The Fire Eater 2010, Volume I
America: Code Blue
The Bazz Buzz
The latest on the dying embers of a fading empire. From Bazz Childress:
- Garrison Keillor: Some things aren't meant to be messed with (includes a delightful attack on the Yankee-Puritan, Ralph Waldo-Pond Emerson). And this from the Star Tribune of Minnesota?
- Happy Birthday General Robert E Lee (John Killian's blog).
This is the last of a four-part series of articles by Al Benson, Jr. on leftist evangelicalism, or what he calls "Evangelical Marxism." We've left the other three parts up so you can read them all in context.
Evangelical Marxism: Part Four
by Al Benson Jr.
6 January 2010
So, some “progressive” evangelicals have noted that the Republicans failed to deliver on the abortion issue. I can’t disagree with their assessment on that one issue. The Republicans thought they had the anti-abortion folks handily in their back pocket and so they just courted them with pious-sounding platitudes, taking them for granted. It seems that some of them realized this and ended up voting for Obama. If they were all that much opposed to abortion, why, pray tell, couldn’t they have seen their way clear to vote for Ron Paul? Or Church Baldwin after him? Both were strongly anti-abortion and deserved evangelical support more than Obama ever could. But it seems to be a singular failing among Christians that all they are able to focus on are the two major parties and voting for what they perceive is the lesser of two evils. It never seems to occur to them that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
So it seems the evangelical “revolt” (such as it was) against the Republican Party was siphoned off into votes for pro-abortion Marxist Obama by some prominent evangelical leaders. In an article on lifenews.com for May 5, 2008, Steven Ertelt noted:
The Democratic Party has the strongest pro-abortion stance possible, but Reverent Tony Campolo, an evangelical author, has been appointed to the committee that will review the platform. Campolo has vowed to represent pro-lifers “to the highest members of the Democratic Party.” Campolo says that he believes in pro-life issues so strongly that he pledged a vigorous defense at the national convention in Denver this summer.
If his efforts ever made any difference in Denver I don’t recall hearing anything about it. If he thought he was going to change the minds of the Marxist crowd around Obama and the Democratic leadership he was whistling in the wind. But one way or another he was aligned with the strongest pro-abortion political group in the country. How much do you want to bet that his presence there didn’t pull a lot of evangelical votes in for Obama and the Democrats?
Campolo has some other ideas that are rather “interesting” too. In a book Speaking My Mind, on page 149, Campolo stated:
Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other.
That’s an interesting mouthful! My question is this: Whatever ecstatic unions Christians and Muslims have, are they having them with the same God? I rather think not. The God of Holy Scripture is not the Muslim god. So you’ve got to wonder just where Campolo is coming from besides the fact that he has allied himself with the Democratic Party.
David A. Noebel, writing on worldviewtimes.com for February 19th of 2008 noted of Campolo that he wrote a book in 2006 called Letters to a Young Evangelical. It was published by Basic Books. Mr. Noebel says of Campolo’s book that:
Campolo’s volume is a veritable love-fest among three leftwing evangelicals—Campolo and his two partners in crime (the crime being deception): Ron Sider (Evangelicals for Social Action) and Jim Wallis (Sojourners Magazine), whom he calls his “best of friends” throughout the book. All three subscribe to the same party line—liberal, leftwing, allegedly progressive, ideas that impact social, economic and political action. “I believe,” says Campolo “that Christians should engage in efforts to change the political and economic structures in our society because these structures do not adequately address the needs of the poor and oppressed” (4, 5, 258).
You wonder if Abraham Lincoln’s friend, Karl Marx, could have said it any better. Campolo urges evangelicals to begin to look at the “Religious Right” as their enemies and if they really want to get serious about God’s business, which they believe is to help the poor and oppressed, they’ve got to repudiate the conservative wing of evangelicalism and stand beside Sider, Wallis, and Campolo, lining themselves up with the “true progressives.” Doing this, they will thus bring about the Kingdom of God on earth—or the kingdom of Marx! I submit that, in some cases, maybe they can’t tell the difference.
I have no problem with trying to work to promote the Kingdom of God on earth. In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist preached, saying: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That Jesus ushered in the Kingdom of God when He came is proven by Scripture. Look at Matthew 6:33, 12.28, and Mark 1:15.
The Kingdom of God is not some far-off, future event. It is here and now and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit his disciples in all ages will help to usher it in with all its fullness. However, one must question whether what Campolo, Sider, and friends are trying to get evangelicals involved in is God’s Kingdom or someone else’s. You can’t make common cause with socialists, Marxists, and “progressive” (socialist) Democrats or Republicans and then claim that you are helping to usher in the Kingdom of God, when in fact most of those people are much more interested in the precepts of Marx and Lenin than they are in the truths of Scripture.
Some of these left-wing evangelicals may be sincere. I will give them the benefit of the doubt as to their intentions, but if some are sincere, then they are sincerely deluded. Admittedly, the “Religious Right” has had its problems and many of them have been co-opted by the Republicans just as the “progressive” evangelicals have by the Democrats. I think in both of these groups, maybe the leadership should start looking at the real intentions of both Democrats and Republicans to find out where they are really coming from. Would it surprise you to know that both major parties are coming from the same place, have the same basic ideology (Lincolnian Marxism) and are controlled by the same clique of One World Government types that make sure you get the same agenda no matter which party you vote into office? That’s another story, though.
Franklin Sanders, writing in Vol. 3, No. 3 of The Free Magnolia has called modern evangelicalism “shallow” and says:
As fast as it can, Evangelicalism runs to narrow Yankee self-righteousness, do-gooding, busybodying, and legalism and calls that Christianity. Their solution to everything is to pass another law or constitutional amendment or write a letter to some congressman while bathing in the sewage Anti-Christianity pours out. It’s plain how the Republican Party has manipulated and exploited Evangelicals for so many years with such contempt.
And now it seems, with the help of certain “evangelical progressives” they are about to give the Democratic Party the opportunity to do the same thing. Either way, undiscerning but sincere evangelicals get stiffed while both parties use them to help to usher in their New World Order—the satanic counterfeit for God’s Kingdom.
Evangelical Marxism: Part Three
by Al Benson Jr.
