Adam Hamilton and James Talarico represent the kind of theology TV personality Joe Scarborough grew up hearing in Southern Baptist churches, he said in a broadcast last week.
Speaking on his MSNOW show, Morning Joe, the commentator recalled his childhood religious education in Meridian, Miss.; Pensacola, Fla.; and Atlanta. He previously has said he was raised in a mix of Episcopal and Baptist churches.
“It’s been such a disgrace over the past 20 years that Republicans have completely twisted and perverted the gospel of Jesus Christ that the people I hear on TV talking about the Christian nationalist faith sounded nothing like the Baptist preachers I grew up with,” he said.
Beverly Tinnin
He cited specifically First Baptist Church in Meridian, Miss., where Beverly Vaughn “Bev” Tinnin was pastor from 1961 to 1987; First Baptist Church of Pensacola, Fla., where James Pleitz was pastor from 1959 to 1977; and First Baptist Church of Chamblee, Ga., in northern Atlanta.
“These were not left-wing trans whatever celebrating churches,” Scarborough said. “I just thought how weird is it that the people that sound the most like Dr. Tinnin and Dr. Pleitz — I’m not talking about in politics — the people I grew up with listening to Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights —Adam Hamilton is the first person in American politics that talks like them, that speaks like them. And Talarico, despite his whacked-out tweets five, six or seven 7 years ago, when Talarico speaks about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Good Samaritan and what Jesus expects us to do, he sounds like them.
“And the reason I say that is somewhere in the hardened souls of those evangelicals who have voted for Christian nationalists for all these years they are hearing what they grew up with — a gospel of Jesus Christ that talks about helping the least among us, being the Good Samaritan, welcoming the stranger, feeding the poor, the hungry.
James Pleitz
“I would have never guessed this 10 years ago that a couple of Democrats (would) sound like my Deep South Southern Baptist preachers in the way they spoke — not these Republican chest-beating Christian nationalists who bemoaned the fact Jesus didn’t have an AR-15 to get off the Cross; I mean that’s how sick and perverted they’ve become.”
Two of the three churches Scarborough mentioned remain Southern Baptist congregations and have drifted rightward along with the SBC overall: First Baptist of Meridian and First Baptist of Pensacola. First Baptist Chamblee later became Johns Creek Baptist Church in Alpharetta, Ga., a church affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Conservative leaders of today’s SBC, including seminary president Al Mohler, frequently have blamed previous pastors like Pleitz and Tinnin for being part of the “liberal drift” they say the “conservative resurgence” of the late 20th century was necessary to address.
Mohler also has said Talarico’s own grandfather, who was a “moderate” SBC pastor in Texas, is evidence of why conservatives had to take over the SBC.
Pleitz left Pensacola to serve as pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas. He was a leader in the “moderate” Baptist movement, was deeply involved in denominational leadership and was a founding board member of Associated Baptist Press, predecessor to Baptist News Global.
Tinnin was a World War II veteran who retired from the Mississippi church in 1987 and participated in the interfaith and biracial Ministerial Alliance of Meridian during the Civil Rights Movement.