Do you think that Jesus Christ was a Southerner?

From A treasury of American anecdotes; sly, salty, shaggy stories of heroes and hellions, beguilers and buffoons, spellbinders and scapegoats, gagsters and gossips, from the grassroots and sidewalks of America by Benjamin Albert Botkin. 

An aged woman, bom and nurtured in the South, . . . was endeavoring to impress upon her nephews and nieces the beauties of the South and its people, when one of the young men spoke up. Auntie, he asked, do you think that all the virtues originated in and have been preserved by the Southern people?” “No, not all, but most of them,” she replied. “Do you think that Jesus Christ was a Southerner?” The old lady hesitated a moment and said, “He was good enough to be a Southerner.”