In My Texas Hometown, the Methodists Were the Liberals

 

The Sunday morning after [the pastor explained she opposed gay marriage], a pair of women were seen pouring a thick perimeter of salt around the church storefront....

--Sarah Edwards, "What Happens When a Non-LGBTQ+ Church Comes to a Particularly Queer Part of Durham?" 

Pouring a ring of salt around a church entrance? That's an ancient ritual to block the passage of an evil spirit. The ladies of the church who poured the salt ring evidently felt they were threatened by the evil spirits around them. This actually happened recently in Durham, at the intersection of Geer Street and Rigsbee Avenue, the former location of a motor and auto parts business and the new, sparkling Art Deco location of Pioneers Durham, a church affiliated with the United Methodists (UMC) and financially supported by something called the Affiliation of Related Churches (ARC). The official doctrinal stance of both the UMC and of the ARC happens to be anti-gay marriage. Period. So Pioneers Durham -- and its related businesses, of which there are many (including a coffee house catering to GenZ) -- has become controversial in a part of Durham which is, according to LGBTQ+ activists, one of the most queer in the state. 

About that folklore barrier for demons, according to Sarah Edwards, "The salt lingered for several days afterward."

The church -- and its woman pastor, Sherei Lopez Jackson -- are merely following current UMC and ARC doctrine regarding marriage. Both orgs say church-sanctioned marriage will be only between one man and one woman, though various individual UMC churches, including ones in Durham, are defying the doctrine. "In January 2020, Duke Memorial lead pastor Heather Rodrigues took historic action when she stood alongside 11 other UMC pastors and married Durham residents Caleb Parker and Thomas Phillips, who became the first gay couple to be married in the history of the 112-year-old Duke Memorial." There's actually an irrevocable split in the UMC underway, likely to consummate at the 2022 General Conference when the larger church is expected to split into two factions: a conservative wing (with which Pioneers Durham looks likely to affiliate) and another that affirms LGBTQ+ congregations.

I read Sarah Edwards' article carefully. Pastor Lopez Jackson is no Mark Robinson, nor anything even in that neighborhood of intolerant Christianity. She's actually a crusader of sorts for women's rights. She says she wanted ordination in the UMC because they accept women preachers, and her ideas for using the Pioneers Durham property off-hours to stimulate and nurture local small business enterprises, especially among black women, seems totally cool. And her get-to-know video compells sympathy:

But in Edwards' article she's weirdly evasive about the "homophobic" label:

“I hope to teach and create conversation around sexual formation with humility, listening, and compassion towards the ways that this interpretation has caused deep harm,” Lopez Jackson wrote. “Our leaders commit to listening, apologizing when necessary, and continually growing in love, kindness and healthy relationships. We commit to surrounding ourselves with voices unlike our own, so that we might be better spiritual friends to Durham.”

That is a form of gobbledygook which I learned to despise when I was an academic. What, pray tell, does "sexual formation" mean? That obfuscating locution, along with those great big empty generalizations like "humility, listening, and compassion," which she drops like chocolate-covered cheeries of distraction -- really say nothing at all. Who talks this way?

Plus there is that salt ring thing.

"NC fails White House benchmarks for reopening, health experts say"

That headline above appeared on the WRAL website late yesterday, with this paragraph:

As of Tuesday, ... a nationwide collaboration [created by public health and crisis experts] tracking every state's progress toward recovery puts North Carolina in the red. That color-coded designation means it failed one of several "gating criteria" provided by the administration of President Donald Trump in its guidelines for "Reopening America Again."

Not that Donald Trump even knows what those guidelines are or gives a flip.

So far, North Carolina has hit benchmarks for low flu-like illness activity and sufficient hospital capacity. But it's the trendline for new cases, however, that scored the state the lowest on the project's three-color scale.

All signals from Raleigh suggest that Governor Roy Cooper is poised to accelerate reopening anyway, and he could make that announcement that we're going to Phase 2 today.

Meanwhile, last night the Watauga County Commission voted unanimously to ease up on its own virus shutdown. The Commish modified its original plan, which included a ban on short-term rentals and a 14-day self-quarantine order for those arriving from an overnight stay outside of the county, to align with the governor's phases. So now Watauga will allow short-term rentals to resume at the beginning of Phase 2 -- likely to be this Friday — and will lift the 14-day quarantine order for those arriving from an overnight stay outside of the county. The Watauga commissioners said they didn't want to be out of synch with neighboring counties, let alone the governor.

