Pamela Jean Owens off-line

Sunday, April 9, 2006

We are fast losing the giants.

Yesterday I received my copy of the newsletter of Texas Baptists Committed and learned of the deaths of two of the giants in the struggle to preserve religious liberty and uphold the separation of church and state. Earth has lost two men whose name were household names all my life, two of the men (to use someone else’s metaphor) who belong on the Mount Rushmore of Baptist heros of the twentieth century: Phil Strickland and Foy Valentine.

I sincerely doubt that anyone reading my blog regularly (if there are any of you out there, be sure to let me know!) will recognize either of those names. Southern Baptists are not common heros to most people I know. But these two men, plus a few others, including in particular James Dunn, their close colleague, and Bill Estep, who passed on in 2000, are the reason I remain proud of my strong Baptist heritage. They are examples of the reason so many Cherokee, of those who became Christians, became Baptist Christians, not Methodist or Presbyterian or anything else.

Foy Valentine and Phil Strickland are both heros of the fight to preserve what we Baptists have traditionally called “soul comptetency.” That is just a strange term to say that me and God can figure it out, and no one can tell me otherwise. Advice, tradition, scripture, sermons, lessons, and all the rest are important — certainly they are. But when a decision on what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s true and what’s false, must be made, me and God can figure it out and no human-made church or preacher can stop that.

Once upon a time not so far away or long ago, no Baptist would have ever thought to question “soul competency.” But that was before the Paige Pattersons and W. C. Criswells and Jerry Fallwells and Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons of the world came along. Bill Estep had warned Baptists that if we didn’t get better educated about our history and tradition — if we didn’t understand it as well as we understood the Bible — if we didn’t memorize the stories of the Anabaptists and Roger Williams and all the rest — well, we were going to lose our way.

Dr. Estep was right. I give thanks regularly for his two interim pastorates and many other times preaching at my church, Gaston Avenue Baptist, and for the special friendship he gave to my parents, Neva and Tom Owens, who were eager listeners and learners.

I give thanks for leaders at Gaston like Noble Hurley, who made sure Gaston was on board with the Mainstream Baptist Network as soon as it began. Mr. Hurley and Baptists like him made sure we were all getting the Texas Baptist Committeed mailings, along with Report from the Capitol, and they fought like Trojans to keep the Baptist General Convention of Texas and Baylor University out of the hands of the Fundamentalists who abandoned everything Baptists hold dear and took over the Southern Baptist Convention, keeping it Baptist in name only.

I give thanks for life long friends and neighbors, later also becoming returning missionaries, like Sid and Alwilda Reber, who made sure we sent our Foreign Mission dollars through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, not the Baptist Foreign Mission Board even though that was who had originally appointed the Reber family, back when Southern Baptists were still Baptists.

And I give thanks, though I’ve never met them, for Clarence Jordan, and for Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, for bringing the issue of what a Baptist really is into the forefront of the news through Jimmy’s most recent book.

Phil Strickland’s very last sermon was titled “Where have all the prophets gone?” It is in the latest issue of the Texas Baptists Committed newsletter, along with a wonderful speech by another Mainstream Baptist leader, C. Welton Gaddy, who was previously not known to me, “Looking for Some Baptists.” For those of you, my friends and readers, who think all Baptists are like the ones claiming the SBC name today, I urge you to read some of these pieces.

Much of the Right Wing today wants to categorize all of those who oppose their attempts to establish their form of Christianity as America’s national faith as being ‘”Godless Hedonists,” or worse. The idea of religious freedom, the idea of separate spheres for church and state — those ideas did not come from Atheists. They did not come first from Humanists. And they surely did not come from “Godless Hedonists.” They came from persecuted Baptists. They came from men and women I am proud to count among my ancestors in faith, proud to claim as my heros and heroines today. The idea of church and state as separate spheres came from persons who had the vision and imagination to dream of changing what had always been reality — challenging the paradigm in which nations and churches were inextricably linked and could be no other way.

I have not heard Phil Strickland or Foy Valentine speak in person in many years. I confess I hadn’t really thought a lot about either of them recently. Much of what they have represented is being well-carried on by Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and by the on-going efforts of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. But I have taken the presence of all of these workers for granted as my Baptist heritage. I feel about them something like I felt about Anne Braden’s passing last month (see my blog post 3/18/06). Some people I just have the feeling will always be with us.

They will not be. The great ones are aging. Even I am aging, as my arthritis reminds me daily. But the ideas and the values, the ethics, the principles, the determination to carry on — that is timeless. It must stay timeless.

Where are the new prophets? Where can we find some more Baptists who will be the heros and heroines for the next generation? Faith tells me God is even now forming them in their mother’s womb. Anxiety nags me that the cacophany of our day will keep the giants-to-be from hearing their calls. Pragmatism tells me those of us still alive and kicking better keep at it, loud and long, until we are sure replacements are on line to take our place.

In grateful memory of Phil Strickland (1941 – 2006), Foy Valentine (1923 – 2006), and Sid Reber (1918 – 2006)

4:25 pm cdt