Furman criminal trespass and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church

  This will begin a series of blogs on my drama with Furman and its criminal trespass policy of which I am the latest victim. Until January of this year I was convinced Furman was a grand place even with the unfortunate decision on Baseball during covid. At Furman I was an Argonaut for two years, in the Band a year and the Furman singers for several months. The fall of 1973 with Dicky Wilson of New Jersey I was co emcee for the Furman Homecoming production the Furman Follies.  McAslister auditorium was packed out with Vince Perone present and Herman Lay of potato chips and Pepsi fame. We did a grand job.

    My friend Jim Pitts recently deceased longtime Chaplain at Furman ssaid I was worthy of Furman's e    uivalent of the order of the Palmetto for my piece in the Christian Century in the early nineties about Furman's dilemma with SC Baptists. Dr. Johns snet me a note of thanks. President David Shi for several years was a reader of this blog, teasuingly calling it "illustrious" at one point. With Shi and Sam Hodges FU 77 and Coug Cumming, son of Joe who hired Marshall Frady at Newswek in 75l we consider ourselves the Marshall Frady fan club of Furman

     But I sent to a gahtering of the Furman faculty in January in late January, the dean of students rudely and arrogantly called out behind me to get to the point reading a Lee Atwater, quoting an Atwater memo interrupted me. When the meting was over I approached Dr. Kolb of the Sociology department and he said you weren't supposed top be here. I replied I'm kinda glad I was , and he said I'm glad you were here too!!

   Five days later I was notifed by Furman security I was charged with criminal trespass and if back on campus wiothin the year could be charge with 200 dollar fine and possibility of jail. And If I made appeals to anybody at Furman could be charged with Harassment.

    I Think all of this is a fiasco, a ridiculous over reaction and friends and classmates will be appealing to the Furman Thrive Committee in hopes I will be allowed on campus for the three day 50 Homecoming celebration including Homecoming Saturday and the next day Basketball exhibition in Renovated Timmons against Alabama

       Again this begins a series of blogs the first now about Monday and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church

        January 31, 2009. I was present at the 16th St., Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama.  on the October 6 of Monday  I went to the Berea Public Library but it was closed . Time to kill before Henry's BBQ i sucker punched myself and rode through the Furman campus. Never stopped but couple hundres yars outside the back fence near Dr. Huff's home I was pulled over by three Furman security including Lieutenant Johnson and Captian Smith   made it down to Henry’s on Wade Hampton for barbecue, but after that, I Visited the Judson bookstore on Main Street and read a few chapters of the new book by Butler Gallie 12 churches that have exemplified an era in Christian development since the time of Jesus. The 12th church is on the 11th church is the 16th St., Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama. I was there on January 31, 2009 and it was it was it was packed house I was standing under a window and when President Carter was speaking, he directed everybody’s attention to the window that I was standing beneath and he says look at that window. That’s the face of Christ that was blown out in the bombing of this church to kill the four little girls in 1963 To  my left two people down was Wayne Flynt, the Auburn professor the conscience of the state of Alabama and a few people down from him was the former governor Siegelman of Alabama 

   So  I was in good company that day Kate Campbell, the singer who open for Emmylou Harris in 2000 in Europe, sang some songs among us she is does a great cover of Kris Kristofferson‘s tribute to Martin Luther King and Gandhi my God they killed him and then later on the front steps, I talked to Marion right Edelman to great civil rights worker from Mississippi that was a great friend of Bobby Kennedy and set up a situation for her to come speak at limestone college in Gaffney, South Carolina my hometown a year later for the Martin Luther King weekend celebration.  She   spoke about a mile from my father‘s church when we were there in the in the 60s, so are the book doubles down on the murder of the girls it fails to mention the pastor there in the 30s whose son was at Union seminary with Dietrich Bon Hoffer. They were great friends in Bon Hoffer himself drove up old Highway 11 from New Orleans to upstate New York in 31 right in front of my mother’s home. She would’ve been seven years old eight years old at the time and and then later for 30 years, I live across the street from where I could see the highway that Bon Hoffer drove up so it’s a remarkable story 

