Casey Mattox, Kris Kobach and the Lesser Vision

Lot of stuff for Casey to navigate in regard his hometown and the Alliance Defense Fund's vision for America.
Take a look at the public policy forum of Baptistlife.com where this will be up for wider discussion; and SBC Trends at that site as well.
Jill Lepore's article in the New Yorker, the Christine Stansell Holy Way review in the New Republic, my friend Brent Walker's essay in January report from the Capitol, and Amy Sullivan's feature today MOn. Jan 30 in USA Today indicts Chuck Pickering for emphasizing abortion to the detriment of my pressing matters in this election cycle.
Biggest indictment was this weekend's 45 minute spotlight on This American Life's NPR program on the Bama Immigration law. Kris Kobach toured S.C. with Mitt Romney during the primary there.
Listen to the program. Eunie Smith introduced Scott Beason to Kris Kobach.
Where is Casey on all this? Out to lunch while NE Bama is trying to navigate through the fog.

I'm going to Selma

I had hoped to go First Sunday in March 2007 to walk across with Hillary and President to Be Obama, but I didn't make it. But I have a friend inspired by the Arab Spring and James Dickey's son Christopher's reporting on the Mideast and he wants to go and I'm gon be dere. I think my sister may make the trip and some others with Connections to Collinsville, but I don't expect the three women who precipitated the events of May 28 2006 to be there.
God is bigger than them.
I'm going. I have txted a woman of influence hoping to bring this Woman to Selma this year. Would be grand if she can make it

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/01/25/egypt-revolution-women

Heard a few minutes ago on NPR and it fired my resolve. Read by happenstance, reread Marshall Frady's intro to his Penguin bio of King. That got me fired up too, and Taylor Branch's parable about the anonymous fellow in 65: "We won when we started walking. Gonna do it for T.C. Smith and Herbert Gezork and Bonhoeffer and Willie Dean Tate and Esther Dawkings and my Mother and Grandfather Jordan.
Gonna be a righteous stroll.
S.C. went a little too red for Gingrich and that gives me some concern and Richard Land's segment on NPR Saturday afternoon before the results were in.
But My walk is not for spite.

Love to see you there weather permitting and the Lord Tarries.

Upstate S.C. Republicans Embrace Casey Mattox

At least Santorum and Gingrich and Perry do as they have a conference tonight in Hyatt Regency in Greenville ralleying around Mississippi's failed Personhood Amendment which Casey's leader with the Allied Defense Fund, Charles Pickering advocated. At least all indicators are to that effect.
Over the weekend, leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention met at Paul Pressler's ranch outside Houston according to a Brian Kaylor report of Jan 16 at ethicsdaily.com. It was Pressler who assaulted Three former Furman religion professors book on the Old Testament, People of the Covenant in the 60's and used it as a ralleying point to demagogue Baptists into the right wing of the Republican party. See Dan Williams, God's Own Party.
So Casey Mattox is in the driver's seat and it doesn't look like his colleagues from Collinsville who went on the sterling higher educations at Duke, UVA, Yale and some to UBama and Auburn and Habitat for Humanity are gonna say anything to contest Casey's view of the world.
If they decide to say something, Bishop Willimon's peculiar prophet blog would be a good place to start; and or Giberson and Stephens book the Anointed; one supportive jacket blurb being that of Matthew's visitting proff at Yale, and my good friend, Randall Balmer, twice Dotson Nelson lecturer at Samford.
But right now Casey and his misguided religious politics are on a roll

20th Anniversary Blessings of Liberty, Collinsville

It was January 1992 when Brett Morgen, Jessica Kane and the Public Roads Production Company came to Collinsville to shoot the documentary that was year later shown on Bama Public TV.
Google Brett Morgen, Oscar Nominee who married into Sweet n Low; major profile in NY Times not long ago if you can google it up. Saw him in FlatRock about Four years ago.
Here are excerpts of the May 31, 1993 BHam Post Herald Feature by Elaine Witt on the screening of the effort at Collinsville, Baptist Church after Bob Dylan's son, Sam, helped edit it in L.A.

It's not everyday a small town gets to see itself Warts and All on the Silver Screen; a big lettered Sidebar Headline said on the back page of the A-section of that Monday issue.
From the article

It wasn't Cannes, but to Brett Morgen it might as well have been.
The 26 year pony tailed Californian lay awake the long night before he showed the Town of Collinsville, population 1500, the 68 minute documentary he'd made about it.
"I was so nervous about how they're going to receive the film," he said a few minutes before Wedsnesday nights screening of the film Blessings of Liberty," at the Collinsville Baptist Church (my Mother was baptized there and on May 28 2006 they had a significant conversation and set new direction for the church)

In the end there was a little tension over the disparity of views Morgen captured--particularly about race, class and economic opportunity in the Dekalb County village known best for its weekly Trade Day. (google Rick Bragg in Southern Magazine)
More prevalent were hugs and acclamations for the young outsider who came 17 months ago to find small town America, and managed to tell a twon a little bit about itself in the process......

And in a few places the Audience seemed to hold its breath. There was the scene of a fight that erupted between teenagers while the crew was filming a HS basketball game.
Casey Mattox, an 18 year old recent HS grad heading for U Virginia, said he and his friends had hoped the fracas wouldn't make it to the final cut.
"But when you saw it, it seemed like if he didn't use it, it would have been an injustice. It didn't start our racial, even though it was a black guy and a white guy fighting. But then when people came in to separate them, the whites were pushing the blacks away and the blacks were pushing the whites away."
......(later in the film) A member of a prominent local family seated on an immaculate white couch, offers a homily to the camera.
"If I could say one thing, I would say we all need to think positive, for this little town of Collinsville, Alabama and the USA. Positive thinking is the most important thing we have left in this country.
For the most part the film cast a golden light on the church and community life of Collinsville, a town where a red, white and blue barber pole still spins, and where you can still get a haircut for $3.00.
(Some) predictably thought the movie had overplayed the racial problems, though many thought the depictions were accurate.
Enough people liked the film for Morgen to leave with a list of people who want to order their own copies on video. And one woman asked in the film would ever show up at the movie theatre.
Morgen said the film has been accepted for screening at an international film festival. And He hopes to have it aired on Bama PBS (which it was, couple times)
"Here I am this Yankee coming here telling them how their town is, but the point of the film is, this could be Anytown, USA. My major concern was getting out of town alive, but I think I will be okay," he quipped.

Since, Morgen was nominated for Oscar for On the Ropes, and his Chicago Ten and the Kid Stays in the Picture got kudos from Robert Redford Himself. In fact I think you can google a conversation between Brett and Bob.