A tribute to Buddy Shurden.

Weaver, Doug

I count myself as one of the lucky ones--back in the day when most Ph D. students took two sub-areas in their major field and one outside of it. However, I decided to dig as deep into my field, church history, as I could. And now, who can boast--and I am boasting--of having had the opportunity to take graduate seminars with this trinity: Glenn Hinson, Bill Leonard, and Buddy Shurden. I studied under all three at the M. Div. level--I knew what I'd be getting, and I was not disappointed.

Since I've never had the opportunity to introduce Buddy Shurden to a public gathering as I have the other mentors, I want to at least share some tidbits of how he has impacted my life and my scholarship. I'll try to stick mostly to the scholarship; this is a Festschrift honoring the contributions of Dr. Walter B. Shurden, Sr., to the Baptist heritage--and those contributions are legion. I've also solicited some help from colleagues-historians to describe the impact Buddy has had upon them.

My first encounter with Buddy was in a Baptist history course at Southern Seminary. The reason I knew the name Shurden was because his brother, Robert, was the best teacher of my undergraduate education. Upon taking Buddy's class, my first impression was, "These Shurden brothers can teach and preach!" I was learning what every student learned: Buddy Shurden is a master teacher and communicator.

My colleague at Baylor, Rosalie Beck, says it this way: "Buddy Shurden's comprehensive and compassionate understanding of Baptists and their history has provided a model for two generations of current historians and will continue to be a model in the future."

Buddy's teaching impacted not only his own students but also students at other Baptist schools.

Jerry Faught of Wiley College confirms: "I learned from Buddy through his many writings, and he had a profound influence upon my understandings of Baptist history and theology. He helped me to see the importance of scholarly writing."

I really like the way Mel Hawkins at Carson-Newman College puts it: "I did not study under Buddy Shurden, but I was introduced to his scholarship through my study under Leon McBeth as an M.Div. student, and I was immediately shaped by it. I suppose you could say I became a Buddy Shurden fan." And Mel reminds us that a legacy keeps on giving: "When I joined the faculty of Carson-Newman in 1994 where he had taught earlier, Buddy's shadow still hung over the place (as it does today).''

Of course, Buddy's shadow still hovers over other Baptist classes, as well it should. Pam Durso, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry, recently taught a Baptist heritage course. As the class worked through Buddy's immensely influential book, Four Fragile Freedoms, Pam told her class: "Dr. Shurden, through careful and intentional use of language and his strong advocacy for women ministers, paved the way for Baptists to open their pulpits and their hearts to women called and gifted by God." And Durso elaborated, "Look at his definition of church freedom: With simple but strong words, he let it be known that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship would be a movement that included the leadership of women."

Shurden's classes were thick with academic scholarship, but Buddy was also committed to the church, to training ministers, and to teaching Baptist laity to value their heritage. He could adroitly speak to Ph.D.s and to the undereducated. Buddy's popular, accessible, and interpretively rich Not a Silent People: Controversies That Flave Shaped Southern Baptists is evidence of his gifts to combine these strengths.

Glenn Jonas of Campbell University summarizes it well: "Buddy Shurden is the consummate example of a scholar whose scholarship is beneficial to both the academy and the church. His writings don't gather dust on a university library bookshelf.''

Rob Nash, while noting that he never had a class with Buddy, grabbed the essence of Buddy's teaching Baptist identity to the church. Nash said: "I have soaked up some profound truth from him. Ttoo lessons stand out: First, being Baptist matters. The world may not know it, but it needs us badly! And the second is that the Baptist tradition lives, moves, and has its being in its institutions--its churches, its denominations, and its associations. It is well worth it to give one's life over to their preservation and nurture."

Buddy's mentorship was wide ranging, including encouragement to do Baptist scholarship. In my M.Div. Baptist history class I wrote a paper on Reuben Alley, the liberal gadfly editor of the Religious Herald of Virginia during the mid-twentieth century. Buddy encouraged me to do further study in church history and to try and publish my paper. I already had designs on a graduate path in church history, so the encouragement was immensely important--and eventually the piece on Reuben Alley was published. The first article I actually had published--in this journal--was a research paper from Buddy's Ph.D. seminar on colonial Baptists. He sent a letter of recommendation with the paper and publication happened. Things take on larger importance than others realize (it was just an article), but the piece was the only article I had published before my dad's death. And, for that reason, it meant more than I could even put into words at the time. But Buddy's encouragement to publish wasn't simply a message to his own students.

Sandy Martin at the University of Georgia attests: "For myself, whose professional affiliation is non-denominational specific, Buddy's scholarship and professionalism--characterized by humane passion for and vast knowledge of Baptist history and understanding of the major impact of Baptists nationally and globally--have sharpened my dedication to continued scholarly efforts to recover and publish the Baptist story."

After I completed my graduate work, Buddy and I kept in regular contact as my career progressed and I benefitted from his wisdom, friendship, and assistance. I wrote a couple of local church history books--something Buddy believes is extremely important to the preservation of our heritage. As one layperson told me, "We selected you as our author because that is what Buddy Shurden told us to do."

In 1998 I became the journal editor of the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society after receiving a call from Buddy. A friend said that my editorship of the Whitsitt Journal (we gave Courage Awards to such "heretics" as Will Campbell, Ralph Elliott, James Dunn, Daniel Vestal, and Jimmy Carter and in our last year, to Buddy) would get me in trouble with Georgia Baptist fundamentalists. (Which of us shouldn't be in trouble with Georgia Baptist fundamentalists?) At Whitsitt meetings in the home of Buddy Shurden, Baptist freedoms were alive and well.

