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