Remarks at James Dunn`s Retirement Dinner

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Remarks at James Dunn`s Retirement Dinner
By Bill Moyers

[These Remarks were made by Bill Moyers at the Retirement Dinner for James Dunn on the occasion of his retirement as Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, in Washington, D.C., on October 4, 1999. Bill Moyers is a journalist.]

It`s hard enough to follow the President of the United States on this platform, but it`s even harder to deliver a eulogy when the deceased is still with us.

But what was I to do when Dunn said he would rather have us lie about him when he`s alive, than tell the truth about him after he`s gone.

It looks as if Dunn`s retirement is going to last until he is satisfied that he has the eulogy he deserves. Even this dress rehearsal had a dress rehearsal. I`m serious. He insisted on a "prehumous" service in New York a month ago, which he pressured the Associated Baptist Press to sponsor, but none of the eulogies, he decided, were worthy of the subject (including the one he delivered himself, which began, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen," and ended–90 minutes later–with " ….that government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth ….for thine is the kingdom …and…the power and the glory forever …and I regret that I have but one life to give for the halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli ….so help me God, till death do us part, kingdom without end, bringing in the sheaves ….world without end ….and the twilight`s last gleaming …when the saints go marching in.)

I mean, we`re not dealing with a teeny, weeny ego here.

If he has his way, we`ll still be celebrating his retirement on the eve of the next millennium ….during Hillary`s last term ….following what the fundamentalists say will be the thousand-year-reign of our blessed Lord from his (presumably air conditioned office in Jerusalem.)

But seriously:

For several years after leaving Washington, D.C., for New York, we lived in the township where Hezekiah Smith was born in 1737. Smith went forth from there to preach the Word in the vast spiritual precincts of the South, traveling 4,235 bruising miles on horseback. From his labors came one of the first Baptist missionary societies and, because Baptists also believed in the life of the mind as well as the power of the spirit, the founding of Brown University.

Baptists also believed in freedom. Hezekiah Smith volunteered in Washington`s army. Of Washington`s twenty-one brigade chaplains six were Baptists, each of whom had grieved at having been taxed by colonial governments to support the established church. We have it on the authority of Washington himself that "Baptists were throughout America uniformly and almost unanimously the firm friends to civil liberty…and our glorious revolution."

When I think of Hezekiah Smith I think of James Dunn.

Last summer I drove through Groton, Connecticut. A historical marker says that Valentine Wightman organized a Baptist church in 1705 when the fine for forming "separate companies of worship in private houses"–was 10 shillings "for every such offense."

When I think of Valentine Wightman I think of James Dunn.

Once on a vacation in Maine 1 stood where a Baptist church was organized in 1641 by William Screven. For exercising his conscience on the issue of baptism, Screven was imprisoned and fined. Under constant harassment of government and religious authorities, he finally led his little congregation of seventeen souls all the way to South Carolina in search for liberty.

When I think of William Screven I think of James Dunn.

On another trip to New England I drove through Lynn, Massachusetts. There, in 1751, Obadiah Holmes was given thirty stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the colonial law against taking communion with another Baptist. Baptists were only a "pitiful negligible minority" in Massachusetts but they were denounced as "the incendiaries of the Commonwealth and the infectors of persons in matter of religion." For refusing to pay tribute to the official state religion they were fined, flogged, and exiled. Holmes refused the offer of friends to pay his fine so that he could be released. He refused the strong drink they said would anesthetize the pain. Sober, he endured the ordeal; sober still, he would one day write: "It is the love of liberty that must free the soul."

You guessed it: When I think of Obadiah Holmes, I think of James Dunn.

Not all stripes of conscience are physical; not all wounds inflicted for liberty are visible.

James Dunn belongs to a long train of Baptists who have struggled–and often suffered–for a free church in a free state. Freedom is the bedrock of our faith. The Baptist scholar Walter Rauschenbush said it this way: "The Christian faith as Baptists hold it, sets spiritual experience boldly to the front as the one great thing in religion." That experience is unique to each of us; God moves in mysterious ways, and the mystery is made manifest one by one.

At the core of our faith is what we call "soul competency," the competence of the individual before God. Created with the imprint of divinity, from the mixed clay of earth, we are endowed with the capacity to choose, to be what James Dunn calls "responsible" a grown-up before God.

At last count there were twenty-seven varieties of Baptists in America. My particular crowd holds that while the Bible is our anchor, it is no icon; that revelation continues; that truth is not frozen in doctrine but emerges from experience and encounter; that the City of God, is a past, present, and future community whose inhabitants are not all alike and some of whom may even surprise us in being counted among the faithful. In Jesus Christ we see the power of the Living Word over tired practice and dead belief. In his relationship with women, the sick, the outcast, and the stranger-even with the hated tax collector-Jesus broke new ground. The literal observance of the law was not to quench the spirit of justice. "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27).

