THEOLOGY OF LAUGHTER: EXPLORING THE PHENOMENON

Abstract

The paper considers theology of laughter as a form of the religious post-modernism and at the same time a cultural phenomenon. Theology of laughter has reflected basic transformations of the Western culture in the second half of the last century, a new understanding of theology associated with its involving into wider cultural space and strengthening of the anthropological element, a new vision of the medieval culture including rethinking on the concepts of carnival and play. In the postmodern situation sacralization of carnival and carnival characters, on the one hand, and carnivalization of ritual and sacred sphere in general, on the other hand, came into the complex interaction. It included the attitude to some holy fools as the God's Fool of the Western Christianity - St. Francis of Assisi.