Larking about

There are all sorts of websites devoted to humor, and all sorts devoted to Evangelical Christianity, but there are a number that combine the two, poking gentle fun, from an inside perspective, at the unintentionally funny things about Evangelical subculture.

One of my favorite such sites is Lark News, a fake-news website in the mold of The Onion (but without any of the filthy stuff The Onion sometimes runs). To give you a flavor, here are a few headlines:

• 40 Days of Purpose draws Deadhead-style following
• Jack Chick buys popular comic strips
• Missionaries maintain obesity against long odds
• Rapture takes two
• Christian couple maintains abstinence through first two years of marriage
• Mega-church downsizes, cuts non-essential members
• New Guinea tribe sees savior in Ark. pastor
• Man in market for Single, Lonely and Depressed Study Bible
• Presb. Church USA launches ambitious plan to lose only 5% of members
• Small Group 'Survivor' experiment fizzles
• Outsourced prayer lines confuse callers

Other Evangelical humor sites find that truth is stranger than fiction:

• Purgatorio: "a panoply of evangelical eccentricities, un-orthodox oddities & christian cultural curiosities." My favorite feature is Divine Vinyl -- odd album covers for Christian albums. There's a lot more polyester on display than actual vinyl.
• Crummy Church Signs: Documenting the weird and the trite.
• Kinda Kitschy: Does anyone really need a Thomas Kinkade angel figurine?

The British website Ship of Fools is broadly Christian, not specifically Evangelical. It's also not solely a humor site. (It reminds me of the way the British satirical mag Private Eye mixes satire and serious investigative articles.) Favorite features include Signs and Blunders and The Mystery Worshipper -- reviews of church services of all denominations from all over the world. The latest "blunder" is a phone message left by a vistor to a church on the pastor's answering machine, gently letting the pastor know that one of the female worship leaders was getting into the music a little more than she should. (After listening to the phone message, you can hear it remixed and set to music!)