Happy Birthday!
by Foy Valentine, Founding Editor
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
So Shakespeare in Julius Caesar has Brutus to say to Cassius.
There have been some tides in my own life, which, to contort poor William’s immortal words a bit, I have taken at the ebb, leaving me bound in shallows and in miseries—somewhat. Yes. Hoist by my own petard, to borrow Hamlet’s felicitous phrase, blown up by my own dynamite.
One of the tides which I took at the flood, however, was the conception and launching of Christian Ethics Today. That move has not exactly led “on to fortune;” but it was nevertheless a fortunate plunge, a move which I have been pleasured by, which lots and lots of friends have affirmed, which generous allies in the Christian ethics vineyard have kept afloat financially, and which, as best I can understand it, God has blessed.
Since the current issue of the journal marks the Tenth Anniversary of that launching, perhaps some modest celebration will not be considered altogether inappropriate.
Birthdays are special.
When I was young, my Mother made a chicken pie on everybody’s birthday. It was a very special way for our family to celebrate those very special days. With all the good things she prepared to go with that scrumptious chicken pie, those big birthday meals during the depths of the Great Depression constituted the major part of our birthday celebrations. As we said in Van Zandt County in East Texas, we really put the big pot in the little one.
I wish I could whomp up such a glorious feast for all the friends of Christian Ethics Today on the occasion of this Anniversary. Lacking the recipe for that fabulous chicken pie, however, I will have to do with just inviting you to celebrate by looking back over our shoulders for a little while.
Now, the journal’s birth ten years ago came about on this wise.
A couple of years after my retirement following 28 years with the Christian Life Commission, the Christian ethics agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, it became increasingly clear that some medium was needed for ongoing support of the cause of Christian social ethics. After numerous conversations, discussions, meetings, and phone calls, it was decided that a Christian ethics journal should be launched. I committed myself with God’s help to make it happen. The journal would be called Christian Ethics Today. It would be published about every other month “as energy and funding permitted.” A 32-page, 8 ½” by 11” format was settled on; and about 1500 names and addresses were cobbled together. A fine typist with good computer skills was enlisted to prepare the copy from the manuscripts, which I would secure and provide. A knowledgeable and experienced layout professional was found who agreed to work with me in preparing the copy for the printer. A first-class printing establishment agreed to print the journal on high quality paper with an attractive and readable typeface. From the beginning, it was determined that the journal would be copy driven with no artwork and no advertising. Only some years later were we able to make arrangements to utilize selected drawings by Doug Marlett, one of the nation’s most effective and successful cartoonists.
For the first issue dated April, 1995, I elicited a few articles related to Christian ethics, transcribed a rather substantive interview with Christian ethicist Henlee H. Barnett, wrote up a piece on “Christian Ethics: Who’s Alive in ’95?,” personally transcribed from a tape recording the masterpiece of an address on “The Crisis in Public Education” (which Frosty Troy had delivered at the annual meeting of Americans United for Separation of Church and State), and with no small expenditure of time, endurance, and energy, dug out an uncut, untamed, and unemasculated version on Walter Rauschenbusch’s “Why I Am a Baptist,” which to this good day is the only unexpurgated copy of that masterpiece which I have found to be in print. (Reprints from Christian Ethics Today have been widely disseminated; and I still have available a few for $1 including postage and my pro bono handling.) That first issue also included a piece, which I pulled together, but mostly have to take the blame for myself on “95 Theses.”
My highly competent and extraordinarily longsuffering wife, Mary Louise, and I proofed all the articles before they went to the typist, after they came back from her, when the layout professional had finished his handiwork, and then once again in blue line form just before the journals were finally printed.
For that first issue, I jumped through all the hoops devised in the Post Office’s torture chambers, secured a mailing permit, and located a mailing service company owner who consented to receive the journals from the printer and then to utilize the mailing list I provided to get them to the mailing dock in properly zip-coded order for distribution.
The first issue stated that this new journal of Christian ethics was intended “to inform, inspire, and unify a lively company of individuals and organizations interested in working for personal morality and public righteousness . . . [to be] issued as money and energy permit. . . . A few pieces might curl your hair. . . . The opinions expressed in the articles . . . are certainly not the opinions of the employees . . . for there are none. . . . If you hate what is in this issue, please do not write as enough griping has already been heard in other contexts for a lifetime. If you like it, enjoy!”
A proud parent could hardly have been more pleased, even elated, over a brand new baby with all its fingers and toes, healthy lungs, and functioning plumbing than I was over that first issue of Christian Ethics Today.
From the beginning, the official Board that I had enlisted and I had agreed that we would not charge a subscription fee but would simply tell the readers that if they wanted to contribute anything toward defraying the expenses of publication and distribution, their contribution would be appreciated. Now, after ten years, the journal has never experienced a deficit; it has never once been in the red. Faithful and generous supporters are the primary reason for this happy circumstance; but another reason is that the authors have nearly always been provided with a paltry $100 honorarium, poor pay for work that Gustave Flaubert called harder than digging ditches. I gratefully salute all those authors whose good, and often brilliant, contributions have made possible this enterprise.
Although this Tenth Anniversary reminiscing has focused on the past, I have to tell you that when Dr. Joe Trull and his very competent and cooperative wife, Audra, took the journal’s reins in the summer of 2000, that was one of the happier days of my life. I felt like a two-ton hippopotamus was off my back. My five years of editing the journal had been wonderfully rewarding; but the never-far-away deadlines of publication exacted a not inconsiderable toll. After the Board’s election of Dr. Trull, I sang the Doxology all the way home.
His work for the past five years has been highly effective, indeed; and I heartily congratulate him and his current Board. God’s best blessing to them.
And Happy Birthday again to Christian Ethics Today
