Frank Page's SBC: Eisenhower or Demint Republicans

[Gene Scarborough]

Jim---

Your analysis has two parts: Presidents or potential ones / the SBC approach being taken by Richard Land. Let me address them in reverse order.

Richard Land has made the same mistake of Franklin Graham---taking a political side rather than ministering to both with an ethical outlook. When Land proudly wears his Republican suspenders as he appears, it is clear the SBC has taken a side as well. Why anyone would enjoy the pretense of righteousness when actions belie a bent to war, is a sad commentary on our Great Crusade / slice off their heads if they won't become Christians pretense. Jesus advocated the towel and love over the whip even though he took such to the moneychangers on the Temple steps!

Your own bent to overlooking the flaws of Republican Presidents is amazing. Each former President gets a wide birth on morals if he is Republican while your take on Democrats is like the Moral Majority implications that Republicans sprout angel wings and halos while Democrats have horns and forks along with the red devil suits.

Personally, I see each former President with the same two inner conflicts of human clay feet and outer pretense of moral perfection. The great communicator, Ronald Reagan, had two wives and was as immoral in that dimension as the affair of Bill Clinton which wasted so much taxpayer money as they tried to impeach him and failed. No human is perfect or without flaws.

I fail to see how we should be drawn to the pretense of morality in any coming candidate. You mention Newt Gingrich, but you say nothing about the more recent events with Arnold Swartzneger. If I were to cite a good man as a potential Republican candidate, it would be Mike Huckaby. The Mormon connection is about to torpedo two other recent potential candidates. That just shows how American voters are easily swayed over a candidate's PARTICULAR religious preference. It was a supposed flaw even with JFK and his Roman Catholic backgroud, but he won despite it being used against him!

I think we should minor on analysis of a candidate over his religion. We have become a laughingstock in the eyes of the European and British politicos who consider a mistress a thing for gossip, but leave it out of the final analysis. The French are notorious for their infidelities---and we looked stupid as Bill Clinton was taken to task in such a distracting fashion.

Why don't we just say "no person is perfect" and leave it at that! The pretense of moral perfection is far worse to me than some scandal with any candidate. God help John Edwards / Strom Thurmond / JFK and others over their infidelity. God help even more a George Bush who used to be an alcoholic, but got a pass as he bombasted his way through 9/11 and the war which still sucks us down in the Middle East. The oil connections and the fact we now have military bases along the route of a long proposed pipeline to the coast running through Afghanistan and other countries in it's path should tell us who is behind our current involvements there.

It's all about the money available to the few who make large contributions to candidates and call in those cards once he is elected President---or a member of Congress. Are we really that moral a nation?????

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.augsburgfortress.org/media/d ... 8Intro.pdf

[Gene Scarborough]

Steve---

Please state your own thoughts clearly rather than give us an endless succession of links I don't care to pursue!!!!

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Ed---

I pick and choose just like you.

I'm just tired of the pretense without the personal expression of view. Blogging, for me, is an opportunity to think and debate issues. It is not for an endless sharing of references nor demands that certain people should get together and discuss things----when we know they never will.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Stephen Fox]

In Alabama Albert Lee Smith's widow Eunie is a Tea Party force.

Will be interesting to see how she and the Alabama Branch tack on this one:

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispa ... %E2%80%9D/

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/05/137554737 ... r-appetite

The kind I was raised with.

I visitted The Ham House in Greenville couple years ago with St. Legislator I was raised with in Gaffney during School integration.

He was on Charlie Rose Jan 2008

Watch the video, good story

I hope OxAm and NPR will study up on Dan Williams book before the GOP Primary next year.

[Jim]

[Stephen Fox]

Make of This?

And will they take issue with Michelle Bachmann and albert Lee Smith's widow on these matters?

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archi ... _bachmann/

[Stephen Fox]

I called the DC office of one Upstate US congressman yesterday and two Senators of Bama

The budget crisis in some respect is the fault of Southern Baptist Convention. They have great influence in Upstate S.C. and Demint and Trey Gowdy to large respect are their creation.

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

If you follow the career of Richard Land and his influence on SBC, and Frank Page's silence on the evolving career of US Senator James Demint of Upstate S.C. then you can see they swim in the same water.
Sandy, it would not hurt you at all to take a close look at Mark Noll's grand review of June 6 print issue of New Republic as well as close read of Dan Williams' God's Own Party.
Then maybe you won't look so ill informed when you cast aspersions on what you consider my sweeping generalizations.
I think you can make a strong case there is no Tea Party today without Richard Land working with karl Rove and the right wing of Pressler's GOP these last 25 years or so.
Hogweed like the tea party just don't grow up like daisies in the body politic without the neglect or the fertilizer of the SBC of the last 40 years whichever way you want to go with my analogy here.

[Gene Scarborough]

Stephen---

I have the same problem as Sandy with following some of your logic.