9 December 2009
As I recall, new evangelicalism’s love affair with the left has been going on for quite awhile now. I remember the 1972 presidential campaign in which George McGovern ran against Richard Nixon. While Nixon was no saint by any stretch of the imagination and was, indeed, one of Rockefeller’s pawns, George McGovern was a dedicated leftist. Yet, with his apparent leftist credentials, McGovern was supported and encouraged by a group called “Evangelicals for McGovern.” If I recall correctly, this group mentioned somewhere in whatever literature they sent out that McGovern spoke strongly in a manner resembling that of Amos, the Old Testament prophet. You’ll forgive me if I was a bit skeptical, but somehow I don’t think Amos was a left-winger. 
Yet this same trend continues today, with some evangelicals firmly supporting our Marxist-in-Chief. There was a definite trend among certain evangelicals during this last election that showed strong support for Obama. There was a short blog on http://my.barackobama.com that was entitled “Evangelicals for Obama.” Sound familiar—like something you’ve heard before? The message said, in part, “Senator Obama presents us with the best choice for the 2008 elections...On matters of social justice, he is more closely aligned to progressive evangelicals than the Republicans are...After much soul searching I believe Obama is a candidate evangelicals can and should support. This group is for evangelical Christians interested in Obama and in furthering his progress toward the DNC nomination and beyond.”
The operative word in this partial quote is probably “progressive.” In his book A Communese-English Dictionary, Professor Roy Colby defined progressives as “Those who deliberately or unwittingly promote the (Communist) Party Line.” In an article on http://www.forbes.com for 22 January 2009 the writer noted: “It’s no surprise that much of the improvement for the Democratic party among evangelicals came from the 18-29 year olds.
According to our online polling, in 2004 Kerry won 14% of their votes. In 2008 Obama received 28%.” What does that say about the decline of evangelical discernment in a short four years? Now evangelicals in this age group are supporting a man with decided Marxist proclivities. Anyone watching what he has done in the short time he has been in office has to realize that. If some of these young evangelicals who voted for him haven’t smelled the coffee by now, one wonders if there is any hope for them. One might wonder if they feel they are rebelling against the supposed conservatism of their fathers.
According to an article by Eileen Flynn for Cox News Service on October 20, 2008: “According to the Faith in Public Life survey, younger evangelicals are more likely than their elders to support bigger government with more services and show more support for diplomacy versus military strength abroad.” I have no problem with genuine diplomacy and I think we are long past the time that America should quit trying to be the world’s policeman. All that has done is to cost many American lives, to waste our resources and to cost us much good will around the world. What bothers me is the seeming evangelical support for more and bigger government. Where is that supported in Scripture?
The government has stepped in and taken over in many areas the churches used to be active in until they started practicing the theological retreatism that seemed to overwhelm them in the 1830s. There seems to be little discernment among younger evangelicals as to what the proper functions of government are (and aren’t). Of course if the majority of them attended government schools, that should come as no surprise. Many evangelicals (at least those I’ve run across) strongly support the government school system and are quick to castigate those among them who will not. I speak from personal experience here. One young evangelical noted that “Jesus is constantly talking about taking care of the poor, taking care of the least of these.” And she thinks Obama’s platform better reflects the Gospel! I agree that Jesus was and is concerned for the poor, but where in Scripture does He mandate the government taking care of them? And how does the program of a Marxist candidate reflect the Gospel? Somehow it’s a little bit hard for me to get around that one.
An article from http://www.cnn.com for 2 July 2008 noted that “Brian McLaren, a former pastor who spent 24 years in the pulpit and is now an informal advisor to the Obama campaign, believes that a significant portion of evangelical voters are ready to break from their traditional home in the Republican Party and take a new leap of faith with Obama.” McLaren stated: “I think there’s a very, very sizable percentage—I think between a third and half—of evangelicals, especially younger evangelicals who are very open to someone with a new vision.” Part of that “new vision” is the evangelical desire to end “global warming” and the war in Iraq.
I can agree with them about the war in Iraq, but in the light of the recent “climategate” revelations, I think they really better get ready to take another look at the global warming scam—if ever the media will report on it! Yet another young evangelical noted that the Republicans failed to deliver on the abortion issue. He’s right—they did, but voting for a candidate who is openly pro-abortion somehow doesn’t seem to be the best way to solve that problem.
Evangelicals and other Americans have gotten stiffed by both major political parties and maybe it’s time they started looking elsewhere for solutions to the problems they see.
To be continued.
Oliver Roswell Crocker: Mississippi Boy
MacDonald King Aston
1 December 2009
The parade of death goes on. Newspapers print obituaries unendingly. Sometimes it seems as if those lives are mere numbers in a jumbled board game we call life and death. But what seems is not what is.
Today I received the news that my friend, Oliver Crocker, has gone home to the Lord. The sorrow lies not in his death, which, as the Apostle Paul knew, is infinite gain in Christ, but in the simple fact of missing him.
Oliver was a Mississippi boy, and the last chance I had to see him was when he and his wife, Sadie, visited Mississippi. They often drove to Mississippi from their place in Lafayette, Colorado, and Oliver knew my cousin, Bobby Joe Mitchell yonder in Holly Springs. Oliver called me when he got to Mississippi and told me that he and Sadie were visiting relatives and maybe we could all get together if the time permitted. The time did not permit, and we did not get together. But fortunately, I had the chance to know Oliver over the years, and the many memories I have of him are all I could ask of God anyway.
It is all that could be wished of to be remembered foremost as a man of God, and that is exactly how I remember Oliver Crocker. We met in Colorado, oddly enough, not in Mississippi. I was the camp commander of a Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp up beyond Denver (non-South, in other words). Oliver just naturally became the Camp’s Chaplain. His opening and closing prayers were simple, natural, and resonant with the knowledge, which he had, of his place in Christ.
Oliver was one of those men who refused to grow old. When my wife and I last visited Oliver and Sadie at their home in Lafayette, Colorado, Oliver was making preparations to give a talk to a local history group at the nearby library. The talk was to be on the butcher’s (Grant) strategy to control the Mississippi “based on [Oliver’s] youth spent in Holly Springs, Mississipi.” And despite his age, Oliver would drive to Mississippi every year along with Sadie. It seemed as if he was just hitting his stride in his eighties!
I look back now, as is usual for most of us, and realise my loss. And it is my loss, for Oliver was indeed my friend. He was one of the least judgemental men I’ve ever known. I always wondered why he would like a long-haired, outspoken, Choctaw-Scots-Irish Fire Eater like myself. But he did. The age difference mattered not at all to him.