These beliefs do not make for lawless anarchy or the religion of lone rangers. They do not mean we can float safely on the little raft on our own faith while the community flounders. They are the ground of personhood. They aim for a community with moral integrity (despite our fallenness as human beings), the wholeness that flows from mutual obligation. Our religion is an adventure in freedom within boundaries of accountability.

Essential to our faith is the conviction that no government can be permitted to compromise any soul`s exercise of freedom. For any government to say, "This experience is more to be preferred by the state than that one," is the slippery slope to the subversion of all faith. Accordingly, we see the separation of church and state as the first line of constitutional defense in protecting that "one great thing in religion" against coercion–the individual`s own experience with God. Every generation must take up the challenge because the threat to religious liberty is as perennial as the seasons, as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun.

In our time the threat has come not from a direct assault by government; it has come from within the Christian community. In the past 20 years reactionary Baptists forged an alliance to take over a major political party and promote an agenda of state–sanctioned prayer, public subsidies, and government privileges. Their first, and most successful, strategy was to seize control of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose pews they envisioned as precincts of power.

It was a remarkable coup, and it was made possible by exploiting an unsuspecting laity`s respect for the Bible. Most Baptists grow up believing the Bible to be the sufficient authority for our faith and practice; its witness to revelation we take as the starting point for our own spiritual growth over a lifetime of attempting to learn and to apply what the Scriptures tell us. There is always incipient in this belief the danger of idolatry, of exalting the Bible as holy instead of the God whose spirit moves within it. Rauschenbush, among others, warned against Baptists who would "use the Bible just as other denominations use their creed." He feared that just as in Catholicism only priests could consecrate the sacraments and forgive sins, so among Baptists an elect would declare: "You must believe everything which we tell you the Bible means and says." They would impose on everyone else "their little interpretation of the great Book as the creed to which all good Baptists must cleave."

Incredibly, this is what happened. The cabal that took over the Southern Baptist Convention could only succeed by a supreme act of ecclesiastical arrogance. They had to make themselves undisputed masters of doctrine. But Baptists have no doctrine to control, given our conviction that personal experience–that "one great thing"–makes each of us responsible for understanding God`s will in our lives. So what if the conspirators substituted the Bible itself for the "one great thing" and then asserted the primacy of their biblical interpretation over the validity of personal spiritual experience? Individual men and women would no longer have to interpret the text themselves; the preacher would do that for them, backed up by an ecclesiastical imperium. Churches that had governed themselves democratically now took a radical turn; the laity would be subjugated to the preacher who would in turn serve the denominational politburo, which alone would decide who is, and isn`t, a Baptist. With the dissidents excluded there would be no one to protest any assault on the wall between church and state. The entire apparatus could then be safely aligned with political operatives who slickly promised the restoration of a "Christian America."

It was a brilliant, if heretical strategy, and James Dunn saw the implications immediately. As head of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs (BJC) in Washington, D.C., his charge was to identify and resist just such alliances between church and state; he was to be the watchdog that barked when church or state climbed over the other`s backyard fence. A cause to bark surfaced in the 1980s. A BJC staffer learned that a resolution passed by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1982, calling for a Constitutional amendment in support of school prayer, had actually been drafted by a White House assistant. James pronounced the action to be "the most glaring illustration of the successful attempt of secular politics to move into the denomination." There were other examples, as the pious men with the cold eyes now in command of the Convention launched a series of stealth moves to align the organization to partisan causes. You have to try to imagine the pain James Dunn must have felt sounding the trumpet against his own denomination; he had spent his whole life as a servant of the Southern Baptist Convention; he was himself a theological conservative. But as a matter of conscience he felt obliged to declare that the new order`s political designs were an attack on religious freedom.

When he spoke out, they tried to silence him. When he would not be silenced, they tried to fire him, as they had summarily and cruelly purged other denominational

employees who would not bow to the new orthodoxy. Fortunately, Dunn`s own BJC board, which in addition to the Southern Baptist Convention includes representatives from eight other Baptist denominations, refused to abandon him. Now the theological Stalinists cut his budget. He went out and raised funds to make up the loss. Not only could the watchdog bark, but he could also bite, and the poachers of the First Amendment soon found the seats of their pants in shreds.

The Lenin of the SBC-the man who plotted and perpetrated the takeover-had determined that reactionaries would be named to run every one of the denomination`s seminaries, colleges, boards, and agencies. But he had more than religious power in mind. It turned out that he was a card-carrying member of a secret organization of right wing ideologues and political activists — The Council on National Policy — who met regularly to coordinate their political and religious agendas. Its members included Senator Jesse Helms, Oliver North, Jerry Falwell, Joseph Coors, and Phyllis Schlafly, among others. I inadvertently stumbled on this fellow`s membership while reporting for a documentary series on "God and Politics." When I pressed him on camera about his membership in the secret organization, he grew indignant and broke off the interview.

