Have You Been Saved?

 

Saved by Humor

“I thought I got that call [from God] once, but it was the wrong number. I determined it was just the DNA talking, the faith of my father trickling from the wellspring of my gene pool.”

John Archibald (Shaking the Gates of Hell, p.110-111, Alfred A. Knopf, 2021)

          John Archibald is a celebrated opinion writer in Birmingham. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2018 and took a year of sabbatical to write a book about his father, who was a Methodist minister in Alabama during the Civil Rights era. After his father’s death, John began going through his sermons matching the dates that violence was happening in the streets of Birmingham, the days of “Bull” Connor and George Wallace, police dogs and fire hoses. As he realized there was no mention of the marches or the beatings or the bombings in his dad’s sermons, his anger rose. How could the father he loved and respected not rise up in righteous indignation and lead the charge to put an end to all that brutality. Instead, the white ministers of Birmingham wrote a letter to King asking him to cease and desist, to wait and be patient. That precipitated King’s “letter from the Birmingham jail.”

          Even in anger and disillusionment, John manages to be exceptionally funny and personable. He sets a great example of using humor to say what he wants to say without lam-basting people with his rage. He calls people out, but does it in such a way that, while you can’t miss the point, you realize how absurd it is. He did several interviews with Rachel Maddow during our governor’s (Bentley, not Ivey) breast-groping fest which led to Bentley’s ouster and Ivey’s assuming the office. Most of Alabama’s governors go from the state house to the “big house” it seems. As for Bentley, he just went back to his (creepy) medical practice in Tuscaloosa and resumed life in what passes for “normal” in Alabama. That’s a whole other book. Maybe John will write that one next.

          Here’s the thing—humor is as essential as air if you want to stay on the right side of bat-shit-crazy these days. I know that’s not a spiritual thing to say, but God gave us a sense of humor for a reason. There’s no better time to use it than when the world is swimming in the muck of conspiracy theories and idiotic fantasy (not to mention Alabama’s transition to a tropical rainforest.) John Archibald is one person this state can be proud to call a native son. Write on, John, write on!

                                                            In the (vexed) Spirit,

                                                            Jane