   I didnt recognize anybody else from Furman in the audience that day but did have a great friend from Samfod, SGA Presidnet Todd Heifner who was acquainted then with Cherington Shucker now in development at Furman and member of the Thrive Committee

     More later so keep checking in the next three weeks as more unfolds

    

    

Authentic Baptists as identified by Randall Balmer and the threat of the legacy of Charlie Kirk

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 In 1959 and I was baptized at the Truett memorial Baptist Church in Hayesville, North Carolina the birthplace of George W Truett.  my father was the pastor there and it registered with me early the historical marker on Highway 64 on the sidewalk right in front of the Baptist Church.  This  historical markers said something to the effect-- and you can find it online --George W Truett, great Baptist who was 40 years to pastor the first Baptist Church Dallas, Texas was born 3 miles west of here.  There is a camp in Haysville still there in Truett‘s honor and in fact, oh one of my daddy‘s good scrabble playing friends Hershey Miller was in the 10th grade in high school in those days. His father was the association of missionary and he slept in the room in George W Truett‘s bedroom at his house there at the camp in 1960. The  great Baptist Stewart a Newman Came through Haysville with the president of Southeastern seminary and another fella on the way to Nashville in the early days of the Elliott controversy, mom made a good meal for them and when it was over Newman, who really wasn’t enthusiastic about what he knew he would face in Nashville told Olan Binkley said you fellas just go ahead. I think I’ll stay here with Billy. Newman I was later to find out was a mentor to James Dunn DUNN himself.Newman  taught at Southeastern seminary was a teacher, not only for my dad, but his classmates Randall, lolly and Bill Self.  

   1960 would’ve been about four years after he followed WA Criswell  while at the pastors conference in South Carolina after Criswell  would’ve given a race speeding speech. Nwewman said W Criswell doesn'tit speak for me.   See Duke's Curtis Freeman Dead from the Neck up on thattelling piece of American history.   The late 30s it turns out from a oral tradition interview with Newman in archives at Baylor,  Newman was on a Train with George Truett  from Fort Worth to Memphis and they talked a good four hours on that trip and Newman said it wasn’t long before Truett was talking about his entanglement with Jay Frank Norris.   Norris did everything he could to be little Truett and to diminish his great legacy at first Baptist Dallas. In  bigger context in what is to follow the great historian Jill  LEPORE missions in her grand history of America These Truths;, she smart enough to see how Norris and his way of thinking was to poison America’s politics in the 20th centurycom that through the fundamentals take over the southern Baptist convention and it’s part with Bushes the guy he called the third and then perfected in what became the MAGA movement of fundamentalism is the key role plays the key part so much so that when Lepore gets to the 70s, she emphasizes the role of the eagle forum played in slowing down America’s Grudging advanced towards progressive thought in the presidency of Clinton and Obama

  

   Then, as we know the break her own with Trump all this to say with her cover story on the Atlantic for the month of October 2025 she talks about the constitution and original ism and like fundamentalism in the SBC original ism, restless viewof the constitution is throttling America’s best vision this coincides with my friend for 30 years at Dartmouth Randall BALMER his book on Church state separation of the hallmark of Baptist in America, of which Truett was a key a key par

   Jill Lepore in her recent history of America These Truths put the Truett Newman Conversation on the train ride in larger perspective. She has the savvy to make note of the legacy of J Frank Norris and the political evolution of his fundamentalism in her segment on the Scopes Monkey trial. By the end of the 20th Century Karl Rove was perfecting the strategy of molesting religious convictions that have given us the MAGA Base. Lepore doubles down on the Eagle Forum, a sister the John Birch Society and umbrella groups Paul Pressler, Patterson and Jesse Helms were energetic about. It is of some note that Tim Tebow's Mother, a member of Jerry Vines FBC Jacksonville Florida, was the Eagle Forum woman of the year in 2018  

     Balmer does not mention of the 1500's Edict of Torda in the Catholic Lutheran Calvinist tensions of the Transylvanion region of Europe where relative peace and religious toleration was established two hundred years before the creation of the United States. I could not find if the founders were aware of Torda or not as they founded the Second Amendmant which Balmer calls America's greatest idea.

