Remembering Bob Alton

Remembering Bob Alton

My friends and I lost a good friend this past October 19, 2016, Robert M. Alton, Jr., who just seventeen days earlier entered his 90^th year.

Many of us, however, are not aware of his history of achievement and disappointment. He lost his 14-year old son many years ago, a loss most difficult for any parent to accept and endure.

Bob was born in Tallassee, Alabama on October 2, 1927. Tallassee, a small town populated with less than 5,000 in the 2010 census, is geographically located in both Elmore and Tallapoosa counties. Its claim to current-day fame is a major hydroelectric power plant at Thurlow Dam operated by Alabama Power Company. Tallassee’s historical recognition is the central area of the Creek Indians.

As a young man Bob Alton worked as a tinsmith, coppersmith, and sheet metal worker. On August 6, 1946 he enlisted in the Regular Army at Fort McClellan, Alabama. His service at that time was with the Panama Canal Department. At the time of his enlistment Bob had completed one year of college.

Later Bob would complete his undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama. He played trumpet in the Alabama “Million Dollar” Band and was a member of the Phi Kappa Alpha fraternity. In 1951 he graduated from the Alabama Law School and received his Juris Doctor degree (J.D.).

He practiced law in Elmore County, Alabama, became an officer in the Army Reserves and the Alabama National Guard where he served for twenty-six years, and retired as a Lt. Colonel. Bob developed laudable careers in the military and in the practice of law. 

Robert M. Alton, Jr. was an American patriot.

Most of all, Bob was a follower of Jesus Christ. As a member of The Gideons and the Full Gospel Business Men Association, Bob lived his faith hour-by-hour and day-by-day. He was a shining light for many to see, not shining for himself but shining as a reflection of his Lord and Savior.

Bob was a loud (perhaps a hearty) singer of hymns. If you ever sat in church in front of Bob, you knew who was singing. And he could carry a tune. Obviously his college trumpet-playing years continued the development of his musical skills. He and his wife Kay of 46 years exemplified a wonderful duet/couple for the rest of us.

At our church, Saint Peter’s Anglican Church in Mountain Brook, Alabama, Bob was stalwart, a person of deep faith and of high personal integrity. He was a friend to everyone.

God has called our brother-in-Christ to be with Him. It is indeed a sad time, but it is a joyous time, too.

It is Christ in Whom we live, both now and at our time of eternal rest.

Rest in Peace, Bob.

© 2016 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

What's Left

What’s Left?

Has it all gone away?

Our conscience, our soul, our will?

What’s left is here to stay.

Though many chill, the left thrill.

What’s left is any progression

To confuse, mislead, or destroy

Our most prized possession

And its unraveling, their method deploy.

What’s left to control,

Oppress, and dominate

Is not some part but the whole

Social strata to subjugate.

What’s left is a “living” Constitution

And not our Forefathers’ foundation.

It lives to prepare for adversarial persecution

Of murmuring winds from an original nation.

What’s left are new winds

Of persistent change incapable of standard.

What’s left rescinds

Rights, politically gerrymandered.

 What’s left is a humanly constructed deity

Of poverty, attachment, and death.

A government of forced homogeneity,

All the left’s lie, its shibboleth.

What’s right is saving our nation.

What’s right is seeing through the storm.

What’s right is saving the next generation

From what’s left to conform.

© October 2016 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

Challenging Russell Moore

Challenging Russell Moore

The other day several of my Facebook ® “Like”s cited, and recommended as a favorable read, an article by Russell Moore. Therefore, I had to read it.

In The Washington Post opinion article of October 9, 2016, Moore headlined (or The WP editor headlined) his opinion as “If Donald Trump has done anything he has snuffed out the Religious Right.”

I, for one, never want to criticize Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Church’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. But I challenge his initial assertion.

Trump did not and has not “snuffed out the Religious Right.” Moore credited the wrong person. The Religious Right described by Moore as the “old guard,” has for decades been a dying phenomenon.

The likes of Oral Roberts, Jim & Tammy, Robert Tilton, and Jimmy Swaggart were not mentioned by name in his article, therefore one has to assume that Moore is referring to those older TV evangelists as well as to the more politically active evangelists of the past namely Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. (Falwell eventually walked away from his political activism and returned to the Gospel.)

For this current political cycle, again, one must assume that Moore obliquely refers to and lumps in Dallas Baptist minister, Dr. Robert Jeffress as part of the “old guard.” Fair enough. But to headline that it is Donald Trump who has snuffed out the Religious Right is a stretch, a stretch that actually undercuts Moore’s conclusion – the Gospel witness of Millennials.

Russell Moore attributes to the next generation a witness to Christ as counter-cultural. Who can argue with that? For the past decade or more I have read articles by young people who have become fed up not only with TV evangelists but with churches that deftly identify with the culture.

