Grace City Church Youth Group’s Featured Photo Features Problematic Symbol
It recently came to my attention that Grace City Church’s “Anchored Youth” youth group’s featured photo on the GCC website has a group of about 60 people of various ages flashing what has been listed as a symbol of hate by the the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization. Here’s the photo, which is located on the “Connect” tab of GCC’s website.
Now there’s debate over whether the gesture is actually a hate symbol or just a way for digital culture warriors to “trigger the libs.” You can read more about the context of that discussion here and here, but I don’t care to get lost in the weeds on that topic in this short post. What I will say is that the metamorphosis from innocuous internet obscurity to alt-right hate symbol is well documented in the history of the Pepe the Frog, which you can learn more about from the LA Times here.
And if the gesture wasn’t meant to be a symbol of hate originally, its meaning has been co-opted and changed by Neo-Nazis and white nationalists like Richard Spencer who make sure to use the gesture regularly in photos. Here’s how a small town in Montana dealt with Spencer and his shenanigans.
I see this as notable, especially in context with the rest of the Christian Nationalist style content on GCC’s YouTube channel, but it’s not a part of my focus for this investigation. So I decided to make a short post about it here so people can ask their own questions and make up their own minds.
The big question I would like answered is this: When was the photo taken? I know where the photo was taken, at the Cedar Springs Camp in Lake Stevens, Wa. but I have no idea when the photo was taken. So I emailed the Anchor Youth pastor Brian Blair to ask that and a few other questions but have yet to hear back. As you can see from the sources I’ve linked to in this post the symbol has been a source of controversy going back to 2017, when the IDL declared the hand gesture a hate symbol. If it was taken before 2017 that’s worth another post clarifying that, but even if it was taken before 2017 why is it still up as the featured photo for the youth program in fall 2021?
For those who are asking if and when I will reach out to GCC leadership about this and other issues I have questions about, the answer is yes. When I have the documents I have requested and finished the interviews I have been conducting with former members and other subjects I will reach out with my full list of questions, which is growing by the day.
If you or someone you know is in that photo and want to go on record to about the context of the hand gesture used I would like to talk to you. I have been told, “You need to ask about the dialogue before the photo if you can get anyone to talk.”
Update as of Oct. 7, 2021:
After this post was originally published it only took about 30 minutes for people online to start identifying Chelan County Sheriff Brian Burnett in the photo. Here’s a closer crop of that portion of the photo.
So I reached out to contacts in law enforcement and at the Chelan County Prosecutor’s office and asked if they agreed that’s Burnett. Everyone I asked said yes. I know there was a discussion about it at the prosecutor’s office and the Chelan County Prosecutor himself said that’s Burnett. One LEO (law enforcement officer) added that Burnett should know that’s a hate symbol because it has been on FBI posters and literature for years now.
So I reached out to GCC’s Anchored Youth Pastor Brian Blair and asked him about the context of the photo. Was it taken a long time ago, before the gesture was widely known for being a hate symbol? I did not hear back from Blair.
So then I reached out to Sheriff Burnett via email and asked him if that’s him, and if he realized at that time the gesture had become a symbol for white power. I have not heard back from Sheriff Burnett.
