"How To Do It"

Evangelical author explains how to escape the racism that 'infiltrates' white churches in America https://t.co/1pNP8E6fD7

— Raw Story (@RawStory) September 17, 2022

On this Mr. Yancey and I can completely agree.

The United States is the one exception, because life (here) has become so political. But in most of the world, evangelicals are people who work in prisons, who work against sexual trafficking, who do health care. 

I saw the other day that 50% of the health care in sub-Sahara Africa is done by Christian mission agencies. You ask the average African, what is an evangelical? Well, he or she might not know anything about theology, but they'll say, "They're the people who come by in a van with a cross on the side once a month and treat heart diseases." That's true all over the world. 

I wish that when you say the world evangelical, people would still think to what Jesus said in his in his first sermon, that "I've come to free the captives. I've come to visit prisoners, to heal the sick and feed the hungry." I wish people thought that when asked, What is an evangelical?

It’s no slight on Mr. Yancey to point out evangelicals in America are mostly to blame for the image he despairs of:

The respectable conservative legal types told me this was a real example of religious liberty under attack. They said former SG Paul Clement would never misrepresent facts. They said the Court’s opinion was well-considered.

None of these seems to be true. https://t.co/RbwWdgAb9y

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 17, 2022

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Bremerton assistant football coach Joseph Kennedy had the right to pray on the field, it wasn’t widely understood then that the court had also ordered the school district to give him his job back.

The day of the ruling, Fox News host Sean Hannity expressed doubts the district would follow through. But one of Kennedy’s lawyers clarified that they had no choice:

“We’re ready to have that fight. If they want to defy the Supreme Court, I think they’re gonna realize they made a serious mistake.”

Kennedy was sunnier about it all.

“As soon as the school district says ‘Hey, come back,’ I am there, first flight,” he said.

So the school district has been flummoxed about what’s happened since. They complied by offering to reinstate him, they say, and now the football season is in full swing. But Kennedy is nowhere near the sidelines.

“He’s had the paperwork for his reinstatement since August 8th, and we haven’t gotten so much as a phone call,” says Karen Bevers, spokesperson for Bremerton schools.

Instead, as the Bremerton Knights were prepping for the season in August, Kennedy was up in Alaska, meeting with former Vice President Mike Pence and evangelist Franklin Graham. On the eve of the first game, which the Knights won, Kennedy was in Milwaukee being presented with an engraved .22-caliber rifle at an American Legion convention.

The weekend of the second game, which the Knights also won, Kennedy appeared with former President Donald Trump at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey. He saw Trump get a religious award from a group called the American Cornerstone Institute.

Coming up this month, Kennedy’s scheduled to give a talk as part of a lectureship series at a Christian university in Arkansas.

“Place a PR/Publicity Request,” invites his personal website, where he’s known as Coach Joe.

That's just background. Bremer was never fired, because he was a part-time employee. He was put on paid leave (he never even lost any income that year), and he never reapplied for the job as an assistant football coach the next year; or any time after that.

This did not stop Kennedy’s lawyers from telling the Supreme Court repeatedly that he was fired.

“The record is clear that Coach Kennedy was fired for that midfield prayer,” lawyer Paul Clement told the nine justices in the first 15 seconds of the oral arguments of the case in April. The words “fired,” “fire” or “firing” were used 16 times in the hour and a half session.

It wasn’t true though. The district’s lawyers tried to correct the record, to no avail.

“You can’t sue them for failing to rehire you if you didn’t apply,” one lawyer, Mercer Island’s Michael Tierney, argued during a lower court session. “The District didn’t get an application from him, had four positions to fill and filled them with people who had applied. It didn’t fail to rehire him.”

The Supreme Court simply ignored this inconvenient fact — along with a host of others. At one point during oral arguments, as a different school district attorney was saying the narrative that had been spun didn’t fit with the facts — that the coach’s prayers were neither silent nor solitary, nor was he fired — Justice Samuel Alito interrupted him, saying “I know that you want to make this very complicated.”

Alito persisted in asking about the coach being fired — six times he said it, to the point that the lawyer finally corrected him. Which is a touchy thing to do with a Supreme Court justice.

“It’s not a question of firing, and in fact, he was put on paid leave,” the lawyer pleaded, fruitlessly, to Alito.

In the end, it all was too complicated. The effect of the court’s order is that Bremerton has to reinstate someone who didn’t apply for the job then and doesn’t appear eager for it now. It’s as if the justices wanted to script an ending for a Christian redemption movie. But real life isn’t cooperating.*

This is the situation of evangelicals in America which goes largely unaddressed in Yancey's interview.  Then again, Kennedy's case presents a question of the First Amendment, not racism.  Yancey does worry about the very human phenomenon of tribalism, which he finds everywhere in the world.  He recognizes it as an issue among Christians, but seems only a bit more than concerned about it among evangelicals who, being Christian by profession, should be guided by Jesus’ admonition to his disciples that those not against them are with them (it’s a much more inclusive formulation than the more common reverse). 

Then again, that lack of concern is widespread among Christians across the globe, evangelical, fundamental, or the vast majority who are neither.

One does see the contrast between Mr. Yancey's global evangelicals, the ones trying to help people in need (though not so much in America?  White man's burden, then?), and the attitude of Coach Kennedy, who's riding his new found (and hard won, one must say) prominence to at least Sarah Palinesque heights.  He won't last long, so he should enjoy the ride.  Kyle Rittenhouse is already finding that being a courtroom darling of the right wing isn't a career move.  But it does underscore the difference between evangelicals here, and evangelicals abroad.  It's an interesting distinction.

I will say, in praise of my Evangelical and Reformed (when "Evangelical" meant "bringer of good news," not "hardcore right winger."  Mr. Yancey points that out, too; again, I ask:  and who's to blame for that?) ancestors in the faith, when they settled in St. Louis in the 19th century they built hospitals for medical care, orphanages for parentless children, and mental health care facilities for those in need of that care.  Those institutions still exist, 150 years later.  I'm heartened to hear "evangelicals" are providing care in sub-Saharan  Africa.  I wonder why they can't provide help in America, especially because mental health care is so wanting for so many people.  I'm sure any effort would be appreciated.  Maybe even urge the governments to do their part for we, the people.

Or is that too "liberal" and "political"?

And nowhere does Mr. Yancey actually explain how to change the hearts of racists. But he doesn’t claim he can, just that we need to, which is a much more banal observation. (Worthy, but solving racism is something even Jesus of Nazareth didn’t tackle.) No, I blame the interviewer for that; and for the unspoken equivalency of racism with violent white supremacy. As Mr. Yancey says, albeit on a different topic, you’ve got to be more subtle.

Racism certainly is. And more pervasive.

*And yeah, if I had any use for "Justice" Alito, I have no use for him as a jurist now.  He and Thomas are in a race to the bottom, and determined to take the Court, and the country, with them.  Expanding the court (which is not "Court packing") is looking more and more like the only viable option the country has.