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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.

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

How Bloody is your Jesus? The Furman experience

    Russ Dean finished Furman in 85 or so where he was a roomate of Kyle Matthews, the Crooner from FBC Greenville SC whose father was said of another pastor Jeff Rogers, to be the best pulpiteer in the history of the church the last half of the 20th Century.

   To that I would say LD Johnson was pretty good at what he did but maybe Jeff was talking about after the move to the new digs where the bells were financed by a native of Blacksburg  SC.

     But I digressed. Dean has written a new book Finding a New Way Home, a collection of sermons set up by his thinking and how he came to write the sermon.

    It's good stuff and a must read especially for Furman students of the last 60 years who happened to be Baptists and took it serious to any degree. Furman student body was about half Baptists, strong dose of native SC Baps when I was there in mid 70s. Now thirty years after the official break with the SC SBC I think it's down to a tenth or less. More cosmopolitan, had a lacrosse team for a while. less members now in the Furman singers, but sadly for all its pride in the average SAT of incoming Freshmen too many of em and their parents voted for Trump in the last election.

       Which raises a alot of questions only hinted at in Dean book.

     But Dean book is valuable as it puts the Furman perspective for shaping Preachers, and church workers, even do gooders in their local communities in perspective with a focus on the thrust of the Religion Department and the network that grew out of LD Johnson and Jim Pitts Pastor's school. The Pastor's school was quite innovative for its time and soon copied across many church related schools and their summer campuses.

     Dean tells the stories for us all of the network of Baptist way makers of the Vietnam and Civil Rights era: Marney, Will D Campbell, Martin England, Marshall Frady and others brought to campus and the Pastors School, pathbreakers, radical Baptists for their time.

    And as a fellow child of a Baptist minister interesting to see the Furman challenge to him was quite similar to mine though a decade apart. Lot of baptist preacher's kids at Furman when I was there; and missionary kids. Dann Brown, now an Episcopalian priest known to Bishop Tutu whose folks were tight with Marney, The Lancasteers from Druid Hills in Atlanta, about the prettiest preacher's daughter I ever saw, though there was a distant blonde reputed to be a preacher's daughter I saw once in the dining hall. Jim Stertz was at Furman while I was there, a quaint genius whose father was at FBC Greenville at the time. The Rice girl from Wyoming who knew my Uncle as her father was a chaplain in the Air Force.

   So Dean as the son of pastor of FBC Clinton, SC is rich for our special breed. And his story of his relationship in the 80s to FBC Clemson SC and Pastor Arrington, whose son taught Chemistry when I was at Furman.

      So Dean investigates for the record we faced about the questions of Fact and Truth and Myth and the declaration of his predecessor at Park Road, Charlie who had concluded by the 60s, It's All myth, but it's true, pretty radical conclusion for a Baptist preacher in the 60s but if you smoked enough cigars with Marney you had to get near that somehow.

   Like Francis told Rudy in the movie Ironweed: "it's All True!"

    I liked Dean's Chapter on the Blood of Jesus and the Atonement. I have a friend who is smart enough but second marriage married a Kellogg Fellow. They have pilgrimed away in their new Episcopal community from the Blood Atonement.

    I'm with Dean. I think Adrian Rogers and Jerry Vines to put it bluntly don't know their ass for a hole in the ground on these matters, but I don't want to throw all of the Baby out with the Bathwater cause AOC and her buddies wouldn't look at me suspiciously at some ecumenical progressive wine and cheese deal. Without the Blood of Jeesus you get a little too upppity with the Fall and the worminess of all mankind.Without the Blood of Jesus we are all sweet innocent little somethings that don't need salvation.

    I don't think Billy Sunday Birt coulda got Baptized and redeemed without the Blood of Jesus, nor one of my Dad's first converts for that matter, Brownlow Sams, who a revenant just today, Henry Green, in a facebook debacle, would just dismiss him as a christian nationalist, racist Trump voter who he has had enough of.

   I doubt many Trump voters will read Russ Dean's book or go out of their way to go to his church to hear a sermon. But I have, and I know some Trump voters I haven't yet consigned to the bottomless pit cause the blood of Jesus saved me too. And I think there is a chance the likes of Ron Rash, and David Joy, and Mark Powell who understand the brothers and cousins of the Patriot Boys, the Boogaloos and Patriot Prayer; while they don't condone it, understand how the blood of Jesus as understood by my friend Russ Dean and the likes of Marilynne Robinson and the late Rachel Held Evans might be the last thing we have in common with Franklin Graham that holds a common language for reconciliation and national redemption.

