Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, defender of the divide between church and state, dies at 81

Reverend C. Welton Gaddy, who began his career with the Southern Baptist Convention but became increasingly troubled as the denomination became more aggressively conservative, and later led the Interfaith Alliance, an organization dedicated to religious and cultural diversity and the preservation of Separated religiously and politically, died June 7 in Monroe, La. He was 81.

Northminster Church of Monroe, where Dr. Gaddy served as senior pastor from 1991 until his retirement in 2016, posted news of his death on his Facebook page, saying he had had serious health problems for several months. The Interfaith Alliance, of which he chaired from 1997 to 2014, also reported his death on its website.

“In so many areas,” said the group’s president and chief executive, Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, in that message, “Welton used his platform to project a vision for America that embraced diverse beliefs and respected the inherent dignity of each individual.”

Dr. Gaddy, while leading congregations in several Southern states, held various positions in the Southern Baptist Convention during the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, including serving on the executive committee from 1980 to 1984. But while he became a rising star in the denomination during this period, he was often at odds with the emerging conservatism largely orchestrated by strategists Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson. Mr. Pressler and Mr. Paige were at war over what they saw as liberal tendencies in doctrine, placing like-minded people in positions of power.

Dr. Gaddy opposed these trends particularly strongly during his years as a pastor at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, from 1977 to 1983. He was often identified as a leader of the denomination’s moderate faction; detractors mockingly labeled them “the Gatlinburg Gang” after they broke up in Gatlinburg, Tenn, in the early 1980s. Met to discuss their concerns about the conservative transformation of the Southern Baptists. (Dr. Gaddy called it “a steamroller wrapped in piety.”)

In October 1983, Dr. Gaddy announced that he would leave Broadway Baptist and become a pastor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. He served in that position from 1984 to 1988. In 1991, he became a senior pastor at Northminster, one with the progressive Alliance of Baptists, which now proclaims to people who visit its website that “every part of you is welcome here — your gender, your race , your politics, your theology, your sexuality.”

Dr. Gaddy became a key figure in the Interfaith Alliance, a group founded in 1994 “to celebrate religious freedom,” as the website puts it, “and to challenge the bigotry and hatred emanating from religious and political extremism that has swept American politics.” intrudes.”

In 1998, when the Southern Baptist Convention changed its creed to include the idea that “a wife should graciously submit to the servant leadership of her husband,” Dr. Gaddy in an interview with NBC News about the move.

“I think it’s unhealthy for the family,” he said. “I think it’s relationally bad. I think it is heresy theologically.”

In May 2008, when Arizona Senator John McCain, seeking the Republican presidential nomination, ran into trouble when two conservative evangelical ministers he had courted made particularly offensive comments about Muslims and Jews, Dr. Gaddy candid about the underlying problem.

“This is a perfect example of when politicians and religious leaders try to use each other, they both end up hurt,” he told The New York Times.

When news outlets reported in 2010 that Trijicon Inc., which supplied telescopic sights to the U.S. military, had embossed phrases from the New Testament on those sights, he was among those who expressed outrage. In a letter to President Barack Obama, he said the visors “clearly violate a government rule prohibiting proselytism.” He called the practice “just the latest in a long line of violations of boundaries between religion and government within the military.”

Dr. Gaddy wrote some 25 books and was a long-time host of “State of Belief,” a weekly radio program produced by the Interfaith Alliance and broadcast nationally. Whatever hat he wore, keeping church and state separate was a primary concern.

“I’m a strong believer in the First Amendment to the Constitution,” he told The News-Star of Monroe in 2016, “and think that both practically and historically, when religion and government get entangled, it hurts both. But it probably hurts the religion the most.”

Curtis Welton Gaddy was born on October 10, 1941 in Paris, Tennessee. His father, George, was a clerk for the Louisiana and Nashville Railroad and treasurer of the West Paris Baptist Church; his mother, Jenola (Rayburn) Gaddy, taught Sunday School there.

“I really can’t remember when I didn’t go to church,” he told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1981. “We went twice on Sunday, once on Wednesday night, and most days of the week.”

He received a bachelor’s degree in 1963 from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, a Baptist institution where he was also a top tennis player. He received a master’s degree in theology from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., in 1968 and a Ph.D. there in 1970.

By then he was pastor of the First Marion Baptist Church in Paris Crossing, Ind. In 1971 he was appointed pastor of Beechwood Baptist Church in Louisville, and the following year moved to Nashville to become director of Christian citizenship development for the Southern Baptist Church. Convention.

His concerns about the mixing of politics and religion were already clear then. In 1973, during the Watergate investigations that would lead to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, Dr. Gaddy offered a prayer at a Southern Baptist breakfast in Washington attended by members of Congress. Among other things, he asked God to “forgive our worship of a civil religion that equates nationalism with Christianity, confuses government policy with Your will, and interprets patriotism as blind allegiance.”

Dr. Gaddy married Julia Mae Grabiel (known as Judy) in 1962. She survives him, along with a son, James, and several grandchildren. another son, John Paulpassed away in 2014.

In a 1981 speech, Dr. Gaddy expressed his growing frustration with the way the Conservative faction and Moral Majority, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, hijack religious discussions and distort the views of himself and others.

“Opposition to the political platform of the ‘pro-family’ forces is interpreted as opposition to family life,” he said. “Disapproval of attempts to pass legislation regulating the practice of prayer in public institutions is labeled disapproval of prayer. The protest against tax credits to finance private education is being portrayed as opposition to education.”

“Our society seems to have an aversion to complexity,” he added. “Maybe we read too many bumper stickers.”