Eulogy
By Dr. Jimmy Allen
Foy Valentine was a master wordsmith. Eulogy actually means, “Good Words.” I will not match his eloquence in trying to say “Good Words,” but no one I know deserved them more. He was a modern-day prophet. He had keen insight, deep faith, uncommon courage, genuine compassion, and unwavering commitment to the application of the principles of Christ to every area of life.
My first memory of Foy was an encounter at an encampment ground in East Texas, just after he had completed his doctorate studies and was doing work with students at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. I was there to work on details for a boys camp I was to direct later in the summer. He was there to arrange for a student retreat. I had not yet had my fire lit on the issue of Christian ethics. I was in my first year of seminary studies. Though we were both preaching in youth revivals, we had done none of that together.
As time passed and my practical experience in the pastorate pressed me to reevaluate my ministry in light of the practical demands of Christian living, I connected with T. B. Maston, Foy’s major professor and masterful ethicist of that day.
Foy had come from his Gonzales church to succeed A. C. Miller in the work of the Christian Life Commission. I was pastor in Wills Point, nearby Foy’s hometown of Edgewood. He asked me to become a member of the Christian Life Commission Board. As we worked in editorial processes for “THE BIBLE SPEAKS” and “CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES APPLIED” pamphlets, I was discovering the principle my Dad had told me: “Son, you don’t make friends, you discover them.”
I discovered a friend. He was a friend of TRUTH. He was a friend of COMMITMENT. He was a friend of COURAGE. He was a friend with COMPASSION. He cared for the damaged and disinherited of this world, not just as a part of society’s problems, but also as persons for whom Christ had died. Most of all he matched the Bible’s description of ancient Abraham, who was “called the friend of God” (James 2:23).
FOY WAS A RARE PERSON. IN THESE DAYS OF CONFUSED IDENTITIES, HE KNEW WHO HE WAS.
He was a man with his own personal Geo Stationery Satellite system. He set it on the high calling of Christ Jesus for his life. Perhaps this is one of the reasons he always maintained the same style, attitudes, and directions in his life. In fact, his class at Baylor at their twentieth anniversary in 1964, voted him the “Person Who Had Changed the Least” since their days in college.
He was proud of his Van Zandt County, Texas beginnings. Mr. Hardy and Miz Josie Valentine helped their two sons know the value of hard work and honorable living. They left deep footprints at the Pleasant Union Baptist Church of Christ in the small community near Edgewood, Texas. She taught Sunday School for decades while he led the singing at the church. It was there that Foy discovered the special calling of God to his life. He was ordained to the gospel ministry at the age of seventeen.
He listened with deep attention to his family’s root systems in the French Huguenot commitment to freedom of conscience or what we Baptists call the “priesthood of the believer.” His name Foy came from that source. He was so pleased when I told him of reading in the book Band of Brothers that one of the major battles of WWII in France was in the village of Foy. He looked it up.
The Huguenots were people who fought the powers of the state when the government tried to throttle their own interpretation of faith. These believers fled to this land in order to achieve freedom of conscience. Little wonder Foy insisted that, having no sons to receive the name, he would just give it to his youngest daughter. Susie is really Susan Foy Valentine Brown!
FOY WAS A RARE PERSON. IN THESE DAYS OF SEARCHINGS AND SHIFTING OF SPIRITUAL PATHS, HE KNEW HIS BIBLICAL CENTERED BELIEFS AND HIS SPECIAL SENSE OF CALLING.
Foy and Mary Louise walked the path of struggle and sorrow when Cindy was born with so much damage that her five years of life called for constant care. They faced that challenge like they faced other challenges of life with faith and faithfulness, love and caring, followed by grief and inner healing. The absence of self-pity in dealing with the struggles of life vindicated the authenticity of their walk with God.
Foy was a churchman. By that I mean that he went to church faithfully through the years. He went not just when he was preaching, but when the time for worship came, Foy was there. He took seriously the command in Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another.” Foy went to church.
