For Christian comedian Jeff Foxworthy, jokes about religion cut too close to the bone
Jeff Foxworthy, a best-selling comedian. Photo from Shutterstock.
By Terry Mattingly
The death of a grandmother is a time for deep grief and sweet memories, and that was certainly the case when comedy legend Jeff Foxworthy lost the small-town matriarch of his Southern family.
Funerals are solemn, holy, mileposts in life. At the same time, they're family get-togethers, when aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews and assorted other kin catch up on news and swap stories – often funny – about the times they've shared.
Foxworthy drove from Georgia into the South Carolina lowlands, then went straight to the funeral home.
"I walk in, say hello to a couple of folks," the comic recalled in a recent interview. "I walk up to the casket and I'm standing there quietly thanking God for my grandmother and saying goodbye to her. And my cousin walks up to me, reaches in his coat pocket and he goes, 'Here's a picture of a pretty good eight-pointer I shot a couple of weeks ago.' He's showing me deer pictures at my grandmother's casket."
People were chatting in other parts of the room. There are tears and laughs. Folks in Foxworthy's family, who play a big role in his humor, were doing what they do. This cousin wasn't trying to be irreverent. Hunting's a big deal in the rural South, and he was excited about this new set of antlers for his den.
Foxworthy wasn't really sure how to respond. "I was like, 'Yeah, that's a beauty. Give me just a minute, I'll come over there and admire it.' Something in his mind said, 'This is the best time to share this with Jeff.' You know?"
Few Foxworthy fans would be surprised if this encounter became a punch line, joining myriad variations on his most famous comedy riff. All together now: "You may be a redneck if … you've ever shared deer-hunt pictures at the funeral home."
This scene was totally redneck. But it also crossed into a zone Foxworthy said he has always tried to avoid – religion and church. Politics is in that demilitarized zone, too.
Obviously, faith plays a big role in Southern life, along with family, food, football, fishing and fast cars. But early in his career, Foxworthy – an outspoken Christian – decided not to take his stand-up comedy into holy ground.
It would be easy – based on his family memories, alone – to create a "You Might Be A Redneck Churchgoer If" cable-TV special. But that could cause tension and even pain, as well as making other folks laugh out loud, he said. Jokes about religion would cut too close to the bone.
After four decades on stage, Foxworthy said that he constantly reminds himself, that "everybody I'm gonna look at tonight is going through some kind of a struggle. It might be financial, it might be physical, it may be emotional. I'm like, 'Just be kind to people.' Have grace. You don't know their story. And I don't think humor makes people's struggles go away. But I do think if you're able to laugh and set that burden down for a little bit, it almost, like, recharges you to where you can pick it back up and go deal with it."
Foxworthy was born in Atlanta and grew up Baptist, while dealing with a broken home defined by a church-going mother and a father who was married six times while smoking, drinking, cussing and hoarding Playboy magazines. The divorce was painful, he said, but his parents were strong and funny, in very different ways.
It didn't take long, after flunking out of Georgia Tech, for Foxworthy's friends to convince him to try stand-up comedy. After five years of hard work, he hit The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Professionals in New York City advised him to ditch his Southern drawl, but Foxworthy quickly learned that rednecks and honorary rednecks were everywhere. He created his own niche.
Since then, Foxworthy has become the bestselling comedy-recording artist, ever. He has topped sales charts with CDs, DVDs, board games, calendars, various television projects and 26 books, including "Dirt on My Shirt," a New York Times bestseller full of poems for children. For more than a decade, he taught a Bible study in an Atlanta homeless shelter.
Jeff Foxworthy’s live recording “You Might Be a Redneck If…” in 1993 was certified as platinum.
Foxworthy said he remains convinced that most Americans, when it comes to the basics of daily life, "agree on about 85% of stuff. That's why, I'll just stay in this lane I'm in. I don't want to do political humor. I don't want to do religious humor. I don't want to go in those areas where we yell at each other. There's enough of that.
"Any comedian I know that ever did religious stuff – they died young. I'm always thinking about God saying he would not be mocked. You know?"
Nevertheless, the comedian has a deep conviction that God has a sense of humor. This belief, he admitted, has been known to surface when he is teaching Bible studies.
"I love the story when they're crossing the Sea of Galilee and it's raging, and Jesus is sleeping in the boat. The disciples wake him up because they're scared to death. And he's like, 'For crying out loud, peace be still.' The wind stops, and he goes back to sleep," Foxworthy explained. "I wonder, if they were scared before, what were they thinking then? They have to be saying, 'Are you kidding? He just told the wind to stop, and it did?'
"That's funny, if you look at it a certain way. I do think humor is one of the attributes of God and I don't know that a lot of people are freed up to see God in that light. I think a lot of people just see God as having His hand cocked back ready to knock you down when you mess up. I don't see Him that way."
—————————————————————————————————
Terry Mattingly writes the national "On Religion" column for the Andrews McMeel Universal syndicate and "Rational Sheep," a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media. He is a member of the Overby Center panel of experts.