(ABP) — A Baptist historian and his wife have given the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty a large gift to establish a lectureship on church-state issues.
The Washington-based BJC announced the $100,000 gift from Walter and Kay Shurden of Macon, Ga., Oct. 18. The gift will endow the Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State.
According to BJC officials, the lectures will be given at Mercer University every three years and at other Baptist colleges or seminaries in the intervening years.
Walter Shurden directs Mercer’s Center for Baptist Studies. Kay Shurden served as a professor of marriage and family therapy in the medical school for 17 years and now is a counselor in private practice.
The first lectureship is planned for 2006 or 2007 at the Georgia school.
According to a statement released by the BJC the Shurdens endowed the lectureship out of a concern for the future of church-state separation and religious freedom.