Will CBF of Georgia and NC rise to the occasion to Stop Trump and Vance

Richard Kremer, a Rhodes Scholar nominee and one of the best Baptist Preachers of my generation got some national attention in 1992  when Bill Clinton tried to finagle himself into the choir at St John's Baptist church in Charlotte on the eve of the Democratic primary in North Carolina. Kremer wrote a column for his church newsletter explaining his NO to the Clinton campaign that got picked up for the Charlotte Observer.

    Since then Kremer has been in the heart of MAGA world in Rome Ga, now home of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the influential fundamentalist Nelson Price. Kremer is now in Macon Ga.

     His wife is the daughter of former Atty for SC Baptists who in the seventies stood firm for historic Baptist principals of church state separation. The BJC Committee that was a target of jesse Helms network in the fundamentalists takeover of the SBC has come out strong endorsing Meathead of All in the Family, Rob Reiner documentary God and Country a strong look at Christian nationalism

    It is yet to be seen whether Kremer and hundreds of Baptist pastors and churches acroos NC and Georgia will bring Reiner to town to shine the light on Trump and Vance. They could make a difference in both states especially if churches in Charlotte, Macon, Dalton, Rome, Athens, Americus  Atlanta Gainesville, Asheville, Raleigh Durahn etc make some publicity with a Reiner Tour. Have Hillary Clinton join the tour.

     In North Carolina, come to Hayesville, the home of George W. Truett, the greatest Baptist of the first half of the twentieth Century. Beautiful Venue to do some truth telling.

   In Greenville SC Furman and FBC Greenville should invite Billy Timmons whose family name is on the Furman basketball arena to join a panel with Trey Gowdy and with Reiner get right down to the real nitty gritty on whats at stake.

     I hope all we be informed by the Pulitzer prize winner Marilynne Robinson and her recent piece at nybooks.com 

Mark Powell as antidote to JD Vance in the category of Mah Fybah

You remember mah Fybah don't you from Oh Brother where art thou. Mark Powell of Wahalla SC, the Citadel and Yale Div School has it; JD Vance does not

    Both write about Appalachia, Powell has written about a fellow in North Georgia who self radicalizes and joins MAGA World. Vance is the more famous but coulda been a Powell character.

    Powell has a beautiful piece about the charming world of Upstate SC he was raised in with a focus on the foibles of the Marshall Tucker Band in Oxford American, easy google. And an interview of couple years ago at U Michigan where he talks about the politics of the textile mill workers, sons daughters and grandchildren he grew up with in the Upstate. He deplores right wing radio and the poison of Fox News, Tucker Carlson and that world. His fellow internationally known novelists of Upstate SC and Western North Carolina David Joy and Ron Rash are in similar vein, though Powell now teaching at Appalachian State in Boone NC has addressed it more directly.

      Rash was cited in a national article by Kathleen Parker as far back as 2008 when Obama was the nominee.

     Vance got Trump right the first time in 2016 as manipulating the folks he was raised with, struggling working class white folks. Now he is part of a movement, stoked by the Heritage foundation and the modern day Birch Society and white Citizens council, under the guise of Populism and has joined the band wagon.

     With Adam Kinzinger and some days Mitt Romney, Powell is a Judge Frank Johnson of our time.

    The national media should pursue Powell immediately and through the vote in Novemember not only for Western NC and North Georgia vote, but for a dying notion of sanity in these improbable times, a plumbline to all the confusion, fog and mendacity.

     The soul molesters are rampant and Biden is stubborn and a lot is at stake. 

The Canterbury Tales on the Way and back to Bama

   Come back to this weekly over the next month as it gets full and evolves, a work in Progress

    Made a mad dash to bama day after the fourth and came back on the sixth, mommas 101 ybirthday. I ghosted collinsville where I lived for thirty years before heading to lodging in Ranis villle near Kelly's diner tubberville made famous with Jordan Doufexis.

