The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, who began his profession within the Southern Baptist Convention however turned more and more troubled because the denomination grew extra aggressively conservative, and who went on to steer the Interfaith Alliance, a corporation devoted to non secular and cultural range and to protecting faith and politics separate, died on June 7 in Monroe, La. He was 81.

Northminster Church of Monroe, the place Dr. Gaddy was senior pastor from 1991 till his retirement in 2016, posted news of his loss of life on its Facebook web page, saying he had been having severe well being points for a number of months. The Interfaith Alliance, of which he was president from 1997 to 2014, additionally famous his loss of life on its web site.

“Across so many areas,” the group’s president and chief government, the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, mentioned in that post, “Welton used his platform to project a vision for America that was inclusive of different beliefs and respectful of every individual’s inherent dignity.”

Dr. Gaddy, whereas main congregations in a number of Southern states, held varied posts within the Southern Baptist Convention within the Nineteen Seventies and the primary half of the ’80s, together with serving on its government committee from 1980 to 1984. But though he gave the impression to be a rising star within the denomination throughout this era, he was usually at odds with its rising conservatism, which was largely being orchestrated by the strategists Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson. Mr. Pressler and Mr. Paige had been on the warpath over what they perceived as liberal traits in doctrine and had been putting like-minded people in positions of energy.

Dr. Gaddy pushed again particularly exhausting towards these traits throughout the years he was pastor on the Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, from 1977 to 1983. He was usually recognized as a pacesetter of the reasonable faction of the denomination; opponents derisively labeled them “the Gatlinburg Gang” after they met in Gatlinburg, Tenn., within the early Nineteen Eighties to debate their considerations in regards to the Southern Baptists’ conservative transformation. (Dr. Gaddy termed it “a steamroller, cloaked in piety.”)

In October 1983, Dr. Gaddy introduced that he was leaving Broadway Baptist and would develop into the campus minister at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. He held that submit from 1984 to 1988. In 1991, he turned senior pastor at Northminster, a church affiliated with the progressive Alliance of Baptists, which now proclaims to individuals visiting its web site that “every part of you is welcome here — your gender, your race, your politics, your theology, your sexuality.”

Dr. Gaddy turned a key determine within the Interfaith Alliance, a gaggle based in 1994 “to celebrate religious freedom,” as its web site says, “and to challenge the bigotry and hatred arising from religious and political extremism infiltrating American politics.”

In 1998, when the Southern Baptist Convention amended its assertion of beliefs to include the idea that “a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband,” Dr. Gaddy, in an interview with NBC News, condemned the transfer.

“I think it’s unhealthy for the family,” he mentioned. “I think it’s bad relationally. I think it’s heresy theologically.”

In May 2008, when Senator John McCain of Arizona, in search of the Republican presidential nomination, bought into sizzling water when two conservative evangelical ministers he had been courting made particularly offensive remarks about Muslims and Jews, Dr. Gaddy was outspoken in regards to the underlying downside.

“This is a perfect example of when politicians and religious leaders try to use each other, both of them end up getting hurt,” he advised The New York Times.

In 2010, when news retailers reported that Trijicon Inc., which provided telescopic gun sights to the United States army, had been embossing phrases drawn from the New Testament on these sights, he was amongst these expressing outrage. In a letter to President Barack Obama, he mentioned that the gun sights “clearly violate a government rule prohibiting proselytizing.” He known as the observe “only the latest in a long line of violations of the boundaries between religion and government within the military.”

Dr. Gaddy wrote some 25 books and was the longtime host of “State of Belief,” a weekly radio program produced by the Interfaith Alliance and broadcast nationally. Whatever hat he was carrying, protecting church and state separate was a foremost concern.

“I believe strongly in the First Amendment to the Constitution,” he advised The News-Star of Monroe in 2016, “and think that practically, as well as historically, when religion and government get entangled with each other, it hurts both. But it probably hurts religion most.”

Curtis Welton Gaddy was born on Oct. 10, 1941, in Paris, Tenn. His father, George, was a clerk for the Louisiana and Nashville Railroad and treasurer of the West Paris Baptist Church; his mom, Jenola (Rayburn) Gaddy, taught Sunday college there.

“I truly can’t remember when I didn’t go to church,” he advised The Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1981. “We went twice on Sundays, once on Wednesday night and on most days of the week.”

He earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1963 at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., a Baptist establishment the place he was additionally a prime tennis participant. He obtained a grasp’s diploma in theology from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., in 1968 and a Ph.D. there in 1970.

By then he was pastor on the First Marion Baptist Church in Paris Crossing, Ind. In 1971, he was named pastor of Beechwood Baptist Church in Louisville, and the following yr he moved to Nashville to develop into director of Christian citizenship improvement for the Southern Baptist Convention.

His considerations in regards to the mixing of politics and faith had been evident even then. In 1973, throughout the Watergate investigations that may result in President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, Dr. Gaddy supplied a prayer at a Southern Baptist breakfast in Washington attended by members of Congress. Among different issues, he requested God to “forgive our worship of a civil religion which equates nationalism with Christianity, confuses governmental policy with Your will, and interprets patriotism as blind allegiance.”

Dr. Gaddy married Julia Mae Grabiel (referred to as Judy) in 1962. She survives him, together with a son, James, and a number of other grandchildren. Another son, John Paul, died in 2014.

In a 1981 speech, Dr. Gaddy expressed his rising frustration with the way in which the conservative faction and the Moral Majority, based by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, had been hijacking spiritual dialogue and twisting the views of himself and others.

“Opposition to the political platform of the ‘pro-family’ forces is interpreted as opposition to family life,” he mentioned. “Disapproval of attempts to pass legislation governing the practice of prayer in public institutions is labeled as disapproval of prayer. The protest against tax credits for purposes of funding private education is peddled as opposition to education.”

“Our society seems to have an aversion to complexity,” he added. “Maybe we read too many bumper stickers.”