DALLAS (ABP) — Phil Strickland, who served nearly a quarter century as director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas' Christian Life Commission, died Feb. 11 at age 64.
According to his colleagues, Strickland believed his mission was to provide a voice for the powerless in the halls of government and speak prophetically to Texas Baptists on moral and ethical issues. After a long battle with cancer, resultant pneumonia silenced that prophetic voice.
Strickland worked 38 years with the public-policy and moral-concerns agency.
“Phil Strickland helped Texas Baptists to remember and be faithful to their heritage, and he consistently declared the high ethical calling of the Christian life,” said BGCT Executive Director Charles Wade.
Strickland possessed a well-earned public reputation as a knowledgeable political insider, an outspoken advocate for children, and a staunch defender of individual religious freedom and other historic mainstream Baptist principles. But people with whom he came into contact individually learned he also was “a man of deep personal faith and prayer,” Wade noted.
“Everybody who ever spent any time around him grew in their Christian walk, their faith and their response to the gospel,” Wade said.
Strickland was a member of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, where he had served as a deacon, Sunday school teacher and chairman of various committees. Pastor George Mason noted his church lost “a faithful servant,” Baptists lost a strong and prophetic voice, and “the kingdom of God has lost a skillful and passionate moral advocate for the weak and vulnerable of our world.”
Strickland possessed a rare combination of keen intellect and consistent activism, Mason observed. “He was always eager to learn the next thing, to read the next book, to measure his position on matters against those who could teach him something new.”
Strickland's “never-ending quest” to make life better for children and to improve the lives of the overlooked and under-served energized his life, Mason added.
“The gospel was Phil's preoccupation, and he occupied his life making sure it penetrated not only human hearts but human systems as well,” he said. “The spiritual and the social were always for him interconnected spheres of life.”
Strickland became the first — and for many years the only — registered lobbyist in Austin serving a religious denominational body.
Drawing on contacts made and lessons learned as a law-school student when he worked as legislative assistant to Texas Lt. Gov. Preston Smith, Strickland lobbied lawmakers to oppose the spread of gambling, resist attempts to chip away at the wall of separation between church and state, and remember the needs of children — particularly the poor, abused or neglected.
To advance those causes, he built coalitions that spanned the political and religious spectrum. Strickland became founding chairman of Texans Care for Children, the state's first multi-issue child-advocacy group, which brought together more than 50 organizations that address the needs of children.
Weston Ware, who worked alongside Strickland at the CLC during nine regular sessions of the Texas Legislature and numerous called special sessions, praised his abilities as a coalition-builder.
“Phil not only was a political strategist par excellence, but he also was able to win the hearts and minds of diverse groups, often bringing together the most conservative and most liberal advocates to resolve difficult issues, as he did with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” Ware recalled, pointing to legislation aimed at preventing substantial burdens on the free exercise of religion.
Strickland earned a reputation for integrity, trustworthiness and professionalism among legislators in Austin, and that established credibility for anyone representing the CLC, Ware noted.
Nationally, Strickland served on the Inter-religious Task Force on U.S. Food Policy, the Bread for the World board of directors, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State board of trustees and the National Child Abuse Coalition.
Even though he held some prominent positions, Strickland worked mostly behind the scenes, said James Dunn, retired executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs and Strickland's immediate predecessor as director of the Christian Life Commission.
“Texas Baptists as a whole have no idea about the significant contributions Phil Strickland made to Texas Baptist life, to the state of Texas, to children and to a decent and just society,” he said.
“In a day when many Baptists seem to have amnesia about our heritage, Phil remained a rock-solid champion of religious freedom and the separation of church and state,” said Dunn, who teaches at Wake Forest Divinity School.
An Abilene native, Strickland studied at Baylor University before transferring to the University of Texas in Austin where he earned both his undergraduate and law degrees.
He also pursued graduate studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
He is survived by his wife, Carolyn; daughter Delaine Mueller of Tucson, Ariz., her husband, Daniel, and their two children ; daughter Shannon Holman of Lone Oak, Ark., and her husband, Merritt; and his mother, Sybil Strickland of Abilene.
A memorial service will be held Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 1:30 p.m. at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
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