The Whitsitt Courage Award – A Response
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.ntation 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.
The Whitsitt Courage Award – A Response
By Henlee Barnette
Let me express my gratitude to President Leonard, the members of the Executive Committee and the members of the staff of the Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society for selecting me to receive the distinguished Whitsitt Courage Award. This honor came as a complete surprise to me. I thought long and hard as to whether I should accept it. I am no William Heth Whitsitt. But I discovered that we have three common characteristics.
Controversy
1. First of all, controversy is attached to our names. Controversy is linked to Whitsitt`s name and is reported even in his obituary of 1911, the year I was born. Trail of Blood Landmarkers forced Whitsitt out as President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Dr. Whitsitt was only trying to give Southern Baptists a more genesis-accurate statement of beginning. Today his view is accepted by distinguished church historians, including Southern Baptists. So the prophesy of the poet was fulfilled:
Truth crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But error wounded, writes in pain,
And dies among his worshipers.
William Cullen Bryant, "The Battlefield"
For more than half a century my life has been filled with controversy stemming from a struggle for racial justice, protest against U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam, political corruption, economic injustice, ecclesiocratic rediculosity, Southern Baptist Convention comicality, and theological twaddle.
Engaging in ethico-theological controversy in a Southern Baptist seminary can be dangerous to your professional welfare. In the 1950s, my colleague, Professor Erick Rust, informed me with much anxiety, that the president of the seminary had on his desk a letter from one of the most powerful trustees calling for my dismissal as Professor of Christian Ethics. I replied, "Erick, clam down. If the President receives only one letter per month demanding my dismissal, I don`t think I`m doing my job."
Heresy
2. Dr. Whitsitt was harassed by Baptist fundamentalists for heresy. He had used the scientific method of history to demonstrate that Southern Baptists did not begin with either one of the Js: John, Jesus, or Jordan.
At this same seminary where Whitsitt was hounded for intellectual honesty, I, too, was called the heretic and made the object of investigation for heresy. (Incidentally, I have been called everything in the pejorative catalogue: false prophet, pinko professor, communist, ad nauseam. Recently I was called a "crusty old saint." I`ll settle for that.) For example, an article written in 1978 was the focus of concern. "Coarchy: Partnership and Equality in the Husband-Wife Relationship" was the title of the article. ("The Church and the Family," Review and Expositor, Winter, 1978.) A former president of the Southern Baptist Convention was particularly interested in labeling me as a heretic. I was required to write a defense of my heresy, namely, that of the equality of man and woman.
I had simply noted that God created man, or Adam, in his own image (Genesis 1:26). Adam, in the Hebrew, is a collective term and means "Human beings." Hence ontologically they are equally made in the image of God and must be accorded the same value and dignity.
Exegetically, I was attempting to update the King James and other versions to "gender accuracy" and furnish the Fundies with a more inerrant Bible. Producers of the NIV Bible, popular with the Fundamentalists, are attempting the same thing by printing a translation of Holy Scripture that is gender accurate. Now three presidents of Southern Baptist seminaries object, though they know that the translation of "Adam" as a collective noun means human beings. Apparently they do not care for an inerrant Bible if it challenges their chauvinism and pulverizes their prejudices.
On May 27, 1997, twelve Evangelical leaders convened by conservative James Dobson came to the conclusion that "man" should ordinarily be translated "human beings." One example is Genesis 1:26-27 (Biblical Recorder, June 14, 1997), p. 9). But those who are afflicted with female phobia do not wish for this to be known by common believers whom they control.
A Place
3. Dr. Whitsitt found a place. To quote the title of Wendell Berry`s book, he found A Place On Earth. After the fundamentalists hounded him out of the Seminary, he found a place of ministry at the University of Richmond as a professor of philosophy and other subjects.
At the University, Whitsitt found academic freedom. There he could maintain his integrity; there he could be intellectually honest.
Dr. Whitsitt found himself in exile. He was in the diaspora of others driven from their positions, homes, and communities. He is joined by other notables who have suffered at the hands of the heresy hunters, and who were forced out of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: Crawford Toy, who became a professor at Harvard; Paul Simmons, now a professor at The University of Louisville; Glen Hinson, now a professor at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Virginia; Molly Marshall, now a professor at Central Baptist Seminary; Diana Garland, now the head of the Department of Social Work at Baylor University; and Frank Tupper, a professor at Wake Forest University. More than 50 faculty, not to mention staff and students, have left the seminary from 1993 to 1997.
We, too, are in exile among those who, on the grounds of conscience, refuse to bow down to Baals of arrogant authoritarianism, intellectual dishonesty, and religious sham. Some of you, along with many others, have been forced from your jobs resulting in the uprooting of your family, illness, and for some, possible premature death.
I was retired, after 26 years, from a Baptist seminary in 1977 with a salary comparable to that of a high school teacher. Pleas of professors, staff, and students to the administration to keep me on the faculty as Senior Professor fell on deaf ears. I found a place. I had to find a place for I had children in college. By a vote of the Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville, I was appointed full clinical professor in The School of Medicine. Here I found a place of kindred minds, a place of academic freedom, a place of intellectual honesty, a place where professionals treated me with respect as a colleague in the healing enterprise.
These are the things we all have, to some degree, in common with William Whitsitt: controversy because we challenge the status quo; the charge of heresy because we take the word of God seriously; a place on earth by the grace of God. And as the light of eternity falls across our pilgrim way we will find at last a place in the Promised Land. So, Sursum Corda!
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