Parsing Huckabee and Bruce Prescott

[Stephen Fox]

I have decided to rename this thread to take a turn and pick up with Prescott which I will do with the latest post. This thread was originally about HBee's appearance at Furman and took off from there.

http://www.furman.edu/press/pressarchive.cfm?ID=4117

Wish I could be there but a couple states away.

Should be one more heckuva Weds Night Prayer Meeting

I have blogged extensively about the context at http://www.foxofbama.blogpot.com where I provide a link to how it is playing today in the Newsweek Religion Blog

[Prentice Fox]

If Huckabee had any guts. he would go across town in Greenville to Bob Jones University, where he would get a more "diverse" audience; but he knows about the adverse publicity that Dubya got for going to BJU. Huckabee is doing the politcally correct thing by going to Furman; and he is probably aware that Dr. Bob Jones III has publically made an endorsement for Romney. I like Mike, but this could be a Strike!(against him.) Prentice

[Stephen Fox]

is this poli sci proff defense of Bob Jones in 2000 when it got national attention for Bush visit there.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... 76695/pg_1

Article's author Furman proff Jim Guth is a mainstream Republican whose daughter is on route to becoming an ordained Baptist minister with graduate studies at UVA where more than likely she will be studying with Charles Marsh.

The Huckabee event tonight is being hosted by Senator Bob Inglis and his right wing faction of the GOP. I have no clout at Furman. Huckabee is welcome there, I just wish it was under some other auspices than the Inglis faction which hasn't learned anything from Garry Wills concluding chapters in American Christianities.

Furman has its faults. But don't ignorantly tag Furman with political correctness. It won't stick.

[Stephen Fox]

From Peter Wehner of Commentary mag on Huckabee:

At the same time, Huckabee is winsome, humorous, formidable, and shrewd. I have my own concerns about Huckabee, including (above all) his stand on national security, which is the least impressive and coherent among the top-tier Republicans; his head-snapping reversal on immigration; his “populist” rhetoric on economics; and even his use of faith in this campaign. But it would be foolish to dismiss him, or what he represents.

[Prentice Fox]

I read Mr. James Guth's article in the Christian Century that you posted, and I believe that he makes a very fair and objective critique of Bob Jones University. The end result of this initial adverse publicity was a net positive for BJU, and Dr. Bob III gained national fame; just like Al Mohler has done by appearing on the Larry King Show. Now both of them are well known beyond the conservative evangelical "Curtain." I have enjoyed reading both from Bob Jones and from Peter Gomes. I plan to quote Gomes at a graveside memorial service this Friday afternoon. In describing human mortality, Gomes calls it, "The Tension of Tentativeness," and reminds his readers that the Book of Common Prayer states, "In the midst of life, we are in death."(p. 332) Prentice.

[Stephen Fox]

I Know I'm dyin

Even so all analogies aside the fact that the Al Mohlers of the world replaced the Lolleys and Dildays; as Richard Land replaced Foy Valentine was not a good thing.

Richard Land's coziness with Karl Rove was of a lower virtue, worse for the country than James Dunn and Jimmy Allen's familiarity with Jimmy Carter.

Buddy Shurden has no reservations about such an assertion.

You, Prentice, on the other hand seem reluctant to state an obvious conclusion, your church membership notwithstanding.

That is the frustration for me and I dare say, Pettibone and others on this board who try to make heads and tails of it all.

Congratulations for quoting Gomes and seeing some light in Bob Jones.

But was the takeover of the SBC by fundamentalists a good or a bad thing; or in your mind it just doesn't matter and Buddy Shurden and Lolley continue to be disturbed over nothing?

Finally, thanks for seeing the virtue in Furman's Guth.

[Prentice Fox]

Randall was my classmate at SEBTS in '56. I understand that he will be honored at a breakfast(? or luncheon?) at the Atlanta NBC this month; and Mainstream Baptists will have a part in it. I think Randall has pretty much retired as I have; with an occasional pulpit supply or funeral or wedding. It would be good if he would blog here with us(we could all gain from his insights;) but I think he is more intelligent than that. Regarding your question regarding the validity of Richard Land and Karl Rove; I am reminded that Saint Paul said to forget those things which are behind and press forth to the High Calling of God. This is our task. I am reading Dan Vestal's book: "It's Time." On page 47, Vestal identifies himself as a Convictional Baptist.(A Christian who expresses faith and lives life compelled and convicted by certain principles.) That is the challenge we all face. Prentice.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.greenvillenews.com/apps/pbcs ... 9/80109059

Streaming video of HBee tonight at Furman for anyone who cares.

