Shorter College chills the Air

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/6886/53/

Larry McSwain was prez there not long ago.

And not too long ago Shorter joined with Berry to host great Short Story writer Mary Hood, who sang in her Baptist choir in Woodstock for women's writers conference. I sat in on that couple days. Great discussion about Flannery O Connor. Lot of men in the audience.

Guess that might put a chill also on Rome's burgeoning RIFF Film festival.

I was kinda hoping they would bring Rachel Held Evans to town to discuss Evolving in Monkeytown but the Inerrancy guideline stifles that.

Joe Frank Harris Dad was member of Northside Drive Baptist when Gov of Georgia.

Somebody missed the boat somewhere. Looks like the Boy Trustee been hanging out with Charles Pickering son, Chip.

Nelson Price is having his way. Maybe Price will come on over to Bama and Run for Governor.

And or maybe the trustees will see this post and all do a weekend group reading of Wayne Flynt's Keeping the Faith. Or Marilynne Robinson's recent Q and A at Duke.

Now there is an idea. Lifelong learning for Trustees and Shorter as a Case Study.

I understand some of their inclinations, but inerrancy for proffs to sign.

I guess my recent letter in the Rome News Tribune about Al Mohler didn't come to much good

[Chris]

This link includes a clip of an interview with the President.

http://www.11alive.com/news/article/210 ... s-eyebrows

In #3, they omitted "fornication".....an oversight?

[Gene Scarborough]

Just another sign of the power of CR in Georgia = stupidity for an institution of "higher learning!!!"

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Ed---

Your homophobia is showing here!!!

Like it of not, Rome is in the Metro Atlanta region and it is the same a NYC and other NY suburbs.

Many people are conflicted about their sexual orientation and need to be more compassionately encouraged to honor their identity without having to desert their religious heritage. Just because a person is gay did not seem to bother Jesus---or we would have heard something about what existed in his day within the 4 Gospels.

Instead, Jesus spoke of love and forgiveness. The Jews were ranting over perfection and unforgiveness. Paul had a great conflict here and the resulting demand for celibacy in the Roman Catholic priests remains a great problem for them.

[Neil Heath]

Shorter College was apparently getting a lot of negative reaction on its facebook page. They asked them to refrain, so another facebook page was created called

"Shorter College/University Alumni (UNCENSORED)"

where alums and others are venting their displeasure with the school's recent decisions. My daughter is an angry alum who will no longer support the school financially or any other way.

Neil

[William Thornton]

Shorter is the single most prominent case where as one source summarized it, trustees voted to "sever ties to the [Georgia Baptist] convention and to shut the college down and shift control of its assets to its foundation. The foundation in turn reestablished the college with its own board. And the entire process was challenged by the Georgia Baptists."

The former trustees lost their case. The school remains under firm GBC control. Let those who disagree with the current trustees' decisions attend school elsewhere. It's a private school.

All that aside, the GBC puts big bucks, about $1.3 million into Shorter directly and more in student support.

[Haruo]

[Abel]

I applaud Shorter for taking a Biblical stand. If one works at a Christian college, I believe they should hold Biblical principles and represent Christ. Drinking and sodomy are not Christlike.

[Gene Scarborough]

Well, Shorter's President was on our local news out of New Bern this morning. It didn't impress me---sorry.

I'm not sure it is authentic. It appears to be another show of SBC super-righteousness. I totally agree with an upright lifestyle, but making too much of a show just causes pretending and lying in the reverse side of moral issues.

Time will tell. Bob Jones University has the "distance rule" and years ago applied for machine guns at their guard posts. Thankfully, it was denied by SC!!!

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

The "wild side" of Ed appears at last!!!!

[Gene Scarborough]

[Abel]

[Big Daddy Weaver]

So both Shorter and Truett McConnell (aka the Harvard of Cleveland, Georgia) have been mentioned.

Here's a bit of news about Mercer, a Domestic Partner Benefit Policy.

All that's missing is Brewton-Parker College - a school that for years employed quite a few gays and lesbians.

[Gene Scarborough]

And Baptists want to say, "We hate the sin, but love the sinner." --- gimme a break =

All the other schools ouside Mercer are bowing to that red-faced / irrate / little church preacher who rises to berate them for dancing on campus---as if the pittance they get from the GBSC is enough to take the grief from such!

Reminds me of that story told of Dr. Poteat who was president of Wake Forest when located still in Wake Forest. The convention had just had its bluster over dancing on campus when Dr. Poteat left his office in the twilight to see the branches of a magnificent magnolia tree, going to the ground, moving. As he parted the limbs he found a couple in the altogether enjoying the rages of college hormones.

He quickly said, "Excuse me, I just thought you were dancing!!!!!"

[Abel]

[Stephen Fox]

Here is a letter in the Rome News Tribune about the SEa Change at Shorter

http://www.romenews-tribune.com/view/fu ... ge-at-SU--?

I think's it's just the tip of the iceberg.

What would be interesting would be three day summit--yes bring the New Prez from Baylor to Rome, Ga. BDW and Barry Hankins can make it happen.

Let's look at Nelson Price's history and where it has intersected the John Birch Society and the Eagle Forum and Where it has not.

Bring Rachel Held Evans and Evolving from MonkeyTown down from Dayton, Tn.

And bring Mark Noll and Randall Balmer, even Holly Hollman to put Shorter in Some perspective.

Marilynne Robinson was on campus at Furman and Duke in the last two months. And she has been to Samford.

Charles Marsh has visitted several schools with Baptist affiliations in the last several years.

I doubt you will see Marsh or Robinson at Shorter anytime soon.

