Available in English | Website www.shipoffools.com | |
Type of site Christian online magazine Created by Simon Jenkins and Stephen Goddard Alexa rank 1,072,676 worldwide
288,813 in the United States Registration Registration required only to use internet forums | ||
Ship of Fools is a UK-based Christian satirical website. It was first launched as a magazine in 1977. The magazine folded in 1983 and was resurrected as an internet magazine website and bulletin board system community forum in 1998. Subtitled "the magazine of Christian unrest", Ship of Fools pokes fun and asks critical questions about the Christian faith. The site is part magazine and part web community.
Ship of Fools was founded and is edited by Simon Jenkins (editor) and Stephen Goddard (co-editor). Jenkins is an author, designer and cartoonist from London (not to be confused with Simon Jenkins, who has written a more traditional guide to England's Thousand Best Churches), while Goddard is a journalist and public relations consultant; both have formal theological education. They also perform a show, Ship of Fools Live, in churches, universities and elsewhere, with excerpts from the site's magazine content. The show toured in the USA in February 2004.
The website presents itself as ecumenical/pan-Christian, although the prevailing ethos is English-speaking Trinitarian Christianity. The diversity of the users range from complete atheists to evangelical and liberal Christians.
Some notable features of Ship of Fools website are:
Activities sometimes leave the site to take place in the real world. There are frequent "Shipmeets" where shipmates get together at different locations around the world. Ship of Fools also ran a Ned Flanders Night at the Christian festival Greenbelt.
"Church of Fools", an online 3D interactive church, ran as a multi-user 3D environment from May to September 2004, and as a single-user environment since that date. The Church of Fools has now renamed itself St Pixels.