Furman, Trump resistance and Process

  I  was present Saturday in Pendleton SC for the anti Trump rallies. I got on camera with the Anderson Observer report and you can see me in the video there. Erin Goss an English Proff at Celemson fan of Cormac McCarthy and Ron Rash was a coordinator for the ralley and she and I had nice conversation. The Oberver said the crowd was about 350 but I think it more more like 750 or more.

   I had twosigns. One said Get Timmons family name of Furman Arena and the other asked why are Nikki Haley and the Clemson trustees struck mute in the face of all of Trump's shenanigans.

     I hope Furman Paladin newspaper will take a look at some faculty acting like Trump. In January I was threatened with criminal trespass for talking at a faculty meeting Jan 15. It It is a ridiculous overreaction to my reservations about some aspects of the Placing Furman initiative. I am am convinced one powerful facllty faculty member got his panties in a wad. The Man who convenend the meeting told me after He was kind of glad I was there, I identified myself before I spoke. It was turned over to John Milby head of security. Nice guy but thick headed and caught up in a ridiculous process beneath Furman and all its advertised virtue and free speech history.

   I am enthusastic about a scholarship initiative in Alabama that could in a few short years deliver a quarter million dollars to Furman in matching funds. I already have two scholars from the small town of Collinsville Alabama. One has verbal scores through the roof I hope to introduce to Tomiko Brown Nagin and the other, Hispanic, with high math scores. I have mentioned her to Dr Harris in the Math Department. My Father and his Father were good friends.

     Not to toot my own horn but I dont see how a fellow like me is a candidate for criminal trespass. There are a good twenty classmates, faculty and staff who think this is ridiculous, and former Chaplain Jim Pitts a few years ago said if Furman had an Order of the Palmetto he would nominate me

   Mr. Milby, President Davis and some of the trustees should read my review of Karen Guth's Tainted Legacies. easy for google for recent issue of Christian Ethics Today. I quote Pitts at some length in that piece.

    A former assistant to Samford President Tom Corts wrote President Davis an appeal on my behalf which she dismissed and turned back to Milby who is not a jury of my peers.

    This is my 50th homecoming year. I hope to get this to the attention of the student newspaper cause I think they can do some investigation worthy of Marshall Frady  early in the upcoming year.

     Furman and Trump in concert. I Never imagined. 

Will Aunt Mary's Johnson Ferry defenestrate Collinsville Baptist

  Aunt Mary Willis of the Johnson Ferry Baptist church in Marietta Ga is the sister of the widow of John Morgan, recently deceased after forty five years as pastor of the Alabama church where my Mother was baptized in the town my family goes back to the 1840s. I lived there for thirty years up till late January 2020 whereupon I relocated to Upstate SC

    That congregation defenestrated me on May 26, 2006 by a vote of 32 20. Now Johnson Ferry and 60 percent of the voting messengers yesterday in Dallas Texas want to drive Collinville Baptist out of the Convention with the Law Amendment. Mary Willis pastor Clay Smith is named as one of ten pastors including the pastor of FBC Cumming Ga out becasue they are soft on women. Prime example in the Collinsville case is the Memorial service for Pastor Morgan of six weeks ago. You can watch it online

   Smith is a trustee of Southern Semonary whose president Al Mohler is a hardline fundamentalist super trumper and political operative. Watch him in the documentary Hold the Line SBC created by the New Yorker.

   Ferry and Cumming are both in Marjorie Taylor Green's congressional district which makes perfect sense in a way. And known historically for the lynching of Leo Frank and the ethnic cleansing and lynchings in Forsyth County in 1915 .    Methodist minster's son Patrick Phillips wrote up seven years ago in Blood at the Root. One chapter was titled Thirty karat son of a bitch with spare parts.

     I'm not calling Clay Smith the Ferry pastor that, but there are some similarities to his mentality and how he  operates. Smith's father was minister of music at FBC Mauldin SC in the nineties whose pastor Strickland wife is the niece of  Etheredge, George Wallace highway man in the 80s. Red retired to Collinsville of some means and was quite the character at Basketball games etc. He is now a trustee of Jacksonville State with the famous lead of the group Alabama, Randy Owen.