    So Put me in the Power in the Blood Column

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

My friend Jim Pitts has died

   The tributes to Furman chaplain Jim Pitts are pouring in on his facebook wall. His father Milton was the barber in the White House for Nixon and Reagan and in 1974 with Martin England, the man who ushered ML King's letter from the Bham Jail out to the wider world and eternity, Pitts had lunch with Ga Governor Jimmy Carter after Carter was presented a Civics award by the South Carolina SBC in Charleston.

     Pitts came to Furman in 68, came back to Furman after graduating in the late 50s as assistant Chaplain to LD Johnson. Between the two of them they were networked to the Baptists that mattered in those days including James Dunn, Stewart A Newman, Will Campbell and Marney. When Furman's great Marshall Frady died in 04, it was Pitts and his great friend TC Smith Will Campbell called on to go to the funeral where Jesse Jackson was the main eulogist and read a note from Campbell in honor of Frady for the gathered.

    Pulitzer winner David Halberstam called Frady the greatest social justice journalist the last half of the 20th Century.

   TC was in Montgomery, had marched with King the last few days from Selma, and was present for King speech on the capitol steps with George Wallace looking on shadowed in the curtains from a first floor window when King said The Moral Arc of the Universe is Long, but it Bends toward Justice.

    That afternoon Smith caught a ride with Viola Liuzzo to the train station to catch a ride to the Atlanta Airport. Liuzzo was assassinated a few transports later. Such was the company of Baptist greats Pitts kept company with his ministry at Furman and Upstate South Carolina. 

     Pitts was a force in his on right as the facebook tributes attribute. And he was a treasure trove of Furman and Baptist stories. I am convinced the Presidency of John Johns at Furman was on auto pilot while his wife Martha and Pitts ran the show.

   Pitts took over the Pastors school with Vic Greene after LD Johnson died. I attended many weeks in the late 80s through the 90s on the day pass, Bring ten dollars the first day and then send another ten for a few months the rest of the year until you forget to send in a payment or Ms Shirley writes you off the Ledger....And come again next year.

      Pitts was proud the Daniel Chapel events were the only ones on Campus that didnt have to work through dining hall protocols for catering. Baptist preachers love their Henry's BBQ . LOL

     I was doing some free lance writing during the height of the Baptist drama, somehow got my name on a piece that got published in the Christian Century about Furman's adventure with SC Baps, the closure--also see Courtney Tollison's dissertation at USC on Furman and SC Baptists.

    Pitts was giving me a lot of inside Furman baseball during the Furman drama. He called me in May of 90 or 91 from the final entanglement, a special session after a year long task force on Furman and SC Baps, a law suit, and a couple thousand letters in the Baptist Courier, the state newspaper.

     I answered the phone in Alabama and Pitts said, Stephen, the AC went out and it was Hotter n Hell in there. Johns was sweatin we all were. A Few Days before Pitts was in the Room with Furman Trustees when Big Minor, Minor Mickel got the call from fundy trustee I think last name Head, who said Ms Mickel, I think we have the votes. This niece of Eisenhower's great friend Charles Daniel, who housed Nixon in his mansion outside Furman's back gates when Dick needed a sleepover in 62, said, "Tim you go ahead and do what you feel like you need to do."

      He and Tom Hartness took a trip in those days down to Union for a little persuasion.

    High Baptist drama in the name of Jesus on many fronts in Pitts era.

     He was my friend. I was looking forward this spring to some monthly chats at the Chic Fil A in Travelers Rest post covid, or after we got the shot, and maybe a baseball game in Greer, to see his Grandson, a Trump supporter (how that happens I don't know but right now I'm covered by the blood of Jeesus and all that stuff Will Campbell said you love one you gotta love em all) play for the Yellow Jackets.

   But that is not gonna happen.

    So Chaplain, All that stuff the Episcopalians say at funerals, about the Eternal light, the stuff they said at Celestine Sibley's funeral, all that.

    Blessed are Those Who Die in the Lord, that they may rest from their labors, and all those smart ass students who came to Furman thinking they already knew all there was to know, And their Works Do follow Them.

   Amen.