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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, November 25, 2019

A Venal Nexus, Franklin Graham, Eric Metaxas and FBC Spartanburg South Carolina

   This is a scattershot blog. I was raised in Gaffney about Twenty miles East of Spartanburg South Carolina and its First Baptist Church. It is where Trey Gowdy shared a membership with Billy Graham for about twenty years; and for a while one of my facebook friends, Ginny Dent Brant, Daughter of Harry Dent, Nixon's Southern Strategist.

     About five years ago Eric Metaxas was a key speaker of FBC Sburg conferences Truth for a New Generation in conjunction with North Greenville College which could pass as a satellite campus of Liberty University.

     Franklin Graham and his son Will have a close working relationship with FBC Spartanburg.

    Long story short Marty Cohen's new Book on a Moral Congress puts in full relief how Christ Church Episcopalians in Greenville are complicit in the fundamentalism and it Trump base politics all in the shadow of Furman and Wofford, what passes for Enlightened Baptists and Methodists in Upstate SC.

   I am a graduate of Furman, and Baxter Wynn is a trustee there. Baxter is the nephew of Lester Maddox and the brother of Barry Wynn, recent Chair of the SC GOP.

    So here is an open invitation to Baxter and Baptists who should know better in the Upstate to listen online to On the Media of NPR yesterday.

    And take a deep dive into Cohen's book in light of the following links
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/to-trumps-evangelicals-everyone-else-is-a-sinner/602569/

And This Bonhoefferian Moment Metaxas is blaspheming.

   https://baptistnews.com/article/baptists-under-nazism-and-baptists-amid-americas-current-political-crisis-a-call-to-disruption/#.XdxTT2cQWUk



 
   

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Collinsville's desperation play 1982 playoffs

         I never played a down of official football in my life but I was raised in the thick of it in Gaffney South Carolina, one of the top hundred high school football dynasties of all time according to Max Preps.

      So I thought all the stories were trumped by the time I got to small town Alabama where Momma was baptized  and I arrived in the late 80s. After some acclimation by mid 90s I was pretty much known in town and there were a couple summers of which the local legends of 82 were winding down after some glory in travel Softball, the Mudballers or Taxi or something they called themselves.

    What I remember outstanding were the groupies from the region that would show up behind the centerfield some more striking than the Glory Day legends on the field. More notable or deserving notoriety, you figure it out; all pre Me Too movement of course.

    That said mid 90s the glory boys were gathering on Fridays about four pm at the tennis courts. After about an hour of socializing--a six pack or half per person, they got down to business. The deal was everybody put a dollar in a tennis can and the doubles team that won it got to split the registration fee.

   Tourney or Friday night administrator Darryl Brown was clear about the rules. However you played in Georgia if you were in this tourney if the ball richocheted off the light poll in bounds on the court it was in play. I was fine with that cause whats a little Bama home cookin for a remunerative late afternoon.

    Well I had just come off my halcyon days in Rome Georgia where I won a couple doubles tournaments and had hit with the Pakistani Jr Davis Cup Tennis team so it was easy money for me.

    But the bonus was halftime about 830 into the evening where the Glory Day Boys got to reminiscing about the Big Play in 82 against Akron in the Turkey Town corner of the local field Where Coach Weaver Called time out and according to Darryl Brown, the two way Center and noseguard or off tackle drew it up on the sideline.

    Or maybe Munsey Box IV, the fourth, or Eye Vee as some called him was the center. He played both ways as most of the standouts did. In fact local revenant and oral history guru Mike Mack Pheerson said Munsey was so fast he "run down the cotton boys from Crossville." Seen it with his own eyes MackPheerson said.

   Brown said they were in the south end of the hometown Panther stadium down 7 to six with a few seconds left. Coach Weaver was of a mind to go for it all with a two point play the struggle it had been to that point to get points on the board.  Just scored and Coach Weaver called a time out. Said they all gathered and Weaver drew up a play that put Todd Roberts on the East of the Line, and his older Brother Scott "Rollo" Roberts on the North. Scott was reputed to have the better hands of the two so the figurin was the Deefense was thinking it would go to him.

    But Todd Said his defender held him by the britches at the line and he  never had a chance.

    Just three weeks ago at the 100th Anniversary of Collinsville HS football, the oldest in the county, I asked Coach Weaver about the infamous play. He was back in town from Marshall County where he was raised and in his day was said as a HS All American; was said he could stand on the steps of the First United Methodist Church in Guntersville and hit the Sign for the Regions Bank two blocks down the street with a football.

    At the big Homecoming Chicken and Dressing Supper Weaver said it was a "desperation Play".

   Desperation or not it meant a lot to his boys in 82. They had played it over and over and over in their minds just 12 years out in 94 and here, now just a couple years close to its 40th anniversary some still do I'm convinced.

    They had a lot of worthy players that year they got close (and even closer the next year) to a state championship. Scott Roberts the Coming spring was in the State All Star game with Bama great Cornelius Bennett in the backfield. A play was drown up this time to spotlight Scott and he scored I think the legend has it on a 70 yard catch and run play, I think first play from scrimmage.  He and John Willingham, Munsey and Darryl Brown, Todd Roberts I'm convinced coulda started for the Gaffney Indians runner ups in South Carolina had they been contemporaries to the 69 Team.