[Prentice Fox]

I believe that Edward's speech video at Clemson was stronger than Huck's; but most impressive was the video of OPRAH at Columbia pushing Obama. Now if O. can just get Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda supporting him, then it is "On to Chicago." Prentice.

[Stephen Fox]

if 3/4ths of the faculty of the Virginia Seminary Consortium including the John Leland Center for Biblical studies doesn't eventually come out for OBama.
David Brooks made a good case for him about three weeks ago.
When Push comes to shove, how will it play when the curtains are drawn in Robeson County, that will be the real test; will the Jesse Helms atavism rise in the shadows there; how will it play?
Will it be the ghosts of Marney or Ed McGhee?
I think my family is going two thirds Obama, One third Huckabee

But I don't know.

In SC today McCain says he will take the evangelical vote, while last night at Furman Hbee said nationally he is 4 points ahead.

Bill Moyers, Bill Friday and I imagine Randall Lolley and myself not to mention Bill Self and martin Marty and Joe Barnhart for OBama; that is pretty much a quorum.

But again how will it play in Robeson County

[Stephen Fox]

December 19 blog this:

We seem to experience this routine with almost every two-term president. But President Bush was never a hero in the first place and only grew more ridiculous with each subsequent crime against the Constitution, against human decency and against democracy itself. If there's any justice left in this nation, history will record that President Bush was an entirely inadequate tool; a bungling villain whose early popularity grew out of a traumatic and patriotic need to support the office regardless of who occupied it.

And when the flood waters literally rose up and washed away the disguise, the slack-jawed poseur was revealed -- the "bore" who had always been there, but who had been previously and cynically costumed in cowboy drag. Some of us recognized the charade from the beginning, but it required a second national tragedy, this time in New Orleans, to alert the media and the rest of America to his criminal incompetence.

American history is inextricably tied to the presidency. It's how we mentally assemble the chronology of our past. For going on eight years, we've endured a chief executive who never should have ascended to this post. Consequently, this decade has been an aberration; a time when Americans somehow championed an illegitimate, Orwellian hooplehead and, naturally, we suffered for our lack of vision. This is how most of the first decade of this century will be remembered.

Yet our generation is being offered another chance here -- an opportunity to set things straight and elect a president who not only illustrates the historical qualities of the office, but who also defines an energetic new approach.

The next president has to be Senator Barack Obama.

Senator Obama's intelligence, passion and quality of character can inspire us to recapture our own potential for greatness. And after all these years of darkness, there is no alternative other than to correct our trajectory with someone who can elevate our common goals -- the American Dream. For the American Dream to survive, this era demands a new president who will include all of us in the debate over our future, whether or not we agree on every issue.

And I'm proud to say that I don't agree with the senator on everything. But it doesn't matter because this campaign is about much more than individuals and their pet issues. This is about the reacquisition of an ideal -- of a benevolent greatness which has been stolen away from us.

I see in Senator Obama an historic character who fits within my persnickety and idealistic template for the presidency -- and this time around, it happens that my idealistic choice has a realistic chance to win. So this isn't necessarily an endorsement based on ideology, but an endorsement based on that which is required from an historical perspective.

The alternatives on either side of this campaign are ultimately redundant to what we have now.

Fox> I think I am getting close to Brooks great column on Barack; will have it for you and the Baer Werner Soon

[Stephen Fox]

lengthy EXCERPT from David Brooks Dec 18 column comparing OBama and Hillary

If Clinton were running against Obama for Senate, it would be easy to choose between them.

But they are running for president, and the presidency requires a different set of qualities. Presidents are buffeted by sycophancy, criticism and betrayal. They must improvise amid a thousand fluid crises. They’re isolated and also exposed, puffed up on the outside and hollowed out within. With the presidency, character and self-knowledge matter more than even experience. There are reasons to think that, among Democrats, Obama is better prepared for this madness.

