When fundies attack

I'm turning once again to the world of football for this morning's opener, because it's just So Bizarre.

Former Florida State quarterback and local sports hero Casey Weldon was fired yesterday as head football coach at North Florida Christian School, despite having led his team to the state title game in each of the last two seasons. So why is this blogworthy? Check out the reason school president and Baptist minister Randy Ray gave for the dismissal:

The school's president, pastor Randy Ray, would not return phone calls on Tuesday but did reply to an e-mail requesting an interview.

"We are a ministry, a church with a school," Ray wrote. "As it is with all of our decisions we try to be led by the Lord we serve. Sometimes that leadership is popular and embraced by everyone and at other times it is not. In any case we must be true to our mission and follow God's leadership.

"It is the consensus of our school administration that this is God's will for what North Florida Baptist Church is trying to do through the program of North Florida Christian School."

God's will, folks. Yes, there are wars and genocide, death and destruction, climate change and poverty, and God decided he needed to fire a high school football coach. Jesus H. Christ on a flea flicker, what a ridiculous statement.

This is a HUGE deal in largely rural north Florida, where high school football is a way of life. Commenters are flooding the article's board, and one local columnist even took on the school today:

But Randy Ray, the pastor who runs North Florida Baptist Church and the school, apparently decided that God needed someone new calling the plays.

Lord, have mercy.

The pure hypocrisy of this situation numbs the soul.

Firing a football coach because it's "God's will"?

What kind of lesson does that teach the students at NFC, and more importantly, the players who were part of Weldon's team? Loyalty and commitment get trumped because of God's will?

Heaven help us.

No one begrudges Ray or anyone else the right to fire a football coach — for any reason. If you don't like the way he calls plays or you don't like the way he treats his players or you simply don't like the way he manages his team meetings, then fire him.

But have the decency to tell the truth.

Don't pass this decision off as "God's will." Be a man, be a leader — for Heaven's sake, be a man of God — and speak the truth.

Casey Weldon was fired Wednesday not because God decided to put on the headsets and call an audible.

Casey Weldon fell victim to the oldest play in the book — politics.

And God's will had nothing to do with it.

The crime here is not that Weldon was fired.

The sin is the way that dismissal was portrayed and, for that, Randy Ray should be ashamed of himself.

God's will?

Thine hypocrisy hath no limit.

Hypocrisy and fundamentalist Christianity go together like peanut butter and jelly. Whether it's Ted Haggard or Randy Ray, a sex scandal in a mega-church or some egotistical backwoods preacher firing a coach in Florida, a Baptist preacher running a school or a Baptist preacher running for president, it's all the same. And, for that matter, it's all a shame.