Striving for Divine Madness : Comedy: Mike Warnke, who will perform at the Anaheim Convention Center Saturday, uses an irreverent approach to get across his Christian message.

Comics for Christ? Mike Warnke is the first to admit that, to many minds at least, Christianity and comedy don’t readily mix.

“When I first started out, that was unheard of,” says Warnke. That was 20 years ago, though, and these days there are Christian comedians just as there are Christian rockers. It seems to be a booming business, too: While most secular stand-ups look forward to the day when they can fill a club, Warnke last year drew a crowd of 8,000 to the Anaheim Convention Center, where he returns Saturday.

“I think that comedy is a way to get the Gospel message across to the people,” Warnke said. “They can laugh and have a good time with it, instead of having it rammed down their throat with a sharpened stick.”

He takes Proverbs 17:22 as a credo: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

In concert, Warnke displays a relaxed, observational approach, roaming through many topics familiar to stand-up fans, from airports to family car trips. He also takes on religious subjects, including a look at the differences between Baptists and Pentecostals: When he fell off the stage during one performance, Warnke said the Baptists wanted to pray for his recovery, the Pentecostals wanted to heal him right then and there.

He is also unafraid to take on what he sees as a certain smug self-righteousness in some Christians. “I think people take themselves too seriously, and the Lord not seriously enough. They forget, really, what the Lord was talking about,” he says. “I spend a lot of time poking fun at those kinds of people.”

In the beginning, Warnke says, he managed to anger a lot of people, not only with his irreverent approach but also with his appearance. “People got real torqued at me. I was this long-haired, bespectacled, semi-rotund hippie,” he says. When people accused him of blasphemy, he told them, “I’m not making fun of the Lord, I’m making fun of you guys.”

Soon after taking the stage, he often warns the crowd (good-naturedly) that many of them may be offended, but if they decide to rush the stage, guards will “beat you to death in Jesus’ name.” Because, Warnke explains, “anybody as righteous as you deserves to be in the presence of God almost immediately.”

Over the years, Warnke says, “people have come to accept it,” although he still gets walkouts and angry letters. “I find that people who are easily offended are people who like to be offended. It gives them something to talk about,” he explains. “Some people are so narrow-minded, they can see through a keyhole with both eyes.”

As Warnke has said on stage, “Being a stand-up comedian and a Christian, I will do anything for a laugh and then ask the Lord for forgiveness.”

He has a bit of fun with overzealous faith healers in a stage routine about one poor soul who receives repeated slaps to the head. In the routine, Warnke, as the recipient, goes back to the end of the line, prompting the healer to ask, “Ain’t you already been up here?” Warnke replies, “Yeah, but now I got a headache.”

While much of the material does not contain an overt Christian viewpoint, Warnke’s 90-minute performances shift gradually from comedy to sermon, and by the end he is challenging his audience to be saved. While his audiences are largely Christian, Warnke says he is not just preaching to the converted: “Lots of unsaved people come.”

The comedy, he acknowledges, is a vehicle, a way for him to tell people that Christianity is “a viable alternative to the way people are living their lives, and give them the information they need to make a choice.”

The comic calls Burgin, Ky., his home but travels most of the year, performing five nights a week for crowds that usually top 1,000 at each appearance. He has recorded 11 cassette tapes, two performance videos and written three books, with another book due next month.

Comedy was an evolution for Warnke, 45, whose past can safely be called colorful. If there was a prize for interesting resumes, Warnke would certainly be in the running: from satanist high priest to decorated Vietnam vet, from drug addict and pusher to founder of a San Diego-based anti-occult center.

Warnke has written extensively about his satanist past but declines to talk about it much in interview. He was saved in 1966--”I was a product of the early Jesus movement, like so many hippies”--and began testifying in churches about his experiences with the occult.

The testimony was so “gruesome,” Warnke says, that he began adding jokes to leaven it, and found that humor was an effective way to convey his message. “It was a pretty natural vehicle for me to show the ridiculousness of living a life that doesn’t include Jesus,” he says.

He counts 1972 as the year he began his career as a Christian comic. In those 20 years, he says he doesn’t cross paths often with secular comedians. “We basically move in different circles. It’s two different worlds, but we’re doing the same thing,” he says.

“That’s one of the things that bothers me. There’s such a division between the secular and non-secular worlds. I’m not sure that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

* Mike Warnke performs Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Anaheim Convention Center, 800 W. Katella Ave. $10 to $14. (714) 999-8900.