     Randy and I had lunch at the Ft Payne Cracker Barrel about a decade ago but I digress

    So google up the New yorker doc Hold the Line, SBC and see the Religion News Service report of today June 12 on the SBC Law Amendment, and sterling unflinching reports at Baptist News Global. Countdown is on for Aunt Mary and Collinsville Baptist.

    Stay in touch as more to come 

Kayla Beene and Mason McKinney new hope for Collinsville Baptist church

Ffriends been a while since I’ve posted in this blogcould be a little sketchy as it’s gonna be kind of a random catch all blog of the last couple of months and I’m doing it. Technically a new way I’m hoping a friend or put it in an email and send it back to me that I can copy and just post as a blog so it won’t be bold or print, but maybe it’ll get the job done. Kayla Beene and Mason McKinney early twenties . They are in their early 20s and a new hope for Collinsville Baptist are taking positions of responsibility with the youth and even on the bylaws committee, the two have a bright families and if they will reach out with the challenge of a Becky Kennedy in her robe and stole for the Morgan memorial Service Becakyon staff at Baylore ordained about ten years ago talked about the wider network of everybody that was around during the time of John Morgan that sits a wide reach With Kayla b she has an a great uncle whose daughter it goes to Duke of Divinity school and there’s a lot of things to think about there. I hope the church in this new generation will will open their minds for good people, especially in the matter of Baptist identity and the authentic Baptist witness in America Will go a little wider and then have been discussed the last 30 or 40 years and understand the implication of the fundamentaist takeover

      the Baptist convention not to dwell on it, but to know that it happened and that the SBC is no longer what it was and it’s not the congregation that in Collinsville Baptist has a part of that water picture is not the congregation now with their recent flirtations with Calvinism that was envisioned in the 20s 30s and fories.  and 40s and my mother‘s era and the era of the Gilbreth and Mary Catherine Reed, who had a wide following because she was here at the home economics department at university of Alabama So those days  those days they had pastors like John Jeffers, who went on to be a longtime Pastor first Baptist Church, Auburn and then even in the 70s they had Fred Grissom, who Jackie Myers embraced and Became a professor at Southeastern seminary under the time  of my dad‘s great friend Randall lolly is the president and that’s completely different from from what’s going on with the SBC now.

 Kayla and Mason Bright people they can watch the documentary. up at baptist news global or a google for SBC Hold The Line .  It’s easy to find hold the line SBC about Women in Baptist life and in their role in the church and it’s obvious Becky Kennedy flew in the face of all that and I’m glad she did in her robe but she’s an ordained minister one of the better products of the Morgan era. They embraced Becky and so that whole service was Flew in the face of what the SBC is and at the SBC followed through from the national level down to the state local level they vote Collinsville Baptist out of the association and Southern Baptist life so I mean that’s just the fact there’s no way to look around it so I hope Mason  side his let me see where his mother’s his mother‘s sister is the aunt By marriage of the school superintendent for the state of Alabama. Eric Mackie and he understands what’s going on in this Baptist mess. He learned a lot when he was at Jacksonville State, Wayne Flynt spoke last year tohistorical societyk association First Baptist Auburn and his is a disciple Mark Wilson. He’s been head of the Auburn democracy project for 14 years which has had a presence in Collinsville through Jennifer Wilkins  he was on the pool pit committee for first Baptist Church Auburn. He knows this is a mess and he knows there’s a better vision For Collinsville Baptist Church than the one that they’re looking at now so there’s ways to do these things and I hope Kayla and a mason look into it and I’m just a phone call away and I got friends who know people that can help if Collinsville Baptist not too stubborn to et a grip in the mist ethnicaoy dierse town in the state. 70 percent of Collinsville school is now minortiy and Jason Barnett and Brad;ey crawford need to talk to their friend Jrdan dufexis and Tommy Tubberville, even rick burgess and get sme carity.   Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong aint what they used to be  (lot more on that in a couple mnths)  used to be so I’m a throw my two cents in later in the year, but I wanted to get this in to get to Kayla and Mason‘s attention and they can do their own thinking they got people they can talk to. They can even talk to Sherlyn Crowe that’s Baptist joint committee in Washington DC who’s a product of the first Baptist Church of Fort Payne got a masters at Vanderbilt so they’re smart there are people that understand this and they’re not very far away and want to put this out there and maybe with the sequel but that’s good for now.