We talked of the War (and it was always “the War”) and of his childhood in Mississippi. My kinfolk had settled in Oliver’s home town of Holly Springs back in the 1830s and 1840s, and I had kin still in Holly Springs, Blue Mountain, and other areas. So perhaps the old Southern kin and culture ties worked their usual magic to bring to unlikely friends together.
Howsoever it was, my life is better now for having known such an honourable man as Oliver Crocker. His journey led from Mississippi to Colorado to Christ. And I’m sure, based on the stories he told me, that the script in between was well written, full of high drama, love, loss, magic, and Mississippi moonlight.
For in the end, Oliver remained a Mississipi boy in my estimation. Neither more nor less. And could he have asked more from his Lord? I doubt it.
I know not of his last days, but I can wager with confidence that at the end Oliver managed one of his wiry grins. Why not? He knew well where he was going, and those green hills which beckoned to him looked a lot like the green hills of Mississippi he knew so well.
We shall meet again, my friend. Under a Southern sun.
Requiescas in pace aeterna in manibus Dei.
Evangelical Marxism: Part Two
(For Part 1, see below.)
by Al Benson Jr.
17 November 2009
I remember, back in the 1980s, they had famine in Ethiopia and all the evangelicals rushed to collect money to send over there to help them out. We all saw pictures of the starving kids on television. The only problem was that the government of Ethiopia was a Marxist government, and all the money that was collected by the evangelicals and others, via their charitable organizations, had to be turned over to the Ethiopian government, supposedly to be dispersed so starving families could be helped. But like most Marxist governments, the one in Ethiopia did not use an awful lot of that money to feed the starving. Rather they used it to improve their armaments, and for “other purposes in the national interest.” Later, I read about tons of food that had been sent to Ethiopia to feed the hungry and much of it sat rotting on wharves and in warehouses because no one could be bothered to load it and take it to where there were hungry people.
This was what the evangelicals rushed to contribute their money to—a Marxist government that had no real concern in helping the starving, but rather used them as a pawn to obtain foreign aid for their own purposes. Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) is yet another prime example of this. It used to be a country, before the Marxists took it over, that used to export food. Now under Marxism it is an economic basket case. Once the Marxists took the country and redistributed the farmlands to their friends, all of a sudden Zimbabwe found that it couldn’t feed itself anymore. It has been proven over decades that most Marxist countries simply cannot feed themselves.
Why should American evangelicals continue to throw money and food at Marxist dictatorships that, if they allowed their people some liberty, would be able to take care of themselves? According to evangelicals like Mr. Sider, American Christians should be ashamed that they have so much and Marxist countries have so little. Has it ever occurred to some of these folks that the Marxist countries have so little exactly because they are Marxist, and their limitations of personal liberty guarantee that those living under their regimes will continue to have little? Why should we finance that as Christians?
Sider’s book made enough of a dent in the evangelical world that, in 1981, David Chilton wrote a rebuttal to it called Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators. Chilton called Sider “one of the new voices in evangelicalism.” Sider was a professor of theology at Eastern Baptist Seminary in Philadelphia and the president of Evangelicals for Social Action. Chilton asked the question of Sider as to whether he was a Marxist or not. Sider claimed he wasn’t, but the policies he advocated lead you to wonder. Chilton said of Sider that “he has allowed his economic views to be shaped by an increasingly vocal, socialistic element in our society, not by the word of God.” And Chilton also quoted writer John Chamberlin, author of The Roots of Capitalism who said: “Thou shalt not covet means that it is sinful even to contemplate the seizure of another man’s goods—which is something which socialists, whether Christian or otherwise, have never managed to explain away.” Chilton continued:
That is the issue: Socialism is theft. I am not speaking of the voluntary sharing of goods, but rather the state-enforced “redistribution” of wealth. If someone, even the government—takes your property against God’s word, it is theft. And Sider advocates state socialism.
Chilton noted that Sider had used the concepts of envy and guilt “to manipulate “rich Christians into accepting socialism.” Unfortunately, many evangelical Christians have accepted socialism at some level without realizing it. Dressing up socialism with a few strategically-placed Bible verses is often enough to gull unsuspecting Christians into buying it, because, although we have learned to be “harmless as doves” we have never learned to be as “wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16). Even thought Sider’s book was first published in 1977 and David Chilton’s rebuttal was printed in 1981, this sort of thing still continues today in the evangelical world.
Author Gary North wrote in 1997 that: “Rich Christians represented what I regard as the second-worst aspect of neo-evangelicalism: its middle-class sell-out to liberation theology.” It seems that the neo-evangelicals today, as represented by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) continue down this same path. In true “liberation theology” style, they are now endorsing amnesty for over 12 million illegal aliens because high immigration seems to be increasing the membership roles in evangelical churches and is, therefore, “good for the economy.” I wonder how many of the illegals spend much time in evangelical churches.
Writer Roy Beck has observed in an article in October, 2009 on http://www.numbersusa.com that:
“Leaders of most of the nation’s evangelical Christians made a shocking endorsement of illegal-alien amnesty today in Senate testimony....Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the NAE, was invited by Sen. (Charles) Shumer (D-NY) to testify in favor of the Senate immigration chairman’s push to create amnesty legislation this fall. Sen. Shumer asked Rev. Anderson if many of his colleagues agree with his support for legalizing 12-20 million illegal aliens and increasing the legal immigration far higher than the 1 million a year current level... Rev. Anderson answered that there was no dissent in adopting the pro-amnesty resolution on the 75-member NAE board of directors. Zero dissent!”
Not only that, the NAE doesn’t want to be bothered hearing any other viewpoints. Their minds are made up so please don’t confuse them with any facts. Mr. Beck noted:
I would note that NumbersUSA and others have made requests to NAE for several years to present our moral arguments for less overall immigration to protect the stewardship of the nation’s natural resources and to protect the nation’s most vulnerable citizens. The NAE has resolutely refused to hear any voice but pro-amnesty voices, as far as we have been able to tell.
Beck and his group are not calling for the locking up of illegal immigrants. They call for letting them return to their homelands with no further penalty. But according to Mr. Beck, “the NAE has proclaimed that our forgiveness of illegal aliens should allow them to keep the very things they broke the law to steal: U.S. jobs and access to U. S. infrastructure.” Undoubtedly the NAE leadership sees this as a major way to help redistribute wealth in the United States and so they’d be all for it.
