Christian Faith Was Jackie Robinson’s Haven In A Heartless World

Christianity Today Book Review:  Christian Faith Was Jackie Robinson’s Haven in a Heartless World, by Clayton Trutor (Norwich University) (reviewing Gary Scott Smith (Grove City College), Strength for the Fight: The Life and Faith of Jackie Robinson (2022)):

Historian Gary Scott Smith has built onto the wing of the Jackie Robinson library that Henry, Long, and Lamb started to erect a few short years ago. In Strength for the Fight, part of Eerdmans’s Library of Religious Biography series, Smith offers a more intimate account of Robinson’s spiritual life than was previously known. Rooted in previous books on his subject, Smith’s book is both a work of synthesis and a triumph of original research that casts a distinct analytical eye on Robinson’s religious life.

While Robinson hardly hid his faith under a bushel basket, he shared his views publicly in a more restrained fashion than many charismatic Christian athletes have in recent decades. Smith illustrates this sensibility by calling upon his subject’s frequent and typically sedate speeches to congregations and church groups, reflecting his mainline Protestant roots in the Methodist church. Robinson spoke calmly about the viciousness he often faced as baseball’s first modern African American player, frequently comparing his experiences to those of Job. Many African Americans who heard Robinson speak could relate to such indignities as they went about their own everyday lives.

Smith places Robinson’s Christianity firmly within the ecumenical sensibilities of 1950s and 1960s mainline Protestantism. In this cultural space, a consensus developed around the need for what Smith terms “social amelioration.” Robinson exemplified the spirit of the time, showing great comfort in both Black and white churches. The straight and narrow of the Christian life was Robinson’s haven in an often-heartless world.

It was also a pathway to social progress and to breaking down seemingly impassible barriers, as Robinson demonstrated time and again during his public life. He desegregated not only Major League diamonds but also housing and public accommodations in many of the cities to which he traveled. He desegregated corporate boardrooms as an executive for Chock full o’Nuts coffee. Such boundary-crossing appeal made him an attractive target for both Republicans and Democrats, who vied for his political allegiances.

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