James Dunn Responds To His Critics

Some wag called the Baptist Joint Committee an “equal opportunity offender”… sort of a back-handed compliment.

Friends philosophize saying “Ah, but you are known by your enemies… well credentialed we.”

Politics draws like molasses draws flies. I know, I know. But it still hurts after all these years, when, without checking the facts, not a note, not a phone call (we’re in the phone book), some church writes saying we have suspended funding because “your commission… promotes legislative remedies which permit abortions on demand.”

I’ve been here almost 16 years. This agency has not made a statement, lobbied a legislator, joined an organization, signed a document, written an article or given a penny to promote abortion. We have stayed out of that fight.

In fact, in a full board meeting in March of 1981, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs voted that the staff should take no position and no action on the abortion issue. It was/is divisive among the supporting Baptist conventions and conferences. Religious liberty and church-state issues in the strictest sense offer enough challenges to keep us busy. Better to do a few things well than many things poorly.

That policy of our board has proven wise. Yet, some persist in misrepresenting the BJC’s work. There appears to be a destructive campaign afoot. It relies on guilt by association, condemnation by implication and outright dishonesty.

Some of our accusers lump the Baptist Joint Committee with the American Civil Liberties Union or “gay rights groups” or vaguely misty left-leaning loonies. It would be funny if the farfetched shots were not so mean and hurtful with folks who do not know better.

Part of this is clearly because of the politization of Baptist life. Every such assault adds proof to our view that fundamentalists among Southern Baptists have a right-wing political agenda.

Some of the problem is simply that folks have not done their homework.

Part of the problem may stem from the hate-Washington, despise-government and mistrust leadership syndrome (or sin-drome) that flows like the tide.

Cut it out! Don’t let friends be snookered.

Let the truth be told.

The Baptist Joint Committee is nonpartisan.

The Baptist Joint Committee has never endorsed or opposed any candidate or nominee. My predecessors were pushed to oppose President Kennedy and to support President Carter. Our staff was brazenly threatened if we did not support Judge Robert Bork. Never, none, nada, ninguno.

The Baptist Joint Committee is still the only church agency that works only on religious liberty and its essential corollary, the separation of church and state.

The Baptist Joint Committee happily and handily cooperates in single issue ventures with all sorts of folks to guarantee the free exercise of religion in this land. It is a matter of record that with the Christian Legal Society we led and still lead the battle for Equal Access legislation, allowing public school prayer meetings. We led the broad coalition that passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. We joined many others to offer public school religion guidelines.

We do it and we’re glad. We dare not do less.

It is our high calling of God in Christ Jesus to stand for soul freedom.

The reality that “all have sinned” leaves us with no choice but to work with fallen humanity. To be salt and light requires no less. AND it takes more, not less love; more, not less faith; more, not less hope, to bear witness in the pluralism of American politics. We cannot be faithful followers of Christ without first going into all the world. Help us get out the truth.

August 1996