Long form Poem on Sweet Billy the Life and Times

From the Jitney Jungle Meat Department of Rome Ga to Walker's Chapel and pulpits in between Sweet Billy Lived his life

    In the souls department and the "greatest business in all the world" he preached the Gospel as it came to him and had his romance with the Gospel.

     He lived among the people and coule be found On the courthouse Square in Hayesville NC in the shadow of George W. Truett, Earlier in Baltimore Tennessee outsideNewport and Steve Spurrier in the fifth grade, to Erwin where Charles High in centerfield lobbed the ball in the air while three runs scored trying to keep a check on his temper, To Gaffney where he would wander off to Lynn's Hamburgers down Wilkinsville Hwy or over to see Donnie Ray and Ulysees at Dogwood Park.

    After my mother died and he picked up with Edna, he told me first six months at his first church Bethel, Momma came to him and said Billy, If you cant do any better than that, we're gonna have a rough go of it. She helped him outline and he got better, a process as Nick Saban would say. Would give a lot of emotion to the Parables of Jesus, the Prodigal son and picked up stuff from Randall Lolley and Stewart A. Newman.

   Near the end Lolley said he was on the right side of History.

    He'd go blackberry picking with Wayne Whiteside doused and soaking in kerosene and sweat in the humidity of late June, when Whiteside would do a confession  in a variety of vulgarities that strung together like music against Political enemies and nuisances while my Dad the man of God would suggest : Wayne you can't kill him, you can't kill him when Whiteside would give voice to his darkness and the son of a bitch that was a constant bastard and naysayer

    Bobby Crocker the hope of the backfield of the Union Yellow Jackets would visit the house on his motorcycle ride from Draytonville to teach his course on the New Testament at Limestone . They would laugh like 8th grade voices at characters they remembered from Seminary, Effort Snodderly for one would get them giggling comparable to Jack Reynolds fart in the 8th grade during quiet time in Ms. Clary's class.

    When he left Gaffney a Black woman at Community Cash said : I know that man, I know that man. He was a friend to the rich and the poor , the Black and the White.

   He was born on May 3, 1922. 

The Billy Graham/Mohler Stampede and the End times of the Southern Baptist Convention

     This blog won't register unless you do the prerequisite reading which in this case is the magnificent take down of the career of Albert Mohler as President of the Souther Baptist Seminary in Louisville Kentucky last week at Baptist Global News. Easy Google and read carefully.

     Mohler Sunday nights of his youth was taken by DJ Kennedy in Coral Gables Florida and that's pretty much where he has ended up.

     The photo with Billy Graham at BGN is fitting as Mohler Told Charles Marsh, the definitive biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, five years ago most folks have no idea the energy and enthusiasm Billy Graham gave behind the scenes to the fundamentalist takeover of the SOuthern Baptist Convention.

     Mohler as editor of the Ga SBC weekly the Christian Index was obsessed with abortion. See the Nation Mag piece on SBC and the Abortion Devil. Mohler played the politics of Mendacity.

     FBC Spartanburg SC is a petri dish perfect example of Mohlerism at the local church level. Confused and complicitous in all things MAGA.

    The former chancellor of the UNC system the popular Bill Friday who for decades had his on Friday night program on NC PBS told influential Baptist leader Cecil Sherman the most significant event in the State of NC for the decade of the 80s was the fundamentalist takeover of the Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest, a sister of Mohler's Louisville Seminary.  Friday knew that Jesse Helms and Paul Pressler strategy was to get in the head of the next generation of Baptist pulpits in the Carolinas and Eastern Seabord and pave the way for MAGA or some version of it. Their plan  worked exceedingly well.

    

    Carlyle Marney was Baptists best mind of the mid 20th century. In Marneyesque fashion Bham pastor Gary Furr had this to say in conjunction with Mark Wingfield's take down:

" A man running in front of a cattle stampede might be  confused for a lot of things. Leader isnt one of them. Mohler took a generation of young ministers into an intellectual cul de sac, and now they can only keep running in circles"

Some random thoughts of March 1. Limestone College, Gaffney SC

   My last blog was Feb 2 so I thought I should post something. My numbers were up last month as stats say I got 1472 views for the month, the last thirty days. I think Taylor Rogers and Nikki Haley mightve done the trick for me. Also I called several congressional offices and Meet the Press and invited them to investigate the underbelly and shallow waters of Nikki Haley and her politics. 

    Today I am thinking about Limetsone College and Martin Luther king. My Dad's Bethany Baptist Church was about a half mile out Limestone's Back gate so I had a shared history with the college for sixteen years. It has close history with the Hamrick family of Textile fame and now David Riggins who was a year older than me through elementary and then high school.

    They just finished Black History month and celebrated over the weekend their first black graduate, 1970

    What follows is facebook post on their main page sparked by a reading, which I shared, of this article

          https://baptistnews.com/article/mlks-civil-rights-work-was-an-outgrowth-of-his-baptist-tradition-author-explains/

    My Limestone Post:

      

• The article I posted not only has political implications it is of great historical values for the best of the Baptist tradition. I have read Paul Harvey's bio of King. Like that of my Furman hero, Marshall Frady, it soars

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    Tom LeGrand Steve Harmon

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  Stephen M. Fox

  I was very proud to work with Limestone trustee emeritus Faye Edwards ten years ago to bring Marian Wright Edelman to Limestone to speak. Growing up a half mile from the Limestone campus at Bethany Baptist church where my Father was pastor, the Civil Rights era and integration of the public schools was an existential anchor of my own archeological site. I challenge all folks of influence in the wider Limestone community to read the following article and explain to me how the MAGA wing of the GOP, the Freedom Caucus of the SC Legislature is the way forward for SC and the USA. It is not: https://baptistnews.com/.../mlks-civil-rights-work-was.../