RALEIGH, N.C. (ABP) — One of the most outspoken and legendary liberals in Southern Baptist life has died.
William Wallace Finlator “thought the German theologian Karl Barth was right that a preacher should preach with a Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other,” his son, Raleigh, N.C., lawyer Wallace Finlator Jr., told the Raleigh News & Observer. “He thought of himself as imitating Jesus, and trying to bring justice to the poor and peace to the world.”
Finlator, longtime pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, died of pneumonia July 3. He was 93.
In the 1950s, unlike virtually all of his white Southern Baptist counterparts, Finlator spoke out forcefully against segregation. Over the years, the causes he adopted were ahead of the curve for most white Baptists, including opposition to the Vietnam War, support for women's rights, calling for nuclear disarmament during the height of the Cold War, even embracing gay rights.
One of Finlator's controversial stances was a bridge too far even for his famously progressive Raleigh church, leading to his forced retirement. He wrote an open letter to then-President Jimmy Carter asking him to withhold federal funding from North Carolina State University for failing to desegregate adequately. Pullen, whose property is adjacent to the N.C. State campus, had several members who served on the school's faculty.
“He was part of a generation of preachers who came out of the progressive-to-liberal stream in Southern Baptist life,” said Bill Leonard, dean of North Carolina's Wake Forest Divinity School, according to the News & Observer. “They stuck their necks out when it wasn't safe and spoke in ways that gave courage to a great many others.”
The newspaper quoted Finlator in 1979 as saying, “the more I understand the Christian faith, the more I see the Bible is concerned with justice. And I've found that if God has any prejudice at all, he's prejudiced on the side of the poor and the deprived and the disinherited. But the church seems to be on the other side.”
Finlator, born in 1913 in Louisburg, N.C., was raised in Raleigh. He graduated from Wake Forest College (now University) in Winston-Salem, N.C.; and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
He served several other North Carolina congregations before being called to Pullen in 1956. He and Robert Seymour, his colleague at Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in nearby Chapel Hill, soon earned reputations as two of the few white Baptist leaders publicly to support integration at the time.
The two congregations later became the first two churches kicked out of a Southern Baptist-affiliated state convention for affirming gays and lesbians.
Finlator publicly chided Wake Forest trustees in 1958 for failing to desegregate, and he supported sit-ins calling attention to segregation at local lunch counters in 1961. In 1962, he presented a resolution opposing capital punishment at the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. In 1965, he sent President Lyndon Johnson an open telegram opposing the war in Vietnam.
Despite his forced retirement from Pullen, Finlator continued to enjoy a good relationship with many church members. The church's fellowship hall is named in his honor.
Finlator is survived by his wife of 64 years, Mary Elizabeth Finlator; his son, Wallace Jr.; daughters Elizabeth McCutchen of Farmville, Va.; and Martha Finlator of Alexandria, Va.; and eight grandchildren.
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