By this time he held the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention under his thumb, and he demanded that it pass a resolution censuring me. His allies went after the corporate sponsor of my television series, who was pressured to withdraw its support of my work. But as an independent journalist, I was essentially beyond their wrath and reach.

James Dunn was another matter–or so they thought–and their lust for vengeance now fell on him. His new affront, as they named it, was to appear in the documentary and talk about soul freedom. Let me repeat for you what James Dunn told me in that interview:

"Freedom of conscience is not simply the popular kind of man on the street understanding of freedom of conscience, but freedom of conscience as an innate, inherent, universal right for every human being ….The right to say no to God, the right to say no to any and all assaults on the intellect. The right to say no to any and all appeals to the imagination and emotions. The insistence upon bowing the knee to no man — that`s been right at the heart of whatever makes Baptists different."

A scandalous opinion, and it riled the reactionaries, who wanted no challenge to the blanket of conformity they were pulling across the Southern Baptist Convention. They were further enraged that he would go on national television at all! The man was clearly an "incendiary of the Commonwealth" and since it was no longer permissible to flog dissenters, they would have to resort to other measures to rid their theocracy of him.

At first they attempted to smear him, but this proved hard to do to a man who doesn`t cuss, smoke, drink, or think harshly even of Methodists. They did succeed in defunding the BJC, cutting off its every last dime of financial support from the Southern Baptist Convention. Rarely have I witnessed such courage and perseverance as was then exhibited by James, his staff, and board. As most of you know, he and the BJC survived to fight another day, and another, and another, subsequently winning some of their most important victories in the continuing battle for religious liberty.

What is his secret? He believes in a very big God. Rauschenbush again:

"Little beliefs make little men (and women) …It is possible to play Nearer, my God to Thee` with one finger on a little reed organ of four octaves. But it is very different music when the same melody is played with all the resources of a great pipe organ, and in all the richness of full harmony."

James pulls out all the stops and pumps with all his might. Watching him in action, I am reminded that God sends his messengers in odd shapes and sizes and from unexpected places. Who would have predicted that one of the most effective advocates of religious freedom in our time would grow up on the east side of a Texas cow town, talk like a horse trader, and dress like a trail driver? Who would ever have imagined that such a quaint little fellow would become one of the most tireless champions of social justice and Christian ethics in the last quarter of the 20th century?

Sometimes in my mind`s eye I see him climbing the Capitol steps, toting a Bible in one hand and a voting tally in another. From one he draws his principles and from the other his prowess. "I don`t want a man up there who can`t count votes," Lyndon Johnson once said as he marched his staff up to Congress on the day a key bill hung in the balance. James can count. He can also sniff, and sniffing is the art of the bloodhound.

Baptists have never had a more savvy master of the legislative process, where the most offensive infringement of religious liberty can be inflicted in fine print no one else bothers to read until it is too late. A lesser man would have been blind sided by the likes of Pat Robertson and his Robespierre, Ralph Reed, who once boasted that the Religious Right had "learned how to move under radar in the cover of the night with shrubbery strapped to our helmets." True, but just when they were about to make off with the First Amendment, James Dunn hove into sight; like a man with radar implants in the corner of his eyes. The back room boys learned long ago that they couldn`t blow smoke in his eyes; he earned their respect for his shrewdness, integrity, and utter lack of self- aggrandizement. With his instincts and talents he could have become an influential lobbyist, raking in huge fees from powerful interests. But James Dunn chose a different course.

He was chosen, rather. I have no doubt of this. Like his mentors, J.M. Dawson and T. B. Maston, the mystery of the Christ event has been central to James` understanding of his faith and practice. The encounter occurred early on and it transformed him, producing a principled commitment to action and aware at every turn of that transcendent Presence. Some of you in this room will remember from our seminary days Wheeler Robinson`s profile of the Baptist tradition:

"Nothing atones for the absence of those memories of childhood and youth which are progressively hallowed by the faith of the adult and gain a richer interpretation by the experience of life. The familiar walls of the church, the familiar phrases of prayer and praise, gain a sacramental quality, so as to be inseparable in memory from the experience they mediated. They have helped to bring us into a living tradition, so that we might discover `how great a thing it is` to live at the end of so many ages…"

It`s quite a story how James Dunn arrived into that living tradition; how this clarinet-playing, foot-tapping, hymn-singing good of boy earned his place in that cloud of witnesses that includes Smith, Wightman, Screven, Rauschenbusch, Dawson, Maston, and so many others; how he found in his beloved Marilyn a life-long soulmate; how he has stood at one Thermopylae after another.

