Was the cabal of Adrian Rogers, McAteer, Pressler Extremist?

[Stephen Fox]

http://christianethicstoday.com/wp/wp-c ... ersion.pdf

Scroll down to Bill Jones story on page 2

Similar story on Pressler and fundy politics and evolution in same period could be fascinating indeed

[Stephen Fox]

48-58

Pressler was in the State Senate in Austin for two of those years as an obstructionist re Brwon V Board

http://christianethicstoday.com/CETART/ ... &ArtID=370

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/a ... -attorneys

[Stephen Fox]

There has been recent promotion of this book at abpnews. This interview is fascinating for the shwllowness of inerrancy as a takeover rubric as with other reasons and goes beyond to ask fascinating questions within the CBF as well

http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2015/02/ ... -with.html

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.scalawagmagazine.org/article ... lain-sight

[Stephen Fox]

This mentality and world view were never far from Pressler, Helms, Adrian Rogers, McAteer and Albert Lee Smith. Without these convictions that SBC Takeover Leadership would have been less sure of themselves. Scary History:

http://religiondispatches.org/how-a-fri ... e-know-it/

[Stephen Fox]

Another W post story of the same day placed Pressler, named Pressler as key in the Cruz phenomenon. That ties him to Ed Young and Jim Deloach.

Merritt also made no reference to Wuthnow's Rough Country even though Criswell is in the air in almost everything Merritt says in this piece.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... in/421563/

[Stephen Fox]

Was reminded in the last few days from firsthand experience, witnesses and their testimonies of the "evil" at work in the takeover. Of course folks like Sandy will never be convinced and a lot of folks are no longer interested in refining the truth about the Takeover; for instance on this board only two folks at most were interested enough to real Molly Worthen and Sandy came to the wrong conclusions. And to my knowledge neither Baps Today nor CEToday has mentioned her work in two years.

I think Jonathan Merritt did an interview.

I hope my "witnesses" will soon come forth cause they have a strong and credible, another firsthand account of the Pressler Patterson agenda and tactics.

[Stephen Fox]

According to David Montoya in the late 80s, Floyd was Pressler's boy, his key young Adrian Rogers in Arkansas

https://baptistnews.com/ministry/organi ... arismatics

Floyd has unclear ties to Auburn Football coach Gus MalZahn and Lashlee

[Stephen Fox]

All Pressler's networks to the Council for National Policy to the netherworld of Jesse Helms to the Oil industry which Houston contingent voted 90 percent for Ronald Reagan in 1980 places his squarely in the world of the Koch Bros most likely in the audience at the donors summits.

I will blog for context. Also listen later today online to NPR Fresh Air for interview with author Jane Mayer

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463551038 ... cal-agenda

[Stephen Fox]

newyorker.com has a great piece today by Jane Mayer on the Koch bros attempts to rebrand and Rehad their image. Fascinating reference in the New Yorker to Rockefeller and the Ludlow massacre.

But today's main point of interest is the NRP Fresh Air chat and the new book. Local juco I hope has it on order.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02 ... ard-right/

[Stephen Fox]

on NPR's drshow.org

The transcript

LAKSHMANAN
All right, let's take a quick call from Steven in Collinsville, Alabama. In the moments we have left, Steven, go ahead. What's your question?



10:53:58



STEVEN
Yeah, I grew up in (unintelligible) now playing for the Georgetown Hoyas, but this crucible, this withering effect on the Bush family, Bush 41 denounced the John Birch Society in 1966 in Harris County, Houston Texas. But now, that Baptist Fundamentalist Group, he came to embrace in '88. And Paul Kressler, who is solidly in the camp of Ted Cruz now. So it's going to be interesting, in Republican political history, to see how this all plays out for Bush in South Carolina.



10:54:29



LAKSHMANAN
Okay, thank you very much, Steven. Norm.



10:54:31



ORNSTEIN
Well, there, you know, there is a Bush history in South Carolina. And it's one that moves candidates sharply further to the right. The question here is whether Jeb Bush can pull out of the playbook the same thing that W. did in devastating John McCain with what was, if it didn't come directly from the campaign, it certainly was with a wink and a nod, a pretty scurrilous attack on McCain of having a child out of wedlock of another race when it was an adopted child from Bangladesh.



10:55:06



ORNSTEIN
If we get that kind of a campaign, it reinforces another phenomenon here, which I think the caller is eluding to, which is this process pulls the candidates further towards the extreme. And that's true in both cases, but much more on the Republican side. To win a nomination, you have to win over people who are not just angry, but more radical. And as you move in that direction, Rubio's moved sharply in that direction, it becomes much, much harder to move back.

