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But BOGUS

I do hope Sandy you will read The Anointed as a matter of conscience by January 15. You could get your hands on a copy from any decent Library by Friday if you call them tomorrow and ask them to put the order in pronto.
I give you credit for expressing yourself well. Just the substance don't scour as well as you have convinced yourself.

I hope Pierce himself and Aaron Weaver wll engage your point soon. I hope to bring it to Pierce attention by Wednesday if he doesn't see it here on the Forum.
Sincere thanks, however, for engaging this aspect of the tragic world of Nelson Price; Tragic not a throwaway word as it was intentionally selected by Harold Bloom to describe the "sandy" as in sinking sand, foundation on which you have constructed your allegiance: The Fundamentalist Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.

OK, Fox, I'll chime in.
1. My potato chip parable is spot on.
2. Shorter is controlled by the Ga. Baptist Convention and the GBC is controlled by fundamentalists. Therefore, the GBC is taking on that orientation. No surprise.
3. The GBC presidents (and other key elected leaders), over the last decade or so, have little legitimate education (despite their well-used "Doctor" titles). It's a classic case of bearing false witness. Therefore, in the current GBC culture, as expected, indoctrination trumps quality education.
4. I also preferred the other college in Rome, Ga., anyway.

John---

I think you made one of the best images possible. It totally clicks!

My comment on your blog depicts my naive mother who, at age 93, still gives to a cause which is totally against what she achieved as a graduate of Carver School of MIssions and a woman who took the RA's when no man would.

The whole deception is terrible and she won't listen to her son who has tried to give her some insights she won't believe!

Sandy----

For you there is a parable of the mule:

Once there was a farmer with a mule. He was a hard-headed old rascal who would always want to do what he wanted to do. He would pay absolutely no attention to the commands of his owner. He would stop and eat whenever he pleased in the field. He was allowed to always do what he wanted whether it was wise or not. He enjoyed his ways but had no direction in his life beyond doing what he wanted when he wanted as he wanted.

The farmer had 2 choices: hit him over the head so hard with a 2X2 so many times that his brains would spill out / send him to the school for mules to teach him how to be a productive animal. He chose the latter.

The school for mules was run by a wise Veternarian who understood the ways of mules. The first thing he did was use an electric prod whenever that mule wanted to do his own thing. Despite the pain of having to do it a different way, the mule ultimately learned to respond to voice commands of "gee" and "haw." He learned to eat from his trough at the right times of day and after a productive day of plowing. After a month the mule was returned to his owner who was flabbergasted at the changes in his animal.

"What was you secret to success?" was his first question.

"Well," said the Vet, "I realized he was spoiled with hard-headed mule ways. You never challenged him with new ideas. You never made him mad because you just let him do what he wanted. He never progressed beyond his basic nature because you never challenged his mule brain with being directed by a man with some good sense who had been some places that mule had not gone."

"I challenged him even though he didn't like it. I became his professor and mentor and he developed beyond his spoiled ways by a man who was just thinking like a mule only beaten by blinders on. When that animal was controlled by his mind instead of blinders, he got the full picture and enjoyed his walk in the field!!!"

The nice thing about Jesus' parables in the New Testament is that they had a point, and were illustrations of a particular principle of truth. The parables that have emerged here are tied to pointless straw men.

Save them, Gene, for those Baptists you think are too stupid to care about anything in the church except the fried chicken and where the thermostat is set.

Here's a suggestion. Choose twenty Southern Baptist churches at random. Pick a few in Georgia, South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina to get some of that Sandy Creek tradition flavor, a few from 'Bamy and "Miz-sippeh", some Tennessee and Kentucky folk, a few of the Yankee Brethren in Maryland and up into the Northeast, and some from the Southwest and the far west. Tell them these four things, and see what their reaction would be:
1. You can't believe all of the Bible because some of it has errors.
2. The next time your church's pulpit becomes vacant, you must consider female candidates to fill it. You can ignore those passages of scripture that restrict the office of elder/shepherd/overseer to men because they are culturally outdated.
3. You need to ordain several women as deacons in your church to keep up with the times and avoid the appearance of being "fundamentalist."
4. Open your membership and leadership up to gay people. Paul was homophobic, and so you can discount whatever he had to say on the subject.

