Chic Fil A to Open Exec Retreat in Ft Payne/Implications for New Baptist Covenant
Uncle Prentice is reporting today at bl.com Truett Cathy is opening a Retreat for Christian Executives in Ft. Payne Alabama. Prentice speculates as to what it means for President Carter's New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta in January.
Prentice got the word, he says, from my Grandfather WD Fox's youngest brother Paul, a 90 something retired Vice President of Reynolds Aluminum. Family Lore is Nixon sent Uncle Paul to meet the Shah of Iran, and Paul was in first group of businessmen in country in China in 1972 after President Nixon de-iced the place.
Prentice may be wrong about Truett Cathy and the Carter meeting of Progressive Baptists. Two months ago Johnny Pierce, a Berry College graduate, now editor of Baptists Today, the mouthpiece for Progressive Baptists everywhere, did a feature on Cathy's scholarship program at Berry, featuring several of my cousins.
It would be great if Cathy and the administration of CFA would do a retreat this fall--I realize that is short order--with Melissa Rogers of Wake Forest, and Robert Parham of ethicsdaily.com so initiatives like Third Way and a new move toward civility in the public square may rightly be understood.
Dan Cathy is now head of CFA. Dan sat beside me in Bob Crapps intro to the Bible at Furman in 1971. CFA has a reputation for social conservative politics, with most recently their former corporate attorney running for attorney General of the state of Georgia.
Would be great for Dan and Truett to bone up on the works of Randall Balmer and former 2nd Ponce de Leon pastor Robert Marsh son, Charles, on where Baptists may have gone astray the last couple years.
Since UPrentice has broached Uncle Paul's connection to the Cathy family at bl.com; I have found it quite interesting my cousin by marriage, Bob Skelton, who is in charge of the scholarship program at Berry has great admiration for the mainstream Baptist theologian, Fisher Humphreys.
Fisher's wife Caroline is Charles Marsh's Aunt, Charles' Mother's sister.
I had a good conversation with Caroline last Tuesday in Birmingham in conjunction with new revelations about how President Bush came to know the Lord in Midland Texas.
Mark Ray, head of Mainstream Baptists in Alabama testified on Prentice's thread it was a chic fil A scholarship that got him through Samford; and that Ray's Dad did the invocation for a new store opening in Decatur several years ago.
Could be interesting news for Ft. Payne and the political dynamics of Lookout Mtn, where a member of the New Agrarians resides; and there is a strong Episcopal influence through summer camps there.
Stay tuned and pray for us all as we keep it in the family and share it elsewhere.
I do hope Truett and Dan will invite Babs Baugh of Sysco Foundation, and the CEO of Publix groceries to his first retreat of Christian CEO's as both have strong George Truett and Baptist Joint Committee Baptist Roots. It may help explain things to Ft. Payne Republicans of the likes of Mary Anne Cole, and the Don and Martha Stouts.
Stephen Fox
October 16, 2007
Prentice got the word, he says, from my Grandfather WD Fox's youngest brother Paul, a 90 something retired Vice President of Reynolds Aluminum. Family Lore is Nixon sent Uncle Paul to meet the Shah of Iran, and Paul was in first group of businessmen in country in China in 1972 after President Nixon de-iced the place.
Prentice may be wrong about Truett Cathy and the Carter meeting of Progressive Baptists. Two months ago Johnny Pierce, a Berry College graduate, now editor of Baptists Today, the mouthpiece for Progressive Baptists everywhere, did a feature on Cathy's scholarship program at Berry, featuring several of my cousins.
It would be great if Cathy and the administration of CFA would do a retreat this fall--I realize that is short order--with Melissa Rogers of Wake Forest, and Robert Parham of ethicsdaily.com so initiatives like Third Way and a new move toward civility in the public square may rightly be understood.
Dan Cathy is now head of CFA. Dan sat beside me in Bob Crapps intro to the Bible at Furman in 1971. CFA has a reputation for social conservative politics, with most recently their former corporate attorney running for attorney General of the state of Georgia.
Would be great for Dan and Truett to bone up on the works of Randall Balmer and former 2nd Ponce de Leon pastor Robert Marsh son, Charles, on where Baptists may have gone astray the last couple years.
Since UPrentice has broached Uncle Paul's connection to the Cathy family at bl.com; I have found it quite interesting my cousin by marriage, Bob Skelton, who is in charge of the scholarship program at Berry has great admiration for the mainstream Baptist theologian, Fisher Humphreys.
Fisher's wife Caroline is Charles Marsh's Aunt, Charles' Mother's sister.
I had a good conversation with Caroline last Tuesday in Birmingham in conjunction with new revelations about how President Bush came to know the Lord in Midland Texas.
Mark Ray, head of Mainstream Baptists in Alabama testified on Prentice's thread it was a chic fil A scholarship that got him through Samford; and that Ray's Dad did the invocation for a new store opening in Decatur several years ago.
Could be interesting news for Ft. Payne and the political dynamics of Lookout Mtn, where a member of the New Agrarians resides; and there is a strong Episcopal influence through summer camps there.
Stay tuned and pray for us all as we keep it in the family and share it elsewhere.
I do hope Truett and Dan will invite Babs Baugh of Sysco Foundation, and the CEO of Publix groceries to his first retreat of Christian CEO's as both have strong George Truett and Baptist Joint Committee Baptist Roots. It may help explain things to Ft. Payne Republicans of the likes of Mary Anne Cole, and the Don and Martha Stouts.
Stephen Fox
October 16, 2007
posted by foxofbama | 12:48 PM
2 Comments:
And there is the Abilene Paradox, of which I knew nothing till five minutes ago.
And it may be interesting to see where CFA would place itself along this spectrum from a Q and A in Monday's Dallasnews with a Rice U proff
Of course, people mix and match, and one is not necessarily better than the other. What struck me was the extent to which some leaders sought to distance themselves from the evangelical subculture.
And this isn’t just a matter of personal taste. Cosmopolitan evangelicals often come from very different backgrounds than their populist counterparts. They travel frequently, are involved in the arts, and live affluent lifestyles. They run powerful institutions, and the social networks they inhabit are populated by leaders from government, business, and entertainment.
Though one might expect cosmopolitan evangelicals to be less fervent than populist evangelicals, that’s not what I found. Both are committed to the same core beliefs and seek to live out their faith as best they can.
But the two groups differ in strategies. Take politics, for example, whereas populist evangelicalism relies on strategies like mobilizing the rank-and-file to push for legislation, cosmopolitan evangelicalism is more likely to sponsor a year-long internship program for future political leaders. As one leader described it, this is "move-the-dial Christianity."
McKenzie: You also talk about evangelicals benefiting from an "elastic orthodoxy." What does this mean? And how has it helped the movement?
Lindsay: Evangelicals are united behind core religious convictions. These include ideas about God, Jesus, the Bible, heaven and hell.
That religious orthodoxy keeps the evangelical movement cohesive; it helps people within the movement identify who is "one of them" and who isn’t. But evangelicals, unlike Christian fundamentalists, are willing to work with people who don’t share their faith convictions.
In recent years, evangelicals have built political alliances with all kinds of groups - such as secular Jews and Buddhist monks - to lobby for legislation they all care about. Issues like international religious freedom are important not just to evangelicals, but to a variety of other people of faith.
This willingness to work with others is what gives evangelicals’ orthodoxy an elasticity; theirs is an orthodoxy that is flexible, durable, and as a result, one of lasting importance.
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