      Little disjointed segueway here but this blog has good chance of publication in the upcoming quarterly winter issue of Dhristian Ethics Today . Balmer has fourteen or so chapters in this book featuring aspects of the the Second Amendment and its interpretation and development of the last 200 years. Baptist Joint Committee's Holly Hollman says  this book is an "antidote to the persistent threat of christian nationalism". Balmer conver the Blaine's amendment, the case of the Mormons, Kennedy and School Prayer and LBJ as well as several insightful chapters on the origin of the second.  In his Chapter on Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments in Alabama twenty years ago he doulbed down on the great Baptist George W. Truett to make a distinction of just how far astray Roy had gone.

   Alabama had a great Republican in the sisties, Judge Frank Johnson. Bill Moyers said of him had Abraham Lincoln lived in Alabama during the Civil Rights era he wouldve been Frank Johnsonl and had Johnson lived during the Civil War he would've been Abraham Lincoln.

    Johnson  was the poster child for the Constitution as Living Document and as a Grand Baptist in the Truett Tradition he was no Inerrantist.

    Citing George Truett great speech on the separation of church and state May 16, 1920 Balmer,  an expert witness in the case,  concudes his chapter on Roy Moore thusly:  As for Roy Moore's Graven image, that was precisely Roger Williams point about protecting the faith from trivialization from too close an association from politics and the state. And Balmer suspects Williams would have something to say about parents screeching their piety at a school board meeting in Florida.

    Baptists have one consisten record throughout their long and eventful history George W truett declard from the Capitol Steps in 1920 "They have never been a party to the suppression of conscience"

     America needs more Baptists!

    End Balmer quote

      

       

    

 Thisd is the set up for review of Balmer new book on separation of church and state. Evey authentic Baptist church should have ten copies of this jewel of a reminder of just how significant Baptists are in a very distinctive part of the greatness of America now under threat of the legacy of Charlie Kirck and Christian nationalists forces.

    Balmer recently names Kirk and is compadre David Barton " charlatans" 

   

Charlie Kirk in perspective, Legacy, Stuckey and what not

 Check her next week for a review of Randall Balmer book on church state separation. On Tuesday Balmer one of the leading scholars on evangelical politics in America at Good Faith Media named Kirk a "Charlatan" . As it is also with Eric Metaxas and david Barton. Somebody please tell FBC Spartanburg and Trey Gowdy, his Mommo Ovalene and Nikkiei Haley on the Clemson Trustee board and her friend the Management Bien Milstead a wayward Wesleyan with the voice of Clemson athletics: The ROAR 

Saints in Newport Tenn and Bethany in Gaffney; Bethel and Bethany

   Come back to this next week as it will need some edits and refinement.

       Couple weeks ago I turned up the obituary for Paul Rufus James of Newport Tenn. Goodgle it up for background of this blog. He was a choir director for 70 years, four of thos at my dad's first church in the Baltimore community of Parrotsville and Newport Tennessee. I was born there in 1953 when Steve Spurrier was in the fourth grade on the Hill at Newport Grammar School. James was a lifelong friend of my dad coming to his birthday party in 1997. My Dad 's first baptism was his son Freddy who became principal of Cosby High School, made famous in Cormac McCarthy;;s last novel, the Passenger where the protagonist Bobby Western toys with going off the grid to Cosby. 

