Moderator: Bruce Gourley
Letters for Publication
The Furman Magazine
The Editors:
In January 1992 I wrote an article published in the Christian Century about the fundamentalist threat to Furman and other SBC affiliated schools of higher education. Thus it was with great interest I read Ms. Riddle's Fall 2012 Furman Magazine piece on spiritual life at Furman 20 years after the break with South Carolina Baptist Convention.
I continue to be concerned about an aspect of recent Baptist history not explored in the FUmag article. The easily googled article of Notre Dame's Mark Noll in the New Republic a couple years ago is but the latest to examine the rightwing political strategy in the fundamentalist maneuverings that continue to have an ill effect for our country.
At a progressive gathering of Baptists in Greensboro in 1993 Cecil Sherman, an early leader among Baptist in the resistance to Fundamentalism shared with me a statement Bill Friday had told him. Friday, former Chancellor of the UNC system and longstanding popular state PBS personality told Sherman the most significant event in N.C. the decade of the 80's was the fundamentalist takeover of the Baptist seminary in the town of Wake Forest, N.C. With that seminary, said Friday, fundamentalists hardwired to Senator Jesse Helms and other national forces had inroads to every hamlet and suburb in the state through Baptist pulpits.
Ellen Rosenberg had expressed a similar sentiment in a letter she wrote me in 1989. In fact the last chapter in her late 80's book on Baptists in Transition is devoted to New Right influences on the struggle.
Emory Historian Joe Crespino book Strom Thurmond's America of October 2012 spotlights and ratifies these concerns and others in the Baptist thicket. Reporting it was Furman benefactor Charles E. Daniel--the Furman chapel among other buildings named for him--who introduced textile magnate of GOP force Roger Milliken to Strom Thurmond in 1956. Furman's entanglement in culture wars are deep indeed in Crespino's tale of how Dixiecrats evolved into the Sunbelt. You don't have to go further than the High Cotton or Reedy River Falls or BMW to see how that played out; but as Crespino says, the origins of today's Tea Party are in that story.
My letter from Ms. Rosenberg is in the History section of the forums at http://www.baptistlife.com. There you can also see a note Furman and Baptist historian Loulie Latimer Owens Pettigrew sent me in 1990. Some of you may want to take up the conversation if you like.
Sincerely,
Stephen M. Fox, FU 75
Stephen:
This is to try to thank you for your letter to the Nov 29 Baptist Courier and the one to Birmingham News of Nov 26. Just a few courageous, interested voices like yours, scattered over the strategic states, could have saved us from the total chaos on SBC and state levels. I am sure you have been doing just that--speaking and writing. I have been screaming since 1979. We believe the fundys; they do what they say they will do. Also, we know our Baptist polity and its dependence on trust and integrity.
Within hours after cutting out your Courier letter, I read of the Beeson bequest. I rushed a note to my Alabama relative to congratulate her and Samford. Since she is so confident that the trials that rage in the SBC and other states (ours, alas) will not come in Alabama, I dared to comment. It was something like this: "I hope that the wisdom that helped Mr. Beeson make his fortune also cautioned him to write safeguards around the Samford Bequest. I hope he knew that the word 'convention' cannot be equated with' Baptist." You may have broken the light to her; by return mail she sent me your Birmingham News letter.!
I don't think you need to worry about Furman. I can tell you more...You doubtless have noted that our "cold turkey" approach gave us a better deal than Stetson, Mercer, or even Baylor.
Keep writing and I'll keep screaming. I am a member of the Convention Affiliations Committee, FBC Greenville. You must have been at Atlanta I; I'll see you at Atlanta II.
Very best wishes,
Loulie L. O. Pettigrew
P.S.
Pardon the fuzzy copy. My typewriter is at the fixer's
for the third time this fall. Nervous break-down, I think
Proud of these two fellows. Going to link this story in the Furman conversation of the History room at Baptistlife.com/forums. They make Marshall Frady proud and I hope this summer they google and read the Scott Sherman piece The Unvanquished tribute to Frady. But as Bush 43 Between freedom and fear, God is not neutral. Likewise honoring the Furman value of civility, there is a noble stream from Furman--see Marguerite Chiles lecture in Furman's What Really Matters. Chiles said there is a difference between Lee Atwater and Dick Riley. Joe Crespino accents that thought in Strom Thurmonds America. With all this goodwill and the nation needs it in the worst way, lets don't sacrifice the overriding virtues of Furman greats, Gordon Blackwell, Marshall Frady, Ernie Harrill and LD Johnson as it intersects the public square. I am convinced these fellows would have serious reservations about how Lindsey Graham bows to the tea Party, and for sure these Furman greats would take Trey Gowdy to the Woodshed, like Ike took Joe McCarthy.
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