Billy Graham and Bama SBC/GOP; Roy Moore and Tom Corts
Lot of GOP Trash hitting Bama in the last few days and I hate to see Billy Graham get entangled in all of it. I was about to give him the benefit of the doubt with the recent Steven Miller book on him stoked by the Greenville, S.C. 1966 crusade as Miller testified at Vanderbilt.
I was there in Greenville, during that Crusade. Drove 50 miles from Gaffney with the family and Steve Wright. Steve Wright got saved best I remember and my Daddy baptized him a few weeks later at Bethany Baptist Church.
But Billy has a black mark on his name here in what he says may be his last election. On Tuesday of this week, I pick up the weekly Postpaper.com; the print issue of Centre Alabama with distribution in West Georgia (Rome) and here in Deekalb County. So that covers US Congressman Mike Rogers district, parts of it; and here in Bama some of Robert Aderholt.
There was a full page picture of Billy in prayerful pose endorsing Mitt Romney for President as part of the Bama GOP "Alabama Values" campaign.
Add said it was paid for by "friends in Cedar Bluff".
So who are Billy and Mitt's friends in Cedar Bluff. Could be the Mother in Law of former Atty General of the US Alberto Gonzalez who had a place on Weiss Lake there, or wealthy tea partiers up from Marietta Ga who have a 2nd home on the lake, or this retired Princeton grad I met not long ago who hates Obama and told me twice; or maybe the First Baptist Church of Cedar Bluff; we just don't know.
George Talbot of the Huntsville Times has been reporting here about Jimmy Jackson former president of the Bama SBC
I was there in Greenville, during that Crusade. Drove 50 miles from Gaffney with the family and Steve Wright. Steve Wright got saved best I remember and my Daddy baptized him a few weeks later at Bethany Baptist Church.
But Billy has a black mark on his name here in what he says may be his last election. On Tuesday of this week, I pick up the weekly Postpaper.com; the print issue of Centre Alabama with distribution in West Georgia (Rome) and here in Deekalb County. So that covers US Congressman Mike Rogers district, parts of it; and here in Bama some of Robert Aderholt.
There was a full page picture of Billy in prayerful pose endorsing Mitt Romney for President as part of the Bama GOP "Alabama Values" campaign.
Add said it was paid for by "friends in Cedar Bluff".
So who are Billy and Mitt's friends in Cedar Bluff. Could be the Mother in Law of former Atty General of the US Alberto Gonzalez who had a place on Weiss Lake there, or wealthy tea partiers up from Marietta Ga who have a 2nd home on the lake, or this retired Princeton grad I met not long ago who hates Obama and told me twice; or maybe the First Baptist Church of Cedar Bluff; we just don't know.
George Talbot of the Huntsville Times has been reporting here about Jimmy Jackson former president of the Bama SBC
As you see in the article it is coordinated by Collinsville Alabama's Casey Mattox and former Bush 43 Judicial nominee Charles Pickering Alliance Defending Freedom's effort. Reagan operative Allan Sears is part of that outfit too.
Talbot had an online live chat with one of casey's colleagues in Weds Times you should be able to google up.
Upshot is with all the straight ticket GOP voting in Bama likely to happen Tuesday, the Bama SBC and Billy Graham will most likely be complicitous, and in Billy's case outright abettin, the re-election of Judge Roy Moore as chief justice of the Bama Supreme Court.
See my thoughts below in a separate blog about that and a real Republican, Judge Frank Johnson.
In March 0f 93 I was in the pews at FBC Birmingham with about 1,000 other Baptists, about 400 of em preachers, when Bircher and one term US congressman Albert Lee Smith staged an inquisition of another Baptist and many believe mainstream Republican Tom Corts, then president of Samford University. Smith and his wife Eunie--look up how she works with Kris Kobach on immigration in bama--Eagle Forum were trying to take over Samford and do to it what Nelson Price has done to Shorter College in Rome Georgia.
The Birchers and their fundamentalist baptist preachers went at Corts for about 90 minutes. Its as if John C. Calhoun and Nathan Bedford Forrest had put Abraham Lincoln on trial.
They mentioned my friend Vicki Covington's name at one point, the novelist who wrote for John Grisham's then Oxford American Magazine.
Samford still remains a grand school in the best of the Baptist tradition. Corts stood firm.
But now this coming Tuesday, Billy Graham and the Bama GOP and Charles Pickering and the ADF may be able to vomit in the face of Corts grand legacy and his noble moment of March 93. With the likely election of Judge Roy Moore, they will put Alabama Southern Baptists in the whorehouse of Karl Rove and the Bircher Tea Party GOP.
Riding to Ft Payne, Alabama I saw a big billboard this morning touting the Bama GOP and Freedom. Billboard was a GOD DAMNED LIE!.
In a visceral disconnect I was listening to Johnny Cash sing about Freedom. Johnny Cash died a great American; Billy Graham is going out in the shadows.
And here is an update to put larger apocalyptic perspective to all this
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/election2012/6562/electionpocalypse%2C_part_i_%28christianity%29/
And here is an update to put larger apocalyptic perspective to all this
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/election2012/6562/electionpocalypse%2C_part_i_%28christianity%29/
posted by foxofbama | 10:01 AM
5 Comments:
Johnny Cash on Freedom
"Redemption Day"
(originally by Sheryl Crow)
I've wept for those who suffer long
But how I weep for those who've gone
Into rooms of grief and questioned wrong
But keep on killing
It's in the soul to feel such things
But weak to watch without speaking
Oh what mercy sadness brings
If God be willing
There is a train that's heading straight
To heaven's gate, to heaven's gate
And on the way, child and man,
And woman wait, watch and wait
For redemption day
Fire rages in the streets
And swallows everything it meets
It's just an image often seen
On television
Come leaders, come you men of great
Let us hear you pontificate
Your many virtues laid to waste
And we aren't listening
There is a train that's heading straight
To heaven's gate, to heaven's gate
And on the way, child and man,
And woman wait, watch and wait
For redemption day
What do you have for us today?
