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.