Seth Dillon, CEO of the main Christian satire website The Babylon Bee, advised spiritual broadcasters Thursday night time that humor stays some of the highly effective weapons towards unhealthy concepts.
In his speech on the Nationwide Spiritual Broadcasters 2026 Worldwide Christian Media Conference on the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Conference Middle in Nashville, Dillon started by acknowledging that the mission had modified.
“Basically, my job at the outset to me was just to monetize mockery, not to defend freedom,” he stated.
What began as an upstart Christian “fake news” website shortly grew to become a cultural power that surpassed The Onion in site visitors whereas additionally producing genuinely humorous Christian comedy — one thing Dillon stated the tradition wants now greater than ever.
“We don’t need more Christian books; we need more good books written by Christians,” he stated.
However with success, stated Dillon, got here new challenges.
In an period the place “your job is to write jokes that are funnier than what Democrats are doing in real life,” actuality saved overtaking satire. Social media platforms started fact-checking punchlines and threatening suspension.
Dillon stated the breaking level got here when the Bee revealed a headline that learn: “A man in a dress is Woman of the Year” — a reference to transgender Biden administration official Rachel Levine’s award.
That’s when the Bee’s Twitter account was locked, proper across the similar time then-former President Donald Trump and The Christian Submit had their respective Twitter accounts locked as properly.
Dillon recalled the second Elon Musk reached out. After shopping for Twitter, now known as X, Musk despatched a direct message that Dillon says he now retains framed: “You want the Babylon Bee restored, there will be no censorship of humor.”
That intervention, Dillon stated, proved a bigger level. Quoting Musk’s earlier verdict on the ideology behind the censorship, Dillon advised the group, “Wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It gives mean people an excuse to be cruel while harboring false virtue.”
The lesson, he argued, is easy and expensive: “We have to stop caring what freedom might cost us.”
Too many believers follow “soft censorship,” he stated, biting their tongues to guard followers or income, a follow Dillon stated he rejects.
He additionally pushed again towards despair following the assassination of Turning Level USA founder Charlie Kirk.
“The man who killed Charlie Kirk did not win,” Dillon declared. “Free speech didn’t lose.”
In his view, the resort to violence was an admission that Kirk’s opponents had already misplaced {the marketplace} of concepts.
Dillon closed with a Fifties psychology research generally known as the Asch conformity experiments, through which topics denied the clear proof to slot in with the group. When even one individual voiced the apparent fact, conformity collapsed.
His cost to the room: be that one individual.
“Courage is like a good infection and it spreads,” he stated.
“Well bless their hearts.”
