Issue 033 PDF Version - Christian Ethics Today

Slattery and his ex-nun wife swooped down upon Waco
recently and scooped in several hundred scudi from prurient
worldlings and half-baked Protestants. . . . Brother Fight-the-
Good-Fight was out in force, and many a Baptist dollar went
into the coffers of these brazen adventurers. . . . The audiences
were representative of that class of so-called Christians which
believes that everyone outside its foolish sectarian fold will go
to hell in a hemlock coffin.” 9
In subsequent issues of his journal Brann continued to
berate the A.P.A., which he dubbed the “Aggregation of
Pusillanimous Asses,” and the Baptist establishment. He
branded the nationally known Baptist minister, T. Dewitt
Talmadge, whose columns were carried in 3000 American
newspapers, a “wide-lipped blatherskite.” In an article which
reveals Brann’s own racial prejudices he objected to the zealous
foreign mission efforts of Baptists, while at the same time criticizing
the wealth of the churches. “For a specimen of audacity
that must amaze Deity, commend me to a crowd of
pharasaical plutocrats, piously offering in a hundred thousand
dollar church prayers to Him who had not where to lay His
head; who pay a preacher $15,000 per annum to point the
way to Paradise, while children must steal or starve. . . .
Everywhere the widow is battling with want, while these
Pharisees send Bibles and blankets, salvation and missionary
soup to a job-lot of niggers, whose souls aren’t worth a
soumarkee in blocks of five. . . . Let the heathen rage; we’ve
got our hands full at home. I’d rather see the whole black-and
16 • APRIL 2001 • CHRISTIAN ETHICS TODAY
tan aggregation short on Bibles than one white child crying for
bread.” 10
In another issue of The Iconoclast Brann turned his caustic
sarcasm on the influential monthly publication, the Baptist
Standard (still today the official journal of Texas Baptists), edited
by Dr. J. B. Cranfill, a Baptist patriarch. His special target
was the advertising featured in Standard pages. “It grieves me
to note that the purveyors of ‘panaceas’ for private diseases
regard the religious press as the best possible medium for
reaching prospective patrons. . . . It shocks my sense of proprieties
to see a great religious journal . . . like the Texas Baptist
Standard flaunting in the middle of a page of jejeune prattle
anent the Holy Spirit, a big display ad for the “French Nerve
Pill”—guaranteed to restallionize old roues.” 11
The event, however, which was to bring Brann’s feud with
the Baptists to a raging boiling point was one that shocked
and intrigued all Waco. In the spring of 1895 the impending
motherhood of an unmarried Baylor student from Brazil,
Antonia Teixeira, became public knowledge. Antonia had come
to Texas from Brazil at the age of 12, sent there by Baptist missionaries
to be educated at Baylor. During her first year at
Baylor she was a boarding student on the campus, but then Dr.
Burleson, Baylor’s president, took her into his home where, in
return for her board, room, and clothes, she assisted Mrs.
Burleson with the housework.
Rooming in a house in the Burleson yard and eating his
Used by permission of Ben Sargent