Hymnals and Hyrnals

So, a few months ago a new website popped up called the Babylon Bee.  The Bee is a Christian satirical news site that posts fake, satirical versions of news stories, very similar to The Onion, but from a Christian perspective.  Needless to say, the stories produced at the Babylon Bee are hilarious and incredibly creative.  Some of my favorite stories from the Bee are here, here, and here.  And, as all good satire does, some of the stories have made me squirm a bit before I could chuckle at them.  Take, for example, this article, and this article.  Admittedly, you have to be a part of the Christian subculture to really appreciate the stories, but trust me: they're spot on.

The Babylon Bee also accepts reader submissions, so one night about a month ago, when I didn't have anything better to do, I thought I'd try my hand at a satirical article.  I typed it up and sent it into their submissions department, and that was that.  The submissions page on their website states that if they're going to use your submitted article, they'll contact you.  If they're not going to use your article, you won't hear back from them.  Time went by, and I never heard back from them, so I assumed they weren't going to use my article.

But then, this morning, I received an email in my inbox from the Babylon Bee with the message, "You're up" in the body of the email with a link to my article on the Bee site.  Have a look for yourself.

The Bee published my article on their Facebook and Twitter pages right away this morning.  This goofy, made up, satirical article is by far the most widely read thing I've ever written - including anything I've ever written on this blog.  In fact, if you counted up the views for all of the things I've ever written on this blog, that's still probably less than the number of people who have read my article at the Bee today.  After all, they have 27,000 followers on Facebook and about 7,500 on Twitter.  As I write this, the article has received 1,700 "likes" on Facebook and almost 500 shares, while on Twitter it has been retweeted almost 50 times.  The comments on the article on Facebook (of which their are 124) have been fun to watch unfold, as some people riffed on the article and made some more jokes, while others are horrified because they have yet to learn that the article is satirical.

So thanks to the Babylon Bee for publishing my article and making this an interesting day, as I've been able to watch people enjoy my article in real time.  Now that I've broken the ice on satirical Christian writing, I think I might try my hand at a few more.