NOTE: In April 2014, I was asked to speak to the annual meeting of the Board of Consultants of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission (CLC), meeting at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene. I was the first of a series of speakers who discussed, in turn, specific eras of the CLC’s history. My charge was to present its founding and early years. At this time, I served as chair of the T. B. Maston Foundation for Christian Ethics, and T. B. Maston played a key role in founding the CLC.
The Beginnings of the CLC
Bill Jones – Presentation to CLC Board of Consultants
April 1, 2014
Primary sources:
- Texas Baptist Leadership and Social Christianity, 1900-1980; by John W. Storey; 1986; Texas A&M University Press; pp. 1-156.
- Texas Baptists: A Sesquicentennial History; by Harry Leon McBeth; 1998; BaptistWay Press; pp. 244-246.
Organization of presentation:
- Intro – Explanation – why previous 50 years are important as context for CLC beginnings
- Texas Baptists and Social Ethics – 1900-1950
- Initial Impetus – J. Howard Williams, A. C. Miller, & T. B. Maston
- Founding of CLC and reaction to it
- A. C. Miller
- Foy Valentine
- Intro – Explanation – why previous 50 years are important as context for CLC beginnings
In 1950, Texas Baptists, with the founding of the Christian Life Commission (CLC), became the first state Baptist convention to establish an agency dedicated specifically to addressing moral and ethical issues.
But we can’t have a full appreciation of the beginnings of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission in the 1950s without first having some understanding of Texas Baptists’ efforts with regard to social ethics and moral issues in the first 50 years of the 20th century.
- Texas Baptists and Social Ethics – 1900-1950
In the early 1900s, the battle for prohibition expanded Texas Baptists’ grasp of social problems and motivated them to join in the political process, as preachers and laypersons alike embraced political action as a means of achieving moral objectives.
In 1914, Joseph M. Dawson, then pastor of First Baptist Church, Temple, preached what is believed to be the first formal series of sermons by a Texas Baptist on the social applications of the Gospel.
In 1915, the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) established two standing committees. The Civic Righteousness Committee initially concerned itself explicitly with prohibition, whereas the Social Service Committee dealt with a broader range of matters. These two committees were eventually combined into one. In 1918, Wallace Bassett, pastor of Cliff Temple Baptist Church in Dallas, explained the Social Service Committee’s mission as being a natural outgrowth of simply following Jesus. “We do not need a new theology for social service,” he said. “We only need to use his words as he intended we should use them.”
In the 1920s & 1930s, Texas Baptists were generally reluctant to dip into issues involving the ethics of society. However, through the Social Service Committee, as well as a few BGCT pastors, such as Dawson, they occasionally addressed matters such as abuse of prisoners by the penal system; the harm caused by predatory profit-seeking; the morality of warfare; and women riding men’s bicycles. Go figure!
The women of the BGCT generally went further than the men in addressing social problems. In 1929, the Woman’s Missionary Union singled out industry for special scrutiny to safeguard women and children from long and dangerous hours of toil and to protect the public from disease-causing practices detrimental to community health. They also recommended the creation of local interracial committees to pursue racial justice.
In 1927, the WMU had published the first of Southwestern Seminary Professor T. B. Maston’s writings on the Bible and race, a pamphlet entitled “Racial Revelations.”
- Initial Impetus – J. Howard Williams, A. C. Miller, & T. B. Maston
The three men who are considered to have provided the key impetus for establishing what became the Christian Life Commission are J. Howard Williams, A. C. Miller, and T. B. Maston. And the key issue driving that impetus was race.
In 1934, J. Howard Williams – who had become executive secretary of the BGCT in 1931 (today his title would be executive director) – recommended that white congregations create a Committee on Colored Work, which would assist Black Baptists with various church-related programs. He also suggested that the BGCT employ someone, white or Black, to work with Black ministers, conducting interracial conferences throughout the state.
In November 1942, Charles T. Alexander – whom Williams had appointed in 1936 as a liaison to the Black community – reported to the BGCT that he had forged meaningful relationships with Black leaders and recommended the creation of a Texas Baptist interracial commission. In November 1943, the Convention established the Department of Interracial Cooperation, ultimately appointing A. C. Miller as director, assisted by an advisory council of 12 associates, including T. B. Maston. By the end of 1945, the Department of Interracial Cooperation had established local interracial committees in 47 of the 113 Baptist associations in Texas. One of the department’s hires, in 1949, was Foy Valentine, who had recently received his Th.D. in Christian ethics under Maston at Southwestern, to work among Black college students. In 1948, Foy had pioneered in an interracial youth revival in Brownwood.
