New Insights on the History of the SBC Takeover

[Stephen Fox]

Sunday I heard an interview on NPR of Kevin Kruse of the new book Faultlines, a Political history of the US since th 1970s. He was talking about the SBC Takeover. I was reading some stuff that I plan to outline in an upcoming blog.

But this link is just too juicy on how shallow the SBC Takeover was

https://heterodoxacademy.org/wp-content ... _Lines.pdf

And Ive come across a great quote from J Frank Norris will share here. William Thornton will like this one.

From another historian.

Norris said: I was born when the moon was dark, in the dog fennel season, when a black cat jumped on a black coffin.

[William Thornton]

Nothing new. We already knew that liberal SBC leaders were pro abortion. Thank Gawd former the CR,

[Stephen Fox]

Up today at Baptist Global News about Abortion and Facebook.

William you are brighter than this. I hope you are not clowning. It has been decided again and again that mendacity was at the heart of the operation when Lee Atwater changed Race Baiting into the politics of guns and abortion. Lepore, Metzl, and now Kruse make ratify the history. You are behind on your reading and spiritual discernment. There is a whole different world beyond the "theology" of Johnny Hunt, Jerry Vines and your friends at Baptist Voices.

[William Thornton]

Then you should have no trouble pointing out these "new insights." Anyone can drop a string of names.

[Stephen Fox]

Then you should have no trouble pointing out these "new insights." Anyone can drop a string of names.

And anyone who blogs about Jerry Vines and does a more than adequate job on a CBF book about Lottie Moon is capable of going outside their comfort zone and usual reading habits for subtantive and insightful in depth reading.

Or as I'm sure WA Criswell said at one point, You can take a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. Or in your case Willie Tee, maybe it was a mule

[Sandy]

Then you should have no trouble pointing out these "new insights." Anyone can drop a string of names.

And anyone who blogs about Jerry Vines and does a more than adequate job on a CBF book about Lottie Moon is capable of going outside their comfort zone and usual reading habits for subtantive and insightful in depth reading.

Or as I'm sure WA Criswell said at one point, You can take a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. Or in your case Willie Tee, maybe it was a mule

I don't see anything in this particular interview that provides any "new insights" into the conservative resurgence. Abortion has always ebbed and flowed as a tool for getting support and money, so much so that conservatives have often been the bigger obstacle in achieving their own goal. I'll give you credit with this one, you're at least heading into more realistic assessment of the situation.

Take a shot at current reading about what is transpiring among both Southern Baptists and conservative Evangelicals at large. You've come up with some excellent reading here and there on that particular subject. The focus of moderate Baptists now is keeping the institutions they've build alive in the hopes that a better day is coming. There's not going to be some kind of awakening among Southern Baptists that will turn fence sitters toward CBF or the Alliance at this point, the fence sitters are drifting back into the SBC. But on the other side those few moderates, such as you Stephen, who still hold an interest in trying to figure out how the majority ousted the narrow and exclusive good ole boy system that entrenched itself behind bylaw walls that now benefit the other side. It was a "takeover" only in the sense that the conservatives figured out how to scale the wall and had enough support to hang on long enough to outlast the moderates. Nothing was "taken over" that those who gained control weren't entitled to run by virtue of membership and they had the support of 90% of the rest of the denomination.

But you could launch a new theme. There is still little criticism of resurgence leadership in the SBC and almost every blog post or opinion piece that is going to be critical of something happening in the denomination is prefaced by the phrase, "of course, there is no question that the conservative resurgence was absolutely neccessary, yada yada yada....." And yet, in spite of the stated goals of the resurgence leadership and all the bombast of the past 40 years the SBC has experienced repeated disaster under their leadership. Baptisms, the key indicator of their evangelistic emphasis mantra, have steadily declined with only a few annual increases here and there to inflate into some kind of success. Membership and attendance are now dropping at rates rivaling those of mainline denominations. Seminary enrollment has declined by half of what it was at its peak. NAMB became a major tangle of good ole boy influences, personal kingdom building and staggering financial mismanagement. Southwestern Seminary, under the leadership of one of the lauded and revered "architects" of the resurgence has become at least as much of a disaster as the broken down Bible college he led before he got his resurgence reward. The first deliberate moves away from their control have been taken at the convention level. There's your theme, Stephen.

[Stephen Fox]

Coming early June. I'm about to blog if you want to click on my blog link.