    INez Thompson,  served Kool-Aid for 10 years or more vacation Bible school at Bethany Baptist on Wilkinsville Road in Gaffney where my Dad was pastor from 1962 to 1978.   we had this two week 10 day vacation Bible school. This memory celebration of two saints   is provoked in part by the cook the goose  ecumenical conference in NE cranny of North Carolina of Virginia and Tenn in the New River vicinity annually for the last seven years  on a farm. Kevin Heffner, the Kidney doctor in Arkansas who has a pine forest and a nice home . His father of Plain Dealing LA father work for the Sunday school board is Todd‘s brother. They’re big fans of Justin Cox, a preacher who interned with Jack Causey in Statesville so there’s that connection to Gaffney though it’s a little bit of a reach 

    I went by the Thompson house last Friday on KNOT T St.. It’s hard to find it. It was closed off two different ways and you can’t get to Jackie Simmons and Chip Sheffield. Can’t get on that street anymore. It’s got a bit tough hill, but it was in that yard my fourth grade , a Sunday,  the fifth grade they invite us over for a very modest charitably, house on that street they invited us over for lunch and we get there and some of their extended families cause of such a big spread. We’re invited up from Pacolet. They hadn’t gone to church that morning when I one of their cousins in law  smoking his Marlboro with his cigarettes wrapped up it is His sleeve and his T-shirt. First time I heard the word politics registered with me as it was an earnest conversation. and then I became enamored with upstate politics with Roger Milliken and his Gaffney associate  John Hamrick and textile Mill workers 

   Paul James  came over to Newport from Warren Wilson school learned that in the obituary in . Later moved his letter from  Bethel Church to  English Creek, he was choir  director song leader for 70 some ideas. He was a good man. He got into local politics on the county commission and his obituary speaks for itself.   Carlyle Marney, the great Baptist Wiseman and intellect came down to Gaffney from Charlotte in 1978 two years two months before he died to speak to ministers and I crashed it and I think Mike Hammett was there but somebody was talking about integrity just a few years after Watergate and he was talking about all the scandals in church life in here and there and somebody ask him so where is integrity in America these days.   and he said he said you preachers see it every Sunday morning when you look out in the congregation, all your churches have five or six people, families that hold it together that tithe give 10% of their income they show up for the services. They have a prayer life. They read their Bible. He said that’s where it is And so it was with Paul James and Inez Thompson, James Broome and Esther Dawkins, and there’s all kinds of others in mom’s hometown I don’t know if he does his daily Bible reading or not but Thomas Barksdale is a good man in the mold of Paul James and Jeff Graves. is a good man and and my friend on the water board in Momma's Hometown of Collinsville Alabama where I lived for thirty years. Peggy Weaver the good Methodist wife of a high school All American quarterback is in the Lamb's Book of life as well

The Beatification of Wayne Whiteside; Preaching as personal story

 his is a dictated text for an email back to me that I could blog. Could be typoas and run on sentences but thewhile the style may be suspect,, trust me, the content is strong

    Whatever do find the Mcentyre review at Baptist News Global and another good one online

