Foundation honors Ware, remembers legacy of Maston

DALLAS—More than 300 friends honored the contributions of longtime anti-gambling activist and Texas Baptist lobbyist Weston Ware and paid tribute to the legacy of Christian ethicist T.B. Maston during a Nov. 4 banquet at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.

Weston Ware, retired director of citizenship and public policy with the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, with Javier Elizondo, executive vice president and provost at Baptist University of the Americas. (David Clanton Photo)

Ware, retired director of citizenship and public policy with the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, received the T.B. Maston Christian Ethics Award from the Maston Foundation.

In presenting the award, Bill Pinson, who was both a student and later a colleague of Maston, noted Ware's contributions as a leader of the Peace Corps and VISTA, as a veteran denominational worker and as a faithful member of Cliff Temple Baptist Church in Dallas.

Being named as "one of Maston's boys"—a doctoral student of the pioneering professor who taught Christian ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 40 years—is one of the highest honors imaginable, Ware noted.

The banquet featured presentations by several of Maston's students—Pinson, executive director emeritus of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; James Dunn, former executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and professor at Wake Forest University's Divinity School; and Jimmy Allen, former president of the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission.

Keynote speaker Javier Elizondo, executive vice president and provost at Baptist University of the Américas, noted Maston—along with Clarence Jordan, founder of the interracial Koinonia farm in Georgia—represented "a Baptist strand I could be proud to be part of" as a Hispanic Christian.

Jordan embodied the prophetic tradition of boldly and bluntly speaking truth to power, and Maston set the example of a gentle teacher whose probing questions and "simple acts of goodness" inspired his students, Elizondo said.

Although Elizondo studied at Southwestern Seminary after Maston retired, he noted how the influential professor continued to make an impact through those who had been his students, such as his teacher, Bill Tillman, who went on to become the first person to occupy the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University.

"The second-generation—'Maston's boys'—were like second-hand smoke," he said. Just as second-hand tobacco smoke presents a pervasive and powerful threat to do harm, Maston's students permeated Baptist life and followed their teacher's admonition to "do good."

"By knowing the Maston boys, I could tell Dr. Maston had been with Jesus," Elizondo said.