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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.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Meadows doesn't know his Baptist history

      The following letter was published in the July 25 issue of the Clay County Progress in Hayesville NC, in the US congressional district of super Trumper Mark Meadows who also claims to be of the Baptist faith.


     I was baptized in the Truett Memorial Baptist Church in 1959 when my Father was pastor there. Within the following year one of his professors Stewart A Newman with two other faculty from the seminary in Wake Forest stopped by for a meal on the way to Nashville for some Baptist conversations on the nature of the Bible.

     Just four years earlier Newman had followed the famous pastor of the Time W. A Criswell, Truett's successor of FBC of Dallas Texas, to the podium of the South Carolina Baptist pastor's conference.   Criswell in 56 HAD Delivered  Fiery Race Baiting Speech to the  Pastor's Conference and the next day a joint session of the SC legislature.

    In an address where Criswell said things like I wouldn't let my daughter within two city blocks of A Big Black Buck; and you wouldn't call a Chigger a Chiggerow, now would ya, Newman's reply when his turn came  was: "W.A. Criswell doesn't speak for me. "

     There were only two pastors in the church in the 20th Century at FBC Dallas , Truett and Criswell. Historians say Truett, the Baptist born in Hayesville was likely the greatest Baptist of the First Half of the 20th Century.

    In Princeton author Robert Wuthnow's Book Rough Country, Wuthnow in the Chapter from Judge Lynch to Jim Crow lays out how Truett leaned forward in his Day on matters of Race.

    Now we have folks like the current pastor at FBC Dallas Jeffress and Jerry Falwell Jr, even Franklin Graham in the Trump Train not to mention Mark Meadows. Criswell set the template for them all.

     To me Trump and his spin meister Stephen Miller--I saw the Sunday interview on Fox News of Miller by Chris Wallace--are more un American than the Squad. Ask the majority of players for ACC basketball and or SEC Football what the phrase go Back to Where you Came from means to them.

    On Tuesday July 17 on Ga NPR program Political Rewind a panel of Three Jews and Two Black people said they have much more to fear, are more threatened by the rhetoric of Trump and his Send her Back Ralleys, than they are by some of the misguided statements of the Squad.

    One of the Jews was twice elected Attorney General for the State of Georgia.

   Or for that matter ask the faculty of Western Carolina, Mars Hill and Appalachian State, ask David Thompson's High School track team member Ron Rash or his novelist colleague at App State Mark Powell.

    Here is a true test for Baptist Christians in Western North Carolina, are they part of the discerning Body of Christ in the legacy of George W. Truett, or are they trapped in the culture of WA Criswell and his lesser understanding of the Gospel for the Public Square and the great vision of the Declaration and its self evident Truths?

Monday, July 22, 2019

Christ Church Greenville's US Congressman Timmons needs history lesson re Trump and the AOC Squad

      William Timmons family name adorns the basketball arena of Furman University. I am a graduate of Furman but of much greater significance it is also the alma mater of Marshall Frady, the consensus greatest social Justice journalist of the last half of the 20th Century.

     But Frady's legacy is apparently lost on a graduate of the pristine Christ Church Episcopal prep school, educating Greenville's wealthiest and most influential for 75 years or more one being Timmons, the successor of Fox News Darling Trey Gowdy in the Upstate.

     Timmons equivocating, lukewarm statement on the outrages of Donald Trump's latest outrage this last week in unworthy of Christ Church, the preaching of the Great Episcopal pulpiteers Fleming Rutledge, not to mention the longstanding association, trustee networking of the school to Frady's alma mater.

    Here is a history lesson for Timmons he seems to have missed at Christ Church and then George Washington.

     https://www.npr.org/2019/07/19/743599290/the-history-of-dissent-in-american-political-life

    And here is hoping this fall at Christ Church and Furman there is a review of the documentary Uprising of 34 to conflate the Professor lesson above about labor strife in America and how language used then against Ella Mae Wiggins and her white working class friends from Greenville to Gaffney up through the Piedmont of the Carolinas is the same Stephen Miller and Trump are using now against The Squad in their campaign to bamboozle white working class folks downward in resentment and despair while Trump funnels wealth upstream.