   _Purpost of it all was the 107 Sacred Harp singing in Henegar at Liberty Baptist regaining its legs after covid.  At least 220 there yesterday all singing full throttle. I havent been in four years after ten of pretty near perfect attendance in the last days of Bud Oliver. Almost lead the the Idumea introducing myself as not Bud Oliver but he once said he was honored to claim me as distant kin

     On the way there Friday and then back on Saturday had conversations with Advanced Readingteacher from Anderson who didnt know Ron Rash or Cormac McCarthy; then great conversation with some Mormon Missionaries at Chic Fil A in Gainesville Ga; took The kingston Hw y past Trevor Lawrence territory onthe way to Schroeders i n Rome Ga, the Cewdar Bluff and Centre and Bill Glenn Mtn Grill for the catfish andtwo sides.

    Details to follow so come back for more in a few days.

hows that welding business coming along"

I have a friend who was a Baptist preacher in Loris SC back in the nineties. He is a certified boilermaker welder and had a little side activity going along to buttress his meager salary to keep up a family of a wife and three children. Some in the church were embarassed from the playful ridicule in town that they couldnt support their preacher.

     On more than one occasion a Methodist used car salesman or insurance salesman would loudly ask across a crowded room at Lunch to the Baptist preacher " how is that welding business coming along."

    The point was not to humiliate the preacher , again a proud boilermaker, but to rib the members of the church in the room about their finances. Locker room jiving most of your deacons and elders insmall towns across the south partake it when not talking about aCC And SEC Football. That's about as deep as their understanding of church ever gets.

    Its kind of like that scene in There Will Be Blood where Daniel Plainview( Daniel Day Lewis ) is eating a steak with his "son" and announces to a room full of detractors who he has outfoxxed with Drinking Their Milkshake, that he has four wells producting.

     My Dad had similar situation in the sixties subbing school. One of the better members of the church was asked at the Post Office why Bethany couldn't pay the preacher enough to live on. We had a nice house, and never missed a meal, Momma was stay at home but we stretched a can of salmon a long way.

    The great Will Campbell said most Baptist churches were oblivious to the great Civil Rights struggle unless as in our case a person of color showed up in the church or befriended one of the Preacher's kids. They considered their preacher, the community mascot, and status was rated along several demarcations like cross town rivalries on Junior High baseball and football. 

      Just starting on this as its gonna get better

We are living in abortion politics of Casey Mattox and Gloria Morgan world now

 Casey Mattox was in sixth grade when I moved to Collinsville Alabama in December of 1986. since then he has graduated from UVA, Boston Las School and done time with Alliance Defending Freedom now with the Koch Brothers.

   Gloria Morgan was the preacher's wife, about 37 that year, native of Mississippi and Nashville Tn. Her husband was the pastor of the church where my Mother's family went back to the early 1900 s my grandfather born in 1881.

     Gloria and a lot of the folks in town including Irma Coker marches on the statenst capitol early 90s against abortion. A member of the community had a wife related to the fellow who wrote George Wallace famous Segregation Forever Speech of 63

     John and Gloria devoted three Sundays every year to preach against abortion; including their Sunday school class and evening Bible Study 

      I dissented one Sunday School and half the Sunday class walked out including the preacher's son Mark who went to Duke. I asked the pastor if he were a trustee of Southern Seminary would he vote to fire PaulSimmons a theologian who supported a woman right to choose on strong theological grounds.

    Rev Morgan had classes under Simmons in Seminary. Theh question got under his skin.

   One Morgan son went to Yale div and had some visiting proff courses with my Dartmouth Friend Randall Balmer, one of the leading scholars of evangelical politics in America. Balmer says Paul Weyrich papers began to crackle when Weyrich got the insight abortion politics could replace Race Baiting as a political strategy.

     More detail later but for the moment the SBC Voted yesterday against IVF which would have taken two of the Morgan's grandchildren out of this world. And last night a segment on PBS Newshour was devoted to a new book on the politics of abortion which would have nullified the life work of Casey Mattox.

    Read the piece at Baptist news global and watch the piece on PBS Newshour.

     I feel vindicated.

     The Morgans and I get along for the most part. They let me play volleyball with them on a few occasions when I was not qualified, could not play at the level of play as the others. And we otherwise enjoyed some choir specials and other shenanigans.