I understand that since this latest incident came about there has been some complaining in the evangelical community and so now some of the denominations involved with the NAE are seeking to withdraw their support. After all, if the folks in the pews get too ticked off they may go somewhere else and the weekly giving will drop off. Of course, if they are all for redistributing the wealth, that shouldn’t really matter—but somehow it still seems to.
This all goes to show, though, that over the years the neo-evangelicals have continued to come down on the left side of most questions, while subtly demeaning those to the right of themselves as “unloving.” Perhaps the neo-evangelicals should do a little checking into some of the people and left-wing groups they so piously support to see just how “loving and compassionate” they really are. They might be more than a little shocked at what they found. But, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen!
The Ole Miss Majorettes of 1962
(Thanks to Bobby Mitchell!)
The Choctaw Fire Eater Confederate Battle Flag
Evangelical Marxism
(Part 1)
by Al Benson Jr.
29 October 2009
Away back in those ancient times in 1947, Harold John Ockenga coined the term “neo-evangelicalism.” Neo, or New Evangelicalism, was supposed to be, at that point, a distinct movement within what had been Christian fundamentalism. And, although Christian fundamentalism, with its Scofieldite theology, the origins of which only go back to the 1830s, had its problems, the emerging “New Evangelicals” created a whole new set of problems of their own. Many in new evangelical circles were people who could be described as “socially conservative.” Unfortunately, that seems to have applied more to the folks in the pews than to much of the leadership of the movement.
Over the years, my family and I have attended, here and there, churches you could probably characterize as broadly evangelical, and new evangelical in some cases. I have heard some evangelical speakers who sounded like they were giving kudos to the old Communist line about “war, racism, and poverty” dressed up with a few Bible verses. And unfortunately in many cases, since many evangelicals do not seem to have any real grasp of history let alone political history, all that has to be done to deceive them is to repackage the Communist line in evangelical verbiage and most will buy it. I heard one black evangelical in the late 1960s do just that, and when questioned about it by one pastor who had the courage to stand up and disagree with his rhetoric, the black evangelist told the pastor that he “didn’t show much love” when he dared to question him. So, supposedly, in some cases, the displaying of “evangelical love” means that you allow rather thinly-veiled Marxism to be preached to Christians because it wouldn’t be “loving” not to let them hear it.
I remember another case, where a student from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, preached at a Sunday morning service in a church we attended in Indiana at that time. His sermon consisted mostly of jabs at those he considered to be politically on the right. He railed about the federal government and said they should give back the Panama Canal because they had stolen it. (He might have been right there). And he concluded his “sermon,” if you could call it that, by playing part of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. To their credit, one or two of the members of the congregation sought to take him to task for his leftward approach, but only one or two. At the time I thought that if he were a sample of what Calvin College was turning out, I wouldn’t want my dog attending there.
Over the years I found, among many evangelicals, a definite affinity for socialism. One lady we knew proudly proclaimed herself a “Christian socialist.” Also, among many evangelicals, no doubt because of their (sometimes unrecognized) proclivities toward socialism, there was often a sometimes subtle looking-down-of-the-nose at anything or anyone they perceived as not totally centrist, or even worse, slightly to the right.
I remember once having taught a Sunday school class on humanism. Some of the material I presented was quite explicit as to what the humanists thought about Christians and the “rotting corpse of Christianity” which they so quickly decried. After the class was over, some of the people in it came to me and wanted to know what John Birch publication I had gotten the material from. When I showed them what I had and its humanist origins, they were shocked. The were prepared to strongly denounce the material if they thought the John Birch Society had published it. That way they could comfortably ignore it as “right-wing” junk. But when they saw the material was right from the humanist horse’s mouth, so to speak, they were in a quandry. They couldn’t disprove or disagree with what the humanists had said themselves, and I’m sure the rest of their Sunday was ruined.
This seems to be where much of evangelicalism or new evangelicalism is. Evangelicals have an affinity for much of the political left and a sometimes ill-concealed disdain for anything on the political right. I once heard an evangelist say that “the hard right cares little for spiritual things.” In many cases he may well have been correct. But what about the hard left? He didn’t bother to mention them. I wonder how much they care for spiritual things. Not as much as some of the evangelicals seem to think!
It should come as no surprise then that many new evangelicals lean to the left and advocate agendas from a leftist position, all the while labeling them as “Christian love.” I do need to note that there are, thank Heaven, exceptions to this, the church we now attend being notable among them, but the leftward tilt of many evangelicals does not bode well for the church as a whole.
A case in point, which I briefly cited in an earlier article, was a book originally written in 1977 by Ronald J. Sider, called Rich Christians in an age of Hunger and published by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Downers Grove, Illinois. I understand this book has now gone through several printings and some of the later ones are not quite as left-leaning as the earlier printings were. Nonetheless, something like 350,000 copies of the earlier left-leaning printings still went out to a mostly evangelical audience. In the copy I have, which is the 1977 printing, Mr. Sider was quite hard on anyone who didn’t immediately sell all he had over the bare subsistence level and give it away to the poor and hungry. On pages 75-76 he wrote about rulers cheating the poor. What else is new? This has gone on in every culture and in every century of human history. It is not particularly an “American” problem. On page 76 he continued on about the “God of the poor” as though God were not God to anyone else but the poor. Somehow you get the impression from Sider’s comments that no one but the poor deserved to have God be concerned about them. In John’s Gospel, in chapter 3, we are told that God loved the world, not just those poor people who happened to be in it.
On pages 84-85 Sider seemed to indict all rich people as oppressors—and to be sure, some of the political wealthy, many of them on the left ideogically, do oppress the poor. It still goes on. However, you should not issue a blanket indictment of all rich people simply because they happen to be rich. On page 116 Sider made distinctions between property rights and human rights. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that property rights are also human rights. He was forced to admit that the Bible allows for private property. There are too many instances in Scripture proving that for him to deny it, but he seemed to admit it grudgingly in my opinion.
Among his ideas for combatting world hunger, Sider proposed more foreign aid (pages 218, 219) and a “national food policy” on pages 214 and 215. In other words, Sider promoted the idea that governments get into setting “food policy,” an area governments have no business being in. You can be sure that once governments get into implementing national food policies everyone’s rights will be trampled on. Yet this sort of thing seems to be part and parcel of the mindset of many evangelicals. They may be well intentioned but their solutions to some problems are as draconian as those of the Marxists.
