asfoxseesit
About Me
- Name: foxofbama
Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Poem the Call Away and the Kingston Hwy Rock Store and Johns Store
This last week had some exchanges with a kidney Doctor in Arkansas. Shared the Robert Bly poem The Call Away and he got several comments on his facebook. Recently he wrote a piece on his facebook about two gas stations near his home. That sparked in me thoughts on the Rock Store and the Johns Store on the Kingston Hwy about a quarter mile apart. they are about five miles east of Rome Ga on the east side of Dykes Creek in walking distance of my grandfather's fram he bought in the early fifties and the Baptist church where was strong influence. Retired chief army Chaplain Doug Carver creist my Grandfather's faith and witness as big reason he rose in the ranks.
Ive been in and out of Rome Ga since my first year of life and lived there good bit of the time from the fall of 81 through December of 86. The fall of 81 I got entangled with a former Miss Alabama contestant who made a significant impression on me for a good six months. She lived on the east side of Rome near the neighborhood of the shortlived South Caroina coach , Will Muschamp formerly at Florida. Across the hwy from them was the Ledbetter Mansion, farm and estate . She'd live in Atlanta for a couple years near the Big Chicken and would often take the Kingston HWY where Johns and the Rock Store became part of her traveling memories just a few miles out.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Furman, Trump resistance and Process
I was present Saturday in Pendleton SC for the anti Trump rallies. I got on camera with the Anderson Observer report and you can see me in the video there. Erin Goss an English Proff at Celemson fan of Cormac McCarthy and Ron Rash was a coordinator for the ralley and she and I had nice conversation. The Oberver said the crowd was about 350 but I think it more more like 750 or more.
I had twosigns. One said Get Timmons family name of Furman Arena and the other asked why are Nikki Haley and the Clemson trustees struck mute in the face of all of Trump's shenanigans.
I hope Furman Paladin newspaper will take a look at some faculty acting like Trump. In January I was threatened with criminal trespass for talking at a faculty meeting Jan 15. It It is a ridiculous overreaction to my reservations about some aspects of the Placing Furman initiative. I am am convinced one powerful facllty faculty member got his panties in a wad. The Man who convenend the meeting told me after He was kind of glad I was there, I identified myself before I spoke. It was turned over to John Milby head of security. Nice guy but thick headed and caught up in a ridiculous process beneath Furman and all its advertised virtue and free speech history.
A former assistant to Samford President Tom Corts wrote President Davis an appeal on my behalf which she dismissed and turned back to Milby who is not a jury of my peers.
This is my 50th homecoming year. I hope to get this to the attention of the student newspaper cause I think they can do some investigation worthy of Marshall Frady early in the upcoming year.
Furman and Trump in concert. I Never imagined.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Will Aunt Mary's Johnson Ferry defenestrate Collinsville Baptist
Aunt Mary Willis of the Johnson Ferry Baptist church in Marietta Ga is the sister of the widow of John Morgan, recently deceased after forty five years as pastor of the Alabama church where my Mother was baptized in the town my family goes back to the 1840s. I lived there for thirty years up till late January 2020 whereupon I relocated to Upstate SC
That congregation defenestrated me on May 26, 2006 by a vote of 32 20. Now Johnson Ferry and 60 percent of the voting messengers yesterday in Dallas Texas want to drive Collinville Baptist out of the Convention with the Law Amendment. Mary Willis pastor Clay Smith is named as one of ten pastors including the pastor of FBC Cumming Ga out becasue they are soft on women. Prime example in the Collinsville case is the Memorial service for Pastor Morgan of six weeks ago. You can watch it online
Ferry and Cumming are both in Marjorie Taylor Green's congressional district which makes perfect sense in a way. And known historically for the lynching of Leo Frank and the ethnic cleansing and lynchings in Forsyth County in 1915 . Methodist minster's son Patrick Phillips wrote up seven years ago in Blood at the Root. One chapter was titled Thirty karat son of a bitch with spare parts.
I'm not calling Clay Smith the Ferry pastor that, but there are some similarities to his mentality and how he operates. Smith's father was minister of music at FBC Mauldin SC in the nineties whose pastor Strickland wife is the niece of Etheredge, George Wallace highway man in the 80s. Red retired to Collinsville of some means and was quite the character at Basketball games etc. He is now a trustee of Jacksonville State with the famous lead of the group Alabama, Randy Owen.
Randy and I had lunch at the Ft Payne Cracker Barrel about a decade ago but I digress
So google up the New yorker doc Hold the Line, SBC and see the Religion News Service report of today June 12 on the SBC Law Amendment, and sterling unflinching reports at Baptist News Global. Countdown is on for Aunt Mary and Collinsville Baptist.
