Will Progressive Baptists make a difference in the Ga runoff

   There are a lot of Baptists in Georgia with degrees of literacy and insight into Scripture running the gamut. And in the last 30 years in reaction to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention there have been many progressive Initiatives that should have some effect on the political equilibrium of the region. It appears it hasnt come to much in the voting booth.

     The groups Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Alliance of Baptists, President Carters 2007 New Baptist Covenant--I was there for the inaugural in Atlanta with Bill Clinton, John Grisham, Carter, Notable Black pastors, Chuck Grassley--all backlashed these last years with Trump and his Base.

   In the last weeks I have engaged conversations with Bruce Gourley on facebook, Alan Bean and others, a former president of Carson Newman college, activist Baptist friends in Birmingham about the conundrum of fear there is no outrage in Georgia re the upcoming election of Warnock and Ossoff versus the evil doers Perdue and Loeffler under the shadowy guidance of Karl Rove, already playing McCarthyism with Black Liberation Theology against Warnock.

     Some have taken up the cause in good fashion at Goodfaithmedia.org and Baptist News Global, John Pierce and Steve Harmon respectively speaking directly against this tactic out of the Lee Atwater Playbook. But what about the rank and file and their local pastors.

    What is going on at FBC Dalton, Rome, Gainesville, Athens, Americus, Macon, Vidalia, Ellijay, Clarksville Vidalia, Savannah, Albany. Are folks in the pew reading Harmon and Pierce and talking to their neighbors, or are the so called better people worried about their status in the country club and the PTA and not wanting to rock the boat.

    Sadly the consensus in Bama was 75 percent or more of the parishioners at FBC Ft Payne, Huntsville, Cullman, Guntersville, Jacksonville Auburn (maybe not Auburn) voted for Tuberville and Trump in the last election. I don't understand it.

    Religion Dispatches has a good piece here that talks about the underbelly of fundamentalism in the Trump base. But the folks at the churches I name above should know better.

   Here is the link that explains a lot and concerns Bruce Gourley, the PHD historian of Baptists during the Civil War:  

      https://religiondispatches.org/its-not-about-facts-or-fear-what-many-liberals-get-wrong-about-religious-conservatives/

     And following a comment I left recently at the Atlantic re Andy Stanley. Also concerning is a facebook conference yesterday with Krista Tibbett of NPR, Russ Moore of the SBC so called ethics organization, a peculiar fellow a specific case of his own, and the Episcopalian priest that got international fame conducting the Recent Royal Wedding. All in all a wasted opportunity quagmired in civility when there needed to be a prophetic word about Georgia.

And this comment about the recent Andy Stanley piece of Browns Bridge Church in Forsyth Co Georgia as featured in the Atlantic magazine:

Good article but overlooked a major historical story. Browns Bridge Church is in Forsyth County Ga where major lynchings of early 20th Century created a black diaspora for a hundred years. See Patrick Phillips Blood at the Root

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Stanley and Browns Bridge toyed with having Phillips come to the congregation but it didn't materialize, But Oprah was in the county in the early 80s with Coretta Scott King, which Phillips covers in the book. Forrsyth is squeezed in between the Hometowns of Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence two of the biggest names in NFL both of whom are against Trump, especially his twitter dustup with Drew Brees. Trevor told me himself June 13 at BLM march in Clemson SC

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Good Faith Media column by Georgia's Colin Harris on the need for a New Narrative can help Andy Stanley if he will engage the conversation and not be too proud to say President Carter was right with his New Baptist Covenant and Andy Stanley father Charles wrong in the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC

  end quote. Have conference by Dec 15 at Browns Bridge with Patrick Phillips, Oprah, John Pierce, Joe Crespino, Andy Stanley, Warnock, Perdue......some mix of them. Live streaming honoring Covid Protocols. Hell have a CNN Town Hall that really matters and lets get to the heart of the Baptist witness in one state that really matters.  

The Law of the Sea Treaty, Sand Mountain and the New York Giants

    For the last thirty years Ive lived in NE Alabama between Sand Mtn and Lookout Mtn. My good friend in Collinsville recently deceased, Herman Kerley, said on a statewide shown Documentary about the region there used to be a sign up at the Top of the Mtn on 68 going West: Read Nigger Run, and if you can't Read, Run Anyway.

     I think things are better now as Collinsville Basketball team hasn't had to take their team off the court competing against the all white teams on Sand Mtn in some time, especially since Solomon Stanton and Mark Dutton and those boys spanked most of the 90s.

      But Sand Mtn voted upwards of 92 percent Trump this last election as the entired county was 87 percent Trump.

      That brings me near despair as there are a lot of great folks in the county. You just have to attend one Sacred Harp Singing at the Liberty Church in Henegar in July for that to sink in deep. Except for their voting dispositions, salt of the earth people whose patriotism and fear of God is authentic and deep.

