Foe of Jesse Helms and the CNP, Lincolnesque Figure in Authentic Baptist Life, Randall Lolley has died

   A Lincolnesque figure of the last quarter of the 20th Century in Baptist life, Randall Lolley has died. Baptist News Global has a report this morning placing his denominational life in context for the best of the Baptist Tradition, easy google. He was ninety years old.

    In 1993 Cecil Sherman told me in Greensboro NC convocation of the CBF, Bill Friday, long time chancellor of the UNC system and popular weekend pundit across the state on NC PBS; Sherman told me Friday said the most significant event in the State of NC for the 80s decade was the fundamentalist ouster of Lolley from the Presidency of Southeastern Baptist Seminary in the little town of Wake Forest where the University was till early 50s when it moved to Greensboro.

    Friday said Jesse Helms right wing of the Republican party hardwired to the Council for National Policy knew that with replacing Lolley they could get into the headset of future generation of Baptist preachers and bend them toward the right that evolved into the Trump Base.

    His view was shared by Ellen Rosenberg who wrote about Southern Baptist in transition. In a personal letter to me late eighties she said when they got all their building blocks in place, "they will move."

    Bill Friday and Rosenberg were spot on. Churches like FBC Spartanburg SC, home of Trey Gowdy are struck mute about all this. This chapter in Baptist life is largely forgotten at historically Baptist schools like Furman, Mercer, Samford, Stetson. Few at Baylor know the significance of all this.

   Recently Robert Jones in Religion News had a piece Shutting Down the Critical Race Theory Debate. He quotes the Lee Atwater Nigger Nigger Nigger memo that helped shape the Republican party today on guns, abortion and CRT. Imami Perry in her recent book South Toward Home and Frye Galliard and Cynthia Tucker in the Southernization of Southern Politics are on to all this.

   As Dennis Hopper said in Paris Trout, All Ether County gonna hear about this

   And Lolley as a native of Troy Alabama and a graduate of Samford, many of us are gonna make sure Katie Britt, the hand picked successor of Richard Shelby to be the next Senator from Alabama, they know about all this so maybe they can distinguish a real Baptist and their voting dispositions toward Justice, can distinguish a real Baptist like Lolley and Judge Frank John and Hugo Black from a Hole in the Ground.

    My Father was a Seminary classmate of Randall Lolley. He loved the guy and the feeling was mutual, and they both loved the great Baptist Stewart A Newman who stood up to a racist WA Criswell in 1956 like Lolley stood up to Helms and his minions in the eighties.

    The summer before the fundies ousted Lolley, at the Baptist Convocation in Atlanta, Lolley addressed the Convention. My Dad and I were at a live stream TV set up in Rome Ga. About forty chairs set up with a big screen tv. My Dad and I were the only one in the room. Lolley comes on and starts telling the truth. My Dad goes up to the Big screen, is crying and in the best of Baptist enthusiams has his fist raised talking loudly to Lolley Onscreen, " You tell em Randall, You Tell em!"