RON SIDER
The View from a Giant’s Shoulders
in retirement,Vernon Grounds modeled tireless service to the kingdom. For most of his 30-plus years of retirement, he continued to teach, counsel (in the Vernon Grounds Counseling Center at Denver Seminary), speak, and write. His selection as master of ceremonies for the important evangelical conference on peacemaking that took place An evangelical giant has just left us to in Pasadena, Calif., in 1983 reflected be with the Lord. Dr.Vernon Grounds, both his prominence as an evangelical prominent evangelical leader for decades leader and his own vigorous commitand close friend of Evangelicals for Social ment to peace. But few things better Action, died on September 12 at the illustrate the degree to which Vernon Grounds was a pioneer well ahead of age of 96. Vernon Grounds’ life and ministry his time than his 1967 lectures published significantly shaped modern evangelical as Evangelicalism and Social Responsibility. Christianity. He began in the heart of This ringing call for evangelicals to comAmerican fundamentalism, taking his bine evangelism and social responsibility seminary degree at Faith Theological Seminary, which was founded by the prominent, reactionary fundamentalist, Carl McIntire. But by the time he moved to Denver in 1951 to join a new Baptist seminary as professor (eventually going on to become dean and then president), Vernon was becoming a prominent leader of a new kind of evangelicalism that embraced vigorous engagement with the modern world — via academic excellence, sociopolitical engagement, and loving In Loving Memory of Dr. Vernon Grounds respect for everyone. J u ly 1 9 , 1 9 1 4 – S e p tem b er 1 2 , 2 0 1 0 In 1973 Grounds signed the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, was delivered six years before the Chicago a document that launched Evangelicals Declaration of Evangelical Concern for Social Action. After retiring as presi- (1973), seven years before the Lausanne dent of Denver Seminary in 1979 after Covenant’s section 5 urging evangelical serving for two decades,Vernon agreed social responsibility. I was still in graduto help ESA, serving (without any salary!) ate school! That was back when Jerry as ESA’s president for several years. His Falwell was still condemning Martin reputation as a prominent evangelical Luther King, Jr.’s political engagement leader, plus the articles he wrote for ESA’s with the claim that Christ calls us to publications, was a great gift to our young preach the gospel, not to influence politics. That was back when many of movement. The 19,000 books in Grounds’ per- evangelicalism’s most visible voices still sonal library reflect his love of learning. understood persons primarily as souls to The 75,000 miles he traveled to speak — be saved rather than body-soul beings just in 1962 — indicate his energy. The made for community and needing God’s 71-year-marriage he enjoyed with his total salvation. Vernon Grounds also anticipated many wife demonstrates his dedication. Even PRISM 2 0 1 0
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of the momentous changes in evangelicalism over the last 40 years. With his vigorous claim that “personal evangelism and social concern are two sides of the same coin,” he was an early harbinger of what is now the evangelical consensus — that Christian mission must embrace both evangelism and social action. With his insistence that the human person “is not a disembodied spirit” but rather a “fleshand-blood being who needs bread as well as truth, shelter here as well as heaven hereafter, clothes for his body as well as the robe of righteousness for his soul,” he pointed the way toward a truly Hebraic understanding of persons and away from a one-sided, Platonic overemphasis on the soul. With his vigorous call for evangelical political action, he anticipated evangelicalism’s political re-engagement so often identified with the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition but did so with wisdom, caution, and qualifications that, if heeded, would have spared us the ghastly mistakes of the religious right. Today it takes precious little daring to speak for holistic ministry combining evangelism and social action or to urge evangelical political engagement. But that was certainly not the case in 1967. Back then, whatVernon Grounds said in Evangelicalism and Social Responsibility was as controversial as it was insightful. For the president of a leading evangelical seminary to say these things took courage. It also involved the risk of loss of funds from influential donors and nasty attacks by fundamentalists. But Vernon Grounds was unconditionally committed to Jesus Christ and the Scriptures, not some short-term calculation of institutional self-interest or avoidance of controversy. A wise person has said that if we see more clearly than our predecessors, it is because we stand on their shoulders. I am not certain that we see more clearly than Vernon Grounds, but we certainly stand on his shoulders. Thank God for this faithful servant, courageous pioneer, and successful leader. n