My own life has been indelibly touched by James Dunn. Through thick and thin he has been my friend. He took in our youngest son and befriended our daughter; he even defended me when I was pictured on the front pages of every newspaper in the country in 1965 doing the Watusi! Almost half a century ago Marilyn, then his fiance, was critically injured in a car wreck near my home town of Marshall, Texas. James rushed from Ft. Worth to be at her side. My mother, Ruby, just happened to be at the hospital where he waited for news of Marilyn`s condition. He was a stranger, and when my mother heard what had happened, she introduced herself to him, learned he was from Southwestern Seminary, and insisted that he make our home his home until the crisis passed. He never forgot her.

Ruby Moyers died in April at the age of ninety-one. James was scheduled to speak that weekend — as he does practically every weekend–at some distant church on behalf of religious liberty (what else?). I assumed he would not–could not–make it to the funeral in deep East Texas. But I looked up and there he was. In the funeral parlor he joined in the family circle as nieces and nephews, grandchildren and cousins, recalled their own experiences with my mother. Then, during the service at the Central Baptist Church, James recounted his own first meeting with her, and spoke movingly of her kindness to him.

And then he was gone–to catch one more plane to one more city for one more testimony to one more Baptist church whose congregation he would summon to remembrance of that "one great thing."

Who would not cherish such a brother?

There`s the eulogy. But here`s the epilogue.

It wasn`t until a week ago Sunday that I realized how to frame this occasion. It was then I truly saw in perspective James` life and work.

Judith and I were in Nacogdoches, Texas, on personal business and were invited by friends to worship on Sunday at Austin Heights Baptist Church on the outskirts of town, with a congregation of about a hundred people.

The church had been founded thirty years ago by five families who could no longer abide the racial exclusiveness or squinted theology of the home church. The new church struggled for two decades and ten years ago called Kyle Childress as pastor, and forging since then a vigorous witness under his leadership.

The Saturday before our visit several members spent the day helping to build a new home with Habitat for Humanity.

The church maintains a partnership with two black churches and the pastor`s attendance at meetings of the black ministerial alliance has discomforted some members of the white alliance.

Nancy Sehested once preached at the church and had to cross a picket line of other Baptists in town who think it`s blasphemous for a woman to be in the pulpit.

Women were integral to the service we attended. One read from Isaiah`s call "To spare not, to lift up thy voice like a trumpet in behalf of the naked, the hungry, and the oppressed."

Another woman threaded her a cappella solo throughout the pastor`s sermon on the subject of "Glorifying God in Music". The compilation of word and song charged the room and sent a tingle up my spine.

But it was during the prayer concerns that I was hit full force by this church`s power as a healing, serving community.

They prayed for Troy whose wife Vee had been buried that week as he mourned in his wheel-chair.

They prayed for a neighbor rushed at 4:30 that morning to the hospital with symptoms of a heart attack.

They prayed for a victim of Alzheimer`s.

They prayed for Clayton caring for his cancer-stricken wife.

They prayed for the family struggling to support Gladys, frail and helpless at 98.

They prayed for Maggie and Roger`s children in Indonesia ….and for Bill Jones` son Matt who has a brain tumor, and for the victims and families of the shooting at the Baptist church in Fort Worth.

Behind us a college professor raised his hand and asked the church to pray for his beloved student who had died that week of a rare disease, and they prayed for her and for him, for his heart was broken. They prayed for his broken heart.

A broken world was there that morning, in need of repair, one-by-one. And the Presence of the Lord was in that place. Within these aqua-colored walls with their white trim and simple wooden cross there was a rendezvous of hope, love, and healing.

What was happening there could not be explained by bumper sticker doctrine or fortune cookie theology.

There was nothing to explain the moment except a people`s openness to each other and the arrival of grace.

As the congregation closed the service I wrote in the program:

"This is what the fight`s been about. This is what Dunn and so many others have sacrificed to defend–the fight of these people to take the church where it would go …to worship as conscience inspires."

And I wrote: "Dunn would be at home here."

Would you believe? As we were leaving I told Pastor Kyle Childress that I had been touched by the service and that I was also grateful to him for informing a talk I would be giving in Washington eight days hence.

"For what purpose?" he asked. And I told him that we were going to Washington to honor a fellow Baptist upon his retirement as head of the Baptist Joint Committee.

"James Dunn?" he said, "Do you mean James Dunn?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

He laughed and said: "James Dunn preached the first revival we held here ten years ago."

"What a coincidence. He`s been on my mind all morning."

And he laughed again. "Yes, ten years ago we were a new suburban church poised for greatness. Then James Dunn came down to preach and put us straight and we`ve been a little bitty church ever since."

Later I wrote this down, too: This is how the kingdom grows. God works in the wedges, through the cracks, along the fault line of schisms, until conformity and orthodoxy can no longer hold the mind hostage to habit or the spirit captive.

The fight had to happen for the kingdom to spread, in "little bitty churches" that witness to a great and mighty faith.

James and Marilyn, you have not labored in vain.