Humor in health care? Of course. Everyone knows that laughter is the best medicine. Humor as mood regulator? We laugh to keep from crying, don’t we? And when we laugh, the world laughs with us. We even find humor in finance by laughing all the way to the bank. But whoever heard of laughing all the way to the church?

Fortunately for us, the Rev. Jay Sidebotham, Vicar of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan, laughs on his way to the church, on his way home from the church, and — just possibly — while he’s actually in the church. And the church can’t get enough of the drawings that result.

The Church Pension Group’s annual wall calendar, featuring Sidebotham’s wittily observant cartoons that skewer clergy and parishioners alike, can be found in Episcopal churches, dioceses and institutions around the country. And who doesn’t know and love his annual Advent calendar, disseminated by St. Columba’s Church? There’s even a line of cartoon coffee mugs in the works.

How did he come to look at life in this particular, and perhaps peculiar, way?

Before hearing a call to ordained ministry, Sidebotham worked in the fields of animation, illustration and advertising. (Some would say he is still working in advertising.) Born in Westchester County, son of an advertising executive who was one of the first to use animation in a TV commercial (Bert and Harry Piels, for those of you old enough to remember), Sidebotham initially lent his talents to Schoolhouse Rock, doing animation the old-fashioned way (which is why he now wears thick glasses). He then worked as an art director at several advertising agencies, but found himself called more and more strongly to a ministry within the Episcopal Church. At last, after a decade in the ad biz, he entered the ordination process and attended Union Theological Seminary. He served in Rhode Island, Washington, DC, and North Carolina before coming to St. Bart’s.
Parish work not only affords him opportunities to continue expressing himself through his art but, he says, also supplies abundant material. (He includes himself in that material; anyone who knows what he looks like will immediately recognizes his cartoon doppelganger.)

There’s so much material to laugh about in the church, Sidebotham says with a smile. Then, lest anyone think he is being too flip, he quotes G. K. Chesterton’s wonderful aphorism: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”