Many of the best presidents in U.S. history had their character forged before they entered politics and carried to it a degree of self-possession and tranquillity that was impervious to the Sturm und Drang of White House life.

Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones. He was forged by the process of discovering his own identity from the scattered facts of his childhood, a process that is described in finely observed detail in “Dreams From My Father.” Once he completed that process, he has been astonishingly constant.

Like most of the rival campaigns, I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none. The unity speech he gives on the stump today is essentially the same speech that he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, and it’s the same sort of speech he gave to Illinois legislators and Harvard Law students in the decades before that. He has a core, and was able to maintain his equipoise, for example, even as his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall.

Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. Though Tom DeLay couldn’t deliver much for Republicans and Nancy Pelosi, so far, hasn’t been able to deliver much for Democrats, these warriors believe that what’s needed is more partisanship, more toughness and eventual conquest for their side.

But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. In her outstanding New Yorker profile, Larissa MacFarquhar notes that Obama does not perceive politics as a series of battles but as a series of systemic problems to be addressed. He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.

Obama also has powers of observation that may mitigate his own inexperience and the isolating pressures of the White House. In his famous essay, “Political Judgment,” Isaiah Berlin writes that wise leaders don’t think abstractly. They use powers of close observation to integrate the vast shifting amalgam of data that constitute their own particular situation — their own and no other.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/opinion/18brooks.html

And the link for the entire oped

[Prentice Fox]

Huckabee appears to be having a crisis identity. I hope he doesn't begin to waffle and wane like John Kerry did. According to this Reuters article, "Huck" is doing a delicate balancing act for a Baptist minister who staunchly opposes Abortion and Gay Marriage. http://www.reuters.com/article/politics ... 2120080109 The Rev. Mike of Arkansas affirms that there is a "Maturing within the Evangelical Movement." I wonder what he means by that. Ed Stoddard does an excellent job and a fair evaluation in characterizing the governor here. Prentice.

[Stephen Fox]

Home-schoolers, televangelists, and pro-life advocates can fit very comfortably within this populism because it stresses conservative moral values and it also recognizes their class and community interests," Green said.

The Reuters article does make the interesting point above Huck's populism, but before it has any virtue, any reformed substance or authenticity both he and Frank Page must address The Rove Era in Garry Wills Head and Heart and state explicity how they would Redeem Land's History with Rove.

Otherwise just so much Fog; creating the Old Fog Machine as the Late Lee Atwater was gifted at doing.
South Carolina seems a great place to Refine the Integrity of Huckabee's politics as it relates to the SBC.
So far it looks like he is getting a pass on it.

I shoulda been at Furman Last Night

[Prentice Fox]

Green's comments about "Stressing conservative moral values" are most appropriate in a broad evaluation of defining Huckabee's platform. "Huck" is not your stereotypical SBC preacher. He has been around the block a couple of times. Last night on FOX NEWS in Myrtle Beach, Mike was applauded with great vim and vigor. I predict that he will win in SC. I wonder what Frank Page will say about all this. Frank knows to not endorse a candidate; but he can exercise his First Amendment Rights and preach "VALUES" all the way to Election Sunday. Prentice

[Stephen Fox]

The strength of the Green Quote does not emphasize values as much as it speaks to class resentments and mistreatment the so called "values voters" have been played by Land and Rove the last 8 years.
Problem is Land and Rove have messed the semantics up for political advantage, taking their cue from a Lee Atwater memo as far back as 84.
Values as politically applied by Rove and Land are in reality dogma; and Frank Page, decent a man as he otherwise most likely is; apparently has neither the time nor the impication to take a good look at Garry Wills to get the strength of this point.
It is a significant point; one that David Gushee understands, and I have to believe Mark Olson and Daniel Carro of the Leland Center understand as well.
Huckabee is to be given credit for at least recognizing the ballpark this game should be played in; class differentials within the GOP. And I agree with Mark Shields of the GOP NewsHour, Huck did a masterful job conflating the idea of change as it effects economic disparities in the New Hampshire Debate.
Again, SC is a great place to talk about Land and Page and SBC and GOP when it comes to a virtuous discussion of class within the GOP and how Land has let the country club Republicans play SBC fundamentalists for fools the last 8 years to keep the tax breaks going toward the Upper Income.
That is where this discussion should park; not on the misnomered "values" discussion as you have, Prentice.