I think you give far too much credit to Richard Land and Frank Page as centers of influence. I think, instead, they are great at testing which way the wind is blowing and adding their hot air to it!!! They take the path of least resistence and seek popularity when true religion is seldom popular.

Perehaps we simply have a cult of worship of easy riches and pathetic influence of politicians to, again, do that which is easiest. If you can stand the smell of corruption, then you have no problem kissing the posteriors of corrupt people.

Jesus took the high road and paid his price as did JFK / MLK / Ghandi / Began / Sadat / etc. The price of freedom and peace is far higher on the individuals involved than the easy way of war and corruption. Far more suffering results to far more people with our Middle East warfare----but, hey, we need the oil to make a few individuals rich as creases!!!!

[Sandy]

Frank Page was a relatively unknown pastor of mid-sized Southern Baptist churches almost right up to the time he was first elected SBC President. He was at Gambrell Street in Ft. Worth when I was in seminary at Southwestern, which was a moderate Baptist congregation with an attendance of about 400 largely because it was across the street from the seminary, and because it had about a dozen "house churches" scattered throughout the neighborhood. He became a known quantity only after arriving at FBC Taylors, SC, which also isn't really in the SBC megachurch classification. His involvement in the state convention came at a time when there was division among the messengers resulting from Wade Burleson's treatment as an IMB trustee, and growing displeasure at the prospect of electing yet another megachurch pastor whose church collected large amounts of dollars, but barely tipped the CP. I don't think you'd find that he's involved in any kind of secular political activity. The core leadership of the CR allowed his selection as Exec Director to pass because the issue of CP support is still strong, and they couldn't afford another one of their prominent members to be embarrassed by being voted down. Events surrounding his election provide evidence that his grip on the leadership of the SBC isn't firm, and he doesn't wield much influence among the hard core CR inner circle. It's not "Frank Page's SBC," not by a long shot. My guess is that his "silence" on Demint and on secular politics in general, is nothing more than the exercise of his better judgement.

Richard Land, like Judge Pressler, had aspirations for appointment to a Bush administration post. They both did a lot of hobnobbing but their connections to the former Texas governor were minimal and distant. Pressler wound up as a liability and got a very minor, fourth level job in some obscure commission. Land never got anywhere. He was heart and soul for Romney during the 2008 primaries, and most Southern Baptist Republicans didn't follow him there, choosing McCain or Huckabee instead. There isn't one Southern Baptist in a hundred who would recognize the name Richard Land, or who would be able to tell you what he does.

[Gene Scarborough]

Sandy--

Thanks for the astute observations of politics, both religious and political. With current Church / State separation being obliterated, I gather you see some of our religious leaders in the SBC aspiring to Republican political positions.

Also most interesting is Frank Page's seeming ability to use the skills of a camelion to adapt to his church as he aspires to bigger ones.

He is following in the footsteps of Ed Young as I have watched him progress from Taylors to 2nd Houston. His move from Taylors took him to SC's Columbia First where his ego was boundless. It wasn't too long until he migrated to the largeness of Texas! Now he's getting old and looking tired. Johnny Hunt has encountered serious health issues in an similar quest.

Equally interesting is the monicer he used all the way through: "The Fellowship of Excitement." Some years ago he and his church were featured in an SBC publication. It's description of him was a pastor totally consumed with popularity and growth in numbers. His son has gone on and gotten in trouble over expenditures for a private jet in his big Texas church.

I am seeing a pattern here which troubles me: obsessive pursuit of popularity and bigness / large ego / personal desires to be paid well and have, not only church influence, but political as well. It reminds me of the Pharisees of Jesus' day!!!

[Stephen Fox]

and the Mark Noll Review.

That said I join Gene in commending Sandy's analysis of Frank Page. But with an Emory Education I think Gene misspelled Chameleon badly; Monicer coulda been a typo.

If I understand Williams, which is necessary read for Sandy and Gene ASAP; Williams adds great import to takeover of the SBC in the scheme of things.
And neither Gene nor Sandy IMO have looked close or had register with them the original link in this thread about Frank Page's connections in Upstate S.C. to an advocacy group for Jim Demint and the Tea Party Republicans.

Read Williams and Noll; read the original RD.org column and maybe I make more sense than you give me credit for. Would be great for Bruce Gourley to join this discussion at this point.

Also I think Gene is little lax on the history of Ed Young. Young has always been close to Harry Dent, who coyly worked with the Pressler and Mohler wing to finish off SBC progressives in late 80's. Gave the takeover little more veneer of respectability than it deserved. Kinda like Nixon's appearance with Billy Graham in Knoxville two weeks after Kent State in 1970.

Read Balmer on Land. I stand by what I say and its significance.

