By Associated Baptist Press and Wake Forest University
Baptist historian Bill Leonard was officially installed Jan. 24 as the first James and Marilyn Dunn Chair of Baptist Studies at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Named in honor of the Dunns of Winston-Salem, N.C., the endowed chair will provide an ongoing Baptist studies faculty presence at the divinity school.
Leonard, a scholar of church history and ordained Baptist minister, dedicated much of his career to the study of the Baptist church and was the founding dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. After retiring in 2010, Leonard continued to teach church history at Wake Forest.
“The Dunn Chair offers the University a tangible opportunity to celebrate its origins even as it moves toward greater inclusion of religious diversity and identities,” Leonard said in a Wake Forest news release. “In this position, particularly because it is named for the Dunns, I hope I will be able to explore that progressive Baptist identity and the role of conscience and dissent in shaping the relationship between faith and culture.”
James and Marilyn Dunn have a long history of contributions to Baptist life, she as a musician and soloist, and he in a career focused on ethics and religious liberty. An advocate and activist, Dunn was the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty from 1980 until 1999, when he joined the Wake Forest University Divinity School faculty as Resident Professor of Christianity and Public Policy, a position he continues to hold.