[Prentice Fox]

I believe that both of these men will be the winners in SC in their respective party's primary. South Carolina is the first state primary where Black voters are a signicantly large block of the electorate, and the vast majority of these black voters are in the Democratic party. So, therefore Obama will take it from Hillary and smile. (john Kerry is in the wings waiting for the VP running-mate announcement.) South Caroliona is a Baptist state. Huckabee is a Baptist preacher. Therefore, Karl Rove or no Karl Rove, HUCK is the man. Then, it's "On to Chicago." Prentice.

[Stephen Fox]

Almost had a moment here where the world's of Colbert, Huckabee and Prentice intersect as I tried to get a comment up at http://www.faithinpubliclife.org bringing them to the discussion here, particularly Norm's thread on Huckabee and BFM 2000

Meanwhile they are on another topic with a list of signatories including Tom Corts of Smaford's Brother, Paul; a list I'm sure Mark Olson would be proud to be a part of .
Do check the site for the link to the letter and the Colbert item on Huckabee.

One day later, a diverse group of evangelical leaders has submitted a letter to the polling and political directors of ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC and the AP, calling on them to ask the evangelical ID question to Democratic as well as Republican primary voters.

The signatories are an impressive roster of prominent evangelicals: Joel Hunter, David Neff, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Randy Brinson, David Gushee, Randall Balmer, Glen Stassen and Paul Corts.

Here's a generic copy of the letter each executive received.

Check back for the networks' responses!

Posted by Dan on January 10, 2008 04:21 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg

Comments
Evangelicals are not led by MEN only. Get some women leaders on this list as well.

Posted by: Holly | January 10, 2008 06:03 PM

[Prentice Fox]

In the Obama VS. Hillary contest, it is safe to say that Hillary has a lot more "Experience" than Obama has. She claims to have "35 years experience". Obama definitely has Charisma, but I think he lacks Depth. Generalissimo Franco had charisma, and he died of natural causes. I believe that Obama will play the Race card as the Dem Primary gets closer to Super Tuesday. He does not get an automatic Win in South Carolina; but with Oprah's full endorsement and John Kerry "reporting for Duty", he will definitely pass little John Edwards in his home state of SC; and then it is "On to Chicago." Prentice.

[Stephen Fox]

Your reference to On To Chicago is ominously loaded in the roll about "Little" John Edwards and comparing OBama to Mussolini.
Again, I doubt these inflections are part of the corridor talk at Leland Inst and Virginia Seminary Consortium, and may have implications for Johnny Pierce's column on pulpit committees on the Other Board; the character of transitions, etc.

Even so a strong but civil and less taunting conversation took place on Bill Moyers Journal last night on PBS.
Featured the Conservative Shelby Steele and Moyers on Steele's Book Why Obama Can't Win.

The questions raised may speak more to the fitness of the Baptist electorate in North and South Carolina than it speaks to OBama's fitness; but that is an open question.

No doubt in my mind right now that OBama far outdistances Fred Thompson in competence and moral character. I guess we'll see how that plays out with Richard Land; as we are yet to have a statement from Land about the character of Rove and President Bush's character assassination of John McCain in 2000.

How a Baptist who claims a progressive pilgrimage, and claims not only the name of Jesus but Marney and Lolley could settle for Thomspon without a much more rigorous and fair exploration of the Dem field than you have demonstrated to date is incomprehensible to me; is disturbing and has me flumoxxed.

Least I think it has me flummoxxed.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/ ... in_th.html

[Ed Pettibone]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Prentice Fox]

Ed, I too question the veracity and the accuracy of Stephen's claim: "Obama far out distances Fred Thompson.... in moral character." His comments resembles verbal flatulence more than it does true political research. It seems to me to be a toss-up. Neither man will be judged on the "content of their character, or on the color of their skin"(MLK,jr.); but rather on their ability to raise the Almighty $$$'s in support of their candidacy. Nothing more, and nothing less. Obama was "Worshipping" at a Pentecostal church in Vegas today. Is there not a UCC church in this town to serve the black community in a like manner as his home UCC Church in Chicago claims to do??? And I wonder where Hillary was working on her "Methodism" today?? Maybe CNN (Clinton News Network) will tell us later. ---Prentice.