The legacy of Bill Hull and the FBC Spartanburg Truth Conference

Yesterday in the mail I got the Spring issue of Christian Ethics Today whose current editor is Pat Anderson,  Furman grad of the class of 65, two years after Marshall Frady. Among the many sterling articles in this issue-- including two by my friend Randall Balmer whose recent book looks at the makings of the desertion of many Southern Baptists from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 Presidential election--is a tribute to Baptist thinker and pastor William E. Hull by Baptist scholar Budy Shurden.

   The politics of  the Balmer analysis of Carter's defeat is now incarnated in a seminar to be held at Billy Graham and Fox News darling Trey Gowdy home church this September in Spartanburg., South Carolina.

     The Tribute to  Hull, an Abraham Lincoln of religious life in the 20th Century, A Baptist gift to Christendom along with the likes of Martin King, Carlyle Marney, George W. Truett and Upstate South Carolina's L.D. Johnson, is analogous and prophetic to Bonhoeffer's thoughts on the politics of stupidity in the recent Marsh bio the the great 20th Century martyr.  (see my recent blog on that topic)

    Here is one thought of Hull in that tribute.

I tried to make the

gospel creditable to thinking people

of whatever faith or of no faith who

were put off by the mindlessness

that is epidemic in many pulpits. I

knew that my preaching would be

appreciated best by a minority, but

I quickly realized that Christianity

must speak persuasively not only to

the majority who follow but to the

minority who lead.

   But you won't see that display in Spartanburg. They will feature Eric Metaxas whom the Christian Century examines in a piece titled Bonhoeffer Hijacked; and David Barton who was discarded several yeaqrs ago for his views on the founding fathers.

    Giberson and Stephens have taken a caustic look in their book The Anointed.

    Here is hoping Wofford College in Spartanburg, their longtime Trustee Will Willimon, even the editorial staff of the Herald Journal take a look at the ideology of the Tea Party Church at Prayer, informed by Molly Worthen's take on Francis Schaeffer in her new book The Apostles of Reason; Balmer's investigation of the rogue Baptists FBC Spartanburg continue to celebrate; and Joe Crespino's Strom Thurmond's America.

    The Baptists the likes of Bill Hull tried to lead will find FBC Spartanburg's exercise this September nauseating.