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
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
posted by foxofbama | 12:33 PM
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