As I read this editorial back to myself, I happily confess to boasting of having Buddy Shurden as a role model and mentor. But please don't think my story is unique.

Hear Loyd Allen of McAfee School of Theology: "Buddy never quits mentoring his students. He taught me in M. Div., supervised me in Ph.D., recommended me for two jobs and advised me against taking a third, drew me into the founding of the Whitsitt Society, introduced me to my favorite peers. This was not special treatment. I am one of many."

And Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty: "Buddy Shurden has taught generations of students, teachers, pastors, and folks in the pews what it means to be Baptist in contemporary American life. He and Kay have also been staunch supporters of the Baptist Joint Committee and our work to ensure religious liberty and uphold the separation of church and state. They put their money where their mouth is. Through their amazing generosity of endowing the Shurden Lectureship to be given each year in partnership with the BJC, they have made it possible for the BJC to educate future generations as well. Buddy and Kay are simply the best!"

And Carolyn Blevins, retired from Carson-Newman College: "I am grateful that early in my career he encouraged me to go to the meetings of Baptist historians, the Southern Baptist Historical Society as it was known then. But the connections with others interested in Baptist history, the discussions in the sessions and around the dinner table were the beginning of my lifelong learning from those who continued to explore Baptist heritage."

And Daniel Vestal, now director of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Center for Baptist Leadership at Mercer University: "Buddy Shurden has been to me what he has been to so many: a teacher, mentor, and friend."

In 2002, as executive director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University, Buddy Shurden invited a group of moderate Baptist historians, mostly though not all from a generation younger than him, to come to Mercer University and read primary sources. Sound exciting, sound groundbreaking? It was, and still is. Each September about fifteen of us met at Mercer University (with a fellowship meal at the Shurdens' home!). We read (and yes, it was a great deal of summer homework) extensively and then had seminar-type discussions. We took it seriously. As Rosalie Beck notes, "When you do Baptist history with Buddy, know that he does not believe in breaks." Each year we covered a fifty-year time span, and thus met for eight years with Buddy as we studied Baptist heritage from the early seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth century. All of us, being academics, have been to multiple conferences. And all of us to a person would say that we learned more in our sessions with Buddy than in any other conference. The group, even after Buddy retired, simply could not stop meeting. We still do. Buddy wanted us to be the best teachers we could be; he wanted the Baptist history preserved. He knew we would network, create, and deepen fellowships, and bond even closer with historic Baptist DNA. We have--and will continue to do so.

Buddy would often bring in special guests. One favorite was Wayne Flynt, retired professor from Auburn University and the prominent historian of southern religion and lover of Baptist history. I asked Wayne to share a story for this editorial, and his reflection points to the wide impact Buddy has had as a church historian and Baptist interpreter:

   Many years ago when I chaired the Baptist History and Heritage
   Commission, we met for the 300th anniversary of the First Baptist
   Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the oldest Baptist
   congregation in the South. Buddy Shurden preached in that historic
   setting. His sermon was a masterpiece, combining the need to
   respect the past while nonetheless moving inevitably away from it
   as flawed and imperfect in many ways. Even after decades, 1
   remember the single sentence that riveted all of us with a truth so
   profound that we gasped that anyone could capture it in one
   sentence: "Faced with a past we do not like and a future we do not
   know, most of us will choose the past we do not like." In
   retrospect, that moment was filled with both profound theology,
   perceptive history, and troubling reality.

Articles in this Festschrift are written to celebrate the career of Buddy Shurden. Contributors all have close connections to Buddy. Glenn Hinson was one of Buddy's colleagues at Southern Seminary. Fisher Humphreys, another contemporary of Buddy's and who taught at Beeson Divinity School, is the theologian Buddy would point readers to for Baptist theology. John Finley, pastor of First Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, did his Ph.D. work with Buddy at Southern Seminary. And our very own Bruce Gourley was Buddy's associate at the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University.

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We've also included three important speeches that Buddy gave during his career that need greater exposure.

The first, "Tender Hearts, Tough Minds, Trained Hands," is a sermon he preached to students at McAfee School of Theology in 1999 and highlights Shurden's interest in theological education and reveals his passion for ministry. The second, "A Decade of Promise" is a speech he delivered in 2001 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the formation of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the moderate Baptist group that he helped found and organize. His influence upon the CBF cannot be under-emphasized. The final piece, "Baptist Pavement, Baptist Potholes, and a P.S. Concerning Baptist Freedom," was Shurden's acceptance speech when he was given the Courage Award by the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society in 2009. The speech wonderfully highlights Buddy's wisdom about the Baptist essence of freedom and responsibility.

While this Festschrift hopes to highlight Buddy's teaching and scholarly career, Pam Durso shares an experience that parallels an experience for me, and I expect, most others whom I have quoted in this tribute. It captures Buddy Shurden, the role model and mentor: "When I first met him, he said to me, 'Call me Buddy. All my friends do, and I want you to be my friend.' Everyone should be so lucky to have such an amazingly wonderful friend as Buddy Shurden.

Doug Weaver

Festschrift and Miscellaneous Issue Editor

Doug Weaver is professor of religion at Baylor University