By Bob Allen
Curtis Ramsey-Lucas, managing director of resource development for American Baptist Home Mission Societies, has been elected chair of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty’s board of directors.
Ramsey-Lucas’ agency is part of American Baptist Churches USA, one of 15 national, state and regional bodies in the United States represented on the BJC board, which met Oct. 7-8.
“This is an exciting time in the life of the Baptist Joint Committee,” Ramsey-Lucas told American Baptist News Service. “With the Center for Religious Liberty up and running and a new education and outreach specialist in place, the committee is expanding its reach and engaging a new generation of advocates for religious liberty.”
Ramsey-Lucas, who oversees resource development for the Valley Forge, Pa.,-based agency formerly known as National Ministries, previously worked as national coordinator of public and social advocacy in the ABHMS Office of Governmental Relations.
Said BJC Executive Director J. Brent Walker: “Curtis Ramsey-Lucas’ wide experience in American Baptist life, his long labor as an advocate on Capitol Hill and his deep passion for religious liberty make him the ideal person to lead the BJC board for the next two years.”
Ramsey-Lucas replaces past chair Mitch Randall, pastor of NorthHaven Church in Norman, Okla., and a representative of the Religious Liberty Council, the BJC’s individual donor organization formed after the Southern Baptist Convention pulled out of the joint religious-liberty coalition founded in 1946 and opened its own Washington office in 1994.