Bill Engvall Becoming A Preacher Can’t Stop His Cancel Culture Complaints

Congrats to Blue Collar comic Bill Engvall on retiring from comedy to become an ordained minister. (But not before one last ka-ching with his comedy special, Bill Engvall: Here Is Your Sign It's Finally Time It's My Last Show, dropping in early December. Maybe he’s too exhausted from saying the title to record any more?) But just because Engvall will be doing his future joke-telling from the pulpit doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have opinions about comedy and cancel culture.

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You’re a comedy fan? Engvall implores you not to go intentionally looking for jokes that provoke your sensibilities. “Comedy is the best thing in the world and to be able to go to a place and laugh. Don't go with the attitude that you're going to try to find something that's offensive. If that's what you’re wanting to do, then I don't know where to tell you to go, but just please don't do it at a comedy show," he told Fox News Digital. “Cause comedy is great. And it’s very fun. And it’s fun to laugh, and you feel better after you’ve had a great night of comedy. So don’t put it under the microscope too much.”

A comedian has a controversial opinion that doesn’t align with your worldview? Let it go, he says. “It’s just their view on real life,” he says. “Understand that that’s their view. They’re not saying you have to think this way, or you’re wrong.” (Well, sometimes that is what Rob Schneider is saying, but I get Engvall’s point.)

Refreshingly, Engvall has a similar take on religion — it’s no problem with the former comic if your spiritual views are different than his. “I feel like one of the problems that we've had in religion is that we all feel like we all have to have the same relationship with God, which we don’t,” he says. “Mine will be different than yours. Yours would be different than someone else’s.”

“I don’t tell anybody what they should or shouldn’t believe,” he says. “That’s not my position or my place to do that.”

Any worries that Engvall’s new comedy special might offend some of the people he’ll be preaching to? Not really. “I feel like, honestly, that my show is probably one of the cleaner shows out there," he says. “There’s no swearing, there's no dropping F-bombs. It’s something that I really have felt strong about. I didn’t feel that any of the material on there was offensive. It’s what I’ve done my whole career, and that’s obviously worked for whatever reason.”

After finishing his degree in Christian studies during COVID, Engvall decided to leave the stand-up grind behind. At 66 years old, endless weeks on the road are less appealing than they used to be. And Engvall realized that his comedy had been devolving into a series of gripes. “I didn’t want to end up being the grouchy old man,” he confesses. “The whole show was just me complaining about stuff. I knew it was getting to be time.”

There’s no grumbling about his upcoming gigs. “I have the great honor of baptizing both my grandkids, and I’ve got a couple of weddings coming up,” he says. “And it’s just really, really fun.”