     Carol McIntyre, the pastor. The first Baptist Church of Greenville has a review of a book by the pastor at Boulevard Baptist in Anderson Austin Carty. He’s written a book about the preaching  working  personal stories into the text You must read McEntire‘s . I went to Furman on a ministerial, church related vocation scholarship. I was up front with them but never got the compelling call given my temperament and other factors. Biut I have been a lifelong fan of good preaching.   I am proud of the eulogy I gave for my father in 1999 and that’s it another blog here. A lot of people liked it Quoted William Blake out of the gate. I’ve been thinking lately about trying to inveigle myself to the first Baptist Church Gaffney, hoping that the association there would see the benefit of having something version of what used to be the January Bible study. This would be a consecutive Wednesday night Pilgrim Journey  the Curtis Freeman book as text . Great book his text Pilgrim journey. It’s a short book, but it’s a beautiful condensation about how to view scripture and engage the mystery of the church and community through the ages. He has a chapter on the Saints saying that one great understanding of the Holy Spirit of the trinity is to study the Saints, and he says that’s comparable to an investigation of Christ And a devotion to the scripture is to look at people through the ages who have a incarnated what that was all about and so I was gonna talk about  SteWART Newman and Paul James a great Layman from my dad‘s first church in Newport Tennessee, where I was born.   Steve Sprurrier was in the fourth grade at the Newport grammar school, I  turned up James obituary tihe other day quite remarkable fella and so I was gonna talk about those two and then focus on people in Gaffney and even take a look at Mr. John Hamrick. He was powerful influential devoted Baptist Layman had a private audience with president Ford and 74 textile magnet and also look at Wayne Whiteside, the football coach in with The insights of Matt Potts into the writings of Cormac  McCarthy, and the sacraments yeah I was gonna make the case so just to make note of McEntire‘s review the book she reviewed. Did Curtis Freeman there a lot of people with a lot of ideas out there, but I’m confident enough to say that all this will be well worth your time between now and March 

one other thing I think it’d be great if anybody’s reading this or I’ll be approaching other people collection of sermons are the best of my generation that would include Richard KREMER a Rhodes scholar nominee Brent McDougal  now at the first Baptist Church of Knoxville Justin Cox. He’s coming along with a friend of Jack Causey in Statesville, North Carolina and then there’s a McEntire, the guy Somerville SOMERVILLE and even if you only other side of the Mississippi River couple from Dan Vestal, yeah just a collection of Steve Shoemaker for sure Their best not more than three and use McIntyre‘s review of the Anderson preacher yeah I think that’ll seale a few copies so maybe somebody out there can put all that together. I get a free copy and review sermons before that happens though yeah I’m proud. I got a collection of Willimon. Best sermons from Duke over 50 years and then also Flemming Rutledge, her book hearse collection that includes goddamn Christians about Will Campbelland then a few thoughts by Barbara Brown Taylor so there’s some in of course Frank Harrington there’s some great sermons out there. I gotta find that poem what you gonna do in the river overflow God bless y’all.

   Had a good chat with Austin Carty two days ago. Hope to visit him Sunday , pick up the book and get the senior discount at Cap D's around the corner. Turns out Carty of High Point NC Wake Forest and Emory knows or knew Causey well and his predecessor at Baoulevard was at Gaffney as pastor and before him Causey himself

Uncle Herschel and Furman's Confederate commencement speaker

I Have recently blogged about Mary Beth Stuckey commencement speaker at Furman for her class of 2013 also a product of Prestonwood Baptist church in Dallas a Flaming christian nationalist congregation in Dallas Texas.

    Like the Randy Newman song,Rednecks, Aliie Beth came in dumb and come out dumb too. Now she has embraced with Lara Trump and others the Trump line on Cracker Barrel. See great piece at Baptist News Global on the same subject, a site that recently named Allie Beth and her straight arrow opposition empathy.

    As the line goes in Road to Perdition, It's all so effing hystrrical. Witness the dance yesterday online of Uncle Herschel and Trump dancing to YMCA making the Barrell Americna again.

    This opinion is much more substantive if you read the BNGlobal piece.

    I was in the Cracker Barrel yesterday. I called on the manager. He said it was mcuh overblown and like the two transgender if there are that many in South Carolina, He was not aware of any Barrels getting the work over. Still dark with Mallo cups in the merchandise area and a fireplace.

   On occasion Cracker Barrel has been a sacred place for me.A few years ago at the Ft Payne Barrel I had a brief but delightful conversation with Alabama's Randy Owen on the writer Ron Rash . And in the mid nineties my Dad and I stopped in the Cracker Barrell in Kennesaw Ga after a CBF gathering in Atlanta. I t was registering with me his Baptist witness and his friendship with the great ones Randall Lolley, Bill Sell Self and Stewart A Newman. I started crying. I said Daddy, I'm Messed up. He said I know, but not so loud.  