During Miller’s tenure leading the Department of Interracial Cooperation, his views evolved, from a stance that might be described as “separate but equal” to, ultimately, a stinging denunciation of racism to the 1949 BGCT annual meeting, urging Texas Baptists to challenge racial discrimination in the areas of education, housing, and jobs.
The greatest influence on Miller’s racial stance was likely his association with T. B. Maston. In 1946, Maston published Of One, a candid and controversial study, which established Maston as the leading spokesman for racial justice among Texas Baptists.
Maston’s own social consciousness had been planted within him when he was young. Growing up among poverty, with a father who worked hard and was a loyal member of a labor union, Maston said, “has explained to some degree what I hope has been a genuine, sincere interest in the underprivileged, the poor, and the disinherited in general in our society.”
In 1933, he wrote a series of lessons for the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, including “The Young Christian and Social Problems,” “Christianizing Economic Life,” “Improving Society Through Legislation,” and “The Christian Attitude Toward Other Races.”
In 1937, ethics was moved at Southwestern from Education to Theology, and – in 1942 – Maston began teaching ethics full-time. In 1944, he offered a course entitled “The Church and the Race Problem.” For this class, Maston took students on field trips through Black neighborhoods; they investigated specific aspects of the city’s race problem, such as public schooling; and he invited prominent Black leaders to address the class.
By the late 1940s, Maston was searching for a way to apply Christian principles to all aspects of daily life. So was J. Howard Williams, who said at the 1949 annual meeting of the BGCT, “. . . this convention should initiate some plan by which we can help our people to understand the grave issues of our day in terms of Christian faith and practice. . . . the help that we can give to labor, . . . the help that we might give to race, . . . We ought to have some agency by which we could promote this phase of the Christian life.”
- Founding of CLC and reaction to it
Messengers to that convention appointed a Committee of Seven to study the needs and bring a recommendation as to how to help people to understand and apply the principles of Christian living to issues of daily life.
In 1950, the Committee of Seven reported to the BGCT, meeting in Fort Worth, that “the major need of our day is an effective working combination of a conservative theology, an aggressive, constructive evangelism, and a progressive application of the spirit and teachings of Jesus to every area of life.” In his report to the Fort Worth convention, Maston originally referred to the new body as the Commission on Problems in Christian Living.
That changed, however, the next night. A speaker from the evangelistic department expressed his fear that any emphasis on social involvement would detract from evangelism and warned the convention against appointing a commission on the Christian life. In the audience, A. C. Miller turned to T. B. Maston, seated next to him, and whispered, “That’s our name! Why not call it the Christian Life Commission?”
Maston’s influence was evident in the founding committee’s declaration in 1950, that “any program of social change should not only be Christian in its goals but also in the methods it uses to achieve those goals.”
Maston saw social ills as an indication of inequities within the social structure that must be addressed. He urged that the Commission be strategic in dealing with sensitive issues. If one moved too rapidly and aggressively, local churchmen would become alienated and all chance for improvement would be lost. One must “start where the people are and keep the pressure in the right place,” Maston insisted, “pointed in the right direction.” This became the guiding strategy of the Christian Life Commission and its directors.
There was early criticism that the CLC, fashioned by leaders who were ahead of their constituents on social issues, was basically out of step with the sentiments of rank-and-file Baptists in Texas. Maston agreed that the CLC was primarily the result of constructive Baptist leadership but saw that as a positive rather than a negative. “. . . that’s not only true of the Christian Life Commission,” he said, “but almost everything else.”
At first, the CLC was assigned to work under the State Missions Commission, and heads of the other BGCT departments were members of the CLC. As time went on, the CLC achieved full commission status in fact as well as in name.
Arthur B Rutledge, pastor of First Baptist Church, Marshall – and later the executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Home Mission Board – became the first chairman of the new Christian Life Commission, serving from 1951 to 1955. Rutledge had been nudging his congregation toward racial justice since the late 1940s.
Also members during the CLC’s formative years were Herbert Howard, pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church, Dallas, who had studied under ethicist Jesse B. Weatherspoon at Southern Seminary; and William R. White, president of Baylor University.
In 1953, the CLC addressed head-on the criticism that an emphasis on ethics would detract from a focus on evangelism. Practical Christianity, it declared, was “boldly proclaimed throughout the Bible,” from the Genesis declaration that Cain was “his brother’s keeper” to the proclamations of the eighth-century prophets to the ministry of Jesus Himself.
Members of the CLC have been drawn from the ranks of not only pastors but educators, homemakers, lawyers, state legislators, journalists, physicians, and business professionals. T. B. Maston himself served on the commission at various stages for a total of 18 years, attending meetings, helping to write pamphlets, always emphasizing the necessity of a biblical basis for social involvement, and establishing the tradition of having an ethicist serving on the commission.
