By David Wilkinson
Thirty years ago McCall, who turned 97 on Sept. 1, was a household name in Southern Baptist life. As president or chief executive officer, he had led the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, transformed a Bible institute into New Orleans Theological Seminary and survived a crisis in 1958 that nearly destroyed Southern Seminary to lead the school to unprecedented strength and influence.
Following his 1980 retirement, he served a five-year term as president of the Baptist World Alliance. In 1982 he was defeated by conservative Texas pastor James T. Draper in a highly contested election for president of the SBC.
Today, McCall lives with his wife, Winona, in relative obscurity in a retirement community in southeast Florida. McCall’s first wife, Marguerite, died on Easter morning 1983. They had been married 44 years and raised four sons. Winona and her late husband, Louisville business executive Paul McCandless, had known the McCalls for a number of years.
Duke McCall
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Most days McCall is at ease with the increasing physical limitations and shrinking spheres of influence that accompany aging. Complications during cataract surgery have left him with extremely poor vision in one eye, hampering his love of reading. He motors about in an electric “mobility scooter” due to some nerve damage in one leg that has affected his balance and stamina and, much to his dislike, keeps him off the beautifully manicured croquet courses nearby.
His interest in Baptist affairs worldwide remains keen, even if his name is no longer on the phone speed-dial lists of most prominent Baptist leaders. At times, he confesses, he would love to take to the pulpit to “say a few things to my Baptist friends, both in the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, but I recognize that I’ve had my day in the sun.”
Every Tuesday morning at 10:30, however, McCall has his groove back. Seated at a U-shaped configuration of tables in the retirement community’s “Club Room” with his Bible and a few notes in front of him, the former pastor, denominational executive and seminary president leads a Bible study for interested residents.
The weekly study group is an unusual blend of Christians of various denominational and theological persuasions, a few skeptics and one or two agnostics. Most participants are highly educated and well read. They have either retired from successful careers in business, education, the military and other arenas — or they are married to or widowed from such a person. And at this stage of life, they feel free to speak their minds.
Although such a group might intimidate most Bible teachers, McCall embraces the challenge with a sense of humor and a genuine respect for divergent viewpoints.
Like his father, who died at age 90, McCall still sports a thinning but distinguished silvery-gray head of hair. Although everyone else is dressed casually, McCall is impeccably dressed in a sports coat and tie.
The group is moving methodically through the book of Acts. McCall begins by reading a portion of a recent newspaper story to illustrate a point from the text. A lively discussion ensues, prompted by McCall’s open-ended questions and insights into the Scripture passage interspersed with engaging anecdotes, all punctuated with a distinctive Mississippi-born, Memphis-bred accent familiar to generations of Southern Baptists.
The one institution to which McCall continues to maintain close ties is Southern Seminary. He and Winona were royally feted at the school’s 150th anniversary festivities in 2009 where a new pavilion was named in his honor. Earlier this year, the seminary announced the establishment of an endowed chair in Christian leadership and a lectureship series in McCall’s name funded by the McCalls and the McCall Family Foundation.
McCall acknowledges that many moderate Baptists, including Southern Seminary alumni and former faculty members, question how — after being an outspoken critic of the dangers of fundamentalism and an early supporter of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship -– he could offer public support and generous financial gifts to an institution that dramatically altered its course since the 1980s.
While aware of the “shifting tides” in Baptist life and theological education, McCall still relishes the statesman role and persists in the hope that the seminary can successfully navigate those currents over the long term. “My theology may differ from much of what is being taught in the classrooms and espoused by the seminary’s leaders,” he says. “But I am trying to take a 50-year view.”
Time will test the wisdom of McCall’s perspective. Generations of pastors, educators and other ministers who are the products of the kind of seminary McCall led 40 years ago have moved on. They no longer care to be associated with their seminary alma mater, choosing instead to live out their understanding of the legacy of the seminary and its teachers and leaders — including McCall — through their respective ministries and a crop of theology schools that have emerged in moderate Baptist life over the past 20 years.
Meanwhile, McCall leans into treasured relationships with friends and family. “Friendship is my currency,” he says. “I have always had friends of all persuasions — politically, socioeconomically and theologically. I learned a long time ago that you don’t have to agree with someone to be friends.”