The word that surfaces in most conversations about Foy is the word “courage.” That word is a reflection of a French word for “heart.” Here is a man who demonstrated it. In days of attack by White Citizen Councils, racists, fundamentalists, and various adversaries, he stood firm. He stuck to principle rather than pettiness. He gave an answer for his faith with clarifications rather than vindictiveness. His sense of humor often came to his rescue. He often told the story with glee of the SBC session in which a woman made a motion that the Christian Life Commission and its staff be “dissolved.”
He was a voice of conscience among us. In 1975 The Christian Century magazine named him as one of the twenty innovative leaders in the religious world. I have a vivid memory of standing in the Rose Garden at the White House in 1964 with a group of Baptist leaders, as President Lyndon Johnson pled for us to help our nation step toward racial justice by passing the Civil Rights Bill. The one name he used in that speech was that of Foy Valentine.
I like the way Foy phrased it in his essay in his final book, Whatsoever Things Are Lovely. He says: “An unwavering, unambiguous, unshakeable sense of God’s special calling has kept my frail raft afloat. My feet have been often, if not nearly always wet; but the raft has not yet sunk” (149).
FOY WAS A RARE PERSON. IN THESE DAYS OF AVOIDANCE OF THE DIFFICULT AND DEMANDING, HE KNEW HOW TO WORK.
When he looked back at the age of 80, he wrote: “My hard work routine is a life pattern I learned from my parents. One of my father’s often repeated admonitions was ‘Hard work never killed anybody.’ While I had many occasions to think him mistaken about that hard saying, I am now confident that the strong medicine of hard work has significantly contributed to the quality as well as to the length of my life” (150).
Foy worked and expected others to do so also. He had hoed enough rows, baled enough hay, and picked enough cotton to know that nothing gets done unless it is done. Books don’t write themselves. Visits and conferences to enlist support for change and justice don’t happen automatically. No task is too small to be important. I remember one of the challenges he gave me when I followed him in the task of the CLC in 1960. He told me to remember that this exciting task in the days of Civil Rights movements involved being willing to haul the boxes of materials to Associational Meetings and local churches and make sure every body got a copy to read. Executives who are too busy for that are too busy. “Despise not the day of small things.”
FOY WAS A RARE PERSON. IN THESE DAYS OF SUPERFICIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND SHIFTING POLITICAL LOYALTIES, HE TREASURED HIS FRIENDS AND WAS LOYAL TO THE INSTITUTIONS THAT HAD HELPED FASHION HIS LIFE.
Foy felt deeply about his church, his college, and his extended family of faith in his denomination of Christians. While willing to do all within his power to maintain their directions in what he believed to be their reason for being, he was brokenhearted if they betrayed his trust. He worked persistently and perseveringly to be the salt that would preserve and enrich them.
He maintained a large network of friends across the world. He spent time and energy in staying in touch with them. He prayed in intercession for them. He counseled, encouraged, and cared.
He also enjoyed as much as anyone I have ever seen, the warmth and humor of life with his friends. He would call across the nation to share a laugh or a funny story. Like every good story-teller, he could deprecate himself as he described his foibles.
FOY WAS A RARE PERSON. IN THESE DAYS OF HASSLED AND HURRIED LIVING, HE KNEW HOW TO SMELL THE FLOWERS AND ENJOY THE MOMENT.
He read with discernment widely and well. He joyed in the gourmet meal he discovered. He knew more about menus in more places than anyone. In any city you named, he knew a chef or kitchen you ought not to miss. In his descriptions of the beauty of the world about him, you find a masterful insight into the beauty of God’s creation.
In his description of “Ten Good Things” in 2000 AD, he wrote, “Like Virgil’s Aeneas who kept bending his personal will to that of his divine mandate to found and build the city of Rome, I have not been disobedient to my own heavenly vision. I have stayed hitched, continuing to heed what I have perceived to be the high calling of God in Christ Jesus to help “changed people change the world.” God has set before me a bountiful table of marvelous fulfillment” (89).
“Behold I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed-in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written:
‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory.’ The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”1 Corinthians 15:51-58.
Dr. Jimmy Allen is the former Executive Director of the Radio and Television Commission of the SBC, former President of the SBC, and former pastor of the FBC of San Antonio, Texas.
