Bill Moyers To Speak At Breakfast

Bill Moyers - broadcaster, journalist, former deputy director of the Peace Corps, press secretary to Lyndon B. Johnson, Baptist preacher - will be the speaker for the eighth annual Texas Baptists Committed breakfast.

The breakfast will be at 7:00 a.m., Tuesday, November 12, in the Fort Worth Convention Center. Tickets are $15.00 and an order form is found on page 11 of this newsletter.

“We are very happy that such a distinguished journalist and Baptist has agreed to speak to our annual breakfast meeting,” said David R. Currie, coordinator of TBC. “When he agreed to be our speaker, we got the word from his office that he was coming because he likes what we are doing.

“Bill Moyers is not only an outstanding journalist, he is an outstanding Christian and an outstanding Baptist,” Currie added.

In an address a few years ago, Moyers talked of his Baptist roots and told of growing up in Central Baptist Church of Marshall.

“I took my first baby steps of faith there. I squirmed in the pews there, prayed in the pews there, held hands and flirted with pretty girls in the pews there, wrestled with hard questions in the pews there, saw people weep and wondered why and wept myself, experiencing joy that needed no explanation.

“I heard the Gospel preached there and felt powerful emotions called from the deep, and like so many, I became a Christian and was baptized in Central Baptist Church of Marshall.”

The world-renowned journalist has said on many occasions that he learned about democracy in a Baptist church.

“I learned about the freedom of the individual in a Baptist church. I learned about the inviolability of the conscience in a Baptist church. I learned how to compromise in a Baptist church. I learned how to negotiate in a Baptist church. I learned how to speak in a Baptist church and I learned about caring in a Baptist church,” he said in an interview.

In his now-famous series on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), God and Politics: The Battle for the Bible, first shown in 1987, Moyers further explained his upbringing…

“We were democrats with a small d, a self-governing democracy. Baptists call it the autonomy of the local church. We chose our own leaders, developed our own programs, without interference from any ecclesiastical organization. Not only was every believer equal before God, each member’s vote was equal to any other. I learned politics in (a Baptist) church, the politics of good faith.

“…In church I was taught that the core of fellowship was not doctrine or dogma, but freedom, the soul’s freedom to follow the teachings of the Bible as one feels led by the spirit of God.”

After growing up in East Texas, and being what some writers have called “the brightest boy in Marshall,” Moyers went to the University of Texas to study journalism. He graduated from UT with honors.

After a year of study in Scotland, he enrolled in Southwestern Seminary, where he pursued a master of divinity degree while serving churches in Brandon, Weir and Loco, Oklahoma.

When he graduated from Southwestern in 1960, he immediately joined the staff of then-U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson and was the Texas senator’s personal assistant.

Moyers told an interviewer that when he joined Sen. Johnson’s staff, some questioned his vocational commitment. He added that many had thought he would take a full-time pastorate, but he had entered seminary thinking he would be a teacher.

Jokingly, he told the interviewer that the student pastorates he held while in seminary helped him realize that his calling lay elsewhere. “I’m awfully glad that something, whatever it was, spared me for what I can do best

. “When I look back, the people to whom I am most indebted are the warm and patient and loving people of Brandon and Weir and Loco who could, despite what I said between 11 and 12 o’clock, have me to dinner at 12:30 and still be a friend,” he recalls.

After serving as Johnson’s personal assistant, Moyers became executive assistant during the 1960 presidential campaign when Johnson ran for vice-president on the ticket with John F. Kennedy.

After serving as associate director and deputy director of the Peace Corps, he became President Johnson’s special assistant and press secretary.

His career also has included being publisher of Newsday, and a renowned broadcaster with CBS, PBS and NBC.

During his 25 years of broadcasting, Moyers has pursued a spectrum of journalism, for which he has received many awards, including 30 Emmys, the George Foster Peabody Award for political reporting and international coverage and the prestigious Gold Baton, which is the highest award of the Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Awards.

Columbia University president Michael Sovern has called Moyers “a unique voice, still seeking new frontiers in television, daring to assume that viewing audiences are willing to think and learn.”

Political reporter Claudia Dreifus interviewed Moyers for a magazine piece and wrote that in person he “has that same strong face, that same inquiring expression, that same intense intelligence that make him such a remarkable interviewer.”

He has produced such programs as “The Secret Government,” “The Constitution in Crisis,” “God and Politics,” “Healing of the Mind,” and “Amazing Grace.” Perhaps his most famous interview was a series of six featuring Sarah Lawrence College professor Joseph Campbell and entitled “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.”

Moyer’s latest production is Genesis: A Living Conversation with Bill Moyers. This production is a ten-part series which premiers on PBS, Wednesday, October 16, at 8:00 p.m. The remaining nine programs will air on consecutive Sundays beginning October 20, at 6:00 p.m. Genesis: A Living Conversation with Bill Moyers is also a published book which will be available at the convention.

Moyers is married to the former Judith Davidson. They have three children.

September 1996