(To be continued.)
About the Author
 Al Benson Jr.'s, columns are found on many online journals, such as The Sierra Times, The Patriotist, and The Fire Eater. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Confederate Society of America. Additionally, Mr. Benson is editor of the Copperhead Chronicle and author of The Homeschool History Project, a study of the War of Southern Independence. The Copperhead Chronicle is a quarterly newsletter written with a Christian, pro-Southern perspective.
Email Al to sign up, or write:
The Copperhead Chronicle
P O Box 55 Sterlington, Louisiana 71280
The Final Person: Mysticism, Christianity, and the Southern Movement
MacDonald King Aston
26 February 2005 (originally published on SouthernRights.com)
The importance of Christianity to the Southern movement can not be understated. The Southern states of America were birthed in Christianity and continue to this day as a beacon of Christianity in a post-Christian American Empire. The South is not called “the Bible Belt” for no good reason. To many approaching the Southern movement, however, the strong emphasis on “Biblical Christianity,” “fundamentalist Christianity,” and “evangelical Christianity” (all doctrines, by the way) can stand as a barrier.
One often gets the feeling, if not the outright commandment, that it is necessary to believe in the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, for example, to be a Card-Carrying Member of the Southern movement. The idea that some Christians might hold other views (or experiences, more importantly) seems hardly talked about. But, as seen in the history of Christianity, doctrinal orthodoxy (or heterodoxy) is, however important, simply not the last word on the subject of Christianity.
Jesus the Christ is. And in the Person of Jesus the Christ is the Final Person, the experience of the Christ—which is the only knowledge one can ever have of Him since there is nothing known outside of experience.
There are at least two basic types of religious experience: the phenomenal and the noumenal, or doctrinally-based religiosity and mystically-based religiosity. By doctrinally-based religiosity, I refer, however inadequately, to the type of person who finds his truth and solace in the great doctrines of religion. Most of those doctrines are found in the written Scriptures of Christianity.
I hasten to point out that I am not anti-doctrine. The doctrines of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and others, are not ideas with which I necessarily disagree. (I can hear sighs of relief out there: “Whew, he’s going to hang himself soon!”) I do, however, wish to point out that there are some who do not find doctrinal issues the most important part of the Christian experience.
Throughout the twenty centuries of historical Christianity, there has been another stream flowing down the mountain of faith. It is generally called mysticism, though that word seems to have taken on negative connotations, especially since the 17th and 18th centuries, dominated as they were by the Enlightenment thinkers. (“Obscurity of doctrine”!) The Gospel of John is a paean to mystical theology, and the first Christian mystic, Paul, began his life as a Christian with the famous mystical experience on the road to Damascus. Paul’s epistles shine with mystical thought. It was Paul’s use of “the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:15-16, for one) that led to the now-familiar doctrine of the mystical body of Christ, the mystical union of Christians into a spiritual body with the Christ as their head. St. Augustine continued the metaphor as did Pope Pius XII, whose 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi (“the Mystical Body of the Christ”), reflected upon the church as the body of the Christ.
But though the doctrines of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection are generally well known to many, the theology of mysticism is not. Mystics tend to be, historically, a minority among Christians. (Though the mystical experience itself, oddly enough, belongs to all Christians, especially to those to whom the blinding truth of the Christ comes of a sudden.)
One could do worse, in plumbing the depths of the subject, than to turn to William James and his The Varieties of Religious Experience, for in that work James proclaims his attempt to defend experience’ against philosophy “as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life.” This statement is just another way of saying that the personal mystical experience is the real substance of religion, for James locates religion itself “not as it appeared in the object (God or the universe or revelation) but as it appeared in the subject (the believing, doubting, praying, and experiencing person).” This is to say that no matter how much the various doctrines may be debated, and no matter how many sects, denominations, and churches take issue with each other, ultimately the encounter with Jesus the Christ is an interior encounter.
One could also quote the logocentric Prologue to John as well in this sense: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God.” I can hardly think of a more personal and mystical formulation than John’s words (and you who are theologians know the complexity of the Greek word Logos).
One also thinks of the more noted mystics: St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, the Pseudo-Areopagite, and the simple but profound Juliana of Norwich. And the equally profound words of Hildegard of Bingen: “God has gifted creation with everything that is necessary. Limitless love, from the depths to the stars: flooding all, loving all. It is the royal kiss of peace.”
G. K. Chesterton, seeking to explain mysticism, wrote: “The whole secret of Mysticism is this, that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The Morbid Logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The Mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.” Perhaps Chesterton has hit upon the confluence of the doctrinal and the mystic understandings of Christianity, for is it not the mystery of the Resurrection, to take one example, that makes all things lucid to a Christian?
What unites all mystical theology, from Paul to Chesterton, however, is the insistence upon the Person of the divine. Thus does Christianity part ways with other religious traditions. Without Jesus the Christ, the Christian’s mystical experience is nothing. The Person whom Christian mystics meet is always a Person experienced (as opposed to abstracted). Experience, then, is the ground of all Christian mysticism, and that experience is always experience of a Person. The uppercase letters signify the experience of that Person as the Final Person, the immediate experience of the Christ beyond which one can not go. Beyond that experience also, Christian mystics would say, doctrine can not go. And this is my point.
To a mystic, the Resurrection is not “wrong” or “right.” It does not matter to the mystic whether that doctrine specifically points to a corporeal flight into clouds or a noncorporeal resurrection of the inward-dwelling Spirit. What matters to the mystic is that the Christ is risen and by His resurrection all things are made lucid. Seen from the mystical perspective (and not the mysterious perspective I should add) there is no “right” or “wrong” interpretation of doctine; there is simply the truth of Jesus the Christ.
I am not saying that there is no “wrong” or “right,” for there is. But the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, and all other doctrines are not so much doctrines as illumination; a way of grasping with one’s heart the simple truth that without the Person, the very God, of Jesus the Christ, there is no way home. And considering where our home lies, that insight is of no little consequence, but the very essence of Christianity itself, which is, after all, the only religion which proclaims a saving Love. Imagine that!
It is to this saving Love of our Father through His Son, Jesus, that ultimately all doctrines must turn. Whatever “type” of Christian you may be, whatever doctrines you espouse, whatever your denomination, in the end your eyes must look into the eyes of that Final Person and either accept or reject what you see there. It is to the Christian mystics that we owe this insight. To those uncomfortable with biblical inerrancy, fundamentalism, evangelicalism, or other doctrinally specific orthodoxies, the personal experience of Jesus the Christ remains not only possible, but necessary. So rejoice, you who fit into no category, you are not alone, nor are you an outcast in the Southern movement.
