Pastor Allen Joyner from Sweet Home Baptist Church in Alabama made the news recently after he made an apparently controversial statement while serving as an announcer for a high school football game.
"If you don't want to stand for the national anthem, you can line up over there by the fence and let our military personnel take a few shots at you since they're taking shots for you," he allegedly said, according to a Facebook post shared by Denise Crowley-Whitfield.
The post has already been taken down, but before that, it received over 4,700 shares and dozens of comments, according to AL.com.
Joyner later issued a statement saying he never said anybody should be shot. "My words were, 'If you don't want to stand for the national anthem, please go sit at the baseball field and let some of our folks take a shot at reminding you of the price the military paid for your freedom to sit.' I never advocated violence of any kind," he pointed out
Following that incident, Joyner resigned from his prep football announcer position. He hopes his resignation will not be misconstrued by some as an admission of his alleged mistake. "My family, my church and my school have suffered because of the misquote; therefore, I choose not to continue to put them under more scrutiny from people who don't know me," he said.
Butler County Schools Superintendent Amy Bryan said they never support violence of any kind, even in jest, and that the school board will not condone threats against anyone who some people consider to be unpatriotic. They have accepted Joyner's resignation.
As for the pastor, he told the Greenville Advocate that he deeply regrets that he was misquoted. As a Christian, Joyner said he would never support unlawful acts of any kind, much less murder.
"Anyone who knows me knows... I am not the man I am being portrayed as," he said. "As for everyone else, it really doesn't matter. I am being judged by a Facebook misquote, so really I guess prejudice is what I should be screaming."
