James Dunn as Neglected Theologian

Michael Westmoreland-White of Levellers is hosting a blog series on Neglected Theologians.

The Neglected Theologians that have been recovered in this series include:

The Venerable Bede (post authored by Tim Furry, Ph.D. student, University of Dayton)

The Blumhardts (post authored by Dr. Christian T. Collins Winn, Associate Prof of Historical and Systematic Theology, Bethel University)

Johann Baptist Metz (post authored by D.W. Horstkoetter, recent M.A. (Theology & Ethics) from Union Theological Seminary and soon-to-be Ph.D. student at Marquette University)

My post on James Milton Dunn is the fourth installment in this Neglected Theologians blog series. Though I'm a tad biased, I'd say it's a pretty decent contribution. James Dunn is not your traditional theologian but he is a theologian nonetheless - an activist theologian for religious liberty.

Check it out here.

James Dunn & Soul Freedom: A Thesis

My thesis is finally complete, all 159 pages! I'm scheduled to defend it at the end of this month.

Here's my short abstract:

James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom:

A Paradigm for Baptist Political Engagement in the Public Arena

In the last half of the twentieth century, James Dunn has been the most aggressive Baptist proponent for religious liberty in the United States. As the leader of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, Dunn’s understanding of church-state separation was a battleground in the Southern Baptist Controversy of the 1980s. “Conservative Resurgence” leaders opposed Dunn and the Southern Baptist Convention eventually withdrew from the BJC.

This thesis analyzes the public career of James Dunn, especially his views on religious liberty. Dunn embodied and articulated a paradigm for Baptist political engagement in the public arena which was based upon the concept of soul freedom: voluntary uncoerced faith and an unfettered individual conscience before God. Dunn defended soul freedom as the historic Baptist basis of religious liberty against critics whom he believed had forfeited their Baptist identity by aligning with the Religious Right and its rejection of church-state separation.

Equal Privileges - A Hallmark of Baptists

This is the seventh post in my Recovering E.Y. Mullins and Saving Soul Freedom series. Past posts include: The Golden Hour to Save Soul Freedom, Recovering E.Y. Mullins - Part 5, Saving Soul Freedom w/ James Dunn, On Being An Authentic Baptist, Priests and Prophets, and the original Recovering E.Y. Mullins.

Today's excerpt comes from the May 3, 1994 issue of the Report From The Capital of the Baptist Joint Committee. The author - James Dunn.

Quintessential democracy. The starting gun for sustainable human rights. A laboratory for soul freedom. The baseline for church polity and politics. A consistent corollary for the competence of the individual before God. A Baptist distinctive or hang-up or cantankerousness.

One of all of those phrases fits the affirmation that "all believers have a right to equal privileges in the church." It is elemental: Religious Liberty starts at home. It is a revolutionary doctrine. It's an idea to which most free church adherents pay lip service....

The notion, like all ideals, is far from being realized. Some churches bearing the name "Baptist" withhold equal privileges on the basis of gender, age, race or some other external factor. More individious and common perhaps is the de facto denial of full membership privileges because of some selective system of sin-sizing. A sin of certain assessed magnitude can cut off equal access....

So go back to the principle: All believers have a right to equal privileges in the church.

The same regard for Scripture protects one from believing that equality of privilege refers to an equality of spiritual and mental capacities. Nor does this rule of thumb diminish appreciation for diversity of gifts and differences of calling. The right of direct access to God makes the church a family. Brothers and sisters with a common allegiance to Jesus Christ do not take equality before God lightly or as an excuse for self-centered individualism.

The tangible reality of a fellowship of believers in real time with actual flesh-and-blood concerns bound by love serves as a powerful deterrence to cowboy Christianity. The principle of equal privileges in the church tends to curtail, not create Lone Ranger religion. At least, that is the way it ought to work. Powerful paradox: the lordship of Christ and autonomy of individual soul. "Jesus Christ is Lord" was the first confession of the church. As Mullins wrote, "The first and finest expression of Christ's lordship over the individual believer is the gift of autonomy." Pardox? Mystery? Yes....

...The working principle that all believers are directly answerable to Christ is dangerous, explosive, open to abuse. One can be certain that it will be misinterpreted and misused. Yet, the introduction of indirect authority, creedal filters, mediators and intermediaries poses a greater danger. That danger is the failure to see Jesus Christ as sole authority.

For Baptists to be faithful to our own best insights, for Baptists to continue to champion religious libety, for Baptists to be Baptists, we must practice freedom in our churches. We are guilty of high hypocrisy; full-fledged phonies if we talk freedom of religion and act less than freely at churh. Democracy and vital religion share this ennobled view of individual freedom. All believers have a right to equal privileges in the church.

The Golden Hour To Save Soul Freedom

This is the sixth post in the Recovering E.Y. Mullins and Saving Soul Freedom Summer Project. See all past posts here. As E.Y. Mullins, J.M. Dawson, G.W. Truett, and James Dunn said time and time again - the freedom of the individual conscience is the cornerstone that precedes and demands religion liberty and her essential corollary the separation of church and state.

The writings of Mullins, Hobbs, Gaustad, Dunn, and most recently Underwood have infected me with the "soul freedom bug." Instead of dabblin' in the latest warm & fuzzy theological trends, perhaps it's time for younger Baptists to recommit themselves to the most basic of our Baptist distinctives...now is the "golden hour" to Save Soul Freedom.

So, I leave you with excerpts from The Wit and Wisdom of James Dunn...

"Freedom is not absolute. No one is 'free as a bird.' Only a bird is free as a bird. We are not free to deny basic freedoms to others. When anyone's freedom is denied, everyone's freedom is endangered."