Or Steve Oney on the lynching of Leo Frank not far from Price's Roswell Street BC having an informed conversation with Price about that legacy for Larry Macdonald and Joe MOrecraft's old Congressional District.
What role did Price play in Morecraft's Reconstructionist campaign of 84?

Look for the Bircher roll call of Faith.

Eunie Smith

Paul Pressler; Barry McCarty; jackleg tea party advocates. Rick Perry; the grandchildren of J. Frank Norris etc. opn and on

This is a shame and a travesty: One of Rome's Seven Shining Hills has become a Dim Bulb for the Dim Witted!!!!!

[Ed Pettibone]

Gene Scarborough: And Baptists want to say, "We hate the sin, but love the sinner." --- gimme a break

Able: All Christians should love the sinner, but hate the sin regardless of what denomination they are.
From where I sit, it looks like it is Mercer who is bowing to the conformity of the world. It takes backbone to be a Christian and not compromise Biblical principles.

Ed: Here I am I am inclined to agree with Able. I am disappointed in Underwood's rational, yet I am empathetic with the bind in which schools like Mercer find themselves. And to Gene, I will say enabling others in their sin is not love.

[Stephen Fox]

I know some of these people

http://www.shorter.edu/about/board_of_trustees.html

Joy Battles for instance sister was one time significant other of Georgia humorist and legend Lewis Grizzard. Grizzard wrote a column about Joy's Mother's passing, A Big Auburn Fan.

Joy's father in law was leader in the Rome area during the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. In 86 current Shorter Trustee Lamar Barden was in the moderate line to address SBC Prez Candidate From Amarillo, Texas while Floyd Battles was in the Jerry Vines or Adrian Rogers line.

Event was held at North Broad Baptist Church, later to be kicked out of the Floyd County Baptist Association.

I remember there was an air of the fundies caucussing before the appearance on Winfred Moore that day.

Abernethy then of NBC News, now of PBS Faith Weekly was present and I spoke to him after the event.

I had talked to him on the phone; saw him leaving and told my Mother: "Here I go."

[Sandy]

[Gene Scarborough]

Look folks---just because you don't drink, dance, and chew--nor go with the girls that do--DOES NOT make you a Christian!

You are trying to define "righteous" by deeds and actions further defined by your traditions as "right" or "wrong." The first thing a learning student in sociology class learns that much of morals is defined by culture. That which is "right" in one has no consequence in another.

All cultures have a sense of "right and wrong." That is God's essential work in mankind to know sin and guilt. Be careful how we use our Puritanical and mean Baptist sense of morality as an ultimate benchmark. Gate guards at the Greenville, SC, bastion or righteousness (Bob Jones University) requesting automatic weapons to keep the world of evil out is a night-and-day difference with Furman on the same side of town.

Let's try some discussion of how Jesus said, "Be in the world, but not of the world." How about the way God will separate the sheep from the goats. The pretense of righteousness is but a seed bed for hidden debauchery to take place on the college campus.

Let me tell you of the super-conservative /righteous youth minister who worked with me one summer. He had a hissie fit over girls wearing their halter tops which had just come into vogue. He laid a giant guilt trip on anyone not a righteous as him----BUT his fiance was pregnant when the quickly married at the end of that summer!!!! The only trouble was that she was a college roomate to one of the best tattletales at our church and the word got out quickly to every teen molested in the name of righteousness by this young pretender.

Lesson learned by many about pretended super-righteousness. Far different than being "in the world, but not of the world."

[Stephen Fox]

Lot of ground Sandy between character building institutions and signing a statement agreeing to Inerrancy.
Inerrancy leads one toward the John Birch Society and the White Citizens Council is my observation.
Enlightened Baptists saw something wrong with That and Pressler was able to distract and Fog and demagogue and confuse folks like Adrian Rogers and now we have you apologizing for Shorter's New Direction.
That saddens me.
Tom Corts at Samford, nor LD Johnson at Furman nor Underwood at Baylor now Mercer were the slippery slope sliding antiChrists Paige Patterson at Mohler and now Nelson Price would lead us to believe.
Marilynne Robinson makes too much sense to me to buy that warm spit.

And it saddens me a good fellow like you Sandy, can't see Shorter debacle for what it is.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

I know President Underwood to be a man of conviction. He displayed his conviction while interim president at Baylor and is doing the same at Mercer University.

I'm sure he would reject the implication that he has been somehow pressured into taking this position. In light of Underwood's comments in the EthicsDaily column that this is "consistent with our policy of not discriminating" and is "the right thing to do," to suggest that he made this move due to pressure or, to quote Ed, "being in a bind," would imply that Underwood is being dishonest.

Underwood has always been regarded as an honest administrator. If he says this policy of domestic partner benefits is "the right thing to do," I think we can take him at his word that he sincerely believes that it is indeed "the right thing to do."

Kudos to Underwood for doing the right thing and enacting a policy consistent with Mercer's commitment to nondiscrimination and promotes fairness as well. If a school doesn't prohibit gays from employment and doesn't prohibit gay students from enrolling, they shouldn't punish those students and employees with their benefits offerings.

[Stephen Fox]

I've been a fan of Underwood since reading the Mother Jones profile of 2004 or so. I've linked it before.

The likes of Corts, Underwood, and at Wake Forest Nathan Hatch, and Willimon as Chaplain at Duke are wise at serpents in a tricky world. Marilynne Robinson too.
World of difference between their substance and capacity and what Nelson Price is doing at Shorter; and it's a shame Price and the folks he got to vote with him in the lesser version of Christian Higher Education aspirations now at Shorter don't have the capacity to get it.