Mah fuybah and Upstate congressional delegation

    You remember mah fybah, moral fibre, from Oh Brother Where Art thou. I went to the Congressional Forum for Third District Thursday at clemson Madden Center sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. Ten Candidates were invited, seven pledged to be there, and four showed up all GOP. I wanted to see Stewart Jones and confront him about his diabolical Anti immigration ad but he didnt show up.she

      I got on Upstate Fox with Kari Beal. She was real nice from Syracuse. Said she is gonna try Bridges BBQ in Shelby been down here for five years and appreciates the BBQ > For a minute I thought she hsd to be a fifth cousin of Debbie Medaris.

   Candidates played it close to the vest. I did however talk to three of of them before or arter the forum. Here is the news. Kevin Bishop long time staffer for Lindsey Graham told me he stands with friend From Easley now in the state house, Neal Collins now under political assault from Palmetto Gun Rights because Neal is not ready to call open season on every public school student in Pickens County with Open Carry. Neal has the backing of his pastor I am certain, John Adams at FBC Easley and most of the congregation. I hope this conversation has legs.

     Ms Elspath running on agriculture concerns had the nerve to say, lets' be honest, Climate Change is for Real.  I wish the trustees at Clemson had her nerve, especially Nikki Haley.

     Franky Franco, A Cuban Baptist and Bob Jones Grad is a charm and has a future if the party every comes back toward the Bush Family. But he said he was not aware of Project 2025, The MAGA, Demint Heritage Foundation plan to dumb down Anerican history on Race and Jim Crow politics

   About thirty minutes later I voted in the GOP primary, Voted for Franco cause he has some integrity and lot of potential in poliitcs. He just has to break wirth Demint and The Bob Jones agenda which of course will be hard for him to do

    Susan Shaw of Rome Ga was able to do it. Raised in West Rome Baptist church under the preaching of Jerry Vines she had a piece at Baptist News Global todal How Low will they Go about SBTS President Al Mohler.

     Kari Beals and Jane Robelot should be visiting that site twice weekley. And read Randall Balmer on the politics of Abortion, Jill Lepore on the Gun Lobby in Deadline collection as well as Miguel de la Torre, and Cynthia Tucker and Frye Galliard on the big frame of how the GOP got to his point.

     Nice people but I fear I was only the person in the room who could distinguish between my A dbl SS and a Hole in the Ground.

     Robert Jones, Shutting down CRT Debate, Religion News.

Where were you when the Verdict came down

I was in the parking lot of the colonial fish market on Cherokee Ave in Gaffney SC right down from the church where WJ Cash was baptized.  Had heard on way in and hoped to be back in the car at five for the top of the hour NPR report. I was also in Gaffney in Ms Goforth's Sixth grade  in 1963 when Kennedy was assasinated and home in time after Church on Anthony Street to see Oswald killed. It was on Anthony Street in 62 on way to church I heard Marilyn Monroe had died on a Sunday Morming. George Singleton says his grandmother used to work as a bartender for Jack Ruby but he was only four years old at the time.

      That's an aside the title of Singleton new collection of true stories which arent much different from his fiction. Said his Daddy made a big scene and walked out of a Baptist church Singleton names in Asides cause the racist mill workers didnt want any "niggers" in the church. Singleton uses that one incident to cast aspersions on all of Christianity but he has a Guggenheim and I don't so what can you say.

     Reason I was in Gaffney was nice day and had lunch with two Gaffney high classmates in Spartanburg then rode on down to Pacolet to meet their acclaimend administrator but she had retired. Jolly Rogers BBQ was closed so went up the Gaffney Pacolet HWY passed Goucher and Jimmy Baker region of Cherokee County on to medidtate in the parking lot of Bethany Baptist Church where my Dad was the pastor from 62-78.

     Went over to Cherokee Avenue for the Midway Food Truck Hash but they didnt show up so got some perch at the Colonial to go. Kind Priee and I will be back.

     Tried to outsmsrt the Pelham Rd exit traffic on my return to no avail. Dicey six miles every time.

    I was an hour early so went to Barnes and Noble on Woodruff Road. Saw a new word in a poem in the New yorker I will have to retrieve.

     Had great lunch. Names of some white women came up as did Al Mohler and Russell Moore as one classmate was on financial advisory committee for SBTS. Indian Food was kinda bland purposely as they are doing lunch buffett for first months. Kinda pricey for my upbringing but I will go back for the spice later.