Normally you wouldn’t associate Christians with satire. After all they are the people who give us “the Gospel plain and simple.” And if you really pressed them they probably think you are going to burn in hell for eternity. So that tends to take an edge off the old sense of humor. I’m a Christian. And I frequently resort to satire in my efforts to proselytize the perishing and spur the saints. For example, in  Whoa to you who laugh I proved that Jesus is not funny and gave helpful hints on how to prevent laughter. Several people took this seriously:

Lingamish’s Tips on Eliminating Laughter from your Life

• When you think of something funny, instead try to think of something serious.
• If you find yourself tempted to read the comics, read the obituary instead.
• Make it a practice of reading theologically minded books and pondering their seriousness.
• Eliminate frivolous pursuits like movies containing comedy and instead engage in productive and edifying activities like woodworking and house-cleaning.
• When you encounter other people laughing, remind them of how much suffering there is in the world.
• Read this blog often. I plan to offer a lot more serious and edifying content from now on.

Well, the good news is that I have decided to give you a list of Five Sites that employ “Christian satire.” You can run right out and read them or put them on your “blogs to avoid” list depending on your temperament.

Five Sites For Christian Satire

1. Purgatorio

Grand-daddy of the saintly satirical photo-blogs. This blog went down for a full year when the blogger burned out. But I just found out that he has since started blogging again (HT: ThinkChristian). Read about what he did during his Summer vacation and check out the bear nativity set.

2. Ship Of Fools

Not just non-stop flapdoodle. The Mystery Worshipper series is having seismic sociological effects in how churches operate (“And please, God, we just want to ask you that, Lord, there might not be a mystery worshipper in our service this morning”).

3. Tominthebox News Network

Wicked, wicked satire with a holy calling. And it’s even on Blogspot. Impressive.

4. The Holy Observer

This is the ROTFL champ. King of the hill for snort-your-milk-through-your-nose headlines like Study: Small Group Hazing At All-Time High and Bible Smugglers Release 31,103 Scripture Duckies on Euphrates River and Asian American Pastor Speaks Only English And those are just from the most recent front page.

5. The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus

Not a satire site per se but a lot of great humour in the form of full-colour comic strips.