- A. C. Miller
In 1950, J. Howard Williams named A. C. Miller as the first director – then called executive secretary – of the CLC. Williams and Miller had first met each other in 1919 as students at Southern Seminary in Louisville. Williams believed that Miller’s leadership of the Department of Interracial Cooperation – which was by this time called Our Ministry with Minorities – made him the logical choice to direct the new Christian Life Commission.
In Miller’s first year, the CLC developed a body of literature entitled “The Bible Speaks”; three pamphlets in this series begun before Miller resigned in 1952 were “The Bible Speaks on Race,” “The Bible Speaks on Economics,” and “The Bible Speaks on Family.” Maston said that this series, which quoted Scripture verbatim, was largely responsible for giving “the Christian life commission its good start.” These brief tracts were distributed by the millions, placed in churches throughout the state, and used as sermon outlines by hundreds of preachers all over the state.
During Miller’s tenure, Christian life committees were organized in many associations throughout the state, and Miller worked to gain slots at the monthly workers’ conferences in the associations for “the associational committee on the Christian life to bring a brief report . . . followed by a speaker and discussion.”
In June 1952, Miller announced his resignation as he prepared to move to Nashville in January 1953, to become executive secretary of the SBC Social Service Commission, the forerunner to the SBC Christian Life Commission.
- Foy Valentine
J. Howard Williams considered 29-year-old Foy Valentine, pastor of First Baptist Church, Gonzales, the obvious choice to replace Miller, because of his training, his obvious interest in applied Christianity, and his close ties to prominent denominational leaders.
Foy Valentine had grown up in Edgewood, a small rural community in northeast Texas, during the Great Depression. He had seen poverty up close, and believed that government, as exemplified by various New Deal programs, could and should be used to ameliorate human want. He credited his parents for helping him “to recognize the social imperatives of the Christian faith.” His parents, faithful members of the local Baptist church, taught him that religion was to be applied to everyday affairs and, specifically, that Black people were to be respected.
He originally planned to attend the University of Texas, study law, and enter politics. However, shortly after graduating from high school, Foy accepted a call to preach and his plans changed.
Instead of UT, he entered Baylor, where he met visiting speaker Clarence Jordan, who he later called “one of the great Christians of our time.” In 1944, following graduation from Baylor, he spent the entire summer at Koinonia Farm, the racially integrated community established by Jordan near Americus, Georgia.
That fall, he enrolled at Southwestern Seminary and was soon taking Christian ethics classes under T. B. Maston. He later said that Maston “opened up new vistas and new understandings of what the church ought to be doing, and what I as a minister of the Gospel ought to be attempting.”
In 1947, Foy completed the requirements for his Masters in Theology and 2 years later obtained his Th.D., writing a dissertation entitled “A Historical Study of Southern Baptists and Race Relations, 1917 to 1947.”
From 1947 to 1948, he served the convention as a special representative on race relations, and from 1949 to 1950 he directed Baptist student activities at Houston colleges. After he was called as pastor of First Baptist Church, Gonzales, in 1950, he was elected to serve on the convention’s executive board and soon thereafter was appointed to the nine-member Christian Life Commission.
So, in 1953, J. Howard Williams called to ask Foy to succeed A. C. Miller as executive secretary of the CLC. Foy initially said “no” but ultimately relented and, in June 1953, became the second director of the Texas Baptist CLC.
During Foy’s tenure as director of the Texas CLC, he tirelessly traveled the state, attending local associational meetings, conducting seminars, addressing college audiences, and visiting regional Baptist encampments. He built a statewide network of local contacts for the CLC; in 1956, there were only 14 associational Christian life committees; by 1960, there were 110.
Under Foy’s leadership, the volume and distribution of tract literature grew from 25,000 pieces annually in 1953 to over 1.2 million pieces annually by the time he left in 1960. He continued adding new topics to “The Bible Speaks” series but also introduced new series entitled “Christian Answers to Family Problems,” “Christian Principles Applied,” and “Teen Talk.” It was in the midst of Foy’s tenure at the Texas CLC, in 1956, that he persuaded Broadman Press, the SBC’s publishing arm, to print its first work on social ethics: Christian Faith in Action, a compilation of sermons.
In 1957, Foy launched an annual CLC workshop to focus attention on social ethics. This is yet another legacy of Foy’s, of course, that continues today in the annual Christian Life Commission Conference.
In 1960, Foy once again succeeded A. C. Miller, this time as director of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville. Before he left, he encouraged fellow Maston Th.D. grad Jimmy Allen to assume leadership of the Texas CLC. As Foy had been in 1953, Jimmy was reluctant, but he ultimately agreed to become director of the Texas CLC in June 1960.