Durham Mayor Steve Schewel,
resisting pressure to reopen too quickly

You know what local North Carolina government isn't going along with a hopeful, easier "unity" with "the neighbors"? Durham Mayor Steve Schewel has extended his stay-at-home order for the foreseeable future, which includes a continuing mandate for face coverings. Durham County ranks 13th in the state for positive COVID-19 cases with 29 cases per 10,000 residents. For deaths, the County ranks 19th in the state with 1.12 deaths per 10,000.

Schewel did not state how long the stay-at-home order would last nor did he go into specifically which guidelines or restrictions would be affected. He even offered a word to critics who say the order is too strict and the city should reopen sooner rather than later.

"There are some people who are just opposed to the stay-at-home orders, and I simply disagree with that. And I think that we've needed those orders .... Because our infection rate is so low ... it means that we don't have much immunity. And so, unless we are coming back with safe practices, it would be very easy for the COVID-19 cases to spike and to hit us very hard. We want to keep our community safe."

Word! Watauga County, too, has had a blessedly low infection rate, but our leaders seem vague about the equation that Durham Mayor Steve Schewel understands. COVID-19 cases are increasing in North Carolina. Why in the world would a responsible local government help that acceleration without requiring, say, face coverings at the very least?

The Durham Civil War Soldier Statue

WRAL

I agree with Gov. Roy Cooper: There's probably a better way to do this.

Like getting these Civil War symbols off public land and into museums or private venues.

But this particular metal statue -- which stood there in front of the Durham County Courthouse since 1924, looking as solid as the Confederate dollar -- turned out to be a cheap (zinc?) hollow casting, part of a mass-production made during the first two decades of the 20th century to satisfy the politics of that time. The politics of that time have not aged all that well into the 21st Century.

Work of art or commercialized pop culture from the Jim Crow South?

These statues, or others like them, went up all over and by the hundreds in the first two decades of the 20th Century. (The McNeel Marble Works in Marietta, Ga., did most of the marble ones, the famous "Standing Soldiers" and other icons, but this statue in Durham was cheap pot metal.) At the turn of the Century, these statues were prideful reactions to Northern industrial superiority and reassertions of segregationist ideology -- "Jim Crow." The money was often raised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, but sometimes local governments wanted to jump on board for obvious reasons.

In North Carolina particularly, that era followed the brief power of the Fusion Party, a coalition of populists and black and white Republicans who swept state elections in 1894, including putting approximately 1,000 black officials into office. US Congressman George H. White was one of them. The Democratic Party of that day was suddenly, conspicuously, and pretty much totally out of power everywhere in North Carolina. There's usually been a strong reactionary white wave against any conspicuous advancement of colored people (and those waves right up to the present often include traditional "Democrats" in the reactionary voting bloc). The Civil Rights movement in the '60s produced a Jesse Helms. The election of Barack Obama brought the Tea Party sweep of 2010. So can't you guess what happened at the turn of the 20th Century? Following two virtual landslides for Fusionists in the elections of 1894 and 1896, the Fusion Party was swept into oblivion in the election of 1898. Boom! Gone! And the broom used in the sweep was overt white racism:

In the 1898 “White Supremacy Campaign,” led by future U.S. Senator Furnifold M. Simmons (1854-1940), chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, the Democratic Party used identity politics to regain power. “Negro rule” and “Negro domination” became the catchphrases of the campaign. Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, was the unabashed press spokesman for white supremacy. Red Shirts, reminiscent of the Klan, intimidated blacks and thereby limited the number of Republican votes. (North Carolina History Project)

Okay, motivation is one thing, but a God-fearing and church-going populace that didn't have anything to do with putting up those statues is allowed to view them as an honored and important part of their history, speaking to sacrifice and pain and loss and not the rest of it. I certainly see the statues as part of history, too, and I haven't been inclined to bash history or attempt to erase it. The psychic juice released by the fantasy of "the lost cause" is powerful ju-ju and lives today for the Alt-Right too -- "You will not replace us!" The pious matrons of the United Daughters of the Confederacy lacked the wherewithal to question the true ingredients of that "cause," its antecedents, and its effects. I just don't know how much history the Alt-Right understands. (Well, it takes time to see yourself. We've all got our bubbles.)

