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Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Bama Immigration, Kris Kobach, and theSouthern Baptist perversion of Bonhoeffer

This one is a little above my paygrade but I'm gonna take a shot at it. Come back to this in a few weeks as I may refine my assertions here.
To frame where Southern Baptists are now read the Paul Harvey opinion piece at religiondispatches.org on the Name Change and how if Heaven aint a Lot Like Dixie, the SBC would just as soon stay home. Sets things up nicely for Kobach and the brown shirts and the legacy of Albert Lee Smith in Bama
The March April issue of Mother Jones magazine--on newstands now at Barnes and Noble, BAM, and your better public libraries--has a feature on the Bama Immigration law and a profile of Kris Kobach.
Albert Lee Smith's widow, Eunie, introduced Kobach to Bama St. Senator Beason and now the front cover of the Bama Baptiss has the elected of the Bama SBC praying over Deacon Gov Bentley who told Cherokee County, Bama and SEBTS educated probate Judge Melvyn Salter he, Bentley stands behind the law.
UMC Bishop and former Duke Chaplain Will Willimon, stands agsinst it. With Progressive Baptist Robert Parham whose documentary Willimon endorses, Kobach has a lot of Christian detractors in the state.
But Willimon and Parham are still waiting on a call from the Annie Lucas Brown endorsed Collinsville Library to have a public showing of Parham's documentary. The chances of it being shown at Collinsville Baptist Church are slim, as they are at FUMC Ft. Payne
Maybe some of the good Christians in Dekalb County will read the MJ article, wring their hands on Easter morning and say: "I wish we coulda done more."
Next will be short examination of Kobach, Timothy George and the Barmen Declaration
This is important. Cut and paste this link

http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/7077/53/

George waxxing long on Bonhoeffer in the heart of Alabama just a county away from Selma. And for the life of him he couldn't bring himself to talk about Kris Kobach and the Alabama Immigration law.
Harvard Divinity School and no reference to my knowledge to Publitzer Prize winning writer Marilynne Robinson's essay on Bonhoeffer in the Death of Adam.
I have no degree from Harvard, but I have read Robinson on Bonhoeffer and I made a B in Miss Chadwick's Advanced Composition class at Gaffney High in 72.
And I have listened to Charles Marsh's magisterial essay on Bonhoeffer and MLKing online from Berlin of March 2010.
You can listen to it too.

You read the essay of MRob for yourself and see if you don't find Tim George to put it mildly; inadequate to this poignant time in Bama, where the Gov is out to lunch on everything George Wallace should have learned from Martin and Judge Frank Johnson.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Letter to Gadsden Times on State Rep Blaine Galliher

A version of the following letter may also appear in the Ft. Payne Times-Journal. To date it has not been published in the Gadsden Times. My friend Balmer read and liked it; but it has gotten mixxed reviews from friends in Collinsville. The test weill be whether Martha, Donnie and Jackie and other leaders in the Collinsville Baptist Church will be provoked to read Giberson and Stephens and see the world of Casey Mattox in a New Light.
Also breaking is concern at ABPNews.com in re the world Casey encourages; the world of Fox News, Richard Land and fundamentalism in the SBC. Shadrack McGill is not the problem in Dekalb County, Alabama. It is folks who blindly contribute to the SBC Cooperative Program and fail to educate themselves to the wackiness Casey Mattox advances and obfuscates.

Letters for Publication
The Gadsden Times
Gadsden, Alabama

The Editors:

Twice Feb 17 on Alabama NPR WBHM I heard the Dan Carsen Education report on Rep Blaine Galliher's ridiculous release time initiative to teach Creationism off site to public school students. What is needed is remedial civics lesson for Rep Galliher and all the folks in the region who encourage such mischief however well meaning or serious his convictions may be.
The Chamber of Commerce, the Junior League and other civic groups should join with Mr. Galliher's church to have some joint Sunday School lessons on the heart of the Gospel and its interests in the Public Square. Have a community wide reading group for the confused on Evolution, those who mistake Genesis for Science, with Giberson and Stephens recent book The Anointed. It comes heartily recommended from the Christian Century, a national magazine for thinking Christians to which UMC North Alabama Bishop Willimon regularly contributes. My friend Randall Balmer, who happened to be a visitting professor for Collinsville native Matthew Morgan when Matthew studied at Yale Divinity School, endorses the book on the back jacket blurbs. You can google online remarks on the book.
While you are waiting for your copy of The Anointed for the Group Read and Study session, whet your appetite with Alan Wolfe's online examination of the creation nonsense Galliher espouses. Easily googled in the Atlantic. Or bring Rachel Held Evans of Dayton Tennessee to have a discussion of her wonderful testimony of her pilgrimage as a Christian challenged by Evolution in her book Evolving in Monkeytown.
Wolfe calls the nonsense of Glenn Beck and David Barton's ridiculous history of America; the End Times folly of Tim Lahaye, the Abortion politics of the Allied Defense Fund, the Inerrancy of the fundamentalists in the Southern Baptist Convention, and Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis: Calls it all "Gibberish."
Don't get mad at me, read the book. Read it for the sake of the True Gospel and any young person you know in Northeast Alabama who has intellectual capacity and deserves a true education in the public school system in the area.
They deserve better than the the distracting politics of Blaine Galliher.

