Well 2018 went by in a flash

    For me 2018 will be the year the car stayed in the yard more months than it was able to get me around dekalb county and through North Georgia to see loved ones. Several friends gave me rides to town on the library in Ft Payne while I tried to figure a cheap way to get it on the highway again.

    It almost got to the point my neighbor across the street hollered one day if you come over the center line in the Highway I'm gonna shoot you cause I cant be runnin you all over the place just because you think I might go to town in 30 minutes.

    I rode my bicycle as much as I could, mostly down hill into town and I could get to the China house in 20 minutes if the pedaling was good and the bulldog at the neighbors about 7 minutes down the highway didnt take a chunk outta my ankle.

    Well I don't want to repeat that year.

   I did get the car going to get me to Upstate on my birthday back in May and that was a good trip through Hayesville.

   But nobody took me to Bridges BBQ all year, well maybe my brother did but I cant remember if that was this year or last, Maybe it was first of June.

    Didnt see a movie all year till last weekend.  But I did read some good books including Varina back in the spring and the Paytons and I got history of Bama in the local History Museum and Thomas and Martha read it.

   Had some big ideas but they have stalled out right now.

    Ate good for the most part though keying on the catfish in Cloudland soon as I can get there.

   As most of you know by now, I did not win the 1.5 billion lotto back in the spring. Bought a ticket, maybe in October about 15 miles away from Simpsonville so that is as close as I ever may get.

    Which reminds me of the October adventure to Furman to crash the Seeking Abraham event. Caught a ride with an Upstate Revenant after a 7 hour delay on the Cracker Barrel porch in Anniston, quite an adventure.

     This Christmas season was almost a disaster but things broke my way and I'm about braced up for 2019.

    I guess we'll see how this Damn Trump thing plays out. At least on the national level don't look like it is gonna be anywhere near as boring as watching a saban team play college football.

Mohler's righteous platform denouncing slavery on shakey clapboard of Baptist fundamentalism

    In the last few days Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist flagship seminary institution in Louisville Kentucky has been the subject of exploratory pieces in the WSJ, the WAPO and Baptist Global News about a year long report at the Seminary looking at the school's slaveholding past. It mirrors a year long study at Marshall Frady and my alma mater, Furman on the same matter. Furman had a 17 member committee that included Danforth Scholar Courtney Tollison whose dissertation was a look at the role Southern Baptist fundamentalists in SC that gave Mohler his current pulpit and presidentcy played with their anti integration politics in the 60s that eventually led to one of Baptists' Better communities of higher education break with the South Carolina SBC.

    See the Molly Worthen Seeking Abraham blog below.

     Mohler was interviewed on NPR Morning Edition Dec 12.

     Robert Wuthnow in Rough Country talks about Lee Atwater's "Nigger Memo". The fundamentalist politics in the SBC that placed Mohler at the Helm of a seminary that once truly leaned in the right direction on matters of justice, worked hand in glove in the takeover the denomination that now gives charlatans the likes of Mohler and Russ Moore national hand wringing coverage of American history 150 years ago.

     Almost all the folks that gave Mohler and Russ Moore, got the water ready for them to walk on, are left over bigots who got mobilized with the John Birch Society and the residues of the White Citizens Council and the Texas Regulars. Strong networked to Jesse Helms, the last senate hold out on the ML King Holiday, Folks like WA Criswell and and Houston Judge Paul Pressler--once nominated by Bush 41 to head the US offc of Govt Ethics--Albert Lee Smith of Bham and his wife Eunie of the Birchers and Eagle Forum; that is Mohler's community of faith.

    Longtime SBC parliamentarian, Barry McCarty, Helms operative in the 80s that was Jesse's first choice to head the NC GOP; Mccarty in hot water in the Baptist Global News report on this matter.

    Google Duke's Curtis Freeman, Dead from the Neck Up. Read about WA Criswell and Strom Thurmond in Columbia SC in 1956 where Criswell, Mohler's inerrant Godfather, got complimentary hoots and howls from the SC Pastor's conference saying things  like you wouldn't call a chigger a chiggerow now would ya; and I wouldn't let my daughter within two city blocks of a Big Black Buck.

   So That's Al Mohler's Baptist heritage.

   These stories have legs.

   I am hoping NPR 1a program in January for the hour has Furman's Tollison and Vernon Burton--Vernon FU 69 now distinguished history proff at Clemson--and UNC's Molly Worthen on for the hour. If they have done their homework on Wuthnow; well like the Selma marcher's sang and singing now loudly to Al Mohler and his kind: This Little Light of Mine, I'm gonna let it shine!!!!!