You are simply looking directly into the eyes of that Final Person.
The Guerilla Jesus
MacDonald King Aston
5 October 2009
I received a disturbing book this week. By John Dear, it is entitled Jesus the Rebel. I ordered the book because I thought Dear could shed some more light on the thesis begun by the Fire Eater’s Cole Kinney in his article back in January of 2008 also called, interestingly enough, Jesus the Rebel (which follows this article).
Dear’s idea of Jesus the Rebel differs radically from Cole Kinney’s. Kinney had written that the “Pale Gallilean is the inverse of Jesus the Rebel.” Kinney continued:
The Pale Gallilean, or the meek and mild Redeemer-With-A-Toothy-Grin, is very much the old Puritan’s God, transmuted to fit the Yankee’s for exorcising his endless (and whiny) guilt, changed from the stoic episkopos of the Puritans to the tidy Bostonian. What the ex-Confederate soldier and matchless theologian, Robert Lewis Dabney, called “the New England Christ.”
With the arrival of Dear’s book, it would appear that God gave Cole Kinney a job to do: to answer John Dear, who could take the Jesus who is the Christ and demote him to a starry-eyed hippy with a penchant for non-violent protest marches.
I thought of Kinney’s (at the time) controversial statement, that the majority of Christians are not Christians at all. Then I read John Dear’s words. I haven’t the space to adequately quote from Dear’s hippy-esque attempt at theology, but I’ll leave you with this one:
Jesus wants his followers to make peace, to end war, to root out the conditions for war, and to reconcile with everyone in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in our nation, and in the world.....He calls us to make peace by renouncing war and nuclear weapons, by seeking disarmament, by persistently reconciling with all peoples, and by loving our enemies. Jesus would bring together people of all races on our city block as well as heal the deep ethnic divisions in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Northern Ireland.
I could have tortured you by quoting more, but this 1960s version of the Christ should give you the picture that Dear continually tries to paint of the real Jesus; the Jesus of the Scriptures at any rate. The Scriptures, if anyone remembers them in Dear’s neck of the woods, have something entirely different to say about this meek and mild friend of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.
J. B. Phillips, in his wonderful little book entitled Your God Is Too Small, would have lumped Dear’s anemic portrayal of Jesus into two categories. One would be the “Meek-and-Mild” and the other the “Pale Galilean,” both subheadings under “Unreal Gods.”
Was Jesus “mild”? Phillips wrote that “mild” would seem to be the least appropriate word ever to use for Jesus. The Christ, wrote Phillips, challenged and exposed the hypocrites about him. He walked straight through murderous crowds. He was considered by the authorities of his time a public danger. And he “could be moved to violent anger” by, among other things, “complacent orthodoxy.”
Violent anger. Think about that for a second.
Phillips wrote that we might be able to think of Jesus as “meek,” in the sense of humble, but mild? Phillips used one word as answer: Never!
And as far as Dear’s hippy-dippy New England Christ of Non-Violent Peace Marches? A Christ forever fretting about “the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Northern Ireland”? A Christ insistent upon our “reconciling will all peoples”?
Hmm. Should we have reconciled with Adolph Hitler and his goons? Should we have reconciled with Pol Pot and his goons? Should we have reconciled with Abraham Lincoln and his goons?
Since when, by the way, was the God of Christians non-violent? Anyone want to point that one out to me? Because, if I’m not entirely mistaken, isn’t He the God who decided to flood the entire world, killing all but a handful of his chosen?
And because I have this odd habit of actually reading the words of Scripture, I find not a God of non-violence as John Dear would have us embrace, but the opposite, a God who could say to his people about war that “the Lord your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.”
And what of the sword? Doesn’t the God of Christians tell his people what to do when after having captured a city “thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword”? (Ezekial 20:4, 13)
Does that sound nonviolent to you?
Or how about when Joshua and his people brought down the walls of Jericho? What did they do with those inside afterwards? Do you remember, Mr Dear? I do. I remember that they “utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” (Joshua 6:21) And yes, I am at least theologically astute to take “context” into mind. But context won’t save the day here, Mr Dear. The context is too broad, for one. It is God. God himself.
The same God whom Samuel quoted unto Saul as “the voice of the words of the Lord,” before instructing Saul that the “Lord of hosts” wanted Saul to “go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (1 Samuel 15: 1-3)
Christians know, of course, that the atheoi will always attack Jesus for the very reason of God’s violent ways. (Without any understanding of the nature of God in the first place, naturally.) So is John Dear sucking up to the leftists? Probably. Certainly the leftist “Christians.”
But folks, ain’t no such thing as a “leftist Christian.” It’s just another way of saying “pagan” or “anti-Christian.” And as uncomfortable as it might make you feel, I take issue with such an obvious anti-Christian as John Dear. I say to you: This is no man of Christ, but a man who belongs to the archon of this world. A man who could actually tie Jesus the Christ to prostitute-addicted, academic-cheater Martin Luther King.
On page 129 of his book, Dear actually writes that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, what Jesus was actually doing was telling the “story of Dr. King and the civil rights movement calling forth African Americans from the tomb of racial injustice and unbinding them.”
In the end, John Dear’s words are the words of what our Lord called “this world.” Dear never understands the Christ, much less the creation, for one second. Why? Let’s see. Born in 1959, eh? Just in time for the good ol’ 1960s aftermath to set in.
In John Dear’s book, we have not Jesus the Rebel, but Jesus the Hippy. Peace, bro.
As for me, I prefer Cole Kinney’s summation:
Small problem though. God ain’t no Nice Guy. He is the Creator of all that is. All that is belongs to him to do with as He sees fit. And He will. All this Jesus the Christ knew (and was).
Let us thank God for that, and pray for those like John Dear, who seem to have found a Cause God and lost the only God there is.
(NOTE: The original article from January 2008 by Cole Kinney follows.)
See also:
Daniel F. Flores, Guerrilla Christianity:Towards Recovering an Apocalyptic Paradigm for Spirit-filled Ministry
About the Author
MacDonald King Aston is a Fire Eater, writer, musician, artist, father, and husband. A member of the Choctaw Nation, his folks have lived in Dixie for over 10,000 years.