Sincerely,


Stephen M. Fox

Friday, February 17, 2012

Collinsville Study Club and Casey Mattox's "Gibberish"

I had a conversation in Collinsville recently and word had gotten to one fellow on the street I was in resistance to Casey Mattox recent blogs with the Allied Defense Fund, contraception and Health Care.
Hissy Fit should google you to Casey's blog. By Inference he attacks Martha Barksdale and the Girl Scout Award given to her not long ago, as Casey's world now opposes Girl Scouts cause of their intermingling with Planned Parenthood.

The Study Clubs can so something about this. In honor of Mary Katherine Reed they can have some substantive discussions about Casey's world beginning with a group read of Giberson and Stephen's The Anointed. Here is a link to cut and paste to start the Conversation'

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opinion/the-evangelical-rejection-of-reason.html?_r=1

They can google up Matthew Morgan's visitting proff at Yale Div School, my friend Randall Balmer, and his jacket blurb endorsing The Anointed.

Alan Wolfe in an easily googled article on CAsey and Charles Pickering's world; in the Atlantic Wolfe calls Casey's world "Gibberish". Enlightened people in his hometown of Collinsville should contest him and his mischief in the orchestrated world of Fox News and Karl Rove.

Martha and Claire and the Collinsville ladies can invite Rachel Held Evans down from Dayton Tn, about a two hour drive, to talk about her book Evolving in Monkeytown; or they can have Annie Lucas Brown and some staffers from the Gadsden Library comes to the Historic Roberts Building in Town for an investigation of Casey's world in light of the revelations In The Anointed.

Look for my letter to the Gadsden Times. It should be out next week.

In the meantime, Go Panthers. Hope you survive Jax St. Regionals and Make it to Bham.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Reading list for 2012

Looks like it could be another tough year, but with what remains as reminder to myself and suggestion to you who read this.

Art of Fielding by Hornback

Charles Marsh new Bio of Bonhoeffer, publised by Knopf

Ron Rash new novel. His Serena is set to start shooting in Czech Republic in March starring Ree Dolly of Winter's Bone Fame.

Maybe the Orphan Master's Son

That one on the Girl Scout Manual I heard on NPR yesterday

Have finished The Anointed by Stephens and Giberson and recommend to all.

Will think of others as I go along

And this one, I got to read this one. As Frank Booth says in Blue Velvet: Got Ta Got Ta Got Ta:.....From the NPR review of Feb 10 Quoting:

Tupelo Hassman writes with such an eye for rough-and-tough detail, she obviously knows something about kids who have been given the dubious gift of premature autonomy. The narrator of her curious debut novel, Girlchild, is a trailer trash tyke named Rory Dawn Hendrix. Rory tells us her alcoholic mom, whom she idolizes, had four children by the time she was 19; Rory is her fifth. The pair live outside Reno, Nev., in a trailer paid for by Mom's jobs as a bartender, keno runner, and change girl at the casinos. Rory is left home alone a lot and, when she's not watching reruns of M*A*S*H or Family Ties or hiding from the boogeymen, real or imagined, banging on the trailer door, she's reading.

Like many a wise child before her, Rory finds consolation in books: her Bible of choice is a tattered old copy of The Girl Scout Handbook. The trailer park doesn't have a troop, but Rory constitutes a fearsome pack of one; she even awards herself her own homemade badges. Here, for instance, is one in a long list of Rory's requirements for the "proficiency badge [in] puberty":


TRANSCRIPT: