Tarnishing the Name of Jesus

It was a week ago tonight that Pres. Biden delivered the annual State of the Union (SOTU) message. His address was widely applauded by Democrats and by the mainstream media—and, not surprisingly, panned by Republicans and by right-wing news outlets who castigate the “lamestream” media.

This post, though, is about the Republican rebuttal speech given by Alabama Senator Katie Britt. 

Katie Boyd Britt (b. 1982) was elected the junior Senator from Alabama in 2022, defeating Democrat Will Boyd, a Black Baptist pastor. She received nearly 67% of the vote.

I didn’t remember hearing the name of Sen. Britt before I saw that she would give the rebuttal after the SOTU address, so I looked her up on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

In a July 2021 interview, Britt stated, “Jesus Christ is the most important thing in life, and that should be the foundation that everything else comes around.” I certainly would not disagree with that, but surely such a statement should include telling the truth and not bearing false witness.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times candidly stated that “the woman sitting in the kitchen with the cross glittering on her neck lied.” After listening (on Friday) to her Thursday night rebuttal speech, that clearly seems to be the case.

And given what she has said about Jesus Christ and the sparkling (diamond-studded?) cross around her neck as she gave her speech, it seemed to me that she was tarnishing the name of Jesus.

No wonder more and more people in the U.S. are leaving the Christian faith and joining the “nones.”

Sen. Boyd’s rebuttal speech was criticized and critiqued by a wide variety of voices. For example, here is part of what historian Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) wrote about Katie’s talk in her March 8 newsletter:

Sitting in a kitchen rather than in a setting that reflected her position in one of the nation’s highest elected offices, Britt conspicuously wore a necklace with a cross and spoke in a breathy, childlike voice as she wavered between smiles and the suggestion she was on the verge of tears. 

At the close of HRC’s letter, I first learned about Jess Piper and her Substack posts under the name “The View from Rural Missouri.” Her March 8 “view” was titled “The Fundie Baby Voice.”*

But it wasn’t the voice that most disturbed me. It was the lies that Sen. Britt told in that problematic voice.

In his remarks at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening, Jimmy Kimmel made these remarks about Emma Stone, who had just been awarded the Best Actress Oscar: “Emma, you are so unbelievably great in Poor Things. Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night.”**

Sen. Boyd did her best to harm Pres. Biden and to lessen his chances of winning a second term as POTUS. She may have done the Republicans more harm than good, however.

I was saddened by the touching story she told of talking last year with the girl who had been a victim of sex trafficking—and then off-put by her blaming the President for that tragic event. And then I was incensed when it turned out the incident in question took place when George W. Bush was President!

On Monday, Washington Post associate editor and columnist Karen Tumulty wrote that the “horrific story” Katie told, “at least by implication, turned out to be a big fat lie.”

Tumulty went on to note that the “Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Britt four Pinocchios for the way she twisted this tragic story to make a cravenly partisan point.”

Despite her later efforts to walk back what she had said, there was no way her listeners could have known she was talking about an incident that took place more than a decade ago. Even if it wasn’t a blatant lie, it was highly deceitful and told with the intent of harming the President.

It is quite clear, though, that in spite of her prominent display of a cross on a necklace and pious talk, she tarnished the name of Jesus and did the cause of Christ far more harm than good.

_____

  * Jess Piper lives in (or near) Maryville, Missouri, which is about 35 miles from my hometown. In 2022 she ran as a progressive Democrat to become a Representative in the Missouri legislature, but she was soundly defeated in the district that twice voted for Trump by 80% or so. I am now receiving her Substack posts and have had email exchanges with her this week.

** This was a powerful putdown of Sen. Britt’s rebuttal speech to those who had seen Emma Stone's Oscar-winning performance in Poor Things, but I do not recommend that movie except to insightful, mature adults.