Jesus The Rebel (Redux)
By Cole Kinney
21 January 2008
The title shocks at first glance. But then, so did Jesus. At first glance, second, and on into the centuries or, as the New Testament puts it, into the ages of the ages. Jesus of Nazareth? A Rebel with a capital R? To those who actually know New Testament theology, which is to say, those who know their scriptures, the picture does not shock at all. Rather, it fits. And fits well at that. Wait a minute.
“Cole, honey, you done taken your Full Loft today? ”
“It’s Zoloft, Momma, and I don’t take it anyway. ”
“What do you take, then? ”
“Aspirin. ”
“Well, take some of that, sweetie, what with you talkin bout Jesus an all in such way. ”
“Yes, ma’am. Right away. ”
OK, where was I? Well I know where I was last night. Reclining in an easy chair while listening to Bebo Norman’s rendition of Rebel Jesus, a Jackson Browne song from the early 90s. Yes, the same Leftist from the same Left Coast. Nonetheless, ol’ Jackboy seemed to strike a nerve, as several Christian artists have now recorded the song. And the lyrics are intriguing. After talking about streets “filled with laughter and light” (nice alliteration, Jackboy) of the Christmas season, Browne introduces a hint of darkness with “families hurrying to their homes” as “the sky darkens and freezes.” Then to the point. “They” call Jesus the “Prince of Peace” and “The Saviour.” “They” pray for his help while filling his churches “with their pride and gold.”
Then an odd turn. “But they’ve turned the nature that I worshipped in/From a temple to a robber’s den/In the words of the rebel Jesus.” Hmm. Nature? Maybe that would be Malibu? But at least he makes his point. Folks bent upon the outward show of Christianity with little to recommend them to the real Jesus. The professors are now running for their reference tomes to confront me with “Just who is the real Jesus? ” But I’ll let you decide that one for your own selves.
But I know this. One of the reasons I started writing for the Fire Eater was a conversation I had with MacDonald King Aston a couple years ago. He referred me to the concept of “The Pale Galilean,” from J. B. Phillips’ book, Your God Is Too Small. The Pale Galilean is the inverse of Jesus the Rebel. The Pale Galilean, or the meek and mild Redeemer-With-A-Toothy- Grin, is very much the old Puritan’s God, transmuted to fit the Yankee’s need for exorcising his endless (and whiny) guilt, changed from the stoic episkopos of the Puritans to the tidy Bostonian. What the ex-Confederate soldier and matchless theologian, Robert Louis Dabney, called “the New England Christ.”
In fact, once I started reading a proof of Mr King Aston’s book of essays, Yankee Babylon, I started to realise, not without a certain amount of attendant shivering, that the majority of alleged Christians are not Christians at all. Jackboy, however Hollyweirded he may be, had a point. A simple one at that. Jesus the Christ is not the Pale Galilean.
Jesus the Christ is not the Just-A-Nice-Man preached from so many pulpits. Jesus the Christ had and has a lot more to do than to sit around taking care of every one of your so-important sins (read: guilt feelings).
Jesus the Christ came for essentially one reason. To kick butt. To overturn the way things were and are. To walk into a temple after fashioning a whip by his own hands and use the dang thing to run the first-century equivalents of the Yankee mercantilists out of God’s holy house. By God. Or, as he put it, “I came not to bring peace, but a sword. ” (And yes, I do know the context. See Matthew 12:48-50.)
Sound like a Rebel to you? Of course, I do not mean to imply that the sole mission of the Christ was to strike terror into the hearts of miscreants and demons (both of which he did quite well, though). No, he came with such passion and fury because his Father’s creation (ktisis) was in danger of sliding into the ocean of nothingness. Because lawyers, politicians, and mercantilists had betrayed God and God’s people.
I just opened my Bible at random to Matthew 26:59. All the “ruler priests” (sounds like Yankees to me) and the guvmint (Sanhedrin, or Supreme Council) were trying to find some “false testimony” from Jesus. Why? To put him to death. Put him to death? Why would they care so much about one man’s opinions that they would want to kill him, which, as we know, they eventually did? The answer is simpler than the convoluted chaos you see in your Official Christian Church of a Sunday morning.
The answer is: Jesus was a Rebel. He did in fact rebel against the Way Things Were. And that upset a lot of important people with money behind them. (Hmm, the Yankee factor again.) Including the lawyers (Pharisees). They knew good and well that Jesus was breaking the law by having his disciples work on Sunday (Matthew 12:1).
Breaking the law. Sound like the nice neighbour next door type to you?
Of course, God was well pleased with him (Luke 3:22). But God was hardly on the minds of the lawyers and the Jerusalem Bostonians.
And if you were a demon? Forget it, boy. Because Jesus took care of you with “authority and power. ” (Luke 4:36) Out you go and don’t hit your hind end on the window on the way out.
Jesus didn’t mind cussin’ either. Most people don’t like to dwell on the topic, but there you go. Seems like he was forever calling folks names: hypocrites, snakes, lawyers (associated with the word “woe” time and again), losers and failures. “Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear?” (Mark 8:18) Heck, he even called his own disciple (Peter) a Satan. (Mark 8:33) Yep. That would be the rock upon which the Church yonder in Romish quarters built itself upon. Satan. And of an entire generation, “adulterous” and “sinful. ” And “faithless. ” The latter I get a kick out of. “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you. How much longer must I put up with you?” (Mark 9:19)
Sounds downright angry to me. Not the mealy-mouthed Jesus I learned of growing up. Not the Pale Galilean by a long shot.
No, this is a man who walked straight into a temple and “began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying.” Who then kicked over the chairs of the merchants and the tables of the bankers. Fact is, he wouldn’t even allow anyone to even carry anything through the temple.
Sound like a nice guy, as the Yankee says, to you?
I have a friend who once told me, “You know, Cole, that God will come to judge both the North and the South. I don’t know why you go on about your precious Dixie. They’re both going down.” And for a while, he had me going. Then one morning I awoke, and the picture grew clear.
Try to follow along here. One people (Yankees) came down into the homes of another people (Southerners). Southerners had not killed or even threatened to kill the Yankees. But the Yankees began to kill the Southerners anyway (tarriffs, slavery, lassitude, any excuse worked just dandy). But God says it is wrong to murder folks. Of course, God has a way of taking care of those who do wrong. And it ain’t pretty. So one people killed another without provocation, without reason, and without mercy.
