The Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice Trailblazer honor was awarded to two distinguished leaders on Thursday in Jacksonville, Florida, during an annual luncheon at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly. Recipients of the award included Robert Parham, founder of the Baptist Center for Ethics (BCE), and Rev. Dr. Danielle Ayers, pastor of justice at Friendship-West Church in Dallas.
Robert Parham
Parham died in 2017 and received the award posthumously. He was a well-respected writer, ethicist and leader in the moderate Baptist movement that developed in response to the rightward shift of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the 1980s and ’90s. He created the Baptist Center for Ethics to fill the gap left when the ethics arm of the SBC shifted from a focus on justice to a more culture-war mindset.
In 2020, BCE merged with Nurturing Faith to form Good Faith Media (GFM).
GFM Media Producer Cliff Vaughn accepted the award on behalf of Parham and his family. Vaughn was a longtime colleague of Parham’s, having joined BCE’s staff in 2000.
Vaughn shared two quotes from Parham regarding the legacy of race and racism with the Jacksonville audience.
“In 2009, Robert told me, ‘Racism is the bone stuck in Baptists’ throat,’” Vaughn said. “And then he said, ‘The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, but because we found a better way. Likewise, the age of racism among Baptists will not end because we run out of racists, but because we will find a better way.’”
Rev. Dr. Danielle Ayers
Ayers provides leadership at Friendship-West in Dallas by mobilizing her community around issues of economic, food, gender and environmental justice. She is also a coalition builder in the Dallas area and around the world, having served as a co-convener of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Inc. and a delegate to the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race, among many other leadership positions.
“I accept this recognition with gratitude, but also with the momentum of memory that none of us does this work alone or without witness,” Ayers said. “So I indeed stand on the shoulders of ancestors, freedom fighters, pastors, organizers, teachers and everyday people who felt compelled to challenge injustice and believe that a better world was always possible.”
Ayers then asked the audience to be honest about the work before them.
“We are witnessing renewed attacks on human rights, efforts to erase factual history, growing economic inequality, threats to public education, and poisonous policies that continue to harm the most vulnerable among us,” she said. “We see division being weaponized, fear being normalized, and democracy itself being tested. Yet our faith teaches us that justice is not optional.”
The Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice Trailblazer Award is given in honor of its namesake, who was a pioneer of the Black Church Studies program at Southern Seminary before joining the faculty at McAfee School of Theology. He has received numerous awards and recognition for his work building bridges between white and Black church spaces.
More information about the Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice and Leadership Initiative is available here.
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