Can Dan Cathy and Tyler Perry Save Atlanta; Or Will Mohler SBC Populism be worse Than Sherman

   Friends as  with other blogs come back to this one as this rough draft and post will need further work.

    Dan Cathy of Chic Fil a was in religion class with me at Furman the fall of 1971 and his father was named for George W Truett the greatest Baptist of the first half of the 20th Century.  I was baptized in the Truett church in Hayesville NC where Truett was born.

    I've never met Tyler Perry but have a film script set in Georgia in the late 60s with a scene at Stone Mtn and one with Janis Joplin at the Atlanta Pops Festival of July 5 1969 I would love for him to help me produce. And then there is another idea low budget for one of the two men who join MLK in bust in Westminster Abbey.

      But there has been an avalanche of speculation lately about Baptist populism and Black Lives Matter. Cathy was the subject of a piece in the Christian Post where he paneled with a rapper in Atlanta who wanted some stock in Chic Fil A instead of Dan shining his shoes. And Al Mohler who was in Atlanta for a few years as editor of the state Baptist paper the Christian Index where he pretty much sabotaged a decade that could have made it much more likely Georgia never woulda gone Doug Collins, Bryan Kemp and Trump to champion anti abortion tribe mindset among Baptists instead of furthering the conversations of Jimmy Carter and his predecessor Harwell on Race Relations.
 Now Mohler is subject of recent interview in New Yorker where he endorses Trump and lays George Floyd and the BLM protests at the feet of a baptist populism that he says is outside his jurisdiction as a theologian.

   I think MLKing and Bonhoeffer would beg to differ.

   Which brings up the great Atlantic Piece on why white Baptist preachers reach out to the local black pastors when there is a racial killing only to have the intermittent enthusiams for reform brick walled on the abortion issue where from FBC Spartanburg SC to Unity Baptist number two in Alabama ( more specifically FBC Williams Alabama of the June 13 Sunday front page profile in NY Times). 

    Lee Atwater wanted it so. He is quoted in Wuthnow's Rough Country about how Baptist fundamentalism shaped the modern day Republican Party. And I think to better effect his same "NWord" memo is on his own lips in Duvernay's documentary 13th now on Netflix. If you want to get right to it, fast forward to minute 25.

    According to Tom Edsall whose easily googled piece Audacity of Hate, Nytimes earlier this year will google right up, in 1984 Atwater wrote a memo to the Reagan Bush committee saying in the south you have three groups, the old Country club Democrats now reliably Republicans, the Blacks, reliably democrat and the white populists ( or you could call them southern baptists). The white working class populists resent the wealth and power of the CC Republican, but hold great antipathy toward blacks. Atwater said they are the Trump card in the game of politics in the south.

    Well you look at Harold Bloom on Southern Baptists in American Religion and he says the Tragedy of the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC is the result of political machinations that massquerade as religious conviction.

   He said that in 1993. 

   Also in the early 90s Bill Friday, the chancellor of the UNC system and popular weekend personality on UNCTV told Cecil Sherman, key founder of the resistance movement to the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC the most important event of the 80s decade in North Carolina was the takeover by fundamentalists of the Seminary in the town of Wake Forest, Southeastern. Friday said Jesse Helms network to Pressler and Patterson of the Council for National policy was a strategic move. Because according to Friday they knew at SEBTS they could turn the screws and get in the head of every Baptist preacher graduate to fill the pulpits in the suburbs and hamlets of North Carolina and beyond to become card carrying advocates for the politicized issues of abortion, prayer in schools and distorted 2nd amendment rights to add to the residue of coded race baiting.

      In 1990 Pressler had become livid when there was chatter from the floor of the convention about a rumored 100 thousand dollar donation from the Helms folks to the takeover cause. Pressler had been asked about it in 1988 in the presence of Nancy Ammerman in San Antonio.

    So the Scholar Mohler one of Time Magazine's top 50 under 40 just a decade ago to shape the future, ain't all he seemed to be cut out to be.

    And my friend Dan Cathy is on a learning curve as well though he's done great with his Dad's recipe and I'm delighted he has as I was fortunate to be one his select 100 free meals weekly for a year when his unit in Ft Payne Alabama opened three years ago.

   My apologies for being scattershot but Ive laid out the background reading material for you and will attempt to be a little more erudite on the edit.

   I'm already thinking of what Joseph Oneill said over Christmas in the NY R of Books No More Nice Dems.

   And Keep an eye on Alabama if its Tubberville vs Doug Jones. It will be as if George himself had a 68 do over with Albert Brewer or the virtues of Judge Frank Johnson.

    I think Nick Saban has already declared for Doug Jones in his Utube video with his football team. If BLM matters as Saban says they do, then Donald Trump owes the SEC an apology for his SOB Statement not to mention Trevor Lawrence and Darien Rencher at Clemson and Tubs will never ask Trump to apologize for anything. Dartmouth's Randall Balmer is with me on this in his Can Football Save America piece. Google than one too.

    Sad that the Baptist convention of Alabama is sittin this one out while a Catholic from Tuscaloosa has made his stand.