Religious Freedom Award Response
By James M Dunn
[The remarks carried here were made on September 2, 1999 by Dr. James Dunn in New York City in response to the Associated Baptist Press` presentation to him of the Religious Freedom Award. Broadcast journalist Bill Moyers presented the award which honors individuals who have championed the principle of religious liberty. For 18 years Dunn headed the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. Upon his retirement on September 1 he began his service as visiting professor of Christianity and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C.]
If when the books are closed, the final thirty is written, and I we know how it all came out; if when we see, no longer through a dark glass, that some good has been done; if some evils have been averted and some harm avoided, it will be perfectly clear that many people have been a part of the process.
Converging circumstances counted for a lot of what`s taken place.
At a farewell party for Congressman Richard Boiling of Missouri in the early Reagan years I was whining. Fred Wertheimer of Common Cause said, "Dunn, stop complaining; our sad plight just means that we`ve never been more needed." I described the debaptistificarion of the Southern Baptist Convention to Martin Marty and he responded, James, just remember you don`t know enough to be totally pessimistic." Maybe not. It is clear that I have had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time.
Time for the Baptist word came due and it was simply my job to say it… and to say it when not many others were. (I must admit here, however, that most fearless friends who were trying to get out the same sort of message didn`t have a Stan Hastey, Larry Chesser, Pam Parry, or Kenny Byrd not only to turn it into news but to egg me on, say sic em" to this watchdog.) Many of you in this room gutsily got out the word. That`s the journalist`s job.
Then, I had the incomparable blessing of having spent two years learning everything I could about Joseph Martin Dawson; did my doctoral dissertation on him in 1966, thanks to Jimmy Allen who shoved me into doing it.
I had drunk deep at the Dawson well 14 years before anyone even mentioned my coming to the BJCPA. Dawson had been its first executive, 1946-1953. So for the first year or two in his chair, I just did what he did and said what he had said. It got me in trouble.
So when y`all say nice things and awards and unearned doctorates come my way, it seems to me as if you are giving me credit for choosing my grandfather well or picking my predecessor wisely.
But we do have some stewardship of all experience. We always need to ask, as Jeanette Holt does, "Now, what can we learn from this?" Not as some fatalist with Calvinistic certainty that God, the "`heavenly computer," mixes, matches and merges our lives like little puzzle pieces to be put in their proper places, but by looking back so that we see some other things more clearly.
They did try to do us in.
At one point the fundamentalists who set out to destroy the mission and message of the Baptist Joint Committee demanded a list of all the periodicals subscribed to by the BJC. They asked for 3 years of all correspondence to or from the Committee. (Fat chance!) Paige Patterson, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told the Houston Post (June 12,1982) when asked about me, "…There will be something done to silence him." The outrages continue: boycott Disney, target Jews, keep women submissive, beat up on gays.
One concludes, then, that to be a whistle blower on anti-baptists trying to pass for the real thing is not for the fainthearted; no room for a fence-straddling, word-mincing, soft-spoken, pseudo-Baptist.
Stubbornness may be the most needed "gift of the Spirit." Those scriptural gifts of the Spirit are mediated to us by mere mortals. Indulge me as I catalog a few of those human shapers of this stubborn so-and-so.
Through Mother and my milkman Daddy, God sent leanlness. They helped this depression baby put material matters in perspective. Mother, whom I never heard curse or say a dirty word, taught my sister and me that "shooey," (her word) happens. I was scrawny, sickly, but a tough little kid, the last one chosen to play on every team, the first one beat up by the bully of the month. I got even tougher in Ernest Parker Junior High, wonderfully 70% Mexican. To prevent certain indignities in 9th grade RE. classes, I bought protection from Frank Escalante and Steve Coronado by doing their algebra for them. Those other "machos" had better not mess with me, and they didn`t.
