Henlee Barnette: Gentle Prophet
Henlee Hulix Barnette – A Special Salute
1. Henlee Hulix Barnette – An Activist By Frank Stagg – Issue 012 p.15
2. Henlee Barnette – Gentle Prophet By Bill Leonard – Issue 012 p. 20
3. The Whitsitt Courage Award – A Response By Henlee Barnette – Issue 012 p. 21
Christian Ethics Today readers will be pleased to see here presented a special salute to Dr. Henlee Barnette. The dean of Christian ethicists, for 26 years he taught Christian ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The latest occasion for many of us to rise up and call him blessed was in Louisville on June 26 where a host of friends and admirers, former students and colleagues gathered, prior to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship`s annual convention, for the Whitsitt Society`s presentation to him of its prestigious Baptist Courage Award. The following fanfare has three parts: (1) an article about Dr. Barnette by Dr. Frank Stagg reprinted by permission of the editor, Dr. Rolin Armour, from Perspectives on Religious Studies; (2) the introduction and award presentation remarks by the Whitsitt Society`s President, Dr. Bill Leonard, who now serves as the dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School; and (3) the response given by Dr. Barnette.
Henlee Barnette: Gentle Prophet
By Bill Leonard
Henlee, you have had an illustrious career, all things considered: Born in the mountains of North Carolina, working in the textile mills with your friend Wayne Oates, educated at Wake Forest College, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Harvard, and elsewhere; Professor at Howard College (Samford), Stetson University, Southern Seminary, and the University of Louisville; author of numerous books (Your work Introducing Christian Ethics, typed in its infallible and original edition by Martha Hinson) is a classroom classic in schools around the country), and innumerable articles on all kinds of topics.
But, Henlee, you have had a right scandalous career, all things considered. While pastor in the Haymarket area of Louisville (where your great Baptist mentor Walter Rauschenbusch also pastored) you lived among the folks to whom you ministered-street people, tenement people, hurting people, exploited people, but you also investigated and challenged slum lords, and institutional structures which contributed to the poverty all around you; in your first teaching job at Howard college, you didn`t even wait for tenure to give you the courage to challenge racial divisions in, of all places, Birmingham, Alabama, organizing the first ever interracial pastors` conference, an act so scandalous it cost you your position when the Howard administration refused to renew your contract. You patiently waited fifty years until Samford hired your son, Jim, as University Minister, and another Barnette voice was heard in Birmingham. At Stetson they called you a Communist because of your concern for social justice; and then you came to Louisville, and all hell broke loose. You marched with Dr. King, worked for integration in this city, linked black and white Baptists in new ways, helped bring King to the chapel of the seminary, and critics said the school lost a quarter of a million dollars in donations in 1961, (you said it was money well spent); You challenged the Vietnam War, got harassed by the FBI for 16 years, called for amnesty for draft dissidents, helped bring Philip Berrigan, antiwar activist, to Louisville. The President`s bulletin board at SBTS posted a statement denying any responsibility for Berrigans visit: students taped a 3 x 5 card on the glass repudiating any responsibility for the seminary administration. To this day you call Baptists to live up to their calling in behalf of religious liberty, the radical idea that God alone, not the state or any establishment is judge of conscience. And, as professor and colleague, you challenged educational institutions to move beyond the status quo and the corporation mentality in dealing with faculty, students and constituency. You shook your boney finger in the face of Presidents Duke McCall, Roy Honeycutt, and Al Mohler with prophetic insight, even when it cost you money and position, and office space. My favorite story of the last few years involves the occasion of a famous sit-in outside President Mohler`s office in behalf of Dean Diana Garland. You joined the dissidents, the story goes, but warned them, "I`ll sit-in with you, but I`m so old that somebody will have to help me get back up." You`ve been helping many of us get back up for years, calling us to higher purposes beyond ourselves in behalf of justice, peace, hope, and the kingdom of God. So, Scandalous Old One, we honor you today with the Whitsitt Courage Award. There is no truth to the rumor that we only did it because you`re the only one old enough to remember Whitsitt.
Your courage grows out of your response to defenseless persons and the injustices of the world. In a piece of your memoirs which your son, Jim, loaned me I found this observation: Your earliest memory involved your anger over a bully who harassed your sister at the farm on Sugar Loaf Mountain when you were no more than three years old. You comment: "You can measure the character of an individual by the way they treat defenseless persons. This applies, of course, to institutions as well." Somehow the lesson of a three-year-old had endured more than 80 years. Your courage in behalf of and alongside defenseless persons has blessed and benefited multitudes.
Your courage carried you into dangerous places and issues. We`ve highlighted them here, and your friend Frank Stagg enumerates the controversies into which your ethics have carried you in his recent article in the Whitsitt journal. Even a small recounting of your exploits and efforts in for race, peace, justice and religious liberty illustrates your courage, wisdom, insight, and humility. You know and live the truth of what I know to be one of your favorite literary lines, "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; The eternal years of God are hers."
Your courage is not paternalistic-your humor and your humility are evidence of that. You have worked with persons of multiple races, creeds, ethnic backgrounds, and theological orientations, never with condescension or a patronizing manner, but as colleague, friend, and learner. There is that great story about the student critic who came by your office to say he didn`t think you were taking your lectures very seriously and that furthermore your lectures were boring. To which you replied, "Well, if you think the lectures are boring, how about me? I have to give them." And those stories that we all heard about your response to the hate mail you received. You would return the letter to the sender with comments such as: "Some fool sent me this letter and signed your name, I thought you`d like to know." You take the gospel seriously, but not yourself doing the gospel.
Your courage extended to your own family. I think you would want us to say today that you learned courage, great courage, from the two women you married: Charlotte Ford Barnette, and Helen Poarch Barnette, both of whom died too soon, facing their ordeals with courage you mirrored and received from them. Liekwise, you raised four courageous children. Many know of the courage of your older sons, John and Wayne, one of whom chose duty in Vietnam while the other chose dissent in Sweden during the Vietnam War. Likewise your son James and daughter Martha declare their courage as preacher and journalist articulately and powerfully.
Finally, Henlee Hulix Barnette, on behalf of the Whitsitt Society, I present to you The William Whitsitt Courage Award. You remain our teacher, our mentor, our friend in the quest for a compassionate justice, which none can really claim until all shall know it. Your ethics, your courage, your faith in Christ have led you to live out what Walt Whitman wrote long ago, "I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I become the wounded person." So you do, Henlee, so you do.
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