[Stephen Fox]

They spelled him Kressler in the the transcript. I was prepared to reference loaded rough country history on Pressler but they squeezed me tight, though Ornstein response was spot on

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2016- ... re-primary

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02 ... cast-bush/

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschae ... theocracy/

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/ ... phenomenon

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... aw/493649/

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02321.html

[Stephen Fox]

http://religiondispatches.org/tim-lahay ... ing-in-it/

In Pressler's inner circle with Helms and the Council for National Policy

[Stephen Fox]

http://religiondispatches.org/phyllis-s ... for-trump/

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/rom ... 6bca4.html

I am writing a letter to RNT to Respond a longer version to appear on my blog shortly.

Price had the prayer breakfast sermon in January 1967 the day of Carter's inauguration. They had been prayer partners for 8 years

[Stephen Fox]

[quote]Nelson Price is a piece of work. This former prayer partner of President Carter turned hardened apologist for the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention attempting to artfully endorse Donald Trump for President as a prayerful concern comes close to blasphemy.


Price outlines several concerns tipping his conscience to the Trump column. What he fails to mention is the leadership he followed in the Baptist world, Pressler, Jesse Helms, Eagle Forum's Phyliss Schlafly and other residues of the John Birch Society and White Citizens Councils most folks now find anathema to a more perfect Union. Long Story short the library shelf the BX 6400's has twenty or more books demonstrating Price to not only be on the wrong side of Baptist history but Christian history as well.


And now he would have us believe the discredited world of Fox News has the high ground over Hillary Clinton. Well there has been an avalanche of opinion pieces in the Christian world in the last few days saying Price is wrong. I would point him to one in particular, that of Molly Worthen in the New York Times about the Moral MOndays Revival in the pivotal state of North Carolina. Worthen should be of special interest to Price as her book The Apostles of Reason a few years ago laid bare the sophomoric ideology of the Inerrancy of Scripture on which all of Price's so called "Biblical World View" is based.


In June of 1986 I walked across the hill at Dykes Creek Baptist Church to the Kingston Hwy to catch a ride with the pastor of Garden Lakes Baptist Church to attend the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Atlanta. There at the bottom of the escalator of the World Congress Center I met my Dad talking to Wieuca Rd Baptist pastor Bill Self and Tom Edsall of the Washington Post. Edsall was waiting on me as we'd had several phone conversations before the Atlanta meeting.


Two years ago my friend Randall Balmer of Dartmouth published a religious political pilgrimage biography of President Carter, one I doubt Price has read. Here is a Balmer quote from a piece Edsall wrote three weeks ago in the NY Times about Baptist fundamentalists and others of Nelson Price's stripe navigating this Trump moment in America:


Quoting Balmer in Edsall piece:

The religious right was never about the advancement of biblical values. The modern, politically conservative evangelical movement we know is a movement rooted in the perpetuation of racial segregation, and its affiliation with the hard-right fringes of the conservative movement in the late 1970s produced a mutant form of evangelicalism inconsistent with the best traditions of evangelicalism itself. Since then, evangelicals have embraced increasingly secular positions divorced from any biblical grounding, and supporting Donald Trump represents the logical conclusion of that tragic aberration.


A longer version of this letter will appear soon at my blog, foxofbama.blogspot.com

Sincerely,

Stephen M. Fox

[Sandy]

The religious right was never about the advancement of biblical values. The modern, politically conservative evangelical movement we know is a movement rooted in the perpetuation of racial segregation, and its affiliation with the hard-right fringes of the conservative movement in the late 1970s produced a mutant form of evangelicalism inconsistent with the best traditions of evangelicalism itself. Since then, evangelicals have embraced increasingly secular positions divorced from any biblical grounding, and supporting Donald Trump represents the logical conclusion of that tragic aberration.

I can't find the specific article this quote came from, Stephen. If this is Balmer, and it's a direct quote, then his credibility just sank to zero as far as I am concerned.

