Richard Jewell and the Church

Earlier this week, Richard Jewell passed away at age 44. Jewell, as many might remember, was the private security guard during the 1996 Olympics at Atlanta who discovered a pipebomb in Olympic Park and was instrumental in getting hundreds of people cleared away before the powerful bomb went off. Initially hailed as a hero, he soon became a target of an FBI who believed that he actually planted the bomb in order to gain positive attention from 'saving' people because he wanted to be a hero. Many media outlets nakedly ran with this theory for the next 2 months, conducting a 'trial by media' in which they combed through Jewell's entire life to try and find parallels to match him up with the FBI's profile of the bomber. Eventually, it was determined that Jewell had nothing to do with planting the bomb, and that Eric Rudolph was the actual culprit. As it turned out, Jewell really was a hero. But his life was largely ruined by the excesses of the Feds eager to make an arrest, and a press eager to milk a story.

The case of Richard Jewell is an intriguing and depressing object lesson on so many levels. One can reasonably ask if either law enforcement or the press learned anything from their respectively fantastic failures in this case. The Duke lacrosse case is one recent example that doesn't inspire confidence that any serious due diligence was done by either camp in the 10 years after Richard Jewell. One might argue that both the Jewell case and the Duke case are aberrations. Perhaps that's true. But this leads to an additional object lesson for the church that I'd like to briefly focus on.

Those of us who are Christians need to understand that many segments of our culture are deeply suspicious of us and the church. Their suspicion is not altogether different from the kinds of suspicions many of us have about the government and the press. Many of us, me included, cite the Richard Jewell case as part of a larger argument to justify our often deep distrust of the government and the press. For me, the Jewell case is frightening because it shows just how destructive power can be when it is wielded with the kind of arrogance and elitism that comes when people think the rules can be swept aside for any reason as long as a 'greater goal' is served. This kind of mentality provides all the justification that is often needed for governments and media to destroy people without remorse. And because I see no evidence that such arrogance has been curbed in any way, I, and many others, are rightly concerned that absolutely anybody might become the next Richard Jewell. This is where skepticism leads to suspicion, and where suspicion leads to fear.

It is, therefore, a difficult pill to swallow when I ponder the reality that many people in our society look upon the church with very similar lenses. Like the government and the press, the church definitely has its share of depressing public episodes of failure upon which reasonable people can make the same kind of inferences about us that many make about the press and the government. As Christians, we are too often in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that the church's failures are aberrations and don't accurately reflect the overwhelming amount of good that is done by the church in the name of Christ its head. But if people are going to justify their suspicion of the government and the press primarily by pointing to cases like Richard Jewell, are we really in a position to say that the church's failures are qualitatively different? Can we really argue that Richard Jewell justifies an overarching suspicion of the press, while also saying that Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard don't justify an overarching suspicion of the church? While Christians like me can theologically make the case all day long that the church is fundamentally different from secular institutions, that doesn't hold much water with those who are not inclined to accept my theological presuppositions even for the sake of argument. So what is the church to do?

Most obviously, the church has to be in the business of constant, routine, and soul-searching reform to ever more closely align ourselves with Scripture. The church's failures represent a lack of reform because they represent a willingness to tolerate sin so as not to rock the boat. This is a sure-fire recipe for failure and public humiliation at some point. Unlike the government and the press, which has always resisted authentic reform, a church that truly embraces reform will indeed be able to make an argument even on secular grounds that it is different and should not be greeted with immediate suspicion by its neighbors.

But in addition, we have to handle the church's failures with integrity. That means being upfront about our mistakes, and making a practice of true repentance. This will enable us to truly be able to say that the church's failures are more isolated than systemic. Unlike the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which has fought Richard Jewell's libel suit for the last decade after slandering him over and over again in 1996, the church simply can't afford to be this defensive and brazen in not taking responsibility. Self-serving justifications almost always backfire, and the loss of reputation that results is very difficult to regain. We have to realize that just as many of us don't believe anything the NY Times says because of Jayson Blair, a lot of people don't believe anything we say because we coddle people like Benny Hinn and John Shelby Spong rather than doing the difficult work of breaking fellowship with those who bring disrepute to the name of the Savior. We have to admit our mistakes, and learn from them by choosing our friends more carefully.

We the church have a lot of work to do. If you are a Christian who thinks the government and/or the press can be very dangerous, be reminded that many people think of the church that way too. Not all doubts and suspicions are well founded or virtuous. But we've given people reasons to distrust us. Our response should not be to pretend this isn't the case and go on as if nothing happened, as both the government and the press did in the aftermath of Richard Jewell. To the contrary, we need to own up to our stuff and not just apologize, but go to school and learn. If we really do this, we won't have nearly as hard a time convincing secular folks that even though we're not perfect, we are different - in a good way.