Many of us have seen this emerging Gospel generation close up. Take for example Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Beeson is an academically top-notch school of theology and trains its students with sound and fundamental Christian teaching. In my own parish we have had a dozen or more seminarians from Beeson taking part in our church life as interns – a requirement of the Beeson curriculum.

These students and most of their non-seminary peers are replacing the “old guard.” Their Christian witness is implicitly counter-cultural, not anti-cultural. It took 40 years for God to transform the Israelites [read the details of the difficult transformational process in The Book of Numbers]– it took the passing of one Israelite generation to the next to understand its mission.

It is the witness of this younger Christian generation who are replacing the “old guard” and not Donald Trump.

© 2016 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

Russell Moore Article

The Aftermath - The Conundrum

The Aftermath - The Conundrum

2009-2017

Now, we at the end of an octave

Of massive social transformation,

Of tradition turned upside down,

Decadence as norm, mutilation.

We had no Second Coming,

The center did not hold,

The right indulged its false purity,

The left continued toward its progressive fool’s gold.

We endured this decadent octave,

A relentless imposition of elite sophistry into fact.

Now in the advent of change,

Our solace seemingly sacked.

We lost our gut, our constitution,

Right, wrong, and morals relative.

Our once-stable pyramid, its foundation

Now teetering on its summit.

On the cusp of this octave’s aftermath

With no stalwart to elect,

People should vote their wrath,

Reversing this season of disruption and neglect.

(c) 2016 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

The Fix Was / Is In

The Fix Was / Is In

On our political left

The fix was (always) in.

No integrity in government, bereft.

The chosen candidate was (always) to win.

Obfuscation and misdirection pressed into motion,

Aided by journalist, broadcasting continually on air.

Lying, cheating proffered as truth-promotion,

But to the wide-eyed, they now in despair.

Discomfort and anger rumbled on the right

As their world of normalcy turned upside down

For eight years (seemingly as if over night).

Only one aspirant spoke to their issues while others just frown.

Establishment-right knows not how to win,

For eight years they were passive.

Having endured revenge, must take it on the shin.

Abandonment of their constituents quite massive.

So here we are both left and right

With two political deplorables delivering immoralities, lies, and tricks.

It’s too late for us to kick and smite.

Help us, Lord because we are really in a big fix.

Father Stephen, Mother Mandrine

Father Stephen, Mother Mandrine

It was fifty years in the past

When Stephen and Mandrine wed.

A marriage expected to last

Far into the future, this love has led.

Our Lord’s blessings upon them flowed

Like God’s love for His lamb.

This couple’s love for each other never slowed,

Yielding another generation in son Sam.

The gospel in marriage lives through people,

Each with their own praise to carry.

With their marriage bound under a steeple,

Mandrine gave birth to daughter Mary.

With two children delivered through grace,

To their mother with honor we curtsy.

But all was not yet complete in this case,

Until the arrival of baby Mercy.

There are grandchildren and generations to come,

For God has blessed this family with His love.

Stephen and Mandrine follow God’s sacred drum

Sharing our Father’s Spirit like a dove.

Family, mission, and service – their calling.

This is not some idle theory.

Any different work would be appalling.

This is the family Ireri.

May God the Father bless their marital union.

May God the Son be their salvation,

And May God the Spirit advocate in Holy Communion.

The Holy Trinity, their Foundation.

© Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

September 17, 2016

Birmingham, Alabama

Our parish, St. Peter's Anglican Church in Mountain Brook, Alabama, has had for more than a decade Kenyan families as members. Stephen and Mandrine Ireri celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on September 17, 2016 at our church. The ceremony was fully Christian and fully Kenyan. The Ireri's are parents to three adult children and many grandchildren. For them this celebration was also a family reunion as relatives came from near and far for this special occasion. Stephen is an assisting priest and has been active in Torati Vision International Torati Website click here.

The Emerging Chamber

The Emerging Chamber

Its parents were Athens and Jerusalem.

One the abstract, of logic and beauty.

The other the real life, hope, and love.

Sages provided concepts of order.

Patriarchs followed created order.

Jerusalem gifted Athens.

Heraclitus and Anaxagoras were on to something:

Science, philosophy, the cosmos.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle their beneficiaries.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob:

Obedient, patriarchs, wrestler.

David, Solomon, Jesus beneficiaries.

The marriage of Athens and Jerusalem,

The thought, the idea, and the true reality:

“The Way” the beneficiary.

“The Way” from the two cities

Westward tamed barbarians.

Europe the beneficiary.

Two thousand years

European mission.

The world, the beneficiary.

Two millennia passing,

Followers losing their way,

Forfeiting their benevolence.

The formerly Holy now deemed offensive,

Positive law overshadowing “The Way.”

Hush or be taken to jail!

Despite appearances,

No separation between secular and divine.

But secular subjugation close at hand.

Excluded from public square assembly,

Holy spaces soon to be quashed.

Prepare “The Way” for a new chamber.

A new catacomb.