Fox is writing letters to editors again...

[deb]

As a favor to Steve Fox who is having trouble accessing the forum, I'm copying below an e-mail he asked me to post for him.....


Ms. McDaniel: While I am having trouble registering, please publish what I have below at bl.com as my latest submission to area newspapers here in the stomping grounds of latest President of the SBC, Bobby Welch...sfox

Gary Palmer of the Alabama Policy Institute has published a column in our region that threatens that if secular extremists like Morris Dees, Linda Rondstadt and Robert Reich have their way America will lose its moorings.
I think Palmer is full of horse manure as I have seen his brand of right wing fundamentalism eviscerate the very progressive ideology that once moved the Southern Baptist convention forward, but now is captive to the fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson; Lackeys for Enron and Exxon Oil who grew out of the racist past almost all of us now see was wrong. As Bill Moyers has said eloquently, they have discarded racism for fundamentalism as the wedge issue to mess with middle America's mind to keep the power and tax breaks going their way.
Palmer is fronting the wrong list of names. Among folks who resist Karl Rove's designs to keep President Bush's fundamentalist base fogged and dumbfounded; among the resistors are folks like Will Willimon, incoming bishop for the North Alabama Conference for the United Methodist Church; Matthew Morgan, Collinsville native now a student at Yale Divinity School; Kate Campbell, recording artist and daughter of Jim Henry, former President of Southern Baptist Convention; Wayne Flynt, Pulitzer Prize Nominee often called the conscience of the state of Alabama; Bertis Downs, manager of the Rock Group REM, Presbyterian Minister's son and active layman of Presbyterian church in Athens Georgia.
These are just a few of the Christian folk who see Gary Palmer and the fundamentalists who now control the Southern Baptist Convention for what they are.
Henry Giroux, a Penn State proff has recently written in Dissident Voice.com an analysis of the political fundamentalist blasphemy of the overriding themes of SCripture and the American experiment. He says: "The emergence of a government sanctioned religious fundamentalism has its counterpart in a political authoritarianism that not only undermines the most basic tenets of religious faith, but also the democratic tenets of social justice and equality."
He is joined by fellow analyst James Hefley, son a former professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary who wrote last April of how right wingers in the GOP are using the fundamentalist exercise in the SBC as a prototype of how to takeover and abuse a proud tradition from the ground up through demagoguery.
Joseph Hough, the head of the Union Thelogical Seminary speaks for many religious leaders when he argues that what passes as Christianity in the Bush administration is simply a form of political machination masquerading as religion, making a a stab for power.
I realize I am in the minority in these parts. But I'm with Baptists who have always been at their best in the American experiment when they spoke in dissent. I invite apathetic deacons and others who should know better to take a good look at themselves and the heart of their tradition and join me and the list at the beginning of this statement to educate themselves and become a prophetic voice for the best of their tradition;instead of sitting on the sideline while a fundamentalist bullying army attempts to make of this great American experiment a Theocracy giving the Founding Fathers and their magnificent ideals of the separation of church and state The Finger.

Sincerely,


Stephen M. Fox

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[Keith]

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