[Oe List ...] CF&LC revisited: shorter, slimmer, and updated

[John Cock]

Thanks, Marshall. Very interesting and revealing, though somewhat forced or
slanted by the author's criteria -- his looking for a good example for his
theory.
 
John

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of W. J.
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 6:41 PM
To: oe at wedgeblade.net; dialogue at wedgeblade.net; springboard email list
Subject: [Oe List ...] CF&LC revisited: shorter, slimmer, and updated


Regrettably, I sent the following out with an obese Word file that was too
fat and not yet scrubbed for typos. I'm trying again without the attachment.
I have uploaded the entire chapter to the O:E Repository. If the fat
attchment goes thru, please delete and go to the Portal to retrieve your
slimmed and corrected copy.
http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Portal/WebHome Click on "recent
changes" under the Repository section and you'll see it.
Marshall

Joe Mathews was born on October 8, 1911, and died his death on October 16,
1977, almost exactly thirty years ago.
 
I guess it's inevitable that if we don't write our own history, somebody
else will do it for us.
 
I was surprised and delighted to find an excellent history of the New Left
in the 1960's that accurately sources the influence of JWM & Company on the
development of a radical leftist countercultural movement.
 
Title is The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New
Left in America (1998) by Doug Rossinow, who is an assistant professor of
history at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis. This book is his
doctoral dissertation, and without giving too much away, I was more than
pleased at how well he, as a historian, integrated an understanding of
Tillich and Bonhoeffer with an appreciation of the role of CF&LC and Joe
Mathews in forming radical consciousness in Austin and across many campuses
in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
 
It's an amazing read to go ten years further back in our history than I had
before in any depth.
 
This guy is a youngster, so he wasn't there, and yet you have a sense of how
much he is able to get inside the context and relate what happened in Austin
to the cultural revolution of the 1960's.
 
And oh yes, he interviewed Lingo by phone in 1991! Also mentions Fred Buss
and Joe Slicker, if only once.
 
Here's a sample paragraph to whet your appetite.
 
Joe Mathews started his career as an evangelical preacher with
fundamentalist leanings. The son of an Ohio Methodist minister, he went to
Hollywood in the 1930's to break into the movies and got saved instead in a
Los Angeles revival. He maintained a dramatic flair; his heavy silences,
poetic outbursts, and fake stammer in the classroom became legend among his
students. With his faith intact, he entered the army as a chaplain during
World War II. His experiences in the Pacific theater of war "destroyed him"
when he found that his religious verities were useless to dying men. "He
could offer somebody a cigarette as they died, but he didn't have anything
to say to them. They had to die by themselves," as Lingo puts it.
 
I've uploaded Chapter Two to the O:E Repository in case you'd like to plow
through it. And I hope to have some more reflections to share soon. I might
even read the whole book--unusual for me.
 
So let's read the chapter together and share our reflections.
 
Happy reading,
 
Marshall Jones
 
http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Portal/WebHome
 
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