Hemant Mehta, the self-styled Friendly Atheist, has never impressed me. He provides a useful service by tracking the Christian Right in his videos and blog posts, but it's hard to get a handle on his own politics.
In this video he reports on a youth minister-cum-junior high school basketball coach in Arkansas who told his church about the time he sowed the gospel to a student in the school library. Someone apparently leaked a video of his performance to Mehta.
We had a student in our middle school library this last week and I overheard this and so I just jumped in. I was like, I don't really care, you can fire me. I don't care. Right. Where's Todd? He's on the school board. Make sure it doesn't happen. Um, but this girl was asking Miss Cheney. She's like, 'Hey, I'm looking for like a book. Uh, it's got mystery and suspense." And so I was like, "I got you, sister." And I said, "Are you looking for something that's romantic, something that has suspense, thrilling? There is some murders in there. There's redemption, and there's a hero." And she said, "Where do I find it?" Sits right over there. It's the Bible. And then I just walked out. And I was like, I just teed off on that one, you know, and I was like, "Thanks, Miss Cheney, I'm so thankful." Um, but right, seriously, like like God just provided that opportunity and I know the girl, but I mean I was like, "Are you kidding me? Yeah. Like if you're looking for a book, I can show you one, right?" And so I just want to encourage you. And are they always that easy? Not necessarily, right? But I do want to encourage you. The opportunities are there all the time.
Mehta then goes on a rant:
Hey kids, if you want to read a book with genocide and incest, have I got the recommendations for you? What the hell is he doing? Let the librarian handle that one. That is not an opportunity that you need to tee off on. Like, no. No. And don't encourage other people to take that opportunity. No, that's not the proper time or place for that.On the whole I agree with him - yes, the guy should keep his jobs separate - but one reason I included Mehta's video here was to let readers see his own tone and body language. I think he sounds just like the Christian-right censors he usually opposes: The Bible has genocide and incest! It's filth! Don't expose our innocent children to it! I suspect that the kind of books the girl was looking for include some objectionable material too - if they haven't already been purged from the school library by adults who just want to protect kids. I mean, I'm all for freedom of speech too, but next these Christians will have Our Children reading Shakespeare, the Iliad, Oedipus Rex and other Greek tragedies, Lord of the Flies, Maus, The Diary of Anne Frank, Twilight, and who knows what other obscenities? I'd like to think that Mehta was deliberately parodying the style, but I can't see that here. Even the sanitized retellings of Greek mythology I read as a kid in the Fifties included gory details such as Odysseus blinding the Cyclops with a burnt log and Procrustes torturing travelers to make them fit his guest bed. These were available in the elementary school library, yet I seem to have survived.
Mehta goes on to ask if Logan McCourtney, the youth pastor and coach, tries to impose his cult on his junior high school basketball players:
But I do wonder if this guy's doing this to a random girl in the library. He said he knows her. Whatever. If he's doing this in the library, what is he doing as the junior high basketball coach? Is he telling them to pray before games? Is he pushing his religion on those kids? Because we know what happened in the library cuz he bragged about it. We don't know what's happening when he's getting this team ready in a practice.Fair questions, and someone connected to that school should ask them. But you know, I'm not sure we do know what happened in the library. We have only McCourtney's account, and braggarts shouldn't be taken too seriously whether they're secular or sacred. Since he's a preacher, it's even more reasonable to suspect he's exaggerating; he might have made the whole thing up so he could puff up his chest and boast of his devotion to the Lord. He dares the woke atheists to try to fire him (from the safety of a stage where they wouldn't hear him)! He has a buddy on the school board! Again, watch the clip: this is a stand-up comic at work, though there's not much daylight between a stand-up comic and a preacher. If Mehta had talked to the girl or the librarian involved, it would be different, but it's odd for him to take the guy at his word.
