RUSSELL H. DILDAY: nominee for president
By Marv Knox,
Associate Editor, Baptist Standard

Russell H. Dilday, former president of Southwestern Seminary, will be nominated for president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Dilday will be nominated by Hardin-Simmons University Chancellor Jesse Fletcher.

Dilday was a political lightning rod among Texas Baptists in 1994, when Southwestern Seminary trustees fired him in one of the climactic chapters in the ultra-conservative domination of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dilday, 66, now teaches at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Seminary in Waco. Fletcher and Dilday have been friends since the 1950s when they were fellow students at Southwestern Seminary.

“I came to know his heart and life and got to admire him,” Fletcher recalled. That admiration grew through the decades, as Dilday was a pastor of churches in Texas and Georgia, a leader in denominational life and president of the world’s largest seminary,” Fletcher added.

Dilday explained he agreed to accept the nomination because he is a “debtor to Texas and Texas Baptists.”

“I owe a lot to the culture where I grew up,” he said. “The open, pioneer spirit and rugged individualism have shaped and formed my life, and I have a deep appreciation for Texas.

“My whole life has points of contact with Baptists in Texas. Along with my parents, Baptists here in this state led me to faith in the Lord. I was baptized in a Texas Baptist church, and a Texas Baptist church ordained and called me to the ministry. I went to Baptist schools here and met my wife at Baylor University.

“The shaping of my life has been vitally linked up with Baptist Texans.”

His father, Hooper Dilday, served on the BGCT staff for 20 years.

If elected, Dilday would work toward two major goals, he said.

“First, I would hope that we could emphasize the importance of being Baptist Christians in the sense that we can be grateful for that heritage,” he said. “The Baptist approach is unique and valuable and needs to be preserved.”

Dilday cited a litany of characteristics and values that shape and define the meaning of “Baptist Christian.” They included the lordship of Christ, the authority of scripture, the importance of the local congregation, the vitality of cooperation as a way of doing missions, freedom of conscience, religious liberty, separation of church and state, evangelism and missions “as the primary responsibility we have in the world.”

Second, Dilday would emphasize “that we need to be Christian Baptists,” he said. “Sometimes we forget to reflect the Spirit of Jesus, to show in our lives the Christlike qualities of kindness and goodness and love.

“We’ve come through a time when Baptists have lost a lot of credibility in the public eye. Life under that name has been ridiculed because a lot of us have forgotten that we need to carry out our lives in a reflection of our Lord.”

Dilday noted he looks forward to Texas Baptists’ future.

The proposals recently presented by the BGCT’s special Effectiveness/Efficiency Committee “come at a timely period at the turn of a new century,” he said. “We can see that by maintaining all that is good in Texas Baptist life and developing new strategies, we can move ahead in the next century.”

Dilday also affirmed his support for the BGCT staff. “It’s time we rallied behind them and thank the Lord for these people who labor with us,” he said.

And he also stressed the need to “spotlight the importance of the local church” in the life of the denomination. “That’s always been one of my favorite concepts in Baptist life—the autonomy or importance of the local church for beginning to carry out the Great Commission,” he said. “The churches do not exist to support the denomination, but the denomination exists to help the churches do their work.”

Dilday also is a product of Baptist schools, Fletcher noted. He is a graduate of Baylor University and Southwestern Seminary, where he earned both master of divinity and doctor of philosophy degrees.

Dilday is “an outstanding candidate,” Fletcher maintained. “He has a proven leadership record. He’s one of us; he knows Texas Baptists.”

October 1997