A Tribute to the Rev. Dr. James A. Langley
A Tribute to the Rev. Dr. James A. Langley
By George O. Stapleton
I first met Jim Langley in 1954 during a youth-led revival I was leading at Fountain Memorial Baptist Church in SE Washington, D.C. He was the visiting preacher while still a student at Southwestern Seminary in Texas. We were all impressed by his preaching and the depth of his knowledge. That never changed during the 64 years I knew him, and I’m convinced if you took a poll of others who knew him they would agree.
Jim was born in Opelika, Alabama in 1925 and seemed to have been on his way to the ministry at an early age. He entered the U.S. Army 10 days after high school graduation in the middle of World War II and, right after basic training, went to MIT for a six-month study. He was then assigned to the 17th Airborne Division in Marseille, France, to support the Seventh Army drive into Germany.
He later received his BA degree from Baylor University in Texas. He became pastor of the Baptist church in Malone, Texas, while still in college. He must have been a good speaker even then since he was asked to give the keynote speech at the laying of the cornerstone for Baylor’s new library.
From Baylor, Jim went on to get his Bachelor of Divinity at Southwestern Seminary, then his M.Div. at Princeton Seminary, and then back to Southwestern for his Doctorate of Theology. While getting well-educated, Jim seemed to excel in preaching, getting involved in the Youth Revival Movement, preaching in many churches in the Southwest. That’s where we heard about Jim and his musical friend, Bob Feather, and invited them to Fountain Memorial. We weren’t the only ones to hear about him, though, as he was invited to preaching missions in Mexico and Rwanda, Africa, as well as Hong Kong. He did find time to travel around the world, stopping in Japan, India, Egypt, Israel, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Soviet Union. He also found time in 1951 to get married to a young woman named Eugenia Savage (Jean) from Alexandria, Virginia, who attended Southwestern Seminary with him, while receiving her Masters in Religious Education. They traveled for two months in Europe (some honeymoon!) including visiting wartime friends in France.
Even though he earned a Th.D, Jim was a humble man, always self-deprecating, with a humorous retort when complimented. In fact, humor was very much a part of his life; but his jokes were somewhat intellectual and you could easily miss the punch line if you weren’t listening carefully. However, there was nothing funny about his ministry. It was always serious business, delivered from a loving and sincere heart. And his first metropolitan church was not an easy one, made up of a group of people who had left their mother church down the street because they couldn’t get along with the pastor.
Early in his career, when he became pastor of Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church (PABC), a fledgling church started by Fountain Memorial Baptist Church (where I met my future wife Glenda Faye Overly), he stepped into a challenging situation; but he was more than up to the challenge. One of the best things I think he did was to encourage Faye and me (along with another young couple) to start a young married group that met on Sunday evenings for a time of sharing and learning. (Faye and I were the first couple married by Jim in the new church building.) Our group flourished because we just wouldn’t take “no” for an answer as we encouraged visiting young couples to join us; so we soon became a group of 10 couples. With Jim’s encouragement, we did a lot in the life of the church as well as socially. Some of those Jim inspired and attracted to our group included a young doctor and nurse, two ministers, two CPA’s who worked on Capitol Hill, one ambassador, one congressman, two teachers, a lawyer, two very successful businessmen and many very committed and encouraging spouses who were there every step of the way. And our sponsors, Jim and Irene Martin, whom we adored, inspired us all. The amazing thing about the group was that we stayed in touch with each other over the years. We all celebrated 50th anniversaries (including Jim and Jean), and got together (with Jim still preaching to us, sadly without his dear wife Jean who died way too soon in 2002) every few years at mountain retreats, until our last gathering in 2013.
With Jim’s counsel, I decided to enter the pastoral ministry after graduating from George Washington University, and Faye and I went off to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, with my license to preach granted by PABC. We kept the church advised of our seminary progress with summer visits at Faye’s parents’ home in Washington. But sometimes plans change as mine did after completing two years of a three-year Master of Divinity program. The impetus for my change of plans was the firing of one of my favorite professors at the seminary for writing a book called the Message of Genesis (really impressive to me), the lack of welcome to African- Americans at the seminary, and the seminary’s refusal to ordain women called to the ministry.
Disappointed by these events, Faye and I left the seminary and went back to PABC where we became very active in the church and my new career as a writer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture while moving around the country and being involved in other churches.
By this time, Jim had been selected as executive director of the D.C. Baptist Convention (one of the best things they ever did) and they had affiliated themselves with the American Baptist Convention, of which Faye and I were now members– thanks to unwelcome changes in the Southern Baptist Convention. And here again my life was about to change as my mentor and friend Jim called me out of the blue and asked me to become pastor of Fountain Memorial Baptist Church where I had first met both him and Faye. (I guess he just never gave up on me.) I agreed to do so and he arranged for my ordination and installation as pastor there with my promise to go back to the seminary and finish my Master of Divinity, which I did a few years later.
The three years there were a good time for both Jim and me. He was a busy beaver himself, helping form the Inter-Faith Conference of Washington, serving on several commissions of the Baptist World Alliance, being editor of the Capital Baptist Newsletter, serving on the executive boards of both the Southern Baptist and American Baptist Conventions, and serving as a trustee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
In the meantime, my own church membership was an older group made up of half white and half African-American people; so I was as much a care-giver as pastor. The events there are a whole story in themselves. But the upshot of it all was that it was a dwindling church in a racially sensitive neighborhood that did not have a future as it existed. So, under Jim’s guidance, and with a little help from me, we led the church through a process of determining to sell the church building and the two houses on the property to an African-American congregation for one million dollars, with the funds going to the D.C. Baptist Convention’s home missions program. After that, I went back to the seminary, got my degree and became pastor and minister of evangelism at several American Baptist and Episcopal churches in Colorado where I had kept my home.
Jim and I kept in touch even after retirement for both of us–both doing some supply preaching and writing–him, poetry (published regularly in this magazine), and in my case, non-fiction books (with a religious theme). There are now five of them with the latest at my publisher entitled, Just a Hillbilly, and Jim’s last poem (The Cup) recently published in this magazine.
This is my abbreviated story of Jim and me, but doesn’t begin to do justice as a tribute to the greatest preacher I ever knew and one whom I would call the Poet Laureate of Theology in America. But maybe I can best say that in a comment I made to Jim on more than one occasion — “I’ll bet St. Peter can hardly wait to hear you preach.” Or maybe the following poem I wrote on the occasion of his death will speak more appropriately to him and to us.
A Man Called Jim
I first met Jim Langley while still in my
Him in his three piece suit and me in my navy jeans.
Only nine years older and too young to
Still in seminary, but boy could he preach!
The meeting was a revival led by me,
He came to us from a Texas seminary.
I was a hillbilly sailor from Kentucky,
He was from Alabama with an impressive degree.
He impressed me and others too,
And when he left we all knew
We’d meet again down the road of Christian living
In all our lives to others giving.
The place of our meeting was called Fountain Memorial
A thriving church where his sermon was tutorial.
Challenging us to start other meeting places too,
One down the street where Faye and I said I do.
Here young married people found a gathering place
When invited by four of us with a warm embrace.
Thanks to the support of a young man named Jim Langley,
Who encouraged and cheered us on, our pastor, mainly.
And it became a phenomenal growing group
That exists today though somewhat stooped,
With him there preaching each time we meet,
Even though our gatherings number less to greet.
Now that one less greeting includes Jim
Who gave us all more than Jean and him.
Because his persona impacted all our lives
Like bees making honey in their hives.
He was my mentor and personal friend
And I’ll miss him mightly until the end
Of my life too,
This man called Jim.
George O. Stapleton
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