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The following letter was read during the opening monologue of the "Religious Talk" radio program on March 5, 2000. It was mailed to Pat McGuigan on the same day. Dear Mr. McGuigan, This letter is written in response to your editorial entitled “Stonewall – Romans 8:28-30” published in the Daily Oklahoman on Friday March 3, 2000. I would like to ignore editorials like the one you wrote on Stonewall Jackson, but conscience will not permit me to do so. When I was a child and thought as a child I could and did ignore the rhetoric that glorified the old South and its generals. My maternal grandparents were from the deep South and were proud to die as unreconstructed Confederates. They did their best to convince me that the cause of the South in the Civil War was a noble cause. They visited all the Confederate monuments and battlefields and, when they didn’t drag my brother and sister and I along with them, they came back with reams of pictures and books that gloriously recounted the stories of the Old South and her generals. My grandparents were good people, but I was never comfortable with this aspect of their personalities. I knew their shortcomings on matters of race all too well. They did not try to hide the prejudice that was in their hearts from their grandchildren. Frankly, they tried to foster the same prejudices within us. Even as a child, however, I could never reconcile their attitude with what I learned at church. I first learned theology by singing “Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Fortunately, songs like that took deeper root in my heart than what my grandparents were trying to foster there. I just learned to ignore my grandparents when they were trying to teach me all the sophisticated ways they had learned to disguise their racism from the disapproving eyes of the world. While I was ignoring the prejudices of my grandparents, a whole host of other children were listening to theirs with open minds and willing hearts. Whenever those children would spout off about the glories of the Old South and the need to be proud of your racial heritage, I learned to ignore them too. If they weren’t sensitive enough to be ashamed to believe such things, I would just be silently ashamed for them. For most of my life, I wrongly thought that if I just kept ignoring the racism and prejudice that was around me, it would gradually die and go away. For a while, that strategy seemed to work. By the time I became a teenager the Civil Rights movement was in full bloom and my grandparents could sense where my loyalties lay. Without my ever saying a word to them, they stopped trying to instill their prejudices within me. In my own family, at least, pride in the racism and prejudices of the old South died with my grandparents. On a broader scale it looked like racism was being defeated within my own religious community. During the Civil Rights era Southern Baptists were ably led by people like Foy Valentine, Jimmy Allen and James Dunn. Those able leaders, in the face of great opposition, helped Southern Baptists overcome the racism and prejudice that permeated our denomination from its beginning in 1845 and helped create the social atmosphere in the South that led to the Civil War. For a while, it looked like people in my generation had little reason to be engaged in the struggle against racism and prejudice within the church and community. We thought the generation before us had won that war. Then, in 1979, things began to change in Southern Baptist life. By that time the memory of the Civil Rights era had begun to fade. By that time the segregationists and racists of the 1960’s had learned to cloak the racism of Southern culture in the language of Christian values and moral majorities. Most importantly, by that time the segregationists and racists of the 1960’s had shifted the battlefield to a different terrain. Instead of overtly defending racism and White Supremacy, they decided to defend the inerrancy of the Bible. Then they began to attack the men who led Baptists through the Civil Rights era for not believing the Bible. With skills that Civil War generals might admire, they led a campaign in Southern Baptist churches that began a process that would reverse their losses during the Civil Rights era. Using ballots instead of bullets, they took over the Southern Baptist Convention and removed every one of the leaders who had so ably guided Southern Baptists during the era of Civil Rights legislation. Now that all the agencies and institutions of the Southern Baptist Convention are in the hands of Fundamentalists, it is not surprising that Broadman & Holman Publishers – a Southern Baptist publishing house -- would be publishing books glorifying and rehabilitating the Christian character and convictions of old Civil War Confederate generals. I suspect that many of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention are as much unreconstructed and unrepentant Confederates as were my grandparents. What does surprise me is that an editorialist in the largest newspaper in Oklahoma would be commending this kind of literature at a time when racial tensions have recently escalated to the point of violence at a high school in Wynnewood. It ought to be obvious that such editorializing does nothing to defuse racial tensions in our community and serves best to fan the flames of conflict. Such editorializing is unconscionable from someone who lives in a city where less than five years ago White Supremacists hoped to start a race war by bombing a federal building and killing 169 innocent men, women and children. You should also realize that people do not have to be what you call, “modern apostles of cultural fascism,” to think that it is just plain stupid to extol the virtues of Confederate generals at times of racial tension. Common sense would tell you to discuss things that would promote unity and harmony among the races – at least until the passions that produce violence subside. In the future, I hope you choose a more appropriate time and place in which to indulge your nostalgia for leaders of causes that many in our community find less than glorious. Sincerely, Bruce Prescott Host, “Religious Talk” Sunday Mornings 8:30-10:00 AM on the Sports Animal Radio Network WWLS 640 am 104.9 fm McGuigan has not printed this letter to the editor. He did publish another editorial entitled "Glorified -- Stonewall's Lessons" that appeared in the Daily Oklahoman on March 15, 2000. To read Dr. Prescott's response to McGuigan's second editorial click here. To vote to give the "Thick as a Brick" award click here.
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