"We are not free without responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are like two sides of a coin, inseparable. No matter how thin it is slice, the coin of responsible freedom still has two sides. God made us able to respond, response able, responsible, and if responsible, free."

"The competence of the individual before God does not demand and in fact precludes Long Ranger religion. No matter what critics left and right may say, autonomous individualism...does not mean that everyone's church is one's own hat...The longing for community and social Christianity presupposes voluntarism. Without individual autonomy, there can be no authentic community, for folks to be herded together by some sort of semi-sacramentalism or joined in a crusade for social justice does not community make."

"This Baptist belief in religious liberty is not just 'doctrine,' or First Amendment or a political elective. It is, rather, THE baptist basic: soul freedom. Each individual comes immediately to God. All vital religion is voluntary. Even God will not trample the freedom to say 'yes' or 'no' to God."

"There is not such thing as 'required religion,' no such thing as 'forced fellowship' or 'coerced community.' All those phrases are oxymorons, and folks who force, coerce or require are ordinary morons.

"Believing in the separation of church and state doesn't make one a Baptist. But it is hard to believe that one could be a Baptist and not cling tenaciously to that baptistic doctrine. How else do we protect and defend those seminal beliefs in freedom of conscience, the priesthood of all believers, the right of private interpretation of Scripture, real religious liberty for all believers, as well as those who refuse to believe, a free church in a free state?"

"No pastor or priest, no doctrine or disciple, no book or belief, no church or creed comes between the individual and God."

Saving Soul Freedom w/ James Dunn

This is the fourth post in our newly launched Recovering E.Y. Mullins and Saving Soul Freedom Summer Project. See here, here, and here. Our inspiration for this Project is none other than Bill Underwood, President of Mercer University and New Baptist Covenant organizer, and his Baptist Summit speech given in January, 2006.

Without further ado, I give you James Dunn in his own words excerpted from Charles W. Deweese's Defining Baptist Convictions: Guidelines for the Twenty-First Century.

Soul freedom is the fire that burns in the innards of every true Baptist. From Thomas Helwys' insistence that "the king is not the Lord of the conscience" to this day, the identifying mark of the breed called Baptist is that dogged determination to be free.

No proof text is needed, because the passion for freedom is rooted in the person and nature of God in whose image all humankind is created. Before any constitution, any social contract, even before the biblical revelation lies the way in which we were all made - responsible to God and free to respond (and take the consequences).

If that is the biblical and theological principles driving religious liberty, then the ethical, moral, and social implications of that transforming idea demand that same freedom for every other human being. If we do love our neighbors as ourselves, if we do unto others as we want them to do to us, if indeed, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, we want religious liberty for everyone.

Anyone's religious libety denied is everyone's religious liberty endangered. Firmly rooted in biblical belief and the ethical demands coming directly from those convictions, Baptists have stood for separation of church and state since we were first labeled "Baptist."

The same King James whose name is in the front of your Bible is the one who ordered the death of Thomas Helwys, the first Baptist pastor in England. Helwys' crime was simple: the king was not his spiritual master. Government, however good, could not be God.

One does not go to the Bible for instruction as if it were a political science textbook. Yet, the Bible speaks to the relation of religion to political life. Baptists who slight the distinctive of church-state separation deny their birthright.

Some today cannot see that clear biblical teachings inform one's estimate of humankind, sin, righteousness, and redemption. Biblical doctrine fuels and empowers believers to seek spiritual libeation for all. The Bible has shaped our best insights and noblest traditions as "people of the Book." The universal freedom of religious conscience is taught in the Bible.

On Being An Authentic Baptist And More...

How to recognize a "real" Baptist if you see one

By James M. Dunn

1. If soul liberty is important.

2. If the priesthood of all believers is more than a slogan.

3. If one insists on interpreting the Scriptures for themselves.

4. If one defends the right of each person to come to the Bible and, led by the spirit, seek its truth.

5. If one believes that one must accept Jesus Christ personally.

6. If the church functions as a democracy.

7. If in the fellowship of churches each one is autonomous.

8. If there is no pope or presbyter, president or pastor who rules over you.

9. If religious liberty is the password to public witness and the separation of church and state is its essential corollary.

10. If no mortal has the power to suppress, curtail, rule out, or reign over the will of the local congregation.

In addition to all the fundamentalism-fightin' and random posts about all-things Baptist , we here at www.thebigdaddyweave.com will be Saving Soul Freedom and Recovering E.Y. Mullins slowly by steadily over the next months.

Also look forward to more posts on the upcoming Celebration of the New Baptist Covenant. To help celebrate the upcoming gathering, several new bloggers are about to make their blogosphere debut - including an ordained American Baptist minister who is both female and employed! So, see, some of us do practice what we preach!

With the CBF and ABC hooking up in just a few short weeks, expect pre-coverage and quasi-live coverage straight from ChinaTown. And to plug the William Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society one more time, I will be posting a fascinating story on American Baptist missionary Lauran Bethell and her fight against the Global Sex Trade. So, stay tuned.

Priests and Prophets: Saving Soul Freedom

Back in February, Dr. James Dunn, former Executive-Director of the Baptist Joint Committee and current visiting professor at the Wake Forest University Divinity School, delivered the Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State.

Below is a snippet from his lecture entitled "Priests and Prophets"

“If soul freedom is important,
If the priesthood of all believers is more than a slogan,
If one insists on interpreting the Bible for himself/herself,
If one defends the right of each person to come to the Bible and led by the Holy Spirit seek its truth,
If one believes that she must accept Jesus Christ personally, freely or not really …
If in the fellowship of churches each one is autonomous….
If religious liberty is the password to public witness and the separation of church and state is essentially corollary,
If no mortal has the power to suppress, curtail, rule out or reign over the will of the congregation,
You have probably been baptistified.”