Why Megachurch Satire Is Only “Offensive” When It Feels Too Real

There is a familiar ritual playing out across social media, and it has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with performance. Someone blows a whistle. A clip circulates. The comments fill with declarations of offense. This week’s sermon is clear: how dare a comedian mock megachurch culture? The target is Druski, whose skit poking fun at the excess, spectacle, and absurdity of megachurch theatrics has apparently crossed an invisible line.

And yet, in the same cultural breath, people are happily tuning in to The Righteous Gemstones, a show that has spent years gleefully dismantling megachurch empires brick by gilded brick. Same subject. Same critique. Far sharper knives. But wildly different reactions.

That difference is the story.

Outrage, in this case, isn’t about disrespecting religion. It’s about who is allowed to joke, where they are allowed to joke, and how comfortable the audience feels while laughing. Druski’s skit doesn’t come with prestige lighting, dramatic score cues, or the insulation of weekly episodes. It shows up raw and immediate, delivered in the language of the internet. It feels close. Too close. And proximity is dangerous.

The truth is, The Righteous Gemstones is not some gentle ribbing of faith. It’s a full-throated satire that portrays televangelists as narcissists, grifters, and moral opportunists. The Gemstone family weaponizes belief for money, power, and ego, and the show makes no attempt to soften that message. It revels in the excess. The private jets. The scandals. The hypocrisy is baked into a system that preaches humility while bathing in opulence.

And it does this on HBO, a premium cable network that markets the show as bold, daring, and culturally incisive. Critics praise it for its fearlessness. Viewers binge it guilt-free. Somehow, this gets framed as art.

Druski makes a five-minute joke, and suddenly it’s sacrilege.

This is where the selective outrage begins to smell less like genuine offense and more like convenience. It’s easier to attack a viral clip than to confront an entire cultural appetite for religious satire that’s already been normalized and monetized. A skit doesn’t let you hide behind distance. You don’t get to say, “Well, it’s just a character” or “It’s prestige television.” It’s comedy in its most naked form. Laugh or don’t. But if you laugh, you might have to admit why.

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There’s also an unspoken hierarchy at play. Prestige TV has been granted an almost holy exemption. If something appears on a respected network, it must be thoughtful. If it’s written by seasoned showrunners and performed by recognizable actors, it must be nuanced. Internet comedy doesn’t get that grace. It’s assumed to be crude, irresponsible, and dangerous by default.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: what exactly makes one satire acceptable and another unforgivable?

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If the answer is “tone,” that argument collapses under scrutiny. The Righteous Gemstones is vulgar, outrageous, and intentionally provocative. It doesn’t gently critique megachurch culture. It mocks it relentlessly. It laughs at the very idea that extreme wealth and spiritual purity can coexist without corruption. The show’s entire thesis is that power rots faith when it’s treated like a brand.

Druski’s skit, by comparison, is practically a footnote.

So maybe it isn’t tone. Maybe it’s familiarity. Maybe megachurch satire is fine as long as it feels fictionalized, distant, and abstract. Once it starts resembling the churches people recognize, attend, or defend, the laughter turns defensive. The joke stops being “about them” and starts feeling “about us.”

Comedy has always served this function. It pokes at the inflated, the powerful, and the self-serious. Religious institutions, especially those entangled with wealth and influence, have been targets for centuries. The idea that megachurches are suddenly off-limits is historically laughable. What’s changed isn’t the comedy. It’s the audience’s tolerance for being reflected back at themselves.

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There’s also a racial and cultural undercurrent that no amount of polite discourse can wash away. A Black comedian skewering megachurch aesthetics online is read differently than a predominantly white, Hollywood-produced series doing the same thing with a Southern Gothic filter. One is “too real.” The other is “satire.” One is threatening. The other is safe.

That distinction matters, even when people don’t want to admit it.

What makes this moment particularly hollow is how quickly outrage replaces introspection. Instead of asking why megachurch culture is such fertile ground for parody, the anger gets redirected at the comedian. It’s easier to shoot the messenger than to examine the message. Much harder to grapple with why faith tied to spectacle, money, and celebrity keeps inspiring the same jokes over and over again.

And let’s be clear: satire does not attack belief. It attacks power. It attacks institutions that claim moral authority while behaving like corporations. When megachurch leaders build empires, sell prosperity, and cultivate celebrity personas, they invite scrutiny. That scrutiny doesn’t disappear just because someone finds it uncomfortable.

If mocking megachurch culture is genuinely offensive, consistency demands more than selective condemnation. It would require rejecting entire seasons of televised mockery. It would mean questioning why audiences cheer when hypocrisy is exposed by scripted characters but bristle when it’s highlighted by a comedian with a phone camera.

Otherwise, the outrage rings false.

What we’re witnessing isn’t a defense of faith. It’s a defense of image. A desire to control who gets to tell the joke and how sanitized it needs to be before it’s considered acceptable. But comedy doesn’t exist to protect comfort. It exists to puncture it.

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Druski didn’t invent megachurch satire. He didn’t escalate it. He didn’t even sharpen it. He simply delivered it without the cushion of prestige television. And that, more than anything else, is what seems to have struck a nerve.

In the end, comedy doesn’t create hypocrisy. It exposes it. The laughter, the anger, the sudden moral clarity, all of it reveals where people feel seen and where they feel threatened. If a skit can provoke more outrage than a multi-season HBO series doing the same thing louder and longer, the issue isn’t disrespect.

It’s recognition.

And no amount of selective outrage can drown out the sound of a joke that hits too close to home.