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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.

Friday, October 31, 2014

Megyn Kelly, Senator Landreu, Texas Fundy Baps and RAce Politics

      Last night Megyn Kelly on Fox News devoted her opening ten minutes to distort a conversation between US Senator Mary Landreu of Lousiana and NBC's Chuck Todd. By the Fox News Christian Sexxy blonde's take race politics started this election cycle and the dems and Al Sharpton are to blame.

       Here's some news for Miss Pageant and her busty New Jersey housewives on The Five of Fox News. Jesse Helms, a leader in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, with firiends hardwired in the John Birch Society, White Citizens Council, Texas Regulars, politicial ancestry of Uncle Bozo the harmless Preacher Mike Huckabee and the whole cabal have a long history of it.

    Shout out Number ONe. Have Roger Ailes, Anne Coulter and Dick Cheney's straight daughter Liz do a close read of the October 9 print issue only of Thomas Powers take on Texas Baptists in the New York Review of Books. Google the online teaser at nybooks.com

    I'm tired of Fox News prime time Oreilly and Kelly half assin recent American Bible history. Here in Alabama our good Methodist Mike Hubbard spews the same ridiculous illiterate poison as Fox News. Just see and google the New Republic New Racism article about how this friend of Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker would let the rest of the extended families who man the SEC off which he's made his small fortune with the Auburn Tigers fend for themselves. That's where Mr. Guillory of LA gets it wrong in his reply to Senator Landreu.

   I've found some of the Ferguson ads and other race attempts by the tempts this last weekend a little less than Christlike, but the current GOP is tawdry in how they play the halftruths and forget, regional amnesia on Helms and Atwater for starters.

    My friends on the Diane Rehm show disappointed me this morning. I waited for 20 minutes after I'd gotten the screener and thought I was gonna go national with my comment. Clarence Page didn't go back for enough to the Hands ad of Helms in the 84 Senate Race against the Charlotte Mayor who integrated Clemson. And he coulda invoked Garry Wills great deconstruction of Joe Scarborough's recent amnesiac history of the GOP in NY Rev Books.

     Here is the kicker. I hope the Diane Rehm show can have Thomas Powers and Emory's Joe Crespino--Strom Thurmond's America-- on for the hour, well versed in Jason Zengerle's New Republic piece on Bama Speaker Hubbard in some post election analysis on Race and the Tea Party.

     I called Bama Gov Bentley's office this morning and talked to Senator Sparkman's grandson Daniel. He's a nice guy; and I have respect for Gov Bentley. I think he has more mah fyburr than say my friend Lowell Barron. But here is the filament, the fine particle that means a great deal in the character of the Southern GOP just now. As Crespino and Powers point out, Southern Baptists who breed like rabbits all over the Southeast are stultified, get go out of the cradle with their inerrancy doctrine. It leads them to a political rationale, short sightedness, that tilts toward a Birch mentality and the kind of fodder Fox News feeds on.

    History is important. Bonhoeffer says Theology matters. The Governor and his Pastor Rick Lance, head of Southern Baptists in Bama need to do their homework with some tutoring by Diane Rehm, Powers and Crespino; then pick up the phone and Call Gov. Jindahl  of Lousiana and then call Fox News and tell them to Get Right with Jesus.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Morgans, Phil Williams and Justice for the Collinsville Soccer Team

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/methodist-bishop-repents-on-immigration-calls-for-action-cms-18965

    

     Click on the link above. The former Bishop of the UMC takes a different stance on Immigration and justice for the Collinsville Soccer Team than apparently John and Gloria Morgan who have done ministry in Collinsville for 35 years or more.
     Google Self Deportation in Mother Jones Magazine. Kris Kobach worked with Phil Williams and Mike Hubbard in the Bama House and Senate to draft an immigration bill former Asst School Supe for Dekalb County Donnie Myers says was conceived in malice.
     Three of the Morgans sons if you ask them the right questions I'm convinced are disappointed in their parents brandishing a yard sign at their house on South Valley Avenue.
     The Morgans are intelligient folks. I doubt I could score as high on College Entrance Exams as did three of their four sons. The Pastor is near expert on the writings of J.R. Tolkien.

    So surely they know, understand the Bible well enough to get what Williams immigration bill means for the Soccer team and Hispanic community in Collinsville, the same ones they tell Jesus about in Sunday School and Children's Choir.

    Look at these articles. Ask the preacher and his wife and the Senator and his operative Joseph Morgan about them.

    Talk to Jesus about it and then vote November 4.

    Also get a working conversational knowledge about bleaching. The Cover story on the New Racism, New Republic will help you.

    And check the Collinsville PTO site for a link to the NPR story on the Hispanic vote in North Carolina. Collinsville could've easily been as good or better story.

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Coke Stevenson and Texas Baptists warp the world

     Friends:

     Before I get to steamrolling click on this:

    http://forums.baptistlife.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=11451#p155533

     Copy and paste whatever it takes.

     I have several links there and a history of my conjecture on this matter which roughly is:

     The Birchers and the whites citizens council to Civil Rights in the cauldron Of Exxon Oil and Paul Pressler's Texas Regulars were more of a driving force in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention than quibbles over the Nature of Scripture.

    Pressler had more in common with the Bircher that split the Missouri synod than he had in common with R. G Lee. I don't know what Adrian Rogers was thinking, but it appears Ed McAteer was doing his thinking for him.

     Inerrancy was a Ruse, to paraphrase W. A. Criswell on the priesthood of the believer.

