Molly Worthen no excuse for Huckabee, Hubbard and Trey Gowdy shenanigans
Molly Worthen is getting good chat at baptistlife.com/forums SBC Trends. Her chapter on the Southern Baptist Convention, excerpt from her Apostles of Reason (easy google) has garnered a good stir.
I've that excerpt, her book flap and last chapter. Hoping to get my hands on the book from a local library so I can read the rest soon. She also has an article in Christian Century on Billy Graham's 92nd Birthday. I think Billy and Elvis Pressley were born the same year, contemporaries of my Uncle Prentice.
This coming year bodes well for some refinement of her pivotal thoughts on the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. That's just part of her book, but unless the likes of Notre Dame's Mark Noll and his friend Darren Dochuk aren't a little more definitive on the legacy of the fundy takeover, the glowing comments they make on the book's cover are open for misinterpretation. The parts of her book I've read so far allows that demagogues have taken advantage in the political arena of folks of conviction on the matter of Biblical authority, but seems to give Birchers like Paul Pressler, Jesse Helms and the unnamed Albert Lee Smith a pass for their role in the SBC Fundy Takeover. And she lacks for my taste Randall Balmer, Marshall Frady and Steven Miller's insights into the duplicity of Billy Graham, if not outright deceit, in the SBC Takeover.
Balmer's upcoming bio of Jimmy Carter hopefully will take some of the bad taste out of my mouth on Ms. Worthen's oversight there. Balmer consistently uses the word "cagey" in describing how Graham has played Presidential politics from Kennedy/Nixon through President Carter where he slighted SBC's Jimmy in Reagan's favor, to George W. Bush even Obama.
Still she puts lot on the table, new insight with eloquence. On that I agree with Dochuk and Noll and with them look forward to the coming conversations.
I am hoping her book will engage the likes of rascals (mild words, bastards in the Will Campbell sense may be more spot on) like the Tea Party's Mike Hubbard of Alabama, Billy Graham's fellow parishioner Trey Gowdy at FBC Spartanburg, S.C.; and the slippery Mike Huckabee who is now doing ads for Senator Lindsey Graham in Upstate S.C.
I'm doing my part to stoke further conversation. I called Bama SBC Deacon Gov Bentley's office this morning, David Wilkins of S.C., the D.C. staff of Trey Gowdy, N.C. Ellmer's of Dunn/Fayetteville US House District, and the Chic Fil A Cares line to get word to Dan CAthy himself about the significance of this book; not to mention Huckabee's good friend, Andy Westmoreland, President of Samford University.
Keep following the conversation at Bl.com. It could get interesting.
I've that excerpt, her book flap and last chapter. Hoping to get my hands on the book from a local library so I can read the rest soon. She also has an article in Christian Century on Billy Graham's 92nd Birthday. I think Billy and Elvis Pressley were born the same year, contemporaries of my Uncle Prentice.
This coming year bodes well for some refinement of her pivotal thoughts on the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. That's just part of her book, but unless the likes of Notre Dame's Mark Noll and his friend Darren Dochuk aren't a little more definitive on the legacy of the fundy takeover, the glowing comments they make on the book's cover are open for misinterpretation. The parts of her book I've read so far allows that demagogues have taken advantage in the political arena of folks of conviction on the matter of Biblical authority, but seems to give Birchers like Paul Pressler, Jesse Helms and the unnamed Albert Lee Smith a pass for their role in the SBC Fundy Takeover. And she lacks for my taste Randall Balmer, Marshall Frady and Steven Miller's insights into the duplicity of Billy Graham, if not outright deceit, in the SBC Takeover.
Balmer's upcoming bio of Jimmy Carter hopefully will take some of the bad taste out of my mouth on Ms. Worthen's oversight there. Balmer consistently uses the word "cagey" in describing how Graham has played Presidential politics from Kennedy/Nixon through President Carter where he slighted SBC's Jimmy in Reagan's favor, to George W. Bush even Obama.
Still she puts lot on the table, new insight with eloquence. On that I agree with Dochuk and Noll and with them look forward to the coming conversations.
I am hoping her book will engage the likes of rascals (mild words, bastards in the Will Campbell sense may be more spot on) like the Tea Party's Mike Hubbard of Alabama, Billy Graham's fellow parishioner Trey Gowdy at FBC Spartanburg, S.C.; and the slippery Mike Huckabee who is now doing ads for Senator Lindsey Graham in Upstate S.C.
I'm doing my part to stoke further conversation. I called Bama SBC Deacon Gov Bentley's office this morning, David Wilkins of S.C., the D.C. staff of Trey Gowdy, N.C. Ellmer's of Dunn/Fayetteville US House District, and the Chic Fil A Cares line to get word to Dan CAthy himself about the significance of this book; not to mention Huckabee's good friend, Andy Westmoreland, President of Samford University.
Keep following the conversation at Bl.com. It could get interesting.
posted by foxofbama | 1:11 PM
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