They'd never take those names in vain, but when they called God a 'boob man,' they took his name in vain."
Boone added that it is possible to skewer religion in funny ways, but SNL's parody simply took it too far.
"God has a sense of humor. Why else would he invent the porcupine and the giraffe?" Boone told THR.
"Something can be devilishly funny, but this skit is diabolical. God has only one real enemy - Satan. Satan ridicules faith, and they're taking Satan's side. They're also ridiculing me and the film, telling impressionable young people not to see it because it's ridiculous. Then they throw in that the lawyer is Jewish to make the Christian look even worse, but it's just anti-Semitic."
"As much as I've enjoyed SNL, they went over the line, and believers in God deserve an apology," Boone added.
Earlier this year, Hart revealed that she has received a great deal of "grief" from Hollywood for playing a Christian woman who stands up for her faith.
"For the longest time, while I played a witch on television [on 'Sabrina, The Teenage Witch'], the Christian community attacked me for popularizing the magic aspects on that secular TV show," Hart said during a recent interview with the Chicago Sun Times.
"Now it's the opposite. I'm getting grief for playing the good Christian woman who is being persecuted by the outside world!"
Ironically, the 31-year-old actress said that she hoped the film would "lead to a more respectful discourse on the role that religion should play in our society. It is a debate that is raging in our country."
She added, "In the past, mainstream Christians were members of what we could call the big powerhouse religion at the time - and may have been doing a fair amount of persecuting minority religions. But now those Christians feel their faith is something that is trampled on or ignored. Now the tables have turned."
