Reverend Timothy Lovejoy

Timothy Lovejoy (voiced by Harry Shearer) is the Reverend of the Church (of uncertain denomination) that seemingly every Christian in Springfield attends. His sermons vary between dreary recitations of the more opaque parts of the old testament, to the occasional "fire and brimstone" scaremongering about Hell - and very little of the love and joy that the Reverend's surname makes comment on. Bart and Homer, particularly, find it extremely difficult to pay attention during church.

Ned Flanders also constantly bothers Reverend Lovejoy for spiritual guidance, which the Reverend dispatches with as much brevity as he can manage ("Ned, have you thought about one of the other major religions? They're all pretty much the same"), so that he can go back to what seems to be his true passion - his model trains.

In one episode we see the young Lovejoy first arriving in Springfield on a motorbike, his first encounter with Flanders, and how his youthful (and hippyish) idealism was gradually worn down into jaded conservatism by Ned's constant pestering ("Reverend Lovejoy?? I think I swallowed a band-aid!") But "fortunately, by then it was the eighties, and no one noticed."

The church itself is a clone of the one seen in The Graduate.

Helen Lovejoy is the reverend's judgemental, small minded, moralistic, and gossipy wife. Helen's catchphrase, delivered in times of civic crisis (moral or otherwise), consistently asks, "will someone please think of the children?"

Jessica Lovejoy is the reverend's daughter, a troublemaker who briefly went out with Bart Simpson.

See also : The Simpsons