This is far too much of a broad brush to even be close to an acceptable, reasonable statement. I wouldn't argue the point that there are evangelicals, particularly those among the self-proclaimed leadership of certain segments of Conservative Evangelicalism, who do use their influence to perpetuate racial segregation, including getting involved with the Alt-right-Breitbart-KKK connection, and there are some evangelicals who have done a complete about face when it comes to their campaigns of principles and values of the 80's and 90's who are now supporting Trump, simply because he's got the R beside his name and they mistakenly and foolishly think he'll be their champion, especially when it comes to Supreme Court appointments. I'd go so far as to say that any Evangelical Conservatives who are relentless in their support for Trump are completely abandoning the "moral majority/religious right" principles that they used to unite their constituents against Bill Clinton in the 90's, and are nothing more than power-hungry hypocrites. But there are many Conservative Evangelicals, including some prominent leaders, who see how inconsistent it is to support Trump after years of touting the "values vote", probably more than the conservative media is reporting or that the so-called liberal media cares about. Many of the weightier voices in the SBC, like Russ Moore and Al Mohler, are never-Trumpers. ust last night, on 60 Minutes, we saw a clip of Georgia pastor Bryant Wright articulate a position on Syrian refugees that is completely counter to Trump's anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, anti-humanitarian position. David Rogers(yes, Adrian's son) is pretty regular in his posts on Facebook and other social media that not only express his own position, which is not favorable toward Trump, but which catches the opinions and feelings of a lot of other Southern Baptists and Christians who share the same perspective. David is certainly a reflection of his father, especially when it comes to his compassion, and as a result of that, his rejection of Trump, particularly when it comes to immigration. Adrian Rogers was 100% behind the advancement of Biblical values, and his son is making an honest, and respected attempt at actually measuring politics biblically, rather than the other way around in trying to confirm Biblical values to the worldly, secular goals of right wing conservatism. And it seems that, as a whole, the SBC as a denomination is well out of the grip of the old Patterson-Pressler coalition and the current confusion of the GOP.

On the other hand, Stephen, I've seen some of your moderate buds behave in such a way as to put up obstacles to racial reconciliation in the church, just a touch of that upper middle class, genteel, snide, Southern aristocratic attitude that gives lip service to being more open, but becomes a cotton-padded stone wall when someone tries to actually make progress.

[KeithE]

The religious right was never about the advancement of biblical values. The modern, politically conservative evangelical movement we know is a movement rooted in the perpetuation of racial segregation, and its affiliation with the hard-right fringes of the conservative movement in the late 1970s produced a mutant form of evangelicalism inconsistent with the best traditions of evangelicalism itself. Since then, evangelicals have embraced increasingly secular positions divorced from any biblical grounding, and supporting Donald Trump represents the logical conclusion of that tragic aberration.

I can't find the specific article this quote came from, Stephen. If this is Balmer, and it's a direct quote, then his credibility just sank to zero as far as I am concerned.

This is far too much of a broad brush to even be close to an acceptable, reasonable statement. I wouldn't argue the point that there are evangelicals, particularly those among the self-proclaimed leadership of certain segments of Conservative Evangelicalism, who do use their influence to perpetuate racial segregation, including getting involved with the Alt-right-Breitbart-KKK connection, and there are some evangelicals who have done a complete about face when it comes to their campaigns of principles and values of the 80's and 90's who are now supporting Trump, simply because he's got the R beside his name and they mistakenly and foolishly think he'll be their champion, especially when it comes to Supreme Court appointments. I'd go so far as to say that any Evangelical Conservatives who are relentless in their support for Trump are completely abandoning the "moral majority/religious right" principles that they used to unite their constituents against Bill Clinton in the 90's, and are nothing more than power-hungry hypocrites. But there are many Conservative Evangelicals, including some prominent leaders, who see how inconsistent it is to support Trump after years of touting the "values vote", probably more than the conservative media is reporting or that the so-called liberal media cares about. Many of the weightier voices in the SBC, like Russ Moore and Al Mohler, are never-Trumpers. ust last night, on 60 Minutes, we saw a clip of Georgia pastor Bryant Wright articulate a position on Syrian refugees that is completely counter to Trump's anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, anti-humanitarian position. David Rogers(yes, Adrian's son) is pretty regular in his posts on Facebook and other social media that not only express his own position, which is not favorable toward Trump, but which catches the opinions and feelings of a lot of other Southern Baptists and Christians who share the same perspective. David is certainly a reflection of his father, especially when it comes to his compassion, and as a result of that, his rejection of Trump, particularly when it comes to immigration. Adrian Rogers was 100% behind the advancement of Biblical values, and his son is making an honest, and respected attempt at actually measuring politics biblically, rather than the other way around in trying to confirm Biblical values to the worldly, secular goals of right wing conservatism. And it seems that, as a whole, the SBC as a denomination is well out of the grip of

Don't know how you intended to end this paragraph - perhaps with "grip of Trump”.

But I agree that evangelicals are split in their Trump support. Perhaps this split represents a split between genuine religious-based evangelicals and those that aligned themselves with evangelicals for political cover to be anti-poor (or as they would say anti-lazy) or xenophobic (or as they would say patriotic).