Betty Law, a pioneering missionary who played pivotal roles in both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, died April 16 in Fort Worth, Texas.
At the time of her retirement from what was then known as the SBC Foreign Mission Board, Law was only the second woman to serve as a vice president there and the first to administer one of its geographical regions.
Betty Law
Her mission career included three years in associational missions in Texas, eight years in Cuba as a home missionary, 18 years as a missionary in Spain and 11 years on the FMB staff in Richmond, Va.
In 1992, as the “conservative resurgence” was reshaping SBC agencies, Law announced her resignation ate age 64 to then-FMB President Keith Parks, who also had announced retirement plans as trustees took the massive mission agency on a sharp rightward turn.
Law said she could no longer serve with integrity as vice president for the Americas because she could no longer “support and defend the actions, directions and views of the trustees or fairly interpret them to missionaries and Southern Baptists,” according to a report published in Baptist Press, the denominational news service.
She was outspoken in her displeasure about trustee-forced changes at the FMB.
“In the past, the Foreign Mission Board has focused on the career missionary and partnership with (Baptists) in the countries,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “We have gone to minister and to serve others as requested or to open new areas of work. This philosophy of work has been effective and given unusual strength, stability and growth worldwide.
“Now this focus is shifting to meeting the needs of our own constituency rather than the need as indicated from the field.”
“Now this focus is shifting to meeting the needs of our own constituency rather than the need as indicated from the field. Until recently we have worked toward balance. This is changing and will move us away from our primary purpose and the type of mission work to which I have committed my life.”
She also cited “a growing tendency toward control and conformity” at the FMB. “In my service with the Foreign Mission Board, I have worked with Baptists in other countries who have a deep faith. They do not have to express their faith in the same way as I do as a Southern Baptist, or be Southern Baptists, for me to serve with them, learn from them and be inspired and challenged by them.
In the past, “there has been trust and confidence in missionaries and staff,” she said. “Now I see a move toward expecting allegiance and compliance without room for differences of opinion. In recent months, for the first time in my experience with the Foreign Mission Board, there has been suspicion and distrust of missionaries and staff.”
Her resignation came eight years before the FMB faced its greatest showdown of the “conservative resurgence” as scores of missions personnel resigned rather than sign a new doctrinal statement adopted by the SBC in 2000. Acceptance of that new version of the Baptist Faith and Message was mandatory for all mission personnel.
From 1992 to 1996, Law continued her work in foreign missions administration, helping set up the new Global Missions office of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which had been formed just the year before out of the schism in the SBC. At CBF, she worked once again with Keith Parks, who was the first coordinator for Global Missions.
Later, when FMB missionaries resigned in protest of the new Baptist Faith and Message, some of them were hired by CBF Global Missions. Many others received aid from a relief fund established by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, located in Law’s home state.
Tom and Betty Law with sons Steve, Charles, Dick and Tom III in 1980.
Law was born Nov. 8, 1928, in Fort Worth and raised by her maternal grandparents beginning at age seven, after her mother’s death. Her faith was nurtured at College Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth. As a student at Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman’s University) she was active in the Baptist Student Union and there experienced a call from God to serve in vocational ministry.
After she and Tom Law were married in August 1949, they went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and then began serving as missionaries in Havana, Cuba, with the SBC Home Mission Board.
When U.S.-Cuba relations soured in 1960, the Laws returned briefly to the U.S., where Tom served as associational missionary of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Baptist Association in deep South Texas, along the border. In 1964, the couple and their four young sons moved to Spain, where they served through the FMB as church planters, mission team leaders and seminary teachers in Seville, Jerez de la Frontera and Barcelona.
Tom became ill in 1980, causing the family to return to the U.S. After his death, Betty Law did not abandon her missions calling. She accepted a position at FMB headquarters in Richmond with the Western South America office. She was promoted into other administrative leadership roles, culminating in her appointment as regional vice president of the Americas in 1990.
After retiring again from CBF Global Missions, she moved back to Fort Worth, where she became an active member at Gambrell Street Baptist, where she was ordained as a deacon and served as a trustee.
“Each time I have … followed God’s leading, I have been blessed in ways beyond understanding.”
In her deacon ordination testimony in 2007, she summarized her life as God’s servant, saying, “Each time I have felt God leading me to make a decision that was certainly not in my plans, and I have followed God’s leading, I have been blessed in ways beyond understanding.”
She was preceded in death by her husband, Thomas Lee Law Jr.; her sister, Dorothy Mae (Freeman) Morrison; and by her great-grandson Gideon Levi Stegner. She is survived by four sons, Thomas Lee “Tom” Law III of Norman, Okla; John Richard “Dick” Law of Austin, Texas; Charles Rush Keith Law of Fort Worth; Stephen Paul “Steve” Law of Richmond; 14 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.
A memorial service is scheduled for July 15, at 1 p.m. at Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth.