Faculty

James M. Dunn - Email

James M. Dunn stepped out of the job he had since 1980 as executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs into this position at the School of Divinity in September 1999. He still works part-time for the Baptist Joint Committee as president of its endowment. The Baptist Joint Committee, with offices in Washington, deals with issues of religious liberty and separation of church and state for fourteen Baptist conventions and conferences in the United States as well as for several hundred churches.

Dunn has served as a pastor, campus minister, and college teacher, and for twelve years he was the executive director of the Christian Life Commission, the social action agency of Texas Baptists. He is a past president of Bread for the World, a former chairman of the Ethics Commission of the Baptist World Alliance, and is currently on the boards of the Churches Center for Theology and Public Policy and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

He has appeared on news programs of all the major television networks and has been a frequent guest on television documentaries and a contributor to TomPaine.com, an internet magazine. He also contributes to several publications and is a co-author of Soul Freedom: Baptist Battle Ground, Endangered Species, An Approach to Christian Ethics and Politics: A Guidebook for Christians. He frequently testifies before congressional committees as he did in 2001 before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft. His wife, Marilyn (nee McNeely) the daughter of two Southwestern Seminary music professors, is a well-known Baptist musician.