When I saw the comments of Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley earlier this week I tried, really tried, to find a way to give him the benefit of the doubt.
As first reported in the Birmingham News, Bentley was speaking on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where King once served as pastor. The News reported:
”I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor … I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind,” Bentley said in a short speech given about an hour after he took the oath of office as governor.
Then Bentley, who for years has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, gave what sounded like an altar call.
“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”Bentley added, ”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”
As is often the case in politics, Bentley’s inelegant sentence turned into a classic gaffe story, with press accounts and bloggers latching onto his comment about non-believers not being his brothers and sisters. The last part of the quote — “I want to be your brother” — disappeared.
Instead, that one jarringly negative sentence overwhelmed everything else. Bentley and others may not feel this is fair, but I also can understand why this is the case.
Bentley’s evangelical faith fuels a continual urge to proclaim the Gospel to others. However, it’s one thing to say that you hunger for others to know the joy and peace that you’ve found in Christ, which includes a strong bond of fellowship. It is quite another to turn that honorable desire around and declare that those who do not share your faith are not your brothers and sisters.
Such a statement signals a negative and needlessly binary view of others: Are you with us or against us? Are you friend or foe? Bentley may never have meant it that way, but as life teaches us what we mean isn’t necessarily what others hear. As a politician Bentley ought to understand that. To say on one hand you are governor of all the state and then say on the other that those who don’t share your faith are not your brothers — well, there’s an obvious tension between the two. Especially if you are not a Christian.
No surprise, then, that he grabbed others’ attention for all the wrong reasons.
Bentley did the right thing in apologizing:
What I would like to do is apologize. Should anyone who heard those words and felt disenfranchised, I want to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ If you’re not a person who can say you are sorry, you’re not a very good leader.
Bentley also met with local religious leaders, and according to WSFA in Birmingham:
The governor said when he made the comments to the church audience he assumed he was speaking as a private citizen and not as the Governor of Alabama.
Two observations about the apology.
First, Bentley’s apology is a variation of the classic frame, “I’m sorry if I offended anybody …” Such a statement, however sincere, apologizes more for the consequences of the original comment than for the comment itself. That distinction is significant because it suggests that if no one is offended, no harm was done. In that light, this is a very limited apology.
Second, his statement about speaking as a private citizen clashes with his own comments during the speech that “I became the governor of all the people.” I’m aware of how folks compartmentalize their lives — but on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis? I think not. Such an excuse tends to undermine the apology, rather than explain his act.
As stories go Bentley’s blunder enjoyed a very limited half-life in today’s hyper news cycles, already fading into the background. Nonetheless, it is instructive reminder for Christians of the power of language and the care required in one’s words. Such care is necessary not for the sake of image-building and public relations savvy. Such care is necessary because words always have an impact, and therefore for a Christian they require wise and humble stewardship.
Signs of Grace 