It's not that people are just in the habit of supporting the Cooperative Program because they always have. It's because they've seen the leftward drift of mainline denominations and don't want the same thing happening to theirs. There has been ample opportunity, and over thirty years of a learning curve for Baptists to "get it" and there's been no movement whatsoever to the left. The odds are that if you picked twenty churches at random, you probably wouldn't find a half dozen people in all of them total who would even give consideration to any of the things I mentioned. And it's not because they've always bought the same bag of chips. To even think that is condescending and arrogant.

This is an easy problem to solve. If you don't like what's happened at Shorter University, or at any other Baptist related college, university or graduate level school that Southern Baptists have reclaimed, you don't have to go there, send your children there, or contribute to its endowment. It doesn't seem like there's a line, or a waiting list for any of the "free thinking" non-fundamentalist Baptists schools and I'm sure, given their current financial status, they'd take your check.

First, JPierce; thanks for chiming in. The conversation is metastasizing in several places today and I don't have time to cover all the nuances but I will cherrypick at the week goes on.

Johnny, I do commend to you and to David McKenzie who teaches the Church state course at Berry every other year, and all the Progressive Baptist forces in the Rome area, the Giberson and Stephens Book The Anointed. With me you can learn from it too. I hope Baptists Today will do a feature on the book soon, and as I have said before great opportunity for Tony Cartledge to bone up on the book and interview one of the authors when they come to Wingate in March.

But now focussing on one apsect of this conversation I am having with Sandy.
The Anointed, in a grand two page riff on Al Mohler, bout page 246 of the book, spotllight Alan Wolfe's online piece in the Atlantic of a few years ago.
Bottom line, when Mohler and Nelson Price overreach into the world of Liberal arts, they speak "gibberish". Read the book to do justice to the assertion.
Order a copy from your local Barnes and Noble. You are not obligated to buy but it would be a shame if there aren't two copies of the book already in the Berry, Mercer, Baylor and Samford Libraries.

To whet your appetite--and I am expecting Gene Scarborough to read all four installments of this piece before he utters the first word in response -- here is the Link of the Year for thinking Baptists; and a big Shout Out to Nelson Price and his Regime at Shorter:

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/is ... /wolfe.htm

Sandy----

You have just proven the point of my mule-headed story = thanks!!!!

So the thinking of Mark Noll on these matters means nothing to you, Sandy?

And Rachel Held Evans?

You had to do a lot of cherry picking to make it seem like Nelson Price knows what he is doing at Shorter; and the Fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention was good for critical thinking in American Universities

Stephen, do you have any idea what is involved in a Christian philosophy of education? It's a whole lot more than college where you have to attend 24 out of 32 chapels in a semester and take six hours of "religious studies."

Wheaton is not the only Evangelical Christian college that requires its faculty to subscribe to the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, considers Darwinism a flawed theory, and yet ranks in the top quartile of American institutions of higher education from an academic perspective. And yes, there are a lot of conservative Evangelicals who have successfully made it through one of the so-called "world class" institutions of higher learning with their belief in the Bible's inerrancy intact, and convinced that Darwinism is wrong.

Sandy---

You have a view of higher education based on undergirding presuppositions rather than exposing students to all and making them make choices supported with their own logic and view.

Education which shows in the class "certain views" to make the grade is not education, but indoctrination.

For me the Evolution Theory of Darwin and the Bible are both theories. When examined more closely both have more in common than at odds. That seems to be the Great Divide in education these days and it is long past the ignorance shown in the Scopes Trial!

In regard Wheaton and Creationism and Inerrancy

Page 246 of Giberson and Stephens The Anointed goes begging for you to read. It answers your reservations with Specific reference to Al Mohler. Mark Noll who taught at Wheaton for a long time is often referenced in the book.
Apparently you missed what Noll said about Inerrancy in America's God in regard, Whitman, Lincoln and Emily Dickinson.
Your plow don't scour.

Read the book, We'll take it from there. But on this matter I honor my Mother and one of her favorite verses and I paraphrase: "I Would Not have you Ignorant, Brethren.,......"

As Jeremiah Wright said: It's in the Bible

I am disappointed Rogers lecture in the series is not online; but this should help Sandy and Dr. Thornton and their church libraries get hold of a copy, or buy one and send it to Nelson Price at Shorter:

http://www2.furman.edu/sites/chaplaincy ... fault.aspx

Lord knows Stephen---Do you EVER post anything of your OWN understanding and clear position from your own brain????