Last year, The Gospel Coalition, seemingly on a suicide mission to shed whatever last vestiges it had as a credible gospel-centered organization, released an article by member Dr. K. Edward Copeland that compared the actions of 17-year Kyle Rittenhouse who shot three assailants in self-defense in Kenosha, to the Charleston Church shooter Dylan Roof.
The post began with the authors lamenting some bad memories from the month of August he has had in his past, then culminated into an ignorant, slanderous, objectively shocking article for a professing Christian organization where they compared a deranged and unabashed white supremacist who premeditatedly killed nine people in a church with the intent to start a race war, to the young man who came to help out and defend peoples’ lives and businesses, clean up graffiti along the way, give medical aid to protesters, who then shot and killed two people in self-defense who were seeking to do him gross bodily harm or worse.
Not only did Copeland compare the two shooters and lump them together as “armed mass shooters,” but he by necessity likened the victims at the church to the lawless looters and rioters and drew parallels between the three shot convicted criminals and the five congregants, three pastors, and one bivocational state senator killed in Emmanuel.
At the time we asked ourselves, “What sort of despicable comparison is this?” This divisive, dishonest, and needlessly provocative piece was ridiculed on arrival. This is unambiguous evidence that TGC has gone off the deep end, with this article being the proverbial rock tied around its ankles that sinks it to the bottom. Now all that is left to do is watch it eventually float to the surface and poke it with a stick.
Whenever someone asks us, “why are you always beating up on TGC?!?” We point them to this article as demonstrative of what the old Green Gang at the Coalition is putting out.
And yet now, after 15 months of sustained criticism over the content of this hideous creature, Collin Hansen, editor in chief of TGC has finally and made a few edits, writing:
Of course, this claim of it simply being an “editorial” oversight is laughable, given that TGC has been consistently criticized for this article and yet purposefully chose to do nothing about it, only changing it from “mass shooter” to “armed shooter” days after the trial ended.
Most important, however, is that even with the small alteration, it doesn’t change the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse is still being compared to Dylan Roof, with the removal of the word “mass” doing little to change that. It is a purposeful connection of the two. Hansen took some time to “oversee” the article and give it a second look, and yet did not feel it necessary to disturb that portion it it.
Lastly, a brief edit is not an apology. Comparing someone to a deranged mass murderer for nearly 400 days and then changing one word while the rest remains, is not an apology. Regretting an “oversight” isn’t an apology. Slandering Rittenhouse online and washing your hands of culpability is not an apology.
After a second, more careful examination of their “Why I hate August” article, TGC has seen it fit to leave it be as is, with no further changes forthcoming.
This is why we hate TGC.
