Excerpts from The Sword of the Lord

Excerpt from Chapter 3 of The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family

Excerpt from Chapter 14 of "The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Funamentalism in an American Family"

Excerpt from The Sword of the Lord, Chapter 6.

Excerpt from Chapter 16 of The Sword of the Lord.

Excerpt from Chapter 3 of The Sword of the Lord. Baptists were an oppressed and disreputable religious community in American before the Revolution. They were attacked, beaten, jailed, and ostracized for the offense of creating their own churches outside the established Church of England. Baptists therefore, led the drive to enshrine the separation of church and state in the new United States Constitution.

In its simplest and most elemental form, the energy that drove the original development of fundamentalism was at the heart of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. A scribe asked Jesus the fundamental question: “What commandment is the foremost of all?” His response was: “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel!

Excerpt from Chapter 5 of The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family.

When I was 14, in the summer of 1964, I lived with my family in Millington, Tennessee, just north of Memphis.