Now upon whom would God look down with his eyes of mercy? The Yankee in Boston? U. S. Grant with his whisky cup in hand and murderous eyes above? Or Robert E. Lee down on his knees in a field of Virginia sweet grass, praying in all humility to the Lord of all creation? Or Stonewall Jackson, sending money regularly to make sure the black kids back at home had a Sunday School to attend?
There is, in short, a holiness to Dixie that cold logic can not attain to, that the Yankee can not grasp. And that holiness has survived to this day. Even the Yankee knows that Dixie is still “the Bible Belt.” What would Rhode Island or Massachusetts be? At best, the Factory Belt.
But I’m not God, thank God. And perhaps God will take the all those murdering John Brown types and forgive them their bloodlust and rape. Or perhaps not. Perhaps God will look into the eyes of every Yankee who passes his way and ask, “Why did you kill my children who did not hurt you first? ”
And before that Yankee can start mumbling atheistic Abolitionist rhetoric, God might well interrupt and point out an embarrassing but holy truth. “I never said, repeat never said, that slavery itself was wrong. Read my words. Never. In fact, those who love me are my slaves.”
The Yankee’s knees would probably be shaking at this point because in the pseudo-church he attended, he had never heard the word slave (doulos in the original Greek) but merely the word “servant.”
How nice. How Pale Galilean. How Nice Guy. How New York.
Small problem, though. God ain’t no Nice Guy. He is the Creator of all that is. All that is belongs to him to do with as He sees fit. And He will. All this Jesus the Christ knew (and was).
So to me Jesus fits the pants of the Rebel far better than the fancy duds of the Yankee.
What Shall We Serve?
by Bazz Childress
7 July 2009
"The real crisis of our time, of which crisis and squabbling are symptoms, is a soul sickness that has now grown acute because our world has forgotten some basic truths..."
Little Satilla: The Voice of T Warren
MacDonald King Aston
10 April 2009
The voice is not plain, nor rugged, nor weatherbeaten. It is the voice of One Who Has Been There. One who knows. T Warren sent some advance copies of his latest music to me recently. I’ve taken my time to listen, and now it’s time to speak.
Little Satilla struck me right away. With its pedal steel floating against the solid drumbeat, its two-fold reading, its honesty, I listened to it for two weeks to fix it in a place, a genre before realising that I could only fit it into the T Warren genre. Is it country? Yes and no. Is it rock? Yes and no. Is it folk? Yes and no. Is it pop? Well, no. So be it. The closest I’m going to get is a blend of country, folk, and rock, salted with blues. Notice, by the way, that blues and rock were born in the South.
With Little Satilla, the first impulse is to lump it into the love-song category:
Little Satilla you been on my mind
Seems I’m thinkin’ boutcha most the time
There’s a place you hold, deep in my heart
Though miles of madness keep us apart
But the next verse begins to reveal the real love:
Folks up here well, they don’t understand
The spell that ya have on this here man
You’re all through my system gets worse every day
Till I get back to Georgia it’s gonna stay that way
And the love is confirmed by the chorus:
My Sweet Satilla, I been all over this land
Spreadin the message in a redneckin band
Little Satilla is a love song. But the Little Satilla is also a blackwater river welling up from the coastal swamps of Dixie, wandering past cypresses and gumswamps, pines, sweetbay, red maples, and emptying into Saint Simon’s Sound in Glynn County, Georgia, home of Sydney Lanier’s The Marshes of Glynn.
The invocation of the Little Satilla marks a coming home—one day. It’s a song about coming home to the Southland, to the magnolias and seawind, to the truth of God’s Country, to the winding of the Little Satilla through the marshlands of southeast Georgia. For T Warren, it is a declaration of his entire life, perhaps. Waiting to get home to God’s green and holy land. Both here and there. 
For me? Little Satilla is indeed both here and there. Both Dixie and God’s Country. Both holy. And listening to T’s voice, you can tell he knows it.
“Miles of madness” is the this-here sorrow. But this-here sorrow is never lost to one’s heart—providing one’s heart is big enough to hold on to the this-there-then truth of God.
And T’s heart has held on, for in the last line he says, “Little Satilla I’m headed your way.” One day.
Of course, T grew up on the move, following his daddy’s oilfield work. Where was home? Where is home? To those who know T well, home is his music. And perhaps that’s why Little Satilla found a place in my own heart, for there is no difference between the “real” Little Satilla and the music of Little Satilla. They are one and the same, both flowing from T’s genius, a word which I seldom use of most musicians.
I think, for example, of someone like Don Henley. Enormously successful, rich, the whole shebang-doodle-bang. But where, if anywhere, is the single note of God’s voice sounding in any of his songs? T does not have the wherewithal to produce his music in fancy studios in Los Angeles, and that is both good and bad. It’s bad because we don’t have the surround-sound quality, the gussied-up stereo cuts. But it’s also good, because what we do have is so real, it takes guts to listen to its reality. And that reality is the genius of dirt and clay, the song of the man who is man and no other.
I could go on about the other music T sent to me. They’re all gold. But they’re all T Warren as well, and they’re all about the long road traveled and the road back home. The upbeat Southland, for example, yet another great song:
Southland callin’
She’s calling me home...
Lord I wanna go home
Dixie’s callin’ me home
One of the things I realised over a few days listening surprised me. T’s lyrics have actually, hmm, what’s the word? Deepened? I first noticed it in the line from Too Damn Old (the title of which is too damn good): “Sittin in a house so quiet the silence reminds me of you.” And from the same song, the familiar honesty of T’s music:
Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder
It rips the heart apart
Or even more so, from Fight On My Hands:
The demons have found me
And sometimes surround me
Even though I don’t call them up
Guess it’s their way of sayin’
They plan on stayin’
Takes all I got just to keep them at bay
I’ve gotten older, still a troubadour soldier
Fightin causes best I can
Keepin the fight on my hands
I’ve got a fight on my hands
Well, we all have a fight on our hands, now don’t we? But as long as we’re in the scrap, it helps to have the Real Stuff alongside. And T’s music is the Real Stuff. Want Hollyweird? Go grab some Don Henley. Want the truth? Then keep your eye on http://www.terrywarren.net.
Meanwhile, I’m gonna light me up a seegar and listen to Little Satilla for the umpteenth time.
All lyrics © T Warren Red Dirt and Redskin Music 2007-09
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