JD Crowe: Tuberville is on a mission to turn Alabama pulpits into a snake pit

PoliticsRev. Tuberville's political snake handling revivalJD CroweThis is an opinion cartoon.Sign up for Crowe JamBeware of Rev. Coach Troubleville’s traveling political snake oil revival tour. Tommy Tuberville is on a mission from DOGE to encourage Alabama preachers to get more political in their sermons. Hell, it’s the midterms. Praise the Lord and pass the snakes. Let’s hear from Brother John Archibald and his sermon: Tubs in the pulpit is scarier than Tubs in the governor’s mansion Excerpts:Tommy Tuberville is telling religious leaders what to say from their pulpits. Which is like Shane Gillis telling women what to wear at the gym.Bad idea.Tuberville said he came to Birmingham recently to meet with about 100 Christian ministers, where he scolded them for not using their pulpits for political purposes.“We sat down and met and we talked a little bit and basically their deal was, ‘we don’t want to get involved in politics,’” Tuberville said at a campaign stop in Mobile. “I said, ‘what are you talking about?’ ‘Is moral values not politics? Teaching right from wrong not politics?’”First of all, I would say no. Teaching right from wrong is not politics, and Alabama politics has historically taught a whole lot more wrongs than rights.Coach and I clearly come from different religious traditions. I come from one in which Christians preached of love and forgiveness and taking the two-by-four out of your own eye before beating up on somebody for the speck of sawdust you spotted in theirs. Coach comes from, well, Florida. And you know how they are down there.I guess it just shows — as if we need another example — how wide the chasms are in this country. We can’t agree on what a Christian is. What morality is. What hypocrisy is.I imagine the Rev. Coach Tuberville knows even less about civil rights history than he does about civics. But Tuberville’s words say a lot in Alabama — where ushers in some white churches met black visitors with baseball bats in the 1950s and ‘60s, where white preachers too often justified segregation and even slavery with crackpot theology, where racist preachers used their pulpits to perpetuate wrongs, and more moderate white preachers too often threw up their hands, told the stories of Jesus and hoped for the best.Their failure to speak up motivated none other than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., locked up for parading without a permit, to pen his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, one of the most significant writings of the Civil Rights Era.Read all of Archibald’s column here.I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Separation of church and state? In Alabama, I’d settle for separation of church and snakes.201/20Graphic short story by editorial cartoonist JD CroweJD Crowe is the moderately disturbed editorial cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and Al.com. His cartoons, essays and stories have tickled, infuriated and resonated with Alabama readers since 2000. If y'all...