[Vision2020] All Things Southern

Fri Aug 24 11:24:45 PDT 2007

I appreciate Nick's clarification, below, of his experiences with Southern culture.  My mother's family is from Little Rock and I worked in Texas for a year, and so while my familiarity with "all things Southern" is fairly limited, it hasn't in any way demonized the South or those who live there.

That said, I continue to be concerned about anyone's affiliation with a group like The League of The South, whose family-friendly and inclusive-appearing website is a facade that masks a combative need to promote a Southern culture based on hierarchy, social strata, patriarchy, and an interpretation of the Bible more like the far-right Libertarianism and rabid anti-progressive strain running through the GOP than it is like the teachings of Jesus.  Not only did Christ demonstrate complete disregard for hierarchy, social strata and patriarchy, his teachings also resulted in a liberation of all peoples that is terrifically at odds with the League's mission.  I refuse to call the League's vision of a "Christian society" Christian, and think that any society upheld by principles of exclusion, authoritarian leadership and social stratification is a society desperately in need of the Gospel.  But rather than operate as agitators for change and agents for truth -- missionaries, perhaps -- the League and its supporters, including Wilkins and Wilson, have chosen to back a worldview that dishonors the Gospel and disenfranchises the very people they ought to be serving.  

Virtually every mature Christian I've ever met would recognize that organizations like The League of The South are a detriment to the Gospel, and they'd separate themselves from it or any other affiliation that would compromise the message of Jesus Christ.  Christians are enjoined to shun those things that may be legal, socially acceptable, or convenient, but that present an obstacle to people understanding and receiving the Good News of reconciliation to God through Christ.  To put it another way, most Christian leaders would gladly turn down opportunities to wield a serrated edge, would sooner die than bully those unbelievers and critics around them, and would seek to be sensitive in how they describe themselves, all for the realization of a higher goal -- presenting an image of Christ that is in accord with his teachings and life.  Nick is right -- anyone living in the 20th century would recognize that "Kirk," while a legitimate Scottish word for "church," primarily conjures images of racial apartheid and bigotry.  Mature Christians and people of good will loathe racism enough to purposefully separate themselves from anything that appears sympathetic.  But Wilson is determined to enjoy his "right" to use whatever term he wants to use for his congregation, and if it confuses or offends anyone, well, that appears to him to be the problem of the hearer, not him.  And since those who cringe upon hearing "Kirk" are simply not as sophisticated and well-read as he is, their dismissal is understandable, even justified.  It seems that making concessions out of respect for those not "in the club" is asking too much of Moscow's most prominent pastor, whose conduct has often appeared to be fueled not by the Spirit, but by a sneering superiority that, buffed and polished, manages to somehow look impressive and unthreatening.  I'm loath to congratulate Wilson for much of anything, but I will say that he is a master of public relations and spin.  Too bad he's not running a campaign for someone other than Jesus Christ.

It's really simple:  If you're a pastor who writes in defense of slavery, AND you appropriate a term that in its most common contemporary usage denotes bigotry and separatism, AND you trumpet your affiliation with a League of the South-type worldview, AND you practice a suffocating brand of hierarchical, patriarchal, and controlling leadership from the pulpit, AND you embrace "heroes" of dubious character and undeniable racism -- R.L. Dabney, for instance -- AND you teach that Christ was a master of the serrated edge in tossing off racial epithets . . . well, you look like a fool and a liar objecting to your opponents' calling you a bigot.  You've not fooled anyone, and you look like a buffoon while trying to.  No fair hollering "foul" when you end up stained by the sewage you've chosen to swim in.

keely

"Patriarchy and its abuses, including the alienation of woman and man from each other, resulted from the material demands of life outside of the Creator's abundance,  a state God never intended human beings to experience in the first place ... Redemption means turning over the order of things in the fallen world."
-- Dr. Carrie Miles

> Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:21:47 -0700
> From: nickgier at adelphia.net
> To: mikedatailor at hotmail.com
> CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] All Things Southern
> 
> Now that I have a break between concrete pourings, I can make good on my promise to respond to Michael Borden's post.  I don't know how he could think that I believe that all people from the South are "catfish eating racists," but I apologize to him and everyone if I gave that impression.  There is, however, a certain ambiguity in my use of the phrase "all things southern" that might imply that I meant all the positive qualities of the South.
> 
> My two major professors in graduate school were from Georgia and they were the very opposite of Bible thumpers and racists.  They were very sophisticated Christian gentlemen, and I would dare say that one of them, John B. Cobb, lives the teachings of Christ more fully than any human being that I know.
> 
> My daughter's final choices for graduate school were Chicago and Duke and the latter won hands down because of the way she was embraced—body, mind, and spirit—by the Duke music faculty.  She found the people at Chicago pasty-faced and dour.
> 
> Gail and I enjoy several visits to North Carolina (I got to sit in on my daughter's dissertation defense!), and even though they looked at me real funny at Bojangles when I said that I did not eat chicken, the young woman said that I could have "fixins" instead and they were real good.
> 
> I visit my Indian student friend in Houston on a regular basis, although Pasadena, south of the ship canal, is not the best neighborhood. I've enjoyed academic conferences in Texas, Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia.  Over the years I detected no differences in the quality of scholarship and critical thinking from any region of the country.
> 
> With regard to Wilson and Co., my charges of guilt by close association stand.  In an e-mail to me Steve Wilkins conceded that he misspoke about the exact date that he left the board of the neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS).  LOS's President Michael Hill attends Wilkins' church and Wilkins has not repudiated any LOS principles.  Hill once described blacks as "a compliant and deadly underclass," and one LOS leader told a reporter from the Southern Poverty Law Center that  “we need a new type of Klan.”
> 
> So as long as Wilkins and his ilk come to Moscow on Wilson's invitation, I believe that Kalvinist Kirk Kathedral is an appropriate reminder of Wilson's closest associations.  
> 
> Most informed people think of the South African apartheid Kirk when Wilson uses Kirk, and he obviously knows that.  Fewer people know that it is also Scottish for church, and that's what Wilson will tell you, but why did he nevertheless use it with its apartheid associations?  
> 
> Wilson simply loves to provoke and loves to poke other people in the eye, even though the biggest splinter is in his eye.
> 
> Nick Gier
> 
> 
> 
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