Curiousity seeking understanding

    According to Robert Jones that is the cardinal virtue of scholarship. He gets into the weeds this week at Baptist Global News about the future of White Christianity. This is an article Trey Gowdy should discuss on his Training Union Hour on FOX News sunday nights, but I doubt he will since he wasnt raised at FBC Spartanburg SC to talk about anything that really matters. There are limits at Billy Graham's Cove and like George Wallace told LBJ when the President said Don't you Shit Me George Wallace; Wallace meekly responded My people have their regulations and they Adhere.

   A few days ago in a room full of loved ones and other acquaintances in the Christian faith I was reminded Robert E Lee requested The Church's One Foundation be sung at his funeral. Several years ago I read Mark Noll's America's God about Faith before the Civil War. It's a great book which roughly concluded with the Juggernaut of Fundamentalism of Both the North and South it came down to the Right Reverends Ulysses S Grant and Billy Sherman to resolve the squabble. And it was not the theologians of the day, but the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson and the Great Poet Walt Whitman  to usher in New Insight about the Human Condition rooted in Scripture often, but forever innoculated to the literal reading of the Bible that got to the Impasse.

    So listening to the words of the hymn and trying to understand them as Lee woulda embraced them in his soul in real time in his day , how do we get to this moment in the Trump base where just 30 years ago a congregation like FBC Spartanburg SC was mainstream, but now a threat to American Democracy as part of the Trump base compromised by Franklin Graham's flirtations with Rupert Murdoch and Trump and Roger Ailes. Spartanburg leaned that way in Milliken Days when the textile magnates teamed with Billy Graham and Gerald Ford to place Mickey Mantle's friend Bobby Richardson in Congress. But now William Timmons and Ralph Norman are more venal than Bobby had the capacity to be and Trey Gowdy abets and FBC Spartanburg unable and unwilling to discuss their history with Eric Metaxas are complicit.

    And Upstate News Media cant even go 20 miles to the divinity school at Gardner Webb to talk to Steve Harmon about Metaxas, not to mention across town to Wofford and friends of Willimon; or to Furman to talk to Helen Lee Turner and Sam Britt about the Baptist legacy of Jim Pitts.

   Pitts was concerned about the Furman legacy name--realizing he was an apologist for slaveholding and exitentially knowing the depth of that sin with friends in Montgomery with Viola Liuzzo the day she was assassinated; yet resisting even among those most dear to him a secular influence that broad brushes the best of the tradition broad brushed in the fad of political correctness and over reaches of diversity politics. So did Lee have more integrity than the Governor of California or Elijah Muhammad or his son Herbert as revealed in the New Ken burns Doc on Ali, Well lets think about it. However that hair splitting comes out, Upstate SC deserves better than Norman and Timmons.

     Pitts life will be celebrated Sunday at 3pm in the Daniel Chapel at Furman, the Chapel named for the benefactor of the man who introduced Strom Thurmond to Roger Milliken and in whose home Nixon slept in 1962.

     So the seed was planted some time ago but has not taken on a carcinogenic affect, a Trump effect that is corrosive to the soul of America, and as Will Campbell would name, Timmons and Norman with their slimey distorting politics of guns, abortion and critical race theory are cheif soul molesters amok.

     Wahalla native, Citadel and Yale Div Grad Mark Powell may be the wise man who knows the guts of textile workers children and their political inclinations. Like me he was raised among them, has deep affection for their welfare, even their souls and also for our friends of color with which we the generation to integrate.

    But the conversation is not taking place in earnest if the SC 3rd 4th and 5th are to find a better way.

      This blog does not offer the solution, just hopefully provokes a conversation that is way past mattering, and must be informed by the Robert Jones piece of two days ago.

Last day of summer, first day of Fall

      Yesterday on the last day of summer I turned up some sermons of the Great Frank Harrington, legendary pastor of the Peachtree Prez USA chuch in Atlanta the last two decades of the 20th Century. I was hoping to find his six part series on the Prodigal son from the 80s, but most of the available sermons were in the nineties. I did watch a good portion of his sermon on his next 20 years at Peachtree. I think he died of cancer before the end of the Century.

   I called Jack Causey who was at FBC Gaffney early 70s. He likes some good stories and I shared some of Frank's best. Also attempted to get word to Jo Cobb who was at Agnes Scott in the fifties. The RA Camp in SC is named for her family, from land they donated in Pickens County to the SC SBC.

    Last couple months Ive become enchanted with John Prine's song Summer's End. Kind got me melancholy as the last few months have been a struggle, kind of a disappointment in spirit and energy as I had looked forward to some delight getting back on the road again with a vehicle. I figure I got about seven good years left , if that, and was hoping to be in better spirits.

    Not asking for sympathy as I have some episodes of light heartedness. But the overall mood edges toward despair and melancholy interrupted by a good bite of BBQ here and there or some pizza or a surprising conversation.

    Plans are for Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC on 74 Oct 2 with my brother and sister. Billy Graham loved the place. The Foxes first set foot in the joint in April of 62 guests of James Worthy and his wife, at the time deacon of Bethany Baptist Church in Gaffney where we'd been about three months in my third grade year.

     This mood has otoh gotten me in proper disposition for the 8 hour rivetting four part documentary on Ali by Ken Burns. I thought I knew the story but turns out I knew little of it. Fascinating to try to remember the dates of the major fights with what I was doing, what grade I was in at Central Elementary, Gaffney High , then Furman. I do remember the Day after the Thrilla in Manilla, I was playing tennis and a fellow who I knew but rarely spoke to got a laugh , hadnt heard, Ali's quip after the Fight :"Let All Nations Declare I am the Greatest."

   I called Congressman Norman office this morning and talked to Wofford intern Adrienne. Thought I might talk to Riley of Lula Ga and SGA President of a Penn State Satellite but talked to Adrienne instead. With all of Norman's mischief with Critical Race theory, would love for him to declare he will publicly shame Gaffney High School if they show the Ali doc and the doc on Isaac Woodard and have open conversations about the movies. He is a joke of a Congressman if he does such a thing. If he approves then all his mess about CRT is a moot point cause these docs lay bare the kind of politics he employs, shines the light.

     Ali's career, his times were intense , then again everyday is intense if you take some measure of it.