Years later, Phil Strickland and I worked that demonstration plot for original sin, that laboratory for total depravity, known as the Texas legislature. So I was for twelve years politically immersed in Austin working with and on people like John B. Connally and Rep. Bill Heatly, the Duke of Paducah, whose head was memorialized in the State House of Representatives as the "state rock."
Then, Foy Valentine and Jimmy Allen, great coaches, helped me see that perception is everything in politics and political effectiveness depends upon what they (the politicians) think you can deliver, but that you shouldn`t lie. You don`t speak for Baptists. You only speak to Baptists. When Richard Land says, "speaking for 16 million Southern Baptists" or "most Baptists believe," as he does, he misrepresents reality.
Let`s face it. All of us added together who share a passion for soul freedom make up a tiny minority even among Baptists. Our kind always has been outnumbered, likely always will be. The only authority we have is the authority of veracity. We count on truth telling and what rings true in fellow believers` innards.
That leads me to theology and the idea so passionately shared with me by Stewart Newman and Bill Estep. This Baptist belief in religious liberty is not just "`doctrine," or the First Amendment, or a political elective. It is, rather, the Baptist basic: soul freedom. Each individual comes immediately to God. All vital religion is voluntary. Even God Almighty will not trample an individual`s freedom to say "yes" or "no" to God
I`ve come, under their tutelage and that of Dawson and Maston, to believe that there is no such thing as "`required religion" (except, of course, in some college), no such thing as "`forced fellowship" or "coerced community." All those phrases are oxymorons, and folks who think they can force, coerce, or require them are ordinary morons.
Then T.B. Maston, my major professor, an H. Richard Niebuhr Ph.D., nudged a lot of us into the real world. He taught us that "there is nothing inherently evil about compromise unless we lose sight of the ideal," that we live with creative tension, that "the Bible is a divine-human book."
Then, there is this 8th century prophet, Bill Moyers, born out of due season. Bill, without any doubt and as a matter of fact attested to by all sorts of authorities, is the prophetic voice of the Last quarter of the 20th century. So when Bill, my friend, indicates that he thinks the stuff I`m doing is OK, that gives me more than a smattering of confidence.
Finally, Marilyn, as uninhibited as her father, well almost…. She is "no respecter of persons"` in the best biblical sense.
I`m really not trying to avoid responsibility for my doings in the 19 years at the BJC but to say again when the books are closed that if we`ve done any good, you and those I`ve mentioned deserve the credit and the blame. We`re in it together and we still face serious challenges.
There are Democrats, even Vice President Gore, who according to what I fervently hope was one sadly misguided foray in Georgia ,would trade off the separation of church and state for a mess of Senator Ashcroft`s "charitable choice"` pottage. To funnel tax dollars directly into "faith-based" programs effectively neuters their first name: "Faith."`
Republicans have made their first priority the passage of education vouchers, massively misled by the one church that owns 90 percent of the parochial schools. Few friends of vouchers will say the Roman Catholic Church desperate to save its schools has partnered with fundamentalist
Christians seeking public money for their segregation academies: a marriage made in hell.
I was saddened by all the carrying on when a federal judge in Cleveland ruled a voucher scheme unconstitutional. Remember the Katzenjammer kids. Rollo and Hans and Otto were always into some mischief and the last frame of the cartoon carried the same moral every week: "They brung it on themselves." They did.
Folks in both parties in Kansas, for instance, have placed a premium on ignorance for the sake of "creationism."
Then, following the flavor of the year in righteous outrage, scores of parroting preachers speak of the "clear teaching of scripture" characterizing biblical passages that arguably might deal with homosexuality. Serious scholars suggest that violence, idolatry, prostitution, and pederasty contextually crowd those debatable verses. But there are clear teachings, not in question, condemning adultery, divorce, greed, and mistreatment of the poor, slighted by church leaders who skew the scriptures for their own agenda.
We have a lot to do. In Chesterton`s words, "We`re all in small boat on a stormy sea and we owe each other a terrible loyalty."
