May 28, 2006; Six years ago

That was the day by a vote of 32-20 I was voted out of the Collinsville Baptist Church. Couldn't even attend Sunday School anymore nor sing congregational hymns in the church where my Mother was baptized and as recently as 86-87 been members. Last Thursday in Centre had a conversation with young woman who went on youth trip in 2002 to Charleston. Had a good trip. one of the then 9th graders is now the Games columnist for the U Bama Crimson Student newspaper. He voted for me May 28 as did the now young married woman in Centre. I am confident Jennifer Cortina was was Miss DAR circa Collinsville HS Class of 2008; and I am confident the pastors son and daw in law John and Susan Weaver Morgan woulda voted to keep me in the fellowship while I had a chance to seek reconciliation with the five or so women who drove my ouster. As the Aught book on fundamentalism made clear, in small congregations it is often women who drive their husbands to maintain their power in the congregation as the neck that turns the head. And bottom line in my case, that's what's happened. I saw versions of same thing happen to my father in S.C. and Tennessee and South Georgia. In February 2002 even by Martha Barksdale's standards I brought a stellar panel to the church; including the biographer of Lottie Moon, the former asst editor of the Alabama Baptist Mark Baggett; and my friend David Currie, the national leader of mainstream Baptists, the point man for John Baugh of Houston Texas, CEO of Sysco Foods. I think Jim Evans sat in the audience. Evans has since preached in the National Cathedral. By 2006 Two of the pastors sons had gone to UVA, one on to Yale Div School and one to Duke. Even the Duke grad said he voted for me and he had come under the tutelage of Duke Chaplain Willimon while a student. But I am off the grounds and five women still have their way in the church; and a fellow who in another state had written for the Sons of the Confederacy or some such group has taken my place in the choir. I remember Norma Rae's pastor in the movie in the late 70's; little could I have predicted 35 years later I would be in the same predicament in my Mother's congregation. Oh Well, Stephens and Giberson have done some truth telling in the last chapter of their Book The Anointed. They follow up on themes of Marshall Frady some 40 years ago about tribalism. In the Old Testament there was the Baal Test. In my experience if you take exceptions for my sometime flamboyant personality it was the Wickerman test and I got Wickered; or the Francis Schaeffer shibboleth and I forgot the password.