Baylor oral history of Stewart A. Newman

  I stumbled on the oral history of Baptist great Stewart A Newman, an easy google. Newman and my correspondence of the nineties is in the Baptist archives at Duke University. Duke's Curtis Freeman has a splendid article Dead From the Neck Up of the Day WA Criswell spoke to a joint session of the SC legislature in 1956 at the invitation of Strom Thurmond and gave a race baiting speech with such trash as you wouldnt call a Chigger a Chiggerow now would ya. He had given the same speech the previous day to the hoots and howls of a state wide gathering of SC Southern Baptist Pastors.

       Newman followed Criswell, next speaker up for the Preachers. Newman said : WA Criswell doesn't speak for me"

   About five years later Newman and the president of South EasternBaptist seminary in the small town of Wake Forest  stopped by our home in Hayesville NC where George W Truett was born. He told his group to go on to Nashville, he thought he would just stay with Billy.

   In 1977 Newman gave two days of guest lectures at Limestone College in Gaffney SC. My Dad had late supper with him at Shoneys and talked for about an hour and a half. That's when I heard the Criswell story for the first time. In the Oral Histoy Newman talks about a train trip he took from Dallas to Memphis. Coincidentally in the late 30s George W. Truett himself was on board. They talked for a good three hours. Newman said it didn't take long for Truett to start talking about what a nuisance Frank Norris was to his ministry. For larger context of Norris, the Jerry Falwell of his day, see Jill Lepore grand history of America, These Truths.

   Newman was a mentor to the great Baptist of the 80s James Dunn and SEBTS President Randall Lolley, the President of SEBTS the fundy led Charles Stanley, Jerry Vines, Jim Deloach and Adrian Rogers removed from office.

      Gifted story teller and jokester He told my Dad and Lolley a joke that had both of them bent over belly laughing. Said an old fellow was reminiscing got to thinking he'd never seen a flying Saucer. Then thought come to think of it he'd never goosed a waitress either.

     I called him once and he answered the phone. He said  I know how both of us loved to talk but before we get going have you heard the latest on our new Southern Baptist President Charles Stanley. Newman said he went out to walk his duck the other day and got his head all cut up by an outboard motor