I’m going to try something different. Sitting still isn’t getting it done. Maybe moving around will mean something.
So I rode my bicycle through London.
On Zwift, of course. No one is traveling to London right now. People are still trying to get out of there, last I checked. New York is clamping down on visiting Brits, and we’re not allowed anywhere right now either.
But an hour in The Big Smoke gets the heart rate up and loosens all the muscles. It’s a good thing.
I had three little sprints, as you can see in the spikes of the graphic details the watts. Maybe, for a half a second, I could have turned on part of a toaster.
I’m not a big watts guy, because I don’t produce a lot of watts, but maybe I could learn.
Anyway, felt better after an hour on the bike. I’ll have to try that again tomorrow.
Elsewhere, not a lot going on. I am working on a image for Christmas, and I’m looking forward to wrapping up a book this evening. I’ve almost taken a mid-day nap two days in a row. So, that’s the pace of things, which is a lovely, lovely pace of things.
So … look forward to a brief book mention tomorrow. Which reminds me I forget to mention one two back. On Sunday night I finished McCullough’s book on the Wright Brothers, and mentioned it here on Monday. But, before that, at some point last week, I finally finished Richard Hughes’ Reviving The Ancient Faith.
I say finally because I started reading this, according to the traditional receipt bookmark, in 2006. I put it down about a third of the way through. And I never give up on books. It’s also as thorough as can be — and Hughes discusses, effectively and believably, why it isn’t more thorough. It’s an issue of source material, and even still, he churns out a cool 385 pages. The style was the problem. It’s almost a monograph, and it makes for dense reading, but its a serious treatment of serious people and their most serious subject matter.
I wrote a little about one person on Twitter last week.
I read old descriptions and think "There should be footage. Why isn't there footage? What a shame," because, of course, we can't have footage of a 19th century like preacher Nancy Mulkey.
But then I think "No one really writes to describe like this anymore do they?" pic.twitter.com/jMAWIlYH9U
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
Anyway, Professor Hughes is quoting Isaac Jones (pictured). Jones was born in 1822 in east Tennessee. The quote is from a manuscript, "The Reformation in Tennessee." He was a preacher and president of the now-defunct Burritt College, one of the South's first coed institutions. pic.twitter.com/gJ7hlg5HAY
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
No photos of Nancy Mulkey, daughter of John Mulkey, a Separate Baptist preacher, described as a "Carolina backwoods preacher…for better or worse, the spiritual ancestor of every brassy, pomaded southern television evangelist ever caught in a scandal."https://t.co/4KZIqA3dtZ
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
Nancy's grandfather was also a preacher. Philip Mulkey, Sr. born in 1732 in North Carolina.
Ordained in 1757, "he was excommunicated in 1790 and churches were warned against him for adultery, perfidy and falsehood." (ibid.)
Philip Mulkey died in Tennessee in 1801.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
Now Philip Mulkey's father, this would be Nancy Mulkey's great-grandfather, he was also a preacher. So that's at least four generations. He was born in 1678, in North Carolina.
That man's father, Eric, the Internet tells me, was born in Sweden in 1636.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
So, to review: Eric in Sweden in 1636, father of Colonial North Carolina's John.
John had Philip in 1732. Among Philip's children was another John, born 1752. Nancy was John's fourth child. She was born 1778.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
The oldest of Nancy's three daughters lived to see 1885. I used to drive by her grave several times a year in Alabama.
That woman, Jemimah, had a son, Elisha. And Elisha had Manerva. She had Ellen. Ellen gave us Alex, who had Nelda who passed away at 90, last year.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
I digress. Nancy Mulkey, the exhorter, as preaching women in pioneer churches of Appalachia were sometimes called, is remembered by that description and one more, which may, in fact, be misattributed. Two blurbs from 200+/- years ago.
I wonder how all of our videos will hold up.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) December 12, 2020
It’s a good book about the Church of Christ, and it traces its way through the last few hundred years of people trying to figure out the belief system. I got this book wanting to learn about people to compliment what I’ve always learned about the Bible. This book does that, at the broadest level. The top review on Amazon says all the necessary things:
After forty plus years attending the Church of Christ, I am just now hearing the names of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone. This is a very hard book to read for those of us who were raised Church of Christ and were never told of our origins or early leaders. Your belief that you are a member of the Church founded in 33 AD will be shattered. Here the curtain is pulled back and the leaders, editors, college administrators, who have formed Church of Christ doctrine over the years are exposed. The amount of debate, fighting, and bickering among the leaders through our short history is very disturbing. If you are happy in the Church of Christ and are looking for material to strengthen your faith, this book is not you. If you want to see how the Churches of Christ have developed by reading history that has been hidden away, this book may change you life.
In that light, I suspect it would be a disconcerting read for some. But history isn’t always easily palatable, which is one of the things that can sometimes make it fun.
The human parts are what really make it work. I learned that when I finally got a history teacher in school who made it about those people and emotions, and not just names and dates. And, so, here, one of the most interesting things I read in this book wasn’t even in this book. That Philip Mulkey, Sr. character, the 18th century preacher excommunicated for adultery, perfidy and falsehood, wasn’t in the book. That one description of Nancy Mulkey, near the end of the book, where it finally had the opportunity to talk about women in the church, had the one brief passage, which, in turn, led me to a late-night search which intrigued me. A long family line of preachers. And then Philip Mulkey, Sr. had his difficulties, whatever they really were. A person’s weaknesses and bad choices aren’t automatically amusing, but there’s a personal story there. It’d be worth learning more about, I’d bet.
But Mulkey isn’t in the book I’m wrapping up tonight, which I’ll briefly mention here soon. And he likely won’t be in the one after that, either. I may never know more about him than what a few genealogy websites can tell me.
Makes you think, and wonder, and worry, doesn’t it?
