Gary Scott Smith

Hillary Rodham Clinton is one of the most admired and most vilified American politicians. When she was First Lady, a woman I knew said she didn’t like her cheeks! As Secretary of State, people didn’t like her pant suits. As a candidate for the presidency, people didn’t like that she didn’t stand up to Trump while others thought she was too abrasive and they didn’t like her voice. We all saw the memes circulating across social media that spewed hate without a stated reason. Some of my social media and personal friends supported Hillary and admired her. Others were Never Trumpers who backed her as the lesser of two evils.

Although I married into the United Methodist Church (UMC) and was a pastor’s wife for most of my adulthood, I didn’t know much about Clinton’s faith and the impact of the UMC in her life.

The very title of this book is basic Methodism: Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. The author shows that this teaching is central to Clinton’s faith and the motivation for her work and political aspirations.

Methodism’s founder John Wesley had been disturbed that the Church of England lacked a spiritual foundation and became involved with a group decried as “Methodists” for their methodical faith life which included weekly prayer, confession, and communion. He was decried for preaching outside of the church’s walls, going to the common working people. He taught the importance of works of charity and reaching out to the suffering and imprisoned as a central response to recognizing God’s gift of grace to all. Over its history, Methodism supported public education, prohibition, worker’s rights, and social justice. The church attacked social ills including alcohol, gambling, racism, and sexism. During most of the twentieth century, this social gospel aspect of the UMC prevailed.

When Clinton left home she was exposed to new ideas, reading Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, Reinhardt Niebuhr, and Karl Barth. (When my husband was a seminary student, I audited classes and read them all. I was particularly impacted by Niebuhr, the class taught by a man who had been involved with the Civil Rights movement.) Clinton drifted from her Republican upbringing to a McGovern Democrat. From the start, she was drawn to working for the social good.

Throughout the book, details of Clinton’s life and career are supported by deep research. The author shares both the criticism she faced and the support she was given, her successes and her failures, her strengths and her weaknesses, evaluations of what she did right and where she went wrong.

The overall picture is of a woman of strength, faith, motivation, and intellect, an imperfect Christian and flawed politician, a victim of sexism and libel and her own fatal flaws. Clinton’s support of controversial topics has overshadowed her life-long work to support the needs of women and children.

Some evangelical Trump supporters contended that flawed and sinful people can still do God’s work, and yes, the Bible is filled with such examples. Those same voices accused Clinton of being Satan.

The failure of the Democratic party and Clinton’s political campaign had, as we know, a huge impact. The book delves into the way each candidates reached, or failed to reach, voters of faith.

Reading this book I was again made aware of how religion has infiltrated politics and the law, and how American society, while leaving organized religion, still hold religious ideals that they believe should be a part of politics. The author quotes James Madison’s Federalist No. 10, warning against the human tendency of dividing into factions that would rather fight than cooperate for the common good.

This book gave me a lot to think about.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.… (mer)

Summary: A biography on this pioneer Hall of Famer who desegregated Major League Baseball, devoted his post-playing years to civil rights activism, all sustained by his active faith.

As a lifelong baseball fan, this is not the first Jackie Robinson biography I’ve read. The one I read when I was a young fan focused on his exploits on the field, his courage and restraint in breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, and how his play contributed to several pennants and a World Series victory. As this book makes clear, Robinson not only needed to be both courageous and self-controlled to face racist treatment, he needed to be good–and he was. He was fast and daring on the base paths, a great fielder, and could deliver hits and bunts in clutch situations. He was a great all-round ballplayer deserving of Hall of Fame status simply on those merits.

This book added to the portrait of Robinson in several ways. Most importantly, it reveals him as a man of deep faith, who like Augustine had a godly mother and his own Ambrose in the form of a Methodist pastor, Karl Downs, who rescued him from gang life in Pasadena. Later, as he faces intense pressure and vitriol, he testifies, “Many nights I get down on my knees and pray for the strength not to fight back.” This and the support of his wife Rachel made all the difference for a proud man whose natural instinct was to fight back. Yet Smith also shows how Rachel went beyond standing by Robinson to pursue her own career as a nurse-therapist and professor.

Gary Scott Smith also fleshes out the vital role Branch Rickey played in Robinson’s life. Smith goes into the Methodist faith the two men shared, a critical factor in Rickey deciding to sign Robinson. Rickey was both a deeply religious man in Smith’s account and a sharp (and parsimonious) baseball entrepreneur. It was Rickey’s counsel he followed in not fighting back against spiking, knockdown pitches, and crude racial insults. When Rickey died in 1965 he said of Rickey: “He talked with me and treated me like a son.” The treatment of Rickey is so interesting that I would love to see Smith follow up this book with a full length biography on Rickey, perhaps as part of this Library of Religious Biography series.

What also distinguishes this book is the account it gives of Robinson’s post-baseball career as a tireless activist for civil rights through newspaper columns that did not hesitate to criticize presidents of either party, through public addresses including messages in hundreds of churches, marching on the front lines in places like Selma. At the same time, Robinson was not a “movement activist.” While honored by the NAACP with its Spingarn award, he did not hesitate to differ with others like Paul Robeson over communism or Dr. King over Vietnam. Some accused him of being an “Uncle Tom” for his relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, motivated by both political and business considerations, and his support in 1960 for Richard Nixon.

Vietnam would contribute to tragedy in Robinson’s life. His son Jackie, Jr. returned with addiction problems but the book makes clear the strains on the father-son relationship between the two. Sadly, just as Jackie, Jr. started to get his life on track as well as his relationship with his father, he died in an auto accident, just a year before Jackson himself passed.

That leads to my one question about this book, that the author doesn’t discuss how such a fine athlete as Robinson died at age 53, just sixteen years after retirement, suffering from diabetes, heart disease, and nearly blind. Others have discussed the disparate impacts of racism on health and the effects of his repressed anger and racial traumas on his health. Pictures of Robinson show him with hair turning white in his last playing years. Robinson bore on his body in many ways, externally and internally, the trauma of racism, and perhaps this might have been further developed in this work.

Smith portrays Robinson’s faith as “muscular,” and apart from those bedside prayers concerned more about moral and social uplift of his people, expressed in his tireless work. Even in his last years, with failing health, he was grateful for God’s blessings. Yet, he was infrequent in church attendance, and Smith notes the evidence of extra-marital affairs. After his first two years, he was more aggressive in defending himself on the field, having fulfilled his agreement with Rickey. Yet there is a thread running through the course of his life, shown by Smith of a faith that sustained and strengthened Robinson. What resulted was some of the most significant civil rights leadership in the twentieth century delivered in the form of a stellar athlete (no one since has stolen home more than the 19 times he did this) and a courageous champion. His faith, courage, and perseverance are worth emulation.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.… (mer)