    My Grandfather Jordan on Mommas's  side  was  a Lincoln Republican and his Father skirmished for the Union in North Alabama. See Howell Raines on the North Alabama Union fighters and also see my blog about the home guard threatening to kill a distant ancestor on Lookout Mtn. He hid out over a bluff you could see from the family front porch I lived in for thirty years on Hwy 11 where Dietrich Bonhoeffer came up the road in 1931 

Guest blog from Arkansas Kidney doctor on Health science

 We are witnessing in real time a dismantling of science and medicine unprecedented in our history. I’m referring to policy and funding attacks on premier institutions which promote and protect the health of every American. Especially the young, elderly and otherwise vulnerable. The CDC, NIH, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, NCI, and other organizations.

The agencies tasked to do the highest level scientific research, develop medicines and vaccines, and promote public health strategies to protect all.

As a physician I know people who work at these places. They are the best and brightest we have. Until recently, everyone… supported and benefited from their work over the past half century. Times have changed.

Bacteria and viruses are the most non-discriminatory entities on earth…  Cancer also. They do not care about gender, ethnicity, political affiliation, where or if you worship… what you believe… or if you’re a butcher, baker, candlestick-maker. They simply infect and kill with no regard.

And now we have a number of top scientists and heads of these agencies placed in the untenable position of making policy decisions based not on science but on political whim and pressure.

I encourage you to ask anyone who spent a life studying and practicing anything related to science…  medicine, for example… I don’t know of any reputable physician regardless of partisanship who supports the policies being promoted by our current Department of Health and Human Services as led by Robert Kennedy… Zero scientific training. Unintelligent, unserious, dangerous. His policies left unchallenged will harm your friends and family.

There’s a lot of political disagreement in our nation. This is the most nonpartisan issue imaginable. Funding cuts, anti-science policy, and the wanton dismissal of premier scientists and public health experts…. places all in danger equally.

People of conscience sometime have to pick a hill on which to die… No one should perish unnecessarily on a hill of imminently treatable and preventable infectious disease or cancer. Take a moment, think… do you really want to live with medieval medicine based not on science… but superstition? Put pressure on your elected officials to correct policies which could be the ultimate killing field.

Fish camps in Upstate SC and nearby

 Friends gonna cross state lines in the Buick this afternoon tocheck out a celebrated fish camp in North Georgia I have heard a lot about.  From there hope to check out the Flounder in Spartanburg SC and the Caro Mi in Landrum. Ca Ro Mi not exactly a fish camp but the trout has great reputation.

    Hoping to get some perch with my all you can eat catfish this afternoon. Perch for sure at the Flounder; my late brother the Sweet Jim Willie was a fan. I think Hush puppies at both places and I will try to onion rings. Cracker Barrel has good catfish, but nothing like th fish camp experience.  I liked Brannon's in Gaffney but that was fifty years ago. And thicketty mtn had a camp but it burned down. So at least four, maybe five by Christmas and I will be reporting, co come back.

   Moe's on Stone Avenue n Greenville has good catfish and collards but they do bbq and other things as well. But no complaints about the fish and tartar sauce is good 

    Continuing August 19:  Leatherwood was an adventure indeed, authentic, hardscrabble, the real deal. Industrial fan near the counter as AC was out. They were true to their word, all you could eat. Ambience worth the trip but will not be going back soon. Slaw was good but nothing special about the fish other than the variety. Met a pretty girl trying to find directions, Sweetheart but I'm not 25 anymore and didnt want to scare her.

    I found the way to the Flounder in Spartanburg and a place called the House in Greer but neither are all you can eat. May try to negotiate a Sampler platter. Going to Cap D in Anderson SC today for senior day and hoping for kind price on third piece of fish to go with the the two piece special.   Been a while for Cap D's. It gets the job done. Miss the one in Ft Payne Alabama. Like Krystal hamburgers getting harder and harder to locate.