John Archibald, Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution

Abstract

John Archibald writes regular columns for several Alabama newspapers, which also appear nationally, and for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. What makes this extraordinary, complex, detailed, engaging, and highly readable account pertinent to Methodist History is its focus upon the Methodist Archibald family and its multi-generation confrontation with American social ills, particularly racism and homophobia. Archibald features as the central actor in the segregation drama his father, the Rev. Robert Archibald experienced and recorded. A selection from the latter heads each of the twenty-six chapters and the epilogue. However, as the subtitle indicates, Archibald covers the lives and commitments of his extended family—of earlier generations, his mother, his siblings, and especially his brother, Murray, whose gay identity occasioned scathing indictment of UMC’s policies and politics.Archibald’s narrative, which is actually a very different, but powerful, autobiography, begins with his birth in 1963 and the publishing of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” He carries the Methodist drama to 2019. The focus, as indicated, is Archibald’s father, who served churches in Alabama (Jacksonville, Alabaster, Huntsville, and Birmingham) and in Decatur, Georgia.The early chapters attend to the various family members and activities. However, Archibald tracks the father’s role therein, keeps the father in view, and dwells upon the latter’s sermons. With these, gathered from his father’s files, Archibald traces his father’s preaching and reluctance to deal with segregation and the nation’s racist ills. Chapter titles in the first section, “The ‘Race Question,” document the racial violence capture the father’s and other Methodist clergy’s reluctance: “Bombingham,” “Closer to God,” “Silence and Dynamite,” “Conspiracy of Silence,” “Hush,” “Sounds of Silence.” With the extended family in view and his father as the central actor, Archibald carries the reader through Methodist traumas in a highly autobiographical style. The narrative charts the father’s pastoral development. He proved resilient and open with his gay son, the son’s partner, their marriage, and the partner’s early death.Archibald’s convictions come through clearly in many, many places, often in passing and in narrating the family’s life. Here, for instance, are judgments, in the chapter following eulogies for Murray’s partner, Stephen Elkins, and for Archibald’s mother: “The United Methodist Church in 2019, with global influence and support from the heartland, emphasized that open minds and hearts didn’t really apply at all to gay people” (278); “Open doors, open minds, open doors to throw somebody out” (280).The UMC events of 2019, specifically the church’s embrace of the traditionalist stance, occasioned an Archibald column which doubtless lived up to its title: “Methodists: Don’t Let the Door Hit You on My Way Out” (281). Archibald has provided a familial lens through which to relive and agonize over Methodist and American societal conflicts.