NEWS FEATURE: Retiring Dan Weiss Led American Baptist To Embrace Inclusive Vision

c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) American Baptist leader Daniel E. Weiss still remembers the turning point in his life, when his worldview expanded from an “extremely monocultural” background to a lifelong commitment to equality and freedom. He was a visiting professor at a seminary in Costa Rica in 1968 when the news came of […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) American Baptist leader Daniel E. Weiss still remembers the turning point in his life, when his worldview expanded from an “extremely monocultural” background to a lifelong commitment to equality and freedom.

He was a visiting professor at a seminary in Costa Rica in 1968 when the news came of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.


“People would come up to me on the street and say, `Why do they kill black people in your country?”’ Weiss recalled. “It was just awful. You were, in a way, ashamed of being an American, although not all Americans shot him. There was a mood and a climate that kind of brought you to your senses. My experience in that country … opened up the windows to a much larger world.”

The Kenosha, Wis., native and former seminary president has just completed a dozen years as general secretary of the American Baptist Churches USA and as its chief executive has led the mainline denomination to embrace greater diversity and fostered inclusion of women and minorities in positions of leadership. At the same time, he has held his church body together despite sharply divergent views on homosexuality.

Weiss has also worked to uphold the unique identity of American Baptists _ both ecumenical and evangelical _ while representing them among umbrella groups of Baptists and Christians across the country and the globe.

But people at a range of levels in the 1.5-million-member denomination credit Weiss, 63, most for his determination about inclusiveness.

“I think he is conscious of it all the time _ probably even when he’s asleep _ and very, very committed to giving everyone a place at the table,” said Jean Kim, the first woman executive on the denomination’s four national boards, who has charge of educational ministries.

In 1987, the denomination’s membership was 60 percent white and 40 percent minority. By 1999, the numbers of whites and racial/ethnic minorities were almost even: 49.5 percent and 50.5 percent, respectively.

“The richness that has been brought into the life of our denomination by Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and African-Americans, Haitians now is just wonderful,” said Weiss, in a telephone interview in mid-August when he was cleaning out his office in the denomination’s Valley Forge, Pa., headquarters.


Over the course of his tenure as general secretary, the denomination has had only one white male serve in the presidential post, which lasts for a two-year term.

“He doesn’t select the president but I think he created the culture by which it was possible for the denomination to do some serious catch-up with regard to participation,” said the Rev. Aidsand Wright-Riggins III, executive director of national ministries for the ABCUSA.

Weiss’ notion of inclusiveness extended beyond racial and ethnic lines to differences in theology and ideology. The denomination is so diverse that its members have ranged from Carl F.H. Henry, first editor of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, to Harvey Cox, professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School.

Over the course of his leadership, Weiss served as referee as people with conflicting views on homosexuality and other issues debated one another.

“The biggest contribution that he made to our denomination was not in new projects but in keeping peace in the family, in keeping this denomination, which has every tendency to tear itself apart, in some degree of wholeness,” said the Rev. Tony Campolo, an American Baptist and a sociology professor at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pa., where Weiss served as president before moving into administrative roles with the denomination.

The Rev. Lowell Fewster, executive minister of American Baptist Churches of Connecticut, said Weiss also worked to find common ground amid different regional groups of Baptists.


“In meetings, he would seek to find alternate ways to do things,” Fewster recalled. “He would always try to build consensus. When we didn’t have it, he would back off and come back to it again.”

Weiss said one of the most painful times of his administration was when the denomination’s General Board voted in June 1999 to oust four California churches that welcomed gays and lesbians. Later that year, the board postponed the ouster, giving the churches until June 2001 to find a regional body that will accept them.

Weiss expects all four churches to find a regional home but wishes they could have remained members of the American Baptist Churches of the West, which expelled them.

“The issue here is not homosexuality, in my view, although that’s what a lot of people make it,” he said. “I think the issue has to do with the autonomy of the local congregation to wrestle with its own understanding of what Scripture is mandating them to do in mission.”

In general he tried to foster an atmosphere where “agreeing to disagree” melded with historic Baptist principles about religious freedom.

“You can’t have freedom yourself if you don’t give it to other people and I think our long-held commitment is that you really do have the right to be wrong,” he said. “We might want to convince you otherwise, but you still have that right. If you don’t have the right not to believe you can’t have the right to believe.”


Weiss attempted to have members of his denomination focus more on what they had in common than on what divided them.

“Without getting caught in the polarization and the emotional chaos that swirls around the question of homosexuality, he has held up the Baptist tenet of soul liberty and freedom and the democratic autonomy of the local church,” said the Rev. James M. Dunn, president of the Baptist Joint Committee Endowment.

Weiss said those outside the denomination may find it confusing to understand his church body, but he considers the wide range of viewpoints among its members to be “part of our genius” and a sign of their tolerance.

He can explain who American Baptists are with a brief summation: “We are evangelical. We are ecumenical. We are interracial. We advocate for women in ministry and we have a global perspective and we work for peace and justice issues.”

Weiss’ efforts toward peace among differing theologies went beyond his own denomination into the ecumenical movement.

Although he spoke out sharply against his sibling Southern Baptists for recently declaring in an “almost heretical” revision of their faith statement that women pastors are not qualified by Scripture, he was a team player during his service on boards of the Baptist World Alliance, which includes Southern Baptists.


“Even though he may have disagreed with other Baptist groups, he always maintained a very cordial relationship with them,” said the Rev. Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance.

The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches, recalled Weiss’ support of African-American Baptist denominations and the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which recently became a member of the ecumenical council.

“He never saw it as a threat that another Baptist denomination or organization … was going to become a part of the ecumenical movement,” recalled Campbell, now director of the religion department at Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York.

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When he wasn’t working on ecumenism, Weiss often focused on evangelism, fostering American Baptists’ goals of starting 1,010 new churches and reaching 1,000,010 new Christians by 2010.

“He’s encouraged that as our goal, our vision that we’ve received for the next 10 years,” said the Rev. Trinette McCray, president of the ABCUSA.

At a June retirement dinner, American Baptist leaders honored Weiss by naming a new scholarship after him that will encourage those who might not have originally planned to pursue ordination to consider that possibility.


Weiss, a former pastor, was thrilled with the honor.

“I have a very deep concern about the next generation of leadership,” he said. “I think that we need to constantly seek out the best and the brightest and see if there’s an openness to God’s call for ministry.”

Weiss served in the administrations of Gordon College near Boston and Pace University in New York before becoming president of Eastern College and Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He moved to the American Baptist Churches USA in 1983, serving as executive director of educational ministries before being named general secretary in 1988.

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Now, after traveling the country and the globe 60 percent of his time, Weiss looks forward to relaxing with his wife, Rachel, at their homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and Marco Island, Fla., and continuing his favorite nonadministrative activity _ cooking.

“At this point in time, I’m reminding myself that even God rested on the seventh day,” he said.

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