Meantime The Marty Cohen book on Upstate Religious right should inform both Sandy and Thornton's misgivings about my take on the significance of the SBC Takeover. Cohen book not available till mid June which is sad for the Harris event in FBC Spartanburg's back yard, there was a piece curated at Baptist Global News; or info should google for Vox.

I like what you said Sandy, I just need to think about it a little more. While there is some substance to what you say, OTOH, Bama is a third world country right now in large part because of the complicity of the Alabama State Baptist convention complicity in the SBC Takeover. Again Lepore chapter Battle lines spells that out if you look at the lingering sickness of the state as the legacy of Phyliss Schlafly and her disciple Eunie Smith.

On another angle here is a nuance from a review of Susan Shaw's first book, Shaw a product of Jerry Vines at West Rome in the 70s. Media in Georgia trying to understand Governor Kemp and his fetal heartbeat bill are lookint at Shaw and the Jerry Vine/Tim Tebow's Momma matrix

From the Dee Miller review of Shaw 2012 CET:

To be Southern is to be Baptist and to be Baptist is to be Southern in many communities in the South, says Shaw. To be a Southern woman is to have learned from birth to be “sweet and genteel,” often in a passive resistant way. So, in a sense, there is resistance. Yet it is questionable how much change that resistance can bring.

Many of her informants noted that while the denomination had changed, they had not. As one of the participants, I know that I’ve often said that myself. Yet, in looking back, I now challenge that understanding on both fronts. The Convention did not change nearly as much as those of us educated in it’s institutions from 1960 to 1990 were led, by some idealistic professors, to believe it would. The bigotry that was there at its birth has remained strong and well protected.

However, many whose stories appear in this book, have truly changed, as much from education and enlightenment through sources outside of the Convention as from the skills and education provided by participation in Baptist life. Some have become bolder and stronger, like the proverbial “tea bag in hot water,” by daring to challenge hypocrisy on issues of social justice and theological confusion that comes through double-speak. Those who have thrived in spite of the system may see and appreciate the first chapter of James with clearer vision.

[William Thornton]

I have no idea what my old friend is talking about. If there's a book, maybe he could get it and read it and then comment...but I don't think Stephen reads books.

[Stephen Fox]

I have no idea what my old friend is talking about. If there's a book, maybe he could get it and read it and then comment...but I don't think Stephen reads books.

In the last six months I have read Lepore's History of America, Edwin C Bridges Bicentennial history of Alabama. Furman grad I am working to bring him to Collinsville as an official Bicentennial event in September.

Rereading Doctorow's The March about Sherman in Georgia. Earlier this year read Varina by Cold Mtn Author.

Upon Further Review by Pesca, I could go on and on.

So as Padget Powell said in a Woman Named Drown,....Stephen don't read book..........

My blog on Kamla is up and widely linked including to Bama Senate Candidate Tommy Tuberville. Willie Tee, you should read it

[Stephen Fox]

http://foxofbama.blogspot.com/2019/06/s ... awdry.html

[Stephen Fox]

Historical Context. Randall Balmer
https://www.vnews.com/Column-Southern-B ... 6E5ZPx9gNs

First time it registered with me one of their key operatives came straight out of policy with Fox News darling Mike Huckabee

Great history he sets up for this trump moment

Best understood if you read Remnick of New Yorker onRace Limbaugh and Trump, And Edsall NY Times, Audacity of Hate. Read those and have a prayer retreat and maybe if will dawn on you how fundies have beat Jesus up in the last 40 years

[Stephen Fox]

As for abortion he mentions in his attempted take down of my analysis above, my latest blog was posted yesterday. Take a gander.

[Stephen Fox]

I have no idea what my old friend is talking about. If there's a book, maybe he could get it and read it and then comment...but I don't think Stephen reads books.

Willie Tee: Ive just finished Michael Gorra's The Saddest Words, the latest and likely most brilliant analysis of the legacy of William Faulkner. Also read the New Yorker, NYbooks and The Atlantic Reviews of the Book. The Atlantic Review by Drew Gilpin Faust President of Harvard and friend of my Furman friend Tomiko Brown Nagin, now dean of Radcliffe.

Why don't you read a few pages. Gray Allison would be proud.

[Stephen Fox]

https://wordandway.org/2021/02/24/the-l ... -d-greear/