Eula Mae Baugh on the Construction Team and the Demolition Crew

     Eula Mae Baugh was the daughter of a Baptist preacher who married a grocer. John Baugh became worth about 100 million dollars or more as a founder of Sysco foods whose trucks you can find outside almost every public school cafeteria on any given days. His gifts and foundation float progressive Baptist causes including the founding of Truett Seminary at Baylor.

     In 1963 according to a recent book, Larry McSwain's Open and Closed Doors, Eula Mae wrote Paul pressler a letter about a church squabble at 2nd Baptist Houston about the nature of Scripture. She asked the son of a VP of Exxon Oil whose family was marinted in the world of the Texas Regulars and John Birch Society, if he wanted to be a part of the "Construction Team or the Wrecking Crew".

       She got to the guts of the matter as 25 years later Pressler was to network with every Baptist layman with a pulse in America's right wing resisting Civil Rights movement, including Jesse Helms, Ed McAteer and Eulie Smith of the Eagle Forun and her Bircher Husband Albert Lee to takeover the Southern Baptist Convention.

     Jill Lepore in her recent History of America, These Truths, has a chapter on the political force the Eagle Forum came to be in the days of the takeover of the SBC, even puts J Frank Norris into historical perspective as an antecedent to the role Fundamentalism was to become in America perfected in the MAGA world of Trump.

   Tim Tebows Mother was close friend of Jerry Vines church in Jacksonville Florida in her most active political years. In 2018 Pam Tebow was named Eagle Forum Woman of the year. She is a key player in the Nikki Haley world of Turning point USA on matters of abortion and critical race theory.

      McSwain's personal journey in the last 50 years of Baptist life is riveting and intriguing. My bone to pick with him is he was about three pages shy of a magnificent opportunity to emphasize the Takeover Coalitions energy with the right wing. As opposed to Nancy Ammerman and others who do a great job on the nitpicking fundies versus the educational wing of Baptist life on the nature of Scripture, I am convinced with Ellen Rosenberg and possibly Randall Balmer of Dartmouth, Pressler woulda never had the motivation to carry it through without his family's background in oil and the Right wing.

    Ellen Rosenberg wrote me a letter in the late August, 1989 acknowledging the evidence of the success of the takeover of the SBC. Her book on the SBC subculture in Transition last chapter was on the ties of the Pressler Helms coalition to the Far Right in America. She said What I think now is this, when the Pressler Helms coalition gets full control they will move even more boldly in the political arena.

     From the Criswell Meeting with Reagan in Dallas McSwain spotlights in his book, Karl Rove moved with abortion in particular to get 43 in the White House, and the strategy was further perfected with Trump.

    And Robert Jones talks about Lee Atwater who appealed to Bush 41 darker instincts, Atwater Nigger Memo in relation to abortion and Critical race theory. Jones Quotes Atwater as saying you can't say nigger nigger nigger anymore so some new strategies have to be employed. Thus the politics of abortion, guns and now critical race theory. google shutting crt debate, Robert Jones, religion news. 

     Bill Moyers confronted Pressler in 87 and later was in a chat mill that speculated Jesse Helms and his people had contributed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand dollars to the takeover, a notion Pressler himself vehemently denied at the SBC in New Orleans in in 1990 to me and others as it got mentioned on the convention floor. Joe Ferguson had a whole chapter in his book Hard Right on the ties of SBC to Helms network.

      Former UNC Chancellor Bill Friday a popular personality on UNC PBS in his time told Cecil Sherman the most significant event in NC in the decade of the 80s was the Helms Pressler fundamentalist takeover of Southeastern Seminary. Cecil and Friday knew the calculations of that bunch to get in the heads of every hamlet and suburb of the East Coast through the products of SEBTS going forward to make their ears big for right wing causes and fertile picking for demagogues like Trump and his populism.

     Tom Edsall was in Atlanta in 86. His takeaway from that pivotal SBC convocation was a piece headlined Far Right now Controls Huge SBC. He named all the fundy SBC presidents to that point as founding members of Tim Lahaye 's Amcerican Coalition for Traditional Values. List included Ed Young of FBC Columbia SC later to present at huge 2nd Baptist in Houston. 

    In Columbia Young became wired at the hip to Nixon and Strom Thurmond Southern Stragest Harry Dent who he got placed on McSwain's beloved Southern Seminary Trustee board.

      McSwain friend and legendary Ga baptist pastor Bill Self told me he called Young early in the takeover mess and asked him who he had joined the dark side. Young told Self, Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, the whole world is going to the Right, and I wanna go too.

       Come back later as I may think of other evidence. Bottom line at this point is Trey Gowdy and FBC Spartanburg. 

    McSwain in his book gives testimony to his seven years as President of Shorter College in Rome Ga. Shorter was eventually to fall to the Birch Society fundamentalism of Nelson Price and twice West Rome pastor Jerry Vines. Shorter has a mirror in North Greenville SC college, an ideological friend of Trey Gowdy's FBC Spartanburg 25 miles away.

    NGU and FBC Sburg have joined together in recent years the likes of Eric Metaxas and David Barton in their Truth for a New Generation conferences. MeTaxas and Barton are despised by the likes of Bonhoeffer Biographer Charles Marsh, and the Mainstream Baptist Church State Joint Committee.

    Even Nearby Gardner Webb Theologian Steve Harmon and his great friend with the House of Baptist studies at Duke, Curtis Freeman have been outspoken against the Super Trumper Metaxas in particular.

     Let's do something with McSwain's book for the best of the Baptist educational system including Furman and Stetson and What not before the fundamentalists savaged it; lets enroll Gardner Webb to host a two day or a three hour afternoon session with intermission for BRidges BBQ and Shine the light on these Bastards.