Stay in touch as more to come
Saturday, June 07, 2025
Kayla Beene and Mason McKinney new hope for Collinsville Baptist church
Ffriends been a while since I’ve posted in this blogcould be a little sketchy as it’s gonna be kind of a random catch all blog of the last couple of months and I’m doing it. Technically a new way I’m hoping a friend or put it in an email and send it back to me that I can copy and just post as a blog so it won’t be bold or print, but maybe it’ll get the job done. Kayla Beene and Mason McKinney early twenties . They are in their early 20s and a new hope for Collinsville Baptist are taking positions of responsibility with the youth and even on the bylaws committee, the two have a bright families and if they will reach out with the challenge of a Becky Kennedy in her robe and stole for the Morgan memorial Service Becakyon staff at Baylore ordained about ten years ago talked about the wider network of everybody that was around during the time of John Morgan that sits a wide reach With Kayla b she has an a great uncle whose daughter it goes to Duke of Divinity school and there’s a lot of things to think about there. I hope the church in this new generation will will open their minds for good people, especially in the matter of Baptist identity and the authentic Baptist witness in America Will go a little wider and then have been discussed the last 30 or 40 years and understand the implication of the fundamentaist takeover
the Baptist convention not to dwell on it, but to know that it happened and that the SBC is no longer what it was and it’s not the congregation that in Collinsville Baptist has a part of that water picture is not the congregation now with their recent flirtations with Calvinism that was envisioned in the 20s 30s and fories. and 40s and my mother‘s era and the era of the Gilbreth and Mary Catherine Reed, who had a wide following because she was here at the home economics department at university of Alabama So those days those days they had pastors like John Jeffers, who went on to be a longtime Pastor first Baptist Church, Auburn and then even in the 70s they had Fred Grissom, who Jackie Myers embraced and Became a professor at Southeastern seminary under the time of my dad‘s great friend Randall lolly is the president and that’s completely different from from what’s going on with the SBC now.
Kayla and Mason Bright people they can watch the documentary. up at baptist news global or a google for SBC Hold The Line . It’s easy to find hold the line SBC about Women in Baptist life and in their role in the church and it’s obvious Becky Kennedy flew in the face of all that and I’m glad she did in her robe but she’s an ordained minister one of the better products of the Morgan era. They embraced Becky and so that whole service was Flew in the face of what the SBC is and at the SBC followed through from the national level down to the state local level they vote Collinsville Baptist out of the association and Southern Baptist life so I mean that’s just the fact there’s no way to look around it so I hope Mason side his let me see where his mother’s his mother‘s sister is the aunt By marriage of the school superintendent for the state of Alabama. Eric Mackie and he understands what’s going on in this Baptist mess. He learned a lot when he was at Jacksonville State, Wayne Flynt spoke last year tohistorical societyk association First Baptist Auburn and his is a disciple Mark Wilson. He’s been head of the Auburn democracy project for 14 years which has had a presence in Collinsville through Jennifer Wilkins he was on the pool pit committee for first Baptist Church Auburn. He knows this is a mess and he knows there’s a better vision For Collinsville Baptist Church than the one that they’re looking at now so there’s ways to do these things and I hope Kayla and a mason look into it and I’m just a phone call away and I got friends who know people that can help if Collinsville Baptist not too stubborn to et a grip in the mist ethnicaoy dierse town in the state. 70 percent of Collinsville school is now minortiy and Jason Barnett and Brad;ey crawford need to talk to their friend Jrdan dufexis and Tommy Tubberville, even rick burgess and get sme carity. Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong aint what they used to be (lot more on that in a couple mnths) used to be so I’m a throw my two cents in later in the year, but I wanted to get this in to get to Kayla and Mason‘s attention and they can do their own thinking they got people they can talk to. They can even talk to Sherlyn Crowe that’s Baptist joint committee in Washington DC who’s a product of the first Baptist Church of Fort Payne got a masters at Vanderbilt so they’re smart there are people that understand this and they’re not very far away and want to put this out there and maybe with the sequel but that’s good for now.
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Baptist populists, the MAGA Base and soul molesting complicity
Andrew Gardner uploaded a piece April 7 on Baptist populism and the MAGA Base. It ratifies what I have been saying for 35 years now about the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. in 1993 Harold Bloom of Yale wrote in his book The American Religion the tragedy in the SBC is the result of pure political machinations masquerading as religious conviction.
Five years before that Paul Pressler in the network of Jesse Helms and the Council for National Policy walked off the interview with Bill Moyers when pressed about his Exxon family history with the right wing. Part of it had to do with windfall profit taxes Jimmy Carter ushered in as suggested by Tom Edsall in The New Politics of Inequality. Pressler's network went back to the McCarthy era in culture war politics distraction disquising oil profits.
Homer Lindsay has a key anecdote in Gardner's telling. Bullying a compromise discussion with the ultra fundies on the seminaries, he called them chickens for backing off hardline notions. One of his key parishioners at FBC Jacksonville Florida was Tim Tebow's Mother, the Eagle Forum Woman of the Year for 2018
Thursday, April 03, 2025
Dabo Swinney Upstate mega church Newspring goes liberal on Women
About twenty years after President Carter figured it out Dabo Swinney mega church in Clemson and Anderson SC, two campuses, broke with the Southern Baptist Convention and their third world view on women. Somebody outted Meredith Knox on their staff as a "teaching minister" and that was all she wrote. Who knows if the congregation will start consulting Baptist News Global on a weekly basie or religion dispatches, but once you start thinking a little there aint no going back.