     Tomorrow, Collinsville plays Ohatchee in Ohatchee, home of Billy Ferguson who was the referee for Charles Barkley's HS all star roundball game. And Gaffney is at Sumter for the 2nd Round in South Carolina, the same team they faced in a lost cause in late November of 69.

    Lucas Black was the QB in the movie version of Friday Night Lights with Billy Bob Thornton. In that movie he goes in the Huddle at a precarious moment in his playoffs and says, Okay Boys, "This is our Time".

   So fall of 82 it was Rollo and Darryl, Eye Vee, Willingham, Action Jackson, Big Todd Graves,  Roger Smith; it was their time and this was a little part of a big memory for them.

   

   

Friday, November 08, 2019

Will Ga. Gov Nathan Deal lectures at Mercer honor the legacy of George W. Truett

    A few weeks ago Georgia NPR announced Mercer plans to hosts a series of lecture at their Macon and Atlanta campus by recent Governor Nathan Deal. Deal is a Republican and reputed active member of FBC Gainesville, Ga a CBF congregation.
      The CBF is not in the Trump camp, unlike the other high profile from Gainesville, Doug Collins an ordained Southern Baptist minister and a fundamentalist.
      The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is also hardwired to the New Baptist Covenant inaugurated by President Carter and Mercer President Underwood among others. I attended the inaugural meeting in Atlanta in 07 and their hierarchy of political concerns was more weighted toward DACA and other justice issues. Abortion wasn't mentioned much at all.

    So what will Deal bring to the Table in these lectures. Will he come aware of the Book Rough Country about how Fundamentalist Southern Baptists of the Collins stripe shaped the modern Day Republican Party. Does Deal have a clue of what the great Baptist George W. Truett would be thinking were he with us in these days of Donald Trump?

    Wuthnow's Rough Country will help him get a clue.

     Now when it counts with Two US Senate seats up for grabs in Georgia, will Chic Fil A weigh into the conversation. The founder of Chic Fil a, Truett Cathy was named for George W. Truett. Does CFA's celebrated values include an understanding of the legacy of George W. Truett for whom the founder was named.

     The Book Blessings of Business by Furman grad Darren Grem suggests Chic Fil A may not have a fine grip on the legacy of Truett.

     Chet Edwards, a blue dog Democrat who lectures at another Baptist school, Baylor understands. Maybe President Carter can lean on Mercer President Underwood to share an event with Gov Deal in these lectures.

      Mercer history records Truett Cathy with his conservative political leanings as a Trustee of Mercer did come to the support of former Mercer President Godsey when he was on the hot seat. Does Gov Deal have a clue as to  the secular political implications of that moment.

     My friend at Dartmouth, Randall Balmer has written a political biography of Jimmy Carter and his travails with the Southern Baptists. Just a few days ago Balmer picked up on the theme of a Redeemer President in a piece in the Concord Monitor that came to the attention of NPR Here and Now.

     I commend all these resources to Gov Deal. If he is ignorant of these sources, and Underwood is out to lunch or bringing them to his attention, of the CBF Divinity School at the Mercer Atlanta Campus, or the Baugh Institute for Baptist Studies, then I am afraid Deal's lecture will be a waste of time, another exercise in Whistling Dixie!

Wednesday, November 06, 2019

Catholic Particularity as Trump comes to Tuscaloosa to see Nick Saban and the Tide

     About ten years ago I crashed an event at Sewanee Writers conference to hear the Harvard Literary Critic James Wood. And these last few years I'd planned to go again to hear the Catholic Novelist Alice McDermott but I didn't get there.
   I wanted to tell Alice that if you change the accents a little and the faith, not a lot of difference in the working Class Catholics she writes about about and the strong values conservative congregation of my Dad's Bethany Baptist Church in Gaffney SC in 60s and 70s.

      Her people and the congregation that fed me and the family for 16 years I suspect are easily in the Trump Column. They aren't deplorable but the leadership of Lee Atwater, Carroll Campbell and now Sean Hannity and North Greenville College play them corrosively to the detriment of our Country.

    And Furman and Wofford who know better for all their boasting about the virtues of enlightened liberal arts education; well you can't see much evidence in the ballot box.

 Same for Samford and Birmingham Southern here in Bama. Rick and Bubba radio have a bigger following than Wayne Flynt and Harper Lee, though my God they do love to brag about Miss Nelle bein from here.

   And now Donald Trump is coming to see the Sabans.  Will the honors program at U Bama have anything to say, or Nick Saban's St Francis Catholic Church.

   I called them Monday and asked them to think about this new Off Broadway play
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/theater/heroes-of-the-fourth-turning-review.html

    And I tried to call Paul Finebaum but his line has been busy lately.

     Allan Boesak, the  South African theologian, had the lead piece in Christianethicstoday.com Fall issue. I'm proud the editor of that quarterly is a Furman grad, 65, two years after Marshall Frady.

     Boesak has something to say about Trump and the politics of vulgarity. Read it and ask yourself if another person of faith, Pete Buttigiege--google Randall Balmer on a new Redeemer President--might be a better way.