    I think Eula Mae Baugh, like my Mother who walked out on Charles Stanley's convention sermon in Atlanta in 1986 would be proud. 

Sixty years with Bridges BBQ as Sacred Space

     

 First come back to this blog as it likely to get better with more anecdotes as my memory evolves.

    I first set foot in Bridges BBQ circa April of 1962 as a third grader in Miss Mattie Mae's class in Gaffney. My Daddy a Baptist preacher had become pastor of Bethany Baptist Church on the Wilkinsville Rd just off the Union HWY , a Mission of FBC Gaffney.  Floyd Worthy, a mechanic in town was on the pulpit committee and a deacon. His wife brought the five of us to Bridges on that inaugural visit and it registered with my palate. Was later to find out there was an elevator in  big shop  where he worked in Gaffney roughly where the Board of Public Works came to headquarter. He and my Dad had some dramatic scrabble contests over the years.

    I think we sat in one of the big ovals just inside the door. The family looked for that booth the rest of the decade when we could come up with church members and later all on our own. Herschel Harris family came with us often, his brother in law a Strom Thurmond Freedom of Choice school board trustee resisting integration I remember.

   By senior year I was coming on my own or double dating but mostly still with family. The hush puppies called and I think we had to be there at least four times  every year minimum through 78 when we moved to Knoxville without my brother who married in 1980.

    My brother  kept the family tradition going riding up from Greenville with his Harley buddies many of whom he would meet in Gaffney and drive. And of course any time we visited from Knoxville or Rome Ga, Collinsville, Alabama of Pike County Ga west of Macon Bridges was on the intinerary.

     My senior year  GHS 71 we played Salley Schweppe and Shelby HS in tennis. Salley beat me in Gaffney and I think she beat Harry Poole in Shelby. In Shelby Mikie Michaels and Robbie McCraw came up from Clemson to watch us play. We got the tennis out of the way and whole team was in Bridges by about 4:30. We sat in the back with Mikie grabbing left over hush puppies all the way down the walls. I think it was our star player from India first time to have the Cue. His father taught Biology at Limestone.

     Robbie and I brought dates the fall of 70 for the meal and putt putt golf. I made a terrible mistake and talked in the back seat all the way home to south of Goucher almost in Union. My delicious tenth grade opportunity was gone in ten days. I was in despair through February of the coming year.

    In the nineties my friend later to writer early script for Denzel Washington, had an office in Shelby. Had lunch with him there and once saw the editor of the Baptist Courier in the place, as well known to Gardner Webb folks including Ron Rash. Saw a Furman class mate, the writer Whitt Bromm in the booth solo about seven years ago. My brother wondered how I know some random fellow in the front booth.

   In the nineties some younger friends from Alabama stopped on way from UVA back home. They were impressed. For them better than SAWS in Bham and the place near the WMU headquarters that had the great chocolate pie, Johnny Rays.

    It was a rare time on the stools that I heard Gaffney Classmate Jimmy Baker had died around 2001 . His Uncle had driven up after church and Gaffney came up and he told me our outstanding running back who played at App State had fallen over on a Saturday morning at the family auto shop near the Gaffney Ledger off downtown Gaffney.

     Steve Shoemaker was a successor to Carlyle Marney at the prestigious as Baptist go, Myers Park BC in Charlotte. Marney was a Baptist public intellectual of mid 20th century, friend of LBJ and Sam Ervin. Shoemaker wrote a recent book on Baptism as a moment, a thin veil between our earthy existence and heaven on this earth. Similar thinking on the characters of the great Cormac McCarthy see each of our Lives as a Sacrament. So for me not much of a reach to say that first bite of hush puppy, slaw, and the divine pork in God's chosen perfected vinegar baste salutation is an event of Communion and sacrament. As Mary Oliver the poet has said, Who knows what the soul is, it comes and goes. For me last Friday it was appearing near Patterson Springs as I could taste that first bite about 12 minutes before I got to my existential sanctuary of BBQ

     George Singleton is a Furman grad who downgraded to teach at Wofford. In his latest collection of short stories, The Curious Case of Non Profit Martyrs he has a story titled Standard that has this to say about a place I think is just outside Union as all his stories are somewhere between Spartanburg and Ninety Six. Comparisons to Bridges are obvious though all units have their distinctions. For instance I couldnt imagine an 8 by ten of Billy Graham and Jesse Helms ever having adorned any restaurant in Union.

    I had time to  turn and see this place brought together , almost, the great melting pot of our country. Tables able to seat ten diners , stood like hurdles throughout the the space. There were lawyer looking people at one place, after workd white women at another. One table held nothing but Duke Power employees wearing their plastic hardhats. A group of Black men, all wearing bow ties sat at another table. Grandmothers, meth addicts, little kids just out of Headstart programs. There were bibb coverall wearing men sporting crooked trucker caps emblazoned with stiteched Confederate flags, or ones that bolstered that Dont Tread on Me Flag. They wore hats promoting the NRA, and Make America Great Again, and 3......I got my plate and walked past the attorneys, the racists and the families who wouldnt know how to deal with a stranger in their midst, their children bent down looking at Cell Phones. I didn't want to sit down with them as I had the propensity to say things like "This world isnt going to end with a bang or a whimper, but from you kids banginging into each other and getting concussions and fallling in a hole, or prancing into traffic. I'm already seeing it, I drive an ambulance.!"

    End quote. So for now there you have it. I have to believe Miss Chadwick, my Advanced English teacher Gaffney High School Class of 71 is proud of me; and Momma too