Elijah Hooper

Reverend Elijah Hooper is the former assistant reverend, later turned reverend, at the First Church of Springfield.

History
After a bed bug infestation hit Springfield, wasn't able to cope with the crowd so The Parson brought in an assistant reverend, Reverend Elijah Hooper. Elijah Hooper turned out to be popular with the congregation, drawing everyone in, including Helen Lovejoy, who asked her husband to hold her wedding ring as it was creating glare when getting her photo taken with Reverend Hooper.

Elijah Hooper went to Moe's Tavern where he met Homer Simpson properly. Hooper listened to all of Homer's complaints about church and decided to make Homer his deacon as if he could get the guy who slept through church to represent the church then everyone stood a chance.

One day at church, Hooper had taken over as the reverend and Lovejoy was playing guitar to sing a hymn. However, Lovejoy couldn't get into it and decided to just leave as he wasn't needed. No one cared much then Hooper revealed the new deacon, Homer Simpson, to the shock of Ned Flanders.

Homer's new job as the deacon made Bart sad as Homer wouldn't be fun any more. Bart saw that Flanders was also annoyed with the new reverend and so Bart decided to pull a prank to get Lovejoy back as reverend. Flanders turned Bart into the police for thinking about doing something naughty and Milhouse bailed him out. The two of them then led a trail of dead bed bugs to the church from the swamp and led a swarm of frogs to the church. After church finished, the congregation exited to see the frogs then ran back in. The congregation were annoyed with the cultural references that Hooper was saying as they didn't help the situation. Reverend Lovejoy then came rolling into the church in a hot tub and soothed the frogs by speaking quotes from the Bible, winning over the congregation again.