Baptist populists, the MAGA Base and soul molesting complicity

   Andrew Gardner uploaded a piece April 7 on Baptist populism and the MAGA Base. It ratifies what I have been saying for 35 years now about the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. in 1993 Harold Bloom of Yale wrote in his book The American Religion the tragedy in the SBC is the result of pure political machinations masquerading as religious conviction.

      Five years before that Paul Pressler in the network of Jesse Helms and the Council for National Policy walked off the interview with Bill Moyers when pressed about his Exxon family history with the right wing. Part of it had to do with windfall profit taxes Jimmy Carter ushered in as suggested by Tom Edsall in The New Politics of Inequality. Pressler's network went back to the McCarthy era in culture war politics distraction disquising oil profits.

   Homer Lindsay has a key anecdote in Gardner's telling. Bullying a compromise discussion with the ultra fundies on the seminaries, he called them chickens for backing off hardline notions. One of his key parishioners at FBC Jacksonville Florida was Tim Tebow's Mother, the Eagle Forum Woman of the Year for 2018

   See Jill Lepore These Truths to put the Eagle Forum in context over the SBC takeover years and check the index for Frank Norris and Baptist populism of Billy Sunday's Day.

        Bill Friday UNC chanclellor told Cecil Sherman the most significant development of the 1980s in North Carolina was the Helms Baptists of the CNP ouster of Randall Lolley as president of Southeastern Baptist Seminary in the town of Wake Forest cause Helms Pressler network knew if they could get in the heads of Baptist preachers in culture war politics they could sway that region of the country to the Right for a generation.   

     Google Robert Jones shutting down CRT debate religion news. It is a sordid tale how race baiting politics evolved into the MAGA politics of Abortion, guns and now immigration. It is chocked full of mendacity SBC and now National MAGA politics.

      Read Gardner and do you your best to distinguish between your ASS and a Hole in the Ground when it comes to Jesus and MAGA SBC Politics

      

        

Dabo Swinney Upstate mega church Newspring goes liberal on Women

About twenty years after President Carter figured it out Dabo Swinney mega church in Clemson and Anderson SC, two campuses, broke with the Southern Baptist Convention and their third world view on women. Somebody outted Meredith Knox on their staff as a "teaching minister" and that was all she wrote. Who knows if the congregation will start consulting Baptist News Global on a weekly basie or religion dispatches, but once you start thinking a little there aint no going back.

      Better for them Than the hard core Super Trumper Church of the Highlands in Bama with congregations from Tuscaloosa to Gadsden. Those Bastards ( check the Old Testament cause it defines them) and their 25 ccampuses are hard core fundamentalists hard wired to Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk. They are proud of it.

     First Baptist Church Spartanburg with Trey Gowdy is almost as bad and Dabo wwill have to talk to his trustee Nikki Haley cause like Highlands, she has embraced Kirk and TPUSA.

    Nick Saban gave a million dollars to his St Francis Catholic student ministry in Tuscaloosa. So now Saban and Dabo are part of congregations Trump defines as the enemy from within.

     So lets have the conversation that matters now the train has left the station and Dabo Swinney is on it.....I think Trevor Lawrence is ready to take it up as well. at least in the off season. 

Franklin Graham to be interviewed tonight on NC PBS

 Side by Side series by Nido Cobain the Presidnet of High Point University. . Will do my best to bring it to the attention of the several, three channels of UNC PBS comparing to what I imagine the late Bill Friday, chancellor of the UNC system would think. And a touch of Marshall Frady, Randall Balmer and the PBS documentary on Billy Graham which is definitive for my tastes.

    I  saw the interview Tuesday. It will be repeating and I think it is online. As expected it was a puff piece softball interview. Foxcues mostly on the logistics of Samartian's Purse which I commend Franklin for.

     Frank only metnioned two presidents, Bush 41 and Trump. Said he went with his father to the inauguration of 43 for Gov of Texas which woulda been early 90s. Sat by 41 at the meal and Georege Herbert Walker pointed around the table to his big family and told Franklin who those family members were. As you know it is a big family.

    Franklin said he wrote a note to Trump about his vulgarities, his speech, and Trump often made mention of the note publicly saying he was trying to do better.

    Nothing mentioned to compared Trump to Bonhoeffer or Lincoln or Alabama's Judge Frank Johnson, even Eisenhower.

