The Atlantic The Babylon Bee, an online satire publication that launched in 2016, has become a popular destination for Christians disaffected with megachurch culture and right-wingers who crave clever commentary about the hypocritical left. Kyle Mann, the website’s editor in chief, sometimes gives talks on college campuses. For conservative students, he told me, “It’s like they found their underground cabal of secret comedians who agree with them.”
"Mann came to the comedy world almost by accident. He had a high-pressure job in construction sales before working at The Bee; he first got involved with the site by cold-pitching a joke. Although political humor drives much of The Bee’s web traffic, the publication’s signature hits focus on what the writers see as shallowness in the evangelical world. Christian humor is a big part of what drew Mann to the site: As a young man, he left the megachurch in which he was raised and moved toward more theologically conservative circles—”my rebellious teen stage,” as he put it.
"In his new book, The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, co-authored with Joel Berry, The Bee’s managing editor, Mann includes a cartoon of a church with its steeple replaced by a raised fist, a symbol of Black Power and the Black Lives Matter movement. I wanted to understand whether Mann sees his jokes as part of a crusade against the left or as something else—and how he reconciles mocking people with the tenets of his faith. “Just being completely honest and vulnerable with you, there’s a level where you have to stop yourself and say, ‘This isn’t good for my soul,’” he told me.". . .
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