by Zoë Pollock
Kristin Dombek ferrets out one reason for The Book of Mormon's success:
[The Book of Mormon] teaches us what secularists don’t get about what makes religion so awesome: it’s like a musical you live in, and it can actually be more fun if it seems a little fake, if you have to work a little to believe. There tend to be so many gaps that the thrill of it is filling them in, making them fit. While to outsiders, religious people seem to believe despite the obvious manufacturedness of their religion, The Book of Mormon suggests that believers believe (at least in part) because of the pleasure of revoicing, adapting, and even inventing stories and then treating them as sacred.
The Dish 