March 31, 1999
Waco representative receives
first BJC Courage Award___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___WACO--United States Representative Chet Edwards, who represents the district surrounding Waco, received the first Barbara Jordan-Mark Hatfield Courage Award from the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs last week.
___Edwards received the award at a banquet on the campus of Baylor University during a conference on church-state issues in ministry sponsored by the BJC and Truett Theological Seminary.
___The award is named for a Democratic representative and a Republican senator who were champions of religious liberty during their terms of service, explained James Dunn, BJC executive director.
___Edwards received the award specifically forleading last year's fight in the House of Representatives against the Religious Freedom Amendment proposed by Rep. Ernest Istook of Oklahoma. That legislation would have amended the U.S. Constitution to allow broader expression of religious beliefs in public forums.
CHET EDWARDS receives the Jordan-Hatfield Courage Award from James Dunn of the Baptist Joint Committee.
___The Baptist Joint Committee and other religious groups strongly opposed the legislation, although it was supported by several conservative Christian groups. The bill garnered a simple majority in the House but not the two-thirds majority needed for passage.
___Dunn hailed Edwards for demonstrating a "peculiar and unusual kind of courage" in opposing the bill.
___In a brief acceptance speech, Edwards highlighted the importance of religious liberty for all people.
___"I cannot imagine any freedom more important than religious freedom," he said. "If you can't practice your faith ... believe in God without the authority of the state's hand, ... then all other freedoms are at risk."
___Edwards, a Methodist who married the daughter of a Baptist pastor, said his life was forever changed when his father-in-law showed him the text of a speech delivered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol by George W. Truett in 1920. Truett was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, and the speech he gave has become a landmark statement of Baptist belief on church-state separation.
___Truett's speech "has haunted me ever since," Edwards said. "It has changed me and forced me to change my political priorities."
___Human hands never should be able to take away the freedom God has given every person, Edwards said.
___"A God that can make the beauty of a flower ... surely has the ability to make this one small person think whatever he wants me to think. Yet the fact is that God gave us free will. To take away that gift is to take away one of the most precious gifts we've ever been given."
___The fact that the Istook amendment was defeated should give concerned Baptists only slight comfort, Edwards warned.
___"While we defeated the Istook amendment, ... the fact is over half the members of the House of Representatives voted to change the first 16 words of the First Amendment.
___"People like you are going to have to continue the fight," he said.
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