       Nido is president of High Point University. Obviously ill prepared for this matter he should arrange to have some of the scholars on the PBS Doc to campus, in particular Randall Balmer of Dartmouth to discuss Frankling and his politics.

    Talk about the invitations Franklin made for Billy's 95th birthday which included Trump and Rogers Ailes and a couple other politics.

      In the early 90s Bill Friday a UNC PBS personality told Cecil Sherman, the pastor then of the FBC of Asheville the biggest event for the decade on the 1980s in NC was the fundamentalist takeover of the Baptist seminary in to the town of Wake Forest, Southeastern Seminary. Friday said Jesse Helms operatives led by Sam Currin knew that in SEBTS they could get in the heads of the next generation of Southern Baptist pastors and bend them toward the Right. That is a big part of the Trump base now across the SE and Franklin Graham is at the core of the movement. See Katherine Stewart Money Lies and Power. Also google Robert Jones, Shutting Down CRT debatle, Religion news.

      Billy Graham told Al Mohler an SBC fundamentalist leader that he sided with the fundamentalist in the SBC takeover

     That is what PBS NC should be reporting about the legacy of Billy and Franklin Graham and every graduate of High Point should know it too.

    

A serendipitous Friday March 21 , 2025

    Come back to this blog as I hope to give it some shine with today just something of an outline

    Some days hold unexpected charm and today was one of them. This year has had more drama than I could have imagined on January One, but today was some relief. Perfect weather and well rested I pulled the trigger and made the trip  to a quartly class of 71 Reunion in Gaffney. Charles Edwards was at the table at the door, a Furman classmate in addition to GHS, but I talk to him often and sat with Barry Denton . Lewis Hiuskey and Donnie Clary Table. Next table up was Joe Hartzog, Bobby Littlejohn and Mike Hammett. Hammett and I may have been only folks in the room who voted Biden.

   Emily McCraw was there for a routine exchange about girls basketball. I made a motion nxt gathering be held at the cracker barrel at one pm but that failed due to prior arrangements.  I said something else but it failed as well.

       I barely had a chance to eat half my spaghetti  before class mates started leaving. They were there for a good forty minutes after I got there. but told one of the waiters a good joke he liked. He was an international from Algeria who got a masters at Limestone College and decided tohang around Gaffney for a while. Then talked to a woman whose Uncle married Phyllis Arial, a great friend of the actree Andie McDowell.

     Went about a quarter mile out to Bethany Baptist where my Dad was pastor from 62 to 78 and sat in parking lot and reminisced. Then decided to go down the Union HWY which was further than I remembers. Went out to Midway BBQ to get some of their famous hash to go. Got three house weiners as well for dollar 28. Furman's George Singleton the writer has made MID way with a mention in his collection Asides.

      Traffic as bad on 85 and it was further up the Buffalo hwy to Roebuck than I thought and the lights were interminable and I caught every one of them.

     85 at Pelham road was atrocious even at three in the afternoon but finally got to chick fil a in Powedersville where I told some hs exchange students from Europe and Brazil who had settled in Winston Salem my unsoliocited life story. They were kind to indulge me. Hit the high points of margins of the film adaptation of Ron Rash's One Foot in Eden and Brett Morgen's six minute standing ovation at Cannes.

    When I pick this up will name the 71 starting line up for the Gaffney Indian baseball team as remembered by their legendary raconteur Barry Denton.

     Denton who was  big bat played centerfield. He said Mike Johnson was beside him in left. Ronnie Smiley was the shortstop. He got strong look from Kansas City after graduation. Danny Parker was the pitcher and could paint the plate. But for a knee injury as football QB our Freshman year, most are convinced he coulda been starting pitcher for Clemson.

     Now it looks like Drew Medley at COC is taking up the Gaffney legend as a reliever. He was a great receiver for the state champion football team couple years ago as they upset Dutch Fork.

    Denton said Lee Smith was the catcher and Donnie Ray Littlejohn a year before Donnie Ray had a big bat and With Ulysses Dawkins legends of the 60s transitional years of integration.

     Webb Pierce and Robb Sartor were outstanding Denton's jr year 69 70.

 I am not aware of records for these teams as they played spring and the High School year book was sparse on information as same for track and tennis team.

     I hope to get more information from Denton and others. Dewitt Price legend has it was among top five to ever play High school baseball at Gaffney