     But I think folks like Will Ainsworth and my friend Jordan Doufexis with this election of Tommy Tuberville are selling them a shallow political bill of goods.

    This is the pocket of the world I know best. You know similar frustrations where you live. Gaffney SC isn't much different from Sand Mtn, the voting disposition of white folk though Gaffney is upwards of 40 percent black within the City limits and in the public schools, where Sand Mtn is about 98 percent white with some towns having an influx of Hispanics.

          So the challenging lessons of insightful Christians at goodfaithmedia.org and The Christian Century, The Methodist Reporter etc aren't resonating.

      There are products of Dekalb county who understand. I could name about forty without getting started but they are outnumbered and except for a few asides in a Sunday School class or some Study Club don't say much. I'm not sure the school board members, any of them have read a book in the last 12 years that would begin to challenge their foundational disposition.

    But the polarization want stop with influencers like Southern Baptist leadership left to fundamentalism and every Baptist preacher knowing any vote of fifty percent in a congregation and his belongings are on the sidewalk. And it just takes a super Trumper or two, or a member blinded by their guns or abortion politics to get a preacher out of a congregation.

    So all that said to taunt you into reading the following analysis and then listening to an interview I heard two days ago on NPR. If you live in Rainsville, Alabama or Ft Payne and See Jordan Doufexis or a school board member at Kelly's Diner or the Cracker Barrel, or some folks at NACC in Section, ask them if they know Stuart Stevens and What he said. Same for the Cracker Barrel in Guntersville if Will Ainsworth Stops in

     Here, check this Out!

 

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/11/12/republican-party-lincoln-project

  

 

Election Eve 2020

   I thought Obama 2008 was gonna be the last election where I got passionate about things but then Trump the Junk comes along and two steps back we are. Last night there was a Trump fiasco just three miles from where my Dad grew up in the Celanese Village of Rome Ga where his Dad labored from 29 to 79. And Lindsey Graham tonight is at the Madren Center at Clemson about four miles from where he was raised in the upstairs above the liquor store and pool hall in Central.

    Like me he was raised Babdists and I think we have mutual acquaintances in Daniel High School's Anna Thode and Karen Baker, and now Trevor Lawrence at Clemson.

    Trevor wears a warm up Tee with Bold Lettered "We Need Change". Saw the picture yesterday in the Anderson Independent Mail.

   Sunday it seemed Chuck Todd was thinkin Biden was gonna pick off one of the four, Ohio, NC, Ga or Florida by nine pm Tuesday and the nightmare of Trump would be over, but this morning he is entertaining the horror of the evangelical women holding fast and the nation goes through the Trump chaos till Pennsylvania is resolved. Imagine the Dung Fox News will fling between now and Then. I'm proud of progressive Baptists for finally calling out Fox News just last week at baptist global news.

   Disappointed in Furman, however for silence on the Hobart Lewis ad supporting Lindsey Graham. I am confident Marshall Frady woulda had a piece in the New Yorker by now comparing Hobart for Lindsey implicitly handicapping the dignity of people of color in the ad, comparable to Atwater's Willie Horton or Atwater and Carroll Campbell on the Greenville Jew, Max Heller, as Not "one of us."

    I guess that's the Furman disadvantage, Handwringing I'm sure when Danielle Vinson and Jessica Taylor are set to "shine" Live Zoom networked to the Cook Political Report.

   My Dartmouth friend Randall Balmer had a great piece up this morning reminding people that abortion politics grew out of race baiting and race resentment politics. That's the truth Lindsey Graham won't explore about Amy Coney Bee.

   And a Wofford Staffer two days ago, staffer for Christ Church US Rep William Timmons of Trey Gowdy's SC 4th; wofford grad couldn't distinguish had no thoughts on the comparable virtue of Fox News to NPR and PBS. What a crock from an otherwise nice guy.

    Yes patriots send your children to a great school, have them major in communications and have them come out promoting sheet shows without having any more depth than a degree from Plainview HS in Rainsville alabama.

   Pardon me Jordan Doufexis, but that one was for you and Will Ainsworth.

    

    See the UTexas Austin proff on PBS Newshour of last Wednesday.

     My Nephew was in a Trump motorcade yesterday that went from Lowe's in Greer to Verdae on 385 and then down 85 about hundred cars strong. And a cousin in Alaska is eaten up with the farce of Trump as well. I've lost two facebook friends in the last two weeks, one of the weekend. They quit me, one in the Tuberville camp, deep in it, and another a friend from High School deep with Trump.

   But so far the daughter of Nixon Southern Strategist Harry Dent, Ginny; we abide.

   Well maybe a post election later in the week, then I will think about other things. Think I'm gonna read Zuchinni on the Wilmington riot, maybe Tye on Trump the Demagogue and for certain Tyll about the Prankster during the Thirty Years war where Christians bled each other about 100 thousand worth.