     And now we got Benghazi Trey Gowdy and Ted Cruz fronting for the legacy of Billy Graham.  Thats how bad things have gotten messed up.

     It is imperative Roger Paynter, Chandler Davidson, Daivd Currie, Lee Berg,  Bill Moyers, Jimmy Allen, Randall Balmer have a focussed chat on Thomas Powers review of Robert Wuthnow's new book on Texas fundamentalism and how it became Ted Cruz and the Tea Party.

  Sidney Blumenthal and his rejoinder to Robert Caro on LBJ in early 90s needs to be in this chat too. And Tom Edsall about oil strategic financing of congressional races. I asked President Carter about that one in 93 

    Current issue print only is at a Barnes and Noble Near you soon. Reading the easily googled teaser online won't cut it.

     I know this is sketchy, but stay tuned. We're just starting on finally gettin this story right.

Excerpt from review:

  Ken Chafin said: "I'm not gonna roll over and let a group of Frank Norrisite Texas fundamentalists stea; the institutions of my denomination."

   But the Pressler-Patterson faction did exactly that; an unbroken string of fundamentalists were elected to head the denomination for the next decade and with power of the presidency they systematically packed every committee and board, pushed out anyone who did not agree, and gradually purged the Baptist seminaries of all the moderates, defined by Pressler as anyone 'who believes the bible does or could contain error of any kind".

    

Thursday, October 02, 2014

Baylor, Furman and the Upstate S.C. Tea Party

    Friends, this blog may not be Furman worthy on first draft but time compels me to post it right away. Please come back if at all interested next week as it may be refined and editted.

    I was shying away from the outburst but a confluence  of reports and events got me about to bust.
 
    One report was a religion news service story by Furman Grad David Gibson about conservative Christians using the theme of Exile to gain unwarranted attention. He even cited an An Atlantic Monthly piece in his roundup of stories on the theme. Ironically enough the Exile theme has more credibility in an anthology in which I will be published by U Tennessee Press in January, a series by Carl Kell, this one on the current generation of progressive Baptists displaced by the fundamentalist takeover.

 

     Furman poli sci proff  Brent Nelsen made a presentation on the Ukraine October First as part of Furman's downtown Greenville High Noon  presentations, a great effort of Furman in the Upstate community. My concern is he is a founding member of the PCA church of Jim Demint of the Upstate Tea Party and shares ideology with Trey Gowdy the Tea Party US Congressman from that district.

    Gowdy is a graduate of Baylor in the early 80s, as was Rand Paul. There was a grand chat today on NPR on Paul with Ryan Lizza about Lizza's current feature in the New Yorker.

   New Yorker does not say if they were acquainted there but they almost certainly traveled in the same Young Republican circles.

   Upshot is Paul at Baylor was progressive on abortion and evolution. Demint and Gowdy and FBC Sburg are not. And I would imagine current Furman Prez Elizabeth  Davis matriculating from Baylor administration; her views are more in line with Randall Balmer of Dartmouth who wrote a piece for Mother Jones in 04 on Baylor and Evolution and the Bible and recently had a bio on President Carter focussing on how Baptist fundamentalists that once threatened Furman hijacked the Presidency of Carter on the abortion issue and tax exemption for Bob Jones University over interracial dating.

     Upshot is to paraphrase the gubernatorial candidate in Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Gowdy, Demint  and their Tea Party fundamentalism with a wink by Billy Graham is not my culture and heritage.

    Ryan Lizza did a piece on Roger Milliken in New Republic in 1999. It was fascinating. Furman sources tell me Millken tried to place the Christian Reconstructionist Gary North on Furman faculty in 73 or so. Furman was nice enough to show North the campus and the front gate; not to say the front gate wasn't an option for me on a couple occasions when I was there.

    Long story short, lot of folks who side with right wing have been students at Furman over the years. Over the years  Some  children of very prominent players associated with the right and religious right were students  including the 2014 grad Lauren Cooley from Billy Graham's grandson's church in Ft Lauderdale Florida;  Nixon's Southern Strategist Harry Dent's Daughter, Dolly; Lee Atwater's daughter, Salley; Even this year very conservative southern forces are represented at Furman,  family and extended family of politicians hardwired to the Tea Party and American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC--google New Racism, New Republic, ALEC in NY Times, Jan this year, and the conversation just today on ALEC at drshow.org.

   I'm fine they were at Furman, in fact I have an ongoing exchange with Dolly's sister Ginny who rose to some prominence in the SBC after the takeover. And I think Dr. Nelsen is good for the conversation at Furman. I witnessed an exchange between him and the Knight of the Religion Department Albert Blackwell in a High Noon exchange in 2010.

     Bottom line is tribalism in Ukraine in some ways is comparable to Upstate S.C. Tea Party if I understand Wahalla novelist Mark Powell, and Emory's Joe Crespino.  There are analogies to the legacy of Strom Thurmond and the Tea Party mindset to Putin heavy handedness in the Ukraine. And I wish I had been at the High Noon presentation with Nelsen yesterday to explore that notion.

   Of course for the conversation to make sense, Furman would have to do the background reading with Crespino, Powell, Lizza, New Republic's Jason Zengerle, Molly Worthen's Apostles of Reason, and Giberson and Stephen's The Anointed as syllabus.

    At a minimum I hope Furman has Crespino and Powell on campus this coming spring in a much publicized event and there is a community read worthy of their presence. 
  
    And here is most recent national coverage of my concern, one that goes to the heart of assertions I have been making for 30 years now:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/oct/09/texas-southern-baptists-power/?insrc=toc