September
11, 2003
To Baylor faculty,
administration, alumni, and concerned friends:
Our
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, Joseph Martin Dawson, graduated
from Baylor University in 1904 and at his commencement delivered the
valedictory address. As a student,
Dawson served as the first editor of the Baylor Lariat.
After his graduation, J. M. Dawson pastored many churches in Texas, including churches in Hillsboro and Temple. He became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Waco in 1914 and served that congregation for 32 years. He retired from the pastorate in 1946 and became the first Executive Director of the Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington, D. C. The Joint Committee’s mission is “to defend and extend God-given religious liberty for all, bringing a uniquely Baptist witness to the principle that religion must be freely exercised, neither advanced nor inhibited by government.” In 1947 Dawson was one of the initiators and founders of the organization now known as Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United advocates for separation of church and state in the United States Congress and state legislatures, and defends separation of church and state in the federal and state courts.
J.
M. Dawson was well known as an advocate for religious freedom and the
separation of church and state. Among
many of his books was Separate Church and
State Now, published in 1948. Dr.
Dawson remained a staunch and loyal Baylor supporter for all of his long and
productive life. Dawson was a Baylor Trustee for three decades. In
1957 the J. M. Dawson Studies in Church and State was launched at Baylor
University as a fitting tribute to the man who had fought for religious liberty
and for the separation of church and state.
Now called the J. M. Dawson
Institute of Church-State Studies, it is devoted to research in the broad field
of church and state and the advancement of religious liberty around the world. It has had many distinguished scholars at
its helm. Since 1995 the Institute has
been directed by Dr. Derek Davis. We,
the undersigned, take great pride in Dawson’s accomplishments and have been
gratified that his work in the field of the freedom of religion and the
separation of church and state has continued at the J. M. Dawson
Institute.
We
are deeply disturbed, however, by the appointment in July 2003 of Dr. Francis
Beckwith as associate director of the J. M. Dawson Institute. We are troubled because Dr. Beckwith is a
Fellow of the Discovery Institute. The
activities of this organization are widely recognized in the academic community
as engaging in political activities that contravene the fundamental principle
of the separation of church and state for which J. M. Dawson stood. The Discovery Institute works to get the
concept called “intelligent design” into the science curriculum of public
school textbooks, claiming that intelligent design is a scientific not a
religious concept. In our judgment and
in the judgment of the scientific community, this is a ruse for getting a
religious notion into the public schools—clearly a violation of the separation
of church and state.
For
example, in May 2000, the Discovery Institute held a congressional briefing in
Washington. The topic of the briefing
was “Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design and Its Implication for Public
Policy and Education.” A vast majority
of scientists view intelligent design as the latest version of creationist
theory, though the Discovery Institute works tirelessly to refute this
fact. As David Applegate says in
reporting on this congressional briefing, “the ID [intelligent design]
proponents have gone to great lengths to make an end run around the
constitutional safeguards that blocked previous attempts to introduce
creationist teachings into public schools.
Two of the briefing speakers co-authored a legal guidebook on how to get
intelligent design material into public school science curricula.”
(“Creationists Open a New Front,” in Geotimes,
published by the American Geological Society,
http://www.geotimes.org/july00/scene.html)
We
are aware that Dr. Beckwith has argued in his publications that “intelligent
design” is a scientific theory and not
a religious concept. In a May 2002
article in Church & State, Steve
Benen states: “The strategy of making
ID [intelligent design] appear scientific, and not religious, is intentional. .
. . ID advocates at the Discovery
Institute try desperately to hide a religious agenda” (“The Discovery
Institute, Genesis of ‘Intelligent Design,’” http://www.au.org/churchstate/cs5023.htm.) Journal
of Church and State included in its spring 2003 issue an article entitled
“Intelligent Design: Scientific Theory
or Religious Conviction?” by Kent Greenawalt, a University Professor at
Columbia University and professor in Columbia’s law school. Greenawalt concludes his article with these
words: “To teach it [intelligent
design] as [the alternative to the
prevailing evolutionary theory] in public school science courses is an
impermissible teaching of religion” (257).
An editorial in the May 2002 issue of Church & State says that “intelligent design isn’t science,
it’s a scheme to circumvent the Constitution and promote religion in public
schools”
(http://www.au.org/churchstate/cs5024.htm). The editorial writer concludes, “Those who
value church-state separation and religiously neutral public schools must be
ready to defend these two vital facets of our national life” (ibid). (How fitting it is that the quotations in
this paragraph are from two journals directly tied to J. M. Dawson: Church
& State, published by Americans United for Separation of Church and
State, and Journal of Church and State,
published by the institute which bears his name.)
In Separate Church and State Now, Dawson
writes, “The American decision for disestablishment, and provision for complete
separation of church and state, marked a radical departure from what had been
the usage of Christendom for nearly fifteen hundred years . . . . It constituted a new and important
experiment in the history of the world.
Is the country going to maintain it?” (12)
We,
the descendants of J. M. Dawson ask the question, is Baylor University going to
maintain its commitment to the separation of church and state? Is the J. M. Dawson Institute of
Church-State Studies going to remain committed to its mission? How can it possibly do so if an associate
director is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute, an organization that lobbies
for actions that violate the church-state separation principle?
We
the undersigned are deeply concerned about many of the events which have
occurred during Dr. Robert Sloan’s eight years as president. Our purpose, however, is not to discuss in
detail all of these concerns. The
purpose of this letter is to express how particularly distressed we descendants
of Joseph Martin Dawson are with Dr. Francis Beckwith’s appointment as
associate director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. We have asked Dr. Sloan that he be removed
as associate director of the Dawson Institute and reassigned to another, more
appropriate position.
Alice
Cheavens Baird* (granddaughter of J. M. Dawson), Waco, TX
R.
Matthew Dawson* (son of J. M. Dawson),Waco, TX
Signed by proxy:
Grandchildren of J. M.
Dawson:
Katherine
Cheavens Hargrove*, Dallas, TX
Joseph
Dawson Cheavens*, Houston, TX
Mary
Martha Cheavens Kvols*, Tampa, FL
Martha
Dawson Newfield*, Cincinnati, OH
Sarah
Dawson Dixon*, Atlanta, GA
Diane
Dawson Delk*, Conroe, TX
Roslyn
Dawson Thompson*, Dallas, TX
Rebecca
Dawson Brumley*, Aledo, TX
Carol
Dawson, Austin, TX
Susanna
VanHoove Duckworth*, Charlotte, NC
Elizabeth
VanHoove Basden*, San Antonio, TX
Great-grandchildren of J. M.
Dawson:
David
McCauley Hargrove
John
Martin Hargrove
Matthew
Blake Hargrove
Brian
Hull Hargrove
Mary
Katherine Baird Darmer
Robert
David Baird*
Susan
Christine Baird
Mark
Richard Cheavens
Joseph
Dawson Cheavens, Jr.
Elizabeth
Cheavens Bailey
Sarah
Cheavens Sarnelli
Laura
Kvols Mogelson
David
Kristian Kvols
Lydia
Newfield Perry*
Rebecca
Dixon
Ashley
Dixon
*
Baylor graduate