Thornton, Jerry Vines and Exiled Generations
My friend William Thornton has taken my measure in a post at baptistlife.com/forums faith and practice over my 8 page effort in the anthology Exiled Generations published by U Tenn Press.
I was on the road to have lunch with Thornton in May of 2006 when I had car trouble and got towed to Iva South Carolina. We didn't have lunch but if he can make it to Lesburg in April we may have a get together then and a discussion of the Kell editted book he's so casually dismissed at blo.com
Thornton was at Mid America Seminary in Memphis when the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC began and a disciple of Adrian Rogers. He championed Rogers and that whole cabal of Birch inflected fundies in his all star lineup blog of 2010 whcih should be an easy google for his SBC plodder blog.
I heard over the weekend Thornton had read my piece in Ex Gens and saw his somments a few hours ago. This morning I was reading David Montoya's piece in the book of 15 some odd years ago, Leaving the Fold. Montoya talks about his dealing with some of Thornton's heroes of the faith in Arkansas in the late 1980s. How Adrain Rogers was brought in to lean on a pastor in Arkansas who was gona buck the fundy system, how Ronnie Floyd was Paul Pressler's hand picked preacher to lead the funy takeover of the Arkansas Baptist convention, how Jerry Vines who in 87 talked to Rocky Purvis off campus at SEBTS as part of the Peace Committee charade that led to the ouster of Randall Lolley; Vines called in to be a go between between Gray Allison of Mid America where my friend Thornton was a student to keep Gray "pure" if they wanted to run him for something.
Montoya talks of a Bob Foster who was key businessman in the movement, who went on to be part of a racist and anti semite founation in Arkansas. Jerry Vines West Rome Church in the 60 is Rome Ga was infested with Birchers. Paul pressler's inside folks were the likes of Jesse Helms and his network, McAteer, and Bama's Alabert Lee Smith, all with teis to the far right that called Martin Luther King a Communist and had their origins in the Texas Regulars of the 48 US senate Capaign in Texas--see New Republic review of 1990 on Caro's bio of LBJ.
So that is where Thornton is coming from. Let's be clear.
I hope he reads Apostles of Reason and Wuthnow's Rough Country now that he's taken a chew on my essay.
And maybe he will take the bait and watch the movie The White Ribbon. When he does. we can talk about Bonhoeffer, and the reason I recommended such in my essay, so that maybe he could grow a little in the faith.
I was on the road to have lunch with Thornton in May of 2006 when I had car trouble and got towed to Iva South Carolina. We didn't have lunch but if he can make it to Lesburg in April we may have a get together then and a discussion of the Kell editted book he's so casually dismissed at blo.com
Thornton was at Mid America Seminary in Memphis when the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC began and a disciple of Adrian Rogers. He championed Rogers and that whole cabal of Birch inflected fundies in his all star lineup blog of 2010 whcih should be an easy google for his SBC plodder blog.
I heard over the weekend Thornton had read my piece in Ex Gens and saw his somments a few hours ago. This morning I was reading David Montoya's piece in the book of 15 some odd years ago, Leaving the Fold. Montoya talks about his dealing with some of Thornton's heroes of the faith in Arkansas in the late 1980s. How Adrain Rogers was brought in to lean on a pastor in Arkansas who was gona buck the fundy system, how Ronnie Floyd was Paul Pressler's hand picked preacher to lead the funy takeover of the Arkansas Baptist convention, how Jerry Vines who in 87 talked to Rocky Purvis off campus at SEBTS as part of the Peace Committee charade that led to the ouster of Randall Lolley; Vines called in to be a go between between Gray Allison of Mid America where my friend Thornton was a student to keep Gray "pure" if they wanted to run him for something.
Montoya talks of a Bob Foster who was key businessman in the movement, who went on to be part of a racist and anti semite founation in Arkansas. Jerry Vines West Rome Church in the 60 is Rome Ga was infested with Birchers. Paul pressler's inside folks were the likes of Jesse Helms and his network, McAteer, and Bama's Alabert Lee Smith, all with teis to the far right that called Martin Luther King a Communist and had their origins in the Texas Regulars of the 48 US senate Capaign in Texas--see New Republic review of 1990 on Caro's bio of LBJ.
So that is where Thornton is coming from. Let's be clear.
I hope he reads Apostles of Reason and Wuthnow's Rough Country now that he's taken a chew on my essay.
And maybe he will take the bait and watch the movie The White Ribbon. When he does. we can talk about Bonhoeffer, and the reason I recommended such in my essay, so that maybe he could grow a little in the faith.
posted by foxofbama | 2:49 PM
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