By Adelle M. Banks / Religion News Service
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The Rev. James M. Dunn, a religious liberty advocate who worked the corridors of Washington power for two decades to defend the separation of church and state, died on Saturday (July 4).
He was 83, and died of a heart attack at his Winston-Salem, N.C., home, said Cherilyn Crowe, spokeswoman for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
After retiring from leading the committee in 1999, Dunn taught at Wake Forest University’s divinity school in Winston-Salem, serving as a professor of Christianity and public policy until 2014.
“The 20th century had no greater champion of religious freedom — of conscience — than James Dunn,” said Oliver “Buzz” Thomas, who was general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee under Dunn from 1985 to 1993, in an announcement of Dunn’s death. “Like Roger Williams, John Leland, George W. Truett and the other great Baptist leaders before him, James understood the dangers of civil religion.”
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Among the committee’s victories under Dunn’s leadership was the Equal Access Amendment of 1984, which allows students to gather for prayer before and after the school day. It was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990.
“That proves that the school is not required to rule out all religions, that public schools are not religion-free zones,” he said.
Dunn was known for his quick wit and frantic pace.
“I said, ‘James, you’re going to get an ulcer,’” Thomas recalled in 1999. “And he said, ‘Buzz, I don’t get ulcers. I give them.’”
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