The ideology of the white Democratic Party of 1900 and 1910 and 1920 has been spectacularly replaced in North Carolina politics by the Republican Party of 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, busying itself at knocking down and doing it like a raiding party of Vikings. Ta-Nehisi Coates captured very nicely the hidden agenda behind the "heritage not hate" argument: "The heritage of white supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder."

Look What the General Assembly Did To Lee County

We hear about the new Republican majority in the General Assembly and what they did to Asheville's water system, and we hear about how they're trying to strip Charlotte of its airport, and we know about how they're forcing Durham to deliver water and sewer services against the will of the people to a huge mega-development outside city limits.

But some of their "smaller-scale" meddling in local government doesn't get the same news coverage.

Take Lee County and its local school board. See, Lee County has a majority-Democrat school board, and that fact apparently puts a burr under the saddle of the local Republican member of the NC House, Rep. Mike Stone, who was just elected in the Tea Party surge of 2010 and who has been drunk with power ever since.

Rep. Stone introduced three local bills in the General Assembly, all clearly intended to punish the Lee County School Board:

1. H490 forces the school board  — which has been officially non-partisan since it was established in 1967 — to hold partisan elections. 

2. H491 transfers control of school resource officers from the school district to the Lee County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff is a Republican.

3. H512 takes away the school board's power to appoint members of Central Carolina Community College's Board of Trustees.

H490 became law. H491 became law. H512 became law.

So much for local government.

But wait! A Lee Co. Superior Court judge has just granted a restraining order against H512 while a new lawsuit plays itself out.

The passage of local bill H512 ended the terms of four members of the Central Carolina Community College, specifically the four who were appointed by the Lee County School Board, and it furthermore decreed that none of those four people can ever be reappointed. Those four, one of whom was only sworn in a couple of weeks ago, have sued, alleging that H512 serves no legitimate government interest and is arbitrary and capricious.

"Arbitrary and capricious"? Why, yes, and perhaps there's still a judge in North Carolina who can recognize the truth of that. While H512 was singling out four people appointed by a Democrat-majority school board, it was leaving alone four other trustees appointed by the Republican dominated Lee County Commission. That's about as arbitrary as you can get. Also blatantly partisan, turning education, or at least the possibility of education, into a political pissing match.

No North Carolina City Is Safe From This General Assembly

The NC House yesterday gave final approval to a "local" bill that will force the city of Durham to annex a mega-development near Jordan Lake and to provide it water and sewer services. Passage of this atrocity is guaranteed in the NC Senate.

H150 Already Causing Consternation

House Bill 150, which would nullify much of Boone's recent Worforce Housing Ordinance, is also causing homeowner panic in Durham.

Thanks, Republicans in the General Assembly, for destabilizing home values all over creation and for riding roughshod over a city's ability to choose its own destiny. Because Uptight Daddy Knows Best!

North Carolina Round-Up

Where was the celebrated Republican/conservative resurgence in North Carolina yesterday? Nowhere much.

Charlotte
...elected its first Democratic mayor in 22 years, Anthony Foxx (no relation), pictured left, and increased the Democratic majority on the city council to eight out of 11 seats.

Asheville
Progressives swept the election. Mayor Terry Bellamy was reelected for a second term, and liberal Democrats Esther Manheimer, Gordon Smith, and Cecil Bothwell won council seats, beating two-term incumbent Republican Carl Mumpower, who ran such a weird campaign against Heath Shuler in the NC-11 last year. Both Smith and Bothwell are well known local bloggers.

Chapel Hill
The N&O summarized this race succinctly: "The liberal establishment held off a band of businessmen trying to change the town's course." So Chapel Hill has a new mayor, Mark Kleinschmidt, and the developers took only one of four available seats on the town council. Shades of Boone's Templetons: The pro-business candidates "were being influenced heavily by a specific group of developers, and I think in the end that backfired on them," said the top vote-getter, Penny Rich (love that name!).

Winston-Salem
Big reelection win for Dan Besse after "a sometimes-heated campaign" against Republican challenger Ted Shipley. Wish I'd been following this one! Dan is a personal hero of ours. Looks like a Democratic sweep otherwise in Tobacco City.

Durham
Democratic incumbents trounced their challengers, though the top vote-getter among the losers, a Libertarian, crowed that his 27% of the vote was a personal best for him and a sign of great things coming in the future.

Greensboro
The major bright spot statewide for the GOP. The mayor and city council turned over to Republican control. Mark Binker discusses it here.