Being Good Ain’t Good Enough For the Baptist
There’s a story that goes like this. A Southern Baptist minister was asked if he thought only Baptists went to heaven. He replied that was true but he also thought some Baptist weren’t going either.
Apparently, one of them was a football and basketball coach.
Baptists used to think that religious freedom meant that you could attend the Baptist Church of your choice. Alabama has decided that’s too damn liberal.
Although he coached the basketball team to a state championship and coached the football team to making the playoff for the first time in many years, Scott Phillips was given a choice – come to East Memorial Baptist Church to teach at our school or lose your job. It is of note that Phillips is a member of Church of the Highlands so it’s not like he’d be teaching Sharia law or anything.
In June 2012, Phillips agreed to accept the athletic director position following the resignation of then-athletic director Vic Foxworth. He taught science and Bible, coached boys basketball and served as a football assistant prior to taking on his new role.
Phillips says that EMCA officials told him that the AD position must be a member of East Memorial Baptist Church — a claim the school’s headmaster Bryan Easley confirmed to the Advertiser in an email.
Now this is Alabama so I’ll bet you a dime that nobody asked Bear Bryant what damfool church he went to. The choice between Jesus and having a winning football team is a tough one.
Welcome to East Memorial Baptist Church, where religious freedom isn’t religious or free.
Thanks to UmptyDump for the heads up.
There are other churches, fine ones, that have that policy: you work for us, you go to our church. I’m not taking sides, just saying.
1Let’s hope he finds a nice new job at the school of their top rivals.
2If it wasn’t in his contract when they made the job offer, they are doing a “bait and switch.” If it was, and he signed it, he can’t make a fuss. It turns out the truth is between the two.
I just read the article. He was told verbally he had to be a member of EMBC; it was not in his contract. It is an undocumented policy that “the administrator, assistant administrator, athletic director and daycare director positions all have to be members of its church.” He spent most of the school year trying to attend both churches with his family and prove he could do the job. In April, his heart told him to be true to his church. He went to the school and told them his spiritual reason for wanting to attend his own church.
They didn’t get back to him until the end of June to tell him they weren’t budging on the policy. He chose to resign, but he really didn’t have a choice, did he? I feel the timing punitive because it will surely be difficult for him to find another job in such a short time. In hindsight, he says if the requirement had been in his contract, he “possibly would have not taken the job.”
3I would not belong to the SBC if my life depended upon it. I left when I was a teenager…….I am not stupid.
4@Judy AMEN!!
5Bear Bryant didn’t allow black players on his team until it became apparent that he had to to win and he’s the closest thing to a saint you can find in Alabama. The time I spent in the SBC (3 years while my boys were in High School) were what finally drove me to leave fundamentalism altogether. People like Tom DeLay, Rick Scarborough, Richard Land, Jerry Falwell, Ed Young, Dan Patrick and Ted Cruz aren’t my idea of people living a spiritual life but they’re all admirable to SBCs.
On the other hand, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are admirable men and they found they could not live in fundamentalism.
I would hope that he could sue the snot out of the school for violating his religious freedom by not originally making this a job requirement. Probably too classy for that as he is much too classy for the SBC.
6I tripped over the line “he taught science and Bible.” Sorry, the TILT sign went up on that one.
I bet these folks think the Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom. And, just like the Pilgrims, they want it only for members of their church, and anybody else had better get the [thing] out of town.
7There is some nuttiness loose in the religious world. I was lectured today for defending a particular philosopher and told that Christianity is the “dynamo” of Western Civilization and to basically bow down. I pointed out some of the problems with that line of thought and was told my examples didn’t count because all those bad sorts were NOT Christians at all because they had broken the rules.
So, hey, sinners ain’t Christian so that means we are pretty much back to only Christ being a good Christian? The Baptists are being liberal by comparison. Now I have to go lie down because of the sarcasm overdose I just ingested.
8I’ve got the will, Lord, if You’ve got the toe.
9Dropkick me, Jesus, through the goal posts of life.
Rhea, that tripped me up too. The last coach that taught one of my kids science tried to tell him air didn’t have mass.
10My parochial high school did not have a football team. Only occasionally did it have a basketball team. If the kids who went to my school – and their parents – wanted a “sports” school, they would have gone elsewhere. Instead, they were interested in a school that could actually depend on scholastics. It sounds as if in the south that the balance is tipped the other way to the point where sport of any sort then becomes the religion. That actually may be where the problem lies in this case. EMBC has forgotten that school comes first and the sports are completely another activity. They really need to get their act together.
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