Throw us a bone but save the plate
On why we waited til so late
Was there no oil to excavate
No riches in trade for the fate
Of every person who died in hate
Throw us a bone, you men of great
There is a train that's heading straight
To heaven's gate, to heaven's gate
And on the way, child and man,
And woman wait, watch and wait
For redemption day
It's buried in the countryside
It's exploding in the shells at night
It's everywhere a baby cries
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom
Race baitin no longer pays for the Birch/Tea Party wing--see the EJ Dionne history in his recent book--of the GOP so they have placed race with the religion card to hoodoo workin class whites to vote against their economic interest. See the 84 trump card memo of Lee Atwater to the Reagan Bush committee; the history of SBC's Richard Land with Karl Rove; Dan William's God's Own Party; and Jeff Faux's The Servant Economy....The Inquisition referenced in the blog was held at FBC Birmingham on Lakeshore about three football fields down from the campus of Samford University.
ABPnews.com has a story on Billy Graham strategy and the NAACP. ABP has a picture of the ad that appeared in the postpaper.com, Centre, Al.
From the Diane Rehm show on NPR this morning, drshow.org. And Billy Graham is complicitous in all this bearing false witness:
CUMMINGS
10:44:18
Well, they have the -- definitely that's the risk they took that Glenn was talking about. And it was -- and they've done this with other ads, but to do it on this issue, in Ohio, was nuts. But if you even look at abortion, they have running in northern Virginia an ad where a woman speaks of how Romney doesn't -- believes in abortion rights and believes in contraception and that it should be available to all women, and that runs in northern Virginia.
CUMMINGS
10:44:50
And now in Roanoke, we have pro-Romney ads by outside groups that differentiate -- that go after Obama for holding the very same positions. So in terms of their advertising, they have pushed boundaries like we've never seen a major candidate do in recent times.
In his day, Jack Flanders spoke against the very things Billy Graham is now advancing in Alabama with Graham's machinations with Judge Pressler's fundamentalists and their associates in the Bama GOP Tea Party. This is what Billy Graham has forsaken:
Dr. Henry Jackson Flanders, former pastor of the First Baptist Church of Waco and chair of the religion department at Baylor, died yesterday in Temple. The following obituary appears in today's Waco Tribune Herald:
Dr. H. J. Flanders Jr.
October 2, 1921--June 20, 2006
Dr. H. J. Flanders Jr., former pastor of First Baptist Church of Waco and chairman of the religion department at Baylor University, died Tuesday, June 20, 2006, in Temple after a long illness.
A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Friday, June 23, at First Baptist Church, Waco with Dr. Scott Walker and Dr. Herbert Reynolds officiating. Visitation with the family will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 22, at Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home, 6101 Bosque.
Dr. Flanders was born Oct. 2, 1921, in Malvern, Ark. and moved soon after to Little Rock. He was the son of Henry Jackson and Mae Hargis Flanders. He attended public schools in Little Rock and then Baylor University, where he was permanent president of the graduating class of 1943. Dr. Flanders went on to receive B. D. and Ph. D. degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
In Feb. 1943, Dr. Flanders was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U. S. Army Air Corps. He flew 50 combat missions and received numerous medals for his combat service. Following the war, Dr. Flanders became a religion professor at Furman University in Greenville, S. C. He subsequently became university chaplain and chairman of the Department of Religion. While at Furman in the early 1960's, Dr. Flanders co-authored People of the Covenant, which has become one of the most widely used textbooks of New Testament history.
In August 1962, Dr. Flanders became pastor of First Baptist Church in Waco. During his seven years as pastor, Dr. Flanders expanded both the size and membership of the church and integrated it for the first time.
In 1970, Dr. Flanders joined Baylor University as a professor of religion and subsequently became chairman of the Department of Relgion. While at Baylor, Dr. Flanders also helped create, and taught, one of the nation's first law school course in law and ethics.
While at Baylor in the early 1970s, Dr. Flanders, along with Tribune-Herald editor Harry Provence and other community leaders, traveled to Paris, France, to participate in international peace talks that brought an end to the Vietnam War. Dr. Flanders retired from Baylor in 1991.
He was a Distinguished Alumini of Baylor University, a Mason, a former chaplain of the Texas Rangers, and a member of the American Academy of Religion, and the Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, among many other organizations. After retiring, Dr. Flanders helped mentor Waco area children with learning difficulties.
Dr. Flanders is survived by his wife of 61 years, Tommie Lou Pardew Flanders, of Waco; a brother, Don H. Flanders, of Fort Smith, Ark.; a daughter, Janet Flanders Mitchell, of Oklahoma City; a son, Jack Flanders, III, of Arlington; three grandchildren, Luke Mitchell, of New York City, N. Y., Thomas Flanders, of Arlington, and Ben Flanders, of Norman, Okla.; a daughter-in-law, Pat Flanders, of Arlington, and a son-in-law, Gil Mitchell of Oklahoma City.
Memorial denotations may be made to one's favorite charity.
The family invites you to leave a message or memory in our "Memorial Gustbook" at http://www.wilkirsonhatchbailey.com
On a personal note, Dr. Flanders, a close family friend, was my pastor for seven years. Later he officiated at both my brother's wedding and my dad's funeral (along with Dr. W. J. Wimpee and Dr. Scott Walker). Janet and Jack, you will be in my thoughts and prayers tonight.
A story that also appears in the Waco Tribune-Herald will follow.
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