Even if McCourtney's account is accurate, we also don't know what happened next, what the girl thought, what the librarian said to her. As McCourtney tells it, he made a lightning intervention and got the hell out of Dodge. The girl might have rolled her eyes and said Geeyyyyy; the librarian might have rolled her eyes, told her not to be bothered, and made some helpful suggestions. It would be different if McCourtney were her teacher or, goddess forbid, her coach, but he isn't. Junior high students are already capable of independent thought, and we liberals want them to be exposed to possibly discomforting literature and ideas, even in class. Don't we?
Mehta titled his video "A junior high basketball coach bragged at church about pushing the Bible on a kid." I didn't think so right away, but after watching the video and reading the comments on it, I think "pushing" is an exaggeration. Again, it's the kind of exaggeration I associate with Christian bigots (Woke teachers are pushing the trans agenda on our children!). I'd already noticed this in comments on other videos and elsewhere, but a significant number of liberals consider any public advocacy of religion, whether directed at them personally or not, as 'having religion forced on them.' Amusingly, they think that Jesus didn't go around pushing his beliefs on others, though that is exactly what he did according to the gospels, and he ordered his disciples to do the same. (I've seen similar claims made of the Buddha; sorry, children, but Buddhism is also a missionary, proselytizing religion.)
Some of these people had strict religious upbringings, which did involve forcing religion on them. I sympathize with them and understand why encountering missionaries makes them uncomfortable, but they are adults now, they often claim that they have left it behind and now think for themselves, and so on. Like it or not, and they don't, they live in a country with constitutionally protected freedom of speech and freedom of religion. That means that adults have a right to try to persuade other adults, even to convert them; it also means that they have the right to tell missionaries to take a hike, or to argue with them and try to persuade them to give up their religious beliefs. (Even more ostensibly open-minded Christians don't like that.) Schools are different in degree, which is exactly what the struggle over library censorship is about; where to draw the line is always up for negotiation, not only on religion but on history, sex education, "race," and other issues. Adults want to "protect" children, but they also want to control them. As students get older, the more discomfort they should be exposed to. As the educator Deborah Meier wrote:
There are plenty of liberal-minded citizens who are uncomfortable with Central Park East's stress on open intellectual inquiry and would have us leave young minds free of uncertainties and openness until "later on" when they are "more prepared to face complexity." First, some argue, "fill the vessel" with neutral information and easily remembered and uplifting stories. But such compromises will neither satisfy the Right nor prepare our children's minds for "later." *
It was funny at first to watch liberals and the Right switch sides on "discomfort." First Culture-of-Therapy liberals declared that no one should ever be made to feel uncomfortable; then they declared that if you're not feeling uncomfortable (mostly but not always about American history) then you're doing it wrong. Then the Right decided that no one should be made to feel uncomfortable about American history. But it's not really funny, because there are serious real-world consequences in these disagreements.
One especially telling comment under Mehta's video was this one (all punctuation sic):
"Free will is gods greatest gift"A fair question, but in context the writer seems to think that simply declaring one's beliefs, or trying to persuade someone else to adopt them, is trying to take away their free will. It isn't. It's essential in a free society. I understand why many people want to take away that freedom, but they mustn't be allowed to do it. I think one problem is that they never learned to say "No, thank you" to such people. It's not surprising, because school is largely based on the assumption that saying "No" is intolerable disobedience; at some indefinite point adults are supposed to learn otherwise, but that point never arrives. Just this week I read another Miss Manners column where she explained that it is permissible simply to turn down unwanted or inconvenient invitations; "No thank you," amplified as "I'm so sorry, I can't," is all that needs to be said. (It's a mistake to invent excuses, which will encourage attempts to persuade you.) The other night a couple of Mormon elders knocked at my door; I said "No thank you," and they gave up gracefully. Not all missionaries are so agreeable, but they can be resisted and dismissed.)
"Really then why do you all always want to take it away from people?"
Did I mention "safe spaces"? I've written about them too, often, but I don't think I've heard about them as much lately.
It's good that Hemant Mehta objected to this pastor-coach's obnoxious conduct. But what does he want to protect children from? Does he want them to learn to think for themselves in a messy world? Or does he think it's enough if adults like him keep away any ideas that might make them uncomfortable?
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* The Power of Their Ideas, Beacon Press, 2002, page 81.