[Sandy]

The "takeover" of the SBC (if you can call something a "takeover" that has been embraced and approved by an overwhelmingly supportive majority of churches) was caused by two things. 1. A drift toward the same liberal theology and practices that captured many mainline Protestant denominations in the 60's which included teaching in at least two seminaries that violated their statements of faith and doctrinal parameters and 2. A group of leaders on trustee boards, the executive committee, and at the helm of denominational agencies and institutions that were oblivious to the rising tide of warnings and complaints coming from the grass roots. There was also a lot of displeasure at the fact that the leadership was entrenched, narrow, and bloated with nepotism and favoritism in hiring practices related to the higher paying, more secure denominational jobs.

As Gene mentioned, there were a few leaders among those in the conservative resurgence who had political aspirations, and saw the shift in SBC leadership as a means to acquiring what they were after. Moderates jumped on this, and blew the conspiracy theories and "true" motivations of the CR all out of proportion. Stephen has clearly bought into this, and continues to hang on to it. The evidence that this was clearly not the case, and that political opportunism was a fringe element and a non-factor in the shift of power in the SBC is in the fact that no one actually had the influence or the ability to achieve the political influence that they desired. If that had been a major part of the reason behind the resurgence, it would have materialized in much more than it has, and the convention messengers would have put a quick halt to it.

[Stephen Fox]

But I think Bruce Gourley and Aaron Weaver among others would beg to differ on the nuances and substance of the points he emphasizes.

Before we get into serious Thread drift with Gene S and others, would like to keep the focus roughly on difference between Demint and Eisenhower factions within SBC political bent.
Maybe Gene and or Sandy will start a new thread here at SBC Trends and we can see if there is any new insight into a matter we explore annually on this board.

[Gene Scarborough]

Let's face it gentlemen---the average Baptist is "dumb as a stump" when it comes to theology and biblical understanding. As long as they are fed the samo-samo and get to meet their friends and gossip on Sunday, they are generally happy. Big covered dish suppers also help! They usually want their presuppostitions stroked and God help the preacher who speaks of racial issues / immigration / Political and Corporate immorality when it comes to greed.

The SBC has always been a conglomoration of churches giving to missions as their only reason to work together. Autonomy allowed this wide range of characters and theologies to co-exist for the benefit of mission support. We have had heroic people like Walker Knight and Victor Glass who stood tall on racial integration, but did they ever get their knocks for going against accepted Southern culture.

In "Christ and Culture," I think it was Reinhold Neihbor who pointed out that the church should be a point of integrity apart from culture rather than a place of support for cultural violations of Christ's teachings. There should always be tension between what we say we believe and what we actually do. At the same time there should be some progress upward and forward toward the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Since the 60's is fail to see any wisdom in erasing the bounderies between church and state. Our nation's founders came out of such a mess when church and state were one and---particularly Baptists---were independent and did not want to be told what to do. The ONLY THING which allowed our diversity to work in unison was thinking more of missions than trite theologies.

The lust for power and control destroyed all that! It was dirty---as politics can be dirty---and it did little to bring joy and peace to our brand of religion. It did much to put searching people off with all the fussing and fighting. Right now the only place of peace seems, to me, to be a-religious / a-political----but that is a cop out so, for Christ's sake, let's help Christ meet culture to redeem it to something far better than we have had in the last 40 years!!!

Sorry I mispelled a word, Stephen---but then you would have nothing "noble" to do!!!

[Sandy]

[Sandy]

Stephen, bless your soul. I'm bowing out of this conversation. You're making connections and implying relationships based on a vivid imagination more than anything else. You are a moderate Baptist version of Roger Moran, of the Missouri Baptist Laymen's Association who played the connections game in such a way that it was hard to follow. I don't think there's much doubt that a majority of Southern Baptists vote Republican, though I think there's a significant, and larger than realized minority who don't. The individual Southern Baptists who are now in Congress didn't get there on the convention's coattails and I think the theorizing about conspiracies of a cadre of denominational leaders using the convention for secular politics is way overblown. If that were the case, then Pressler would have been Bush's vice-presidential running mate and Land would have been Secretary of State.

[Gene Scarborough]

Sandy---

Don't bow out yet!

Sorry if I burst your bubble about the typical SBC church member, but too much of it in my 16 full-time years and the rest since serving part time is EXACTLY AS IT SAID! Too many churches are little more than a glorified social club. We have no clue about the "cost of discipleship," and as soon as a serious moral issue arises we rush to keep our mouths shut!!!

That's just my experience and, if yours is different, I rejoice in it.

[Stephen Fox]

PCA

Would be interesting to have Frank Page navigate this story given Page's role as an official advisor in one of Demint's network of concerns.
See link to that advisory position in early post of this thread.

Here is how it plays among the true believers at Redeemer Prez PCA Greenville, Sc.
The Barry Wynn mentioned in the story is brother of Baxter Wynn, Furman trustee on staff at FBC Greenville, S. C. from the Hardy Clemons through tenure of Jeff Rogers.
The Wynn Brothers are nephews of Lester Maddox, former Gov of Georgia. Their Mother was Lester's sister.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 84218.html

[Stephen Fox]