     It is despicable such a polished fellow in what passes for Destination City's highest level of Southern gentility is complicit in such a travesty.

Monday, July 15, 2019

SBC complicitous in Trump's Venality

     Well the Southern Baptists remain struck mute far as I can tell about the venality of the Trump Administration. Beginning with a July 9 NPR Fresh Air interview on gerrymandering and the Census Question, to Trump's baiting of AOC's squad to the Fox News made for prime TV Immigration roundup to a spot conversation this morning on NPR 1a program featuring Vandy's Jonathan Metzl it's an avalanche of mendacity and venality which has Southern Baptist leadership overwhelmed and out to lunch..

       I don't have time to do this avalanche justice and you're in the fog if you don't do the background reading.

    But here are some things you can google, some transcripts you can read in addition to the Fresh Air program. BTW Fresh Air Gerrymander chat  spotlights,  brings new frame to Kris Kobach. For Kobach context with the SBC see my Dying of Whiteness blog a few posts back.

       On Saturday NPR weekend edition afternoon hour had segment with a woman who covered Trump's Social Media summit

     Theatlantic.com July 5 had a post on how Trump continues to bedazzle his fundamentalist base. That piece had bizarre quote by Eric Metaxas, a guru in his own right for the Truth for a New Generation conferences of a decade ago at FBC Spartanburg SC and just a few months ago featured lecturer at Historically Baptist affiliated Samford University in Birmingham Alabama.

    The Sunday before July 4th Metaxas guest filled the pulpit of 2nd Baptist megachurch Houston Texas whose Ed Young was hardwired to Nixon's Southern Strategist during his days in Columbia South Carolina.

    One thing my alma mater, Furman University can do in what may be a losing cause in Upstate SC, is have Derrick Harkins on campus  this fall with Furman 65 grad Pat Anderson, now editor of the progressive Baptist quarterly Christian Ethics Today. Harkins is not only a disciple of likely the wisest professing Christian left in America, Marilynne Robinson, he also from his days as a pastor in the 90s in Dallas Texas understands the distinct Baptist legacies of George W. Truett and WA Criswell, something apparently the US Congressman for WNC, Mark Meadows, does not.

    Truett was born in Hayesville, NC in 1867

     So is there an LD Johnson, a Carlyle Marney left who has a wise public word before the South Carolina Presidential Primary?

    I guess we will have to wait and see.

     Here is a link to the witness and hope of Derrick Harkins

     https://religionnews.com/2019/06/25/democrats-new-faith-outreach-director-launches-listening-sessions-with-religious-leaders/


    Trump's social media recap
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/13/741485104/white-house-social-media-summit-recap

   And scroll down a third of the way in the following link to see how squarely Eunie Smith--see DofWhiteness blog--friend Kobach fits in the Steve Bannon strategy for Trump's immigration politics

     https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739854998/rulings-on-gerrymandering-and-the-census-could-define-the-political-future

   and the great, the magisterial to Trump, Eric Metaxas and all Their minions:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/which-way-city-hill/
   
    

Monday, July 08, 2019

Which More significant, Moon Landing or King's Dream Speech

   Friends I sent out a text to several Revenants, mostly in Alabama, this morning posing the question. A former SGA President of a historically Baptist College who had friends in the Bush 43 White House and helicopter landings in Jasper Missouri is resolute that the Moon Landing of 69 was most significant mid 20th Century.

    I think Harvard Historian Jill Lepore is correct when on the third page of her magisterial 2018 history of America, These Truths, she spotlights the picture of Martin Luther King on the Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial August 1963 when Mahalia Jackson spoke out loud enough for him to Hear, Martin, Tell em about the Dream.

    Frye Galliard does justice to both events in his Chronicle of the 60s Hard Rain.

    And one of my texters, a seminary graduate replied this morning:

       I wonder if we coulda had one without the other.... But I would definitely say the King Speech.

   I'm with him and my perception of Lepore's leaning.

     What do you think?


     FTR That night in 69 I was across the road in Alabama, the one Bonhoeffer came up in 31. summer of my tenth grade year. Furthrest thing from my mind at the time. Had been living in South Carolina for seven years, that 50 years later I would end up across the road.

   As Paris Trout Said, Cradle to Cradle