Fifteenth anniversary of the churchin in Collinsville Alabama

  May 28 , 2021 is the fifteenth anniversary of the churchin of Stephen Fox at the Collinsville Baptist church, Collinsville, Alabama. I was ousted off the property by a vote of 32 20 in a special called business meeting of the church after the regular sunday morning services that morning. I had to lobby to have a chance to speak but was given seven minutes. Several people in the congregation that morning said they were unaware anything like voting a member out of the congregation was in the works and they were given about seven minutes to decide on a very serious matter.

     I have contended all along it was a matter of vision for the church between me and about six or seven mostly women who didnt like some of my comments at baptistlife.com and some in my Sunday school class who were unsettled because I would express myself with conviction against the pastor and his wife views on the politics of abortion. Both of them were in my class of then thirty somethings and myself, almost all with college degrees.

     And everybody in town knew that I didnt over time get along with Jennifer Wilkins the town librarian. She was able with an innercircle of friends to make me the issue taking focus off my sporadic attempts to nudge the church toward the cooperative Baptist fellowship and a better vision for baptist life. At one point the deacon who they got to handle the "fox problem" said why don't you and Jennifer work this out. That was my point, at no point did the deacons call for these women to meet with me and them. That woulda been the right way to do it. Instead they had a little sewing circle monitor my comments at Baptist life which only about ten folks in the congregation ever took time to read. But my opponents made sure two or three deacons did.

    I have only been able to enter the church doors on one occasion and that was in Nov of 2017 for a wedding of a good friend. On another occasion I was going to a community wide Thanksgiving event as the guests of a family of another church, but the deacons said NO

    My version of events, the bigger picture has been published in a UTenn book The Exiled Generation, a collection of essays of Baptists of my generation in the aftermath of the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. I think there is a copy in the Ft Payne Library. I don't think anybody has read it, maybe Martha and Thomas Barksdale.

    Ms Wilkins made sure about seven members of her family were there for the vote. I think Nessa were absent as was the newly wedded John and Susan Weaver Morgan. They woulda voted for me which woulda given me 22 votes which woulda meant I woulda only needed to flip five instead of seven. One fellow changed his vote cause he didnt like the way I took communion that morning, my last in that congregation.

    It wasnt pretty. It was pretty much a bogus affair. I made some mistakes, apologized to some folks along the way as I was frustrated on some matters of Sunday School literature, integrity on some political issues that now have become key element in the Trump base, etc.

   Lot of good people in the church, some who voted against me as in a popularity contest between me and the pastor and his wife, they made a tough call. Ms Wilkins has been part of the Auburn University Democracy Project for eight years and counting now raising her poker cards in the states library system

   Mark Wilson created that progressive force for the state. He is good friend at Auburn of Wayne Flynt, the historian and conscience of the state, Flynt a great friend of Harper Lee.  Wilson  was chair of the pulpit committee at FBC Auburn to bring in their latest pastor. I am convinced had he been a member of the Collinsville Baptist church on May 28, 2006, he woulda voted against Jennifer Wilkins and her faction in the congregation, and I would still be a member. 

   And Harper Lee and her sister Alice, who once moved for the previous question woulda voted for me too, which with John and Susan Morgan woulda got me to 26 with just three votes to flip. 

     So Close !!!