Rev. Carlyle Marney - Biographical

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Subject: Rev. Carlyle Marney - Biographical

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CARLYLE MARNEY: AN ESSAY OF PASTORAL BIOGRAPHY

by Rev. John Stanley
Highland Park Baptist Church
5206 Balcones Drive
Austin, Texas 78731
United States of America

Correspondence should be sent by postal mail
to Rev. Stanley at the above address.

Voice Telephone (8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Monday through Friday)
(512) 453-6603

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INTRODUCTION

In January of 1990 a packet of information arrived
in my mailbox from the Highland Park Baptist Church in
Austin, Texas, announcing their search for a senior pastor
and soliciting information about my interest in the
position. I had no knowledge about the church and knew very
little about Austin, beyond the fact that it was the state
capital of Texas. I was, at that time, entertaining the
possibility of a move, so I began to do some investigation
about the Highland Park church. One of the first things I
learned was that Carlyle Marney, while pastor of First
Baptist Church in Austin, was instrumental in starting
Highland Park. All of a sudden I was very interested
indeed.
Like most young ministerial students in the
Seventies, I had heard a great number of stories that
comprised a virtual "oral tradition" of the sayings and
doings of the renegade Southern Baptist pastor named Carlyle
Marney. I had also read his last book, Priests to Each
Other1, and had been deeply challenged and inspired by his
vision of Christian ministry. Marney was scheduled to
deliver, in February of 1979, the inaugural series of
Summers Lectures at Milsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi,
only ten miles from my home in Clinton. His untimely death
in July of the preceding year intervened, so John Claypool,
another renegade Southern Baptist at the time (John is now
the rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Birmingham,
Alabama.), gave the lectures in Marney's stead. The
lectures were entitled "Marney and the Ministry," and
Claypool framed them around his many remembrances of Marney.
Between the time of Marney's death in 1978 and my
coming to Austin in 1990 I learned a great deal more about
the great Southern churchman. During my years in seminary
in North Carolina, I continued to learn much, some of it
apocryphal, from the oral tradition that grew up around
Marney. I listened to tapes of his lectures at the Furman
University Pastor's School on the subject of worship. I
also heard about Marney from James Fowler, who lectured at
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest,
North Carolina. Fowler, known for his extensive work on
religious faith in developmental perspective, was Marney's
assistant at Interpreters House, the retreat center Marney
founded in 1967 and led until his death.
But it was with my move to Austin that my interest
in Marney was rekindled. There are a number of members of
Highland Park Church who were members of First Baptist in
Austin during Marney's tenure, some of them, now in their
forties and fifties, were youth and children during those
years. Some of them were baptized by "Dr. Marney," or
married by him. What I find now, almost five decades after
his tenure in Austin, is that Marney is still very much
respected, even revered. I had to ask myself, What, after
all this time, would keep this pastor so keenly in people's
mind? Why would he have such broad appreciation in the
memory of the people of Austin so long after he has been
gone? What kind of ministry did he have here that still
causes people to express their sense of gratitude and pride
at having known him and cared for him?
These questions lie behind my work on this essay of
pastoral biography. I would like to give special attention
to the Austin years of Carlyle Marney's ministry in an
effort to discover the essential qualities that have left
such a lasting impression. But this is more than an
exercise in hagiography. It is part of a study of the
History of Pastoral Care. So I would like to study Marney's
ministry against the backdrop of the history of pastoral
care, identifying forces that shaped the particular kind of
ministry he practiced, and consider the contributions he
made to the larger world of Christian ministry.
Carlyle Marney is one of only a few Southern
Baptists who have made a professional impact beyond the
denomination. A few, such as A. T. Robertson, the eminent
Greek scholar, and John Broadus, the historian and teacher
of preaching, both of the nineteenth century, and Wayne
Oates in this century, have contributed beyond the
denominational level, but as academics. Marney, a pastoral
theologian, although keenly trained and able as an
academician, practiced his ministry always in much closer
proximity to the congregational setting than to the
classroom. Even during his Interpreter's House period,
Marney was chiefly concerned with renewing the church
through renewing lay people and pastors from the churches.
Although John Claypool has come to national notoriety,
Marney remains in a category by himself as a Southern
Baptist pastor who broke out of the regional and cultural
provincialism so prominent in the denomination, while
remaining connected to his Southern Baptist heritage.2
Marney's biographer uses the term "boundary" to
describe the unique purchase from which Marney worked
throughout his whole ministry.

There is value in understanding Marney as "boundary"
person. His was the forthrightness of the mountaineer
tempered by keen perception and the subtleties of southern
wit. He lived out his life crossing boundaries between
rural and urban life, between civilian and military life,
between Southern Baptists and the broader Church in America
and the world, between Christianity and Humanism, between
the Church and the University, and between security and
change. To live and think on the boundary, as Tillich once
aptly noted, is never an easy task, for it subjects one
always to misunderstanding and criticism. It seems clear,
however, that Marney relished the creative edge which life
on the boundary provides.3
Presently, "boundary" describes my own position in
relation to the denomination which birthed me, educated and
trained me, and gave me an opportunity to exercise my
creative gifts. Since 1979 the Southern Baptist Convention
has remained under the control of neo-fundamentalists,
leaving very little room for those who approach the
Christian faith with greater regard for freedom. During the
years between the fundamentalist takeover and the present,
the more moderate elements within the denomination, once an
integral part of the Southern Baptist Convention, have
struggled to find their place, forming organizational
structures which allow them to retain an affiliation with
the Southern Baptist Convention, while collectively seeking
to maintain a free Baptist tradition. With the birth of new
structures of cooperation between more progressive Baptists
and the diminishment of connection with the Southern Baptist
Convention, I often find myself very much on the boundary.
Marney, as a minister on the boundary, speaks my language.4

A PILGRIM'S TRAVELOGUE

Carlyle Marney's familial roots sank deeply into the
hills of East Tennessee, an area of the country that was
itself a boundary situation.5 Located in the upper reaches
of what was once the Confederacy, the region around
Harriman, Marney's home town, had remained loyal to the
Union during the civil war. The town itself, with a
population of 3,500, benefited from an infusion of a number
of cosmopolitan influences. There was an annual Chautauqua
Lecture Series, traveling theater troupes, and periodic
symphonies. Marney gained his early exposure to the wider
world of ideas through broad reading at the local Carnegie
Library. But lest this enclave in East Tennessee seem
exceptionally open-minded, it is important to remember that
the famous Scopes Trial was held only forty miles from
Harriman in the little town of Dayton.6 Marney struggled
valiantly against the provincialism and prejudice of his
native region throughout his life, never really able to put
behind him the ghosts of his narrow-minded ancestry.
Marney's parents were solid small town citizens; his
father designed farming implements and his mother was a
homemaker. He had one brother and one sister, a physicist
and a church music professional respectively. All three
children's educational accomplishments betrays an upbringing
which stressed discipline and learning. Marney's ancestors
included Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics and
Unitarians, so it should not seem strange that he was
predisposed to an ecumenical view of religious faith.
The Marneys themselves were Baptists,7 and when
young Carlyle came to the decision to choose a college, he
chose nearby Carson-Newman College, a long-established
Baptist school in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He went there
on a football scholarship, but did so poorly in his studies
that the dean asked him, after his second year, to take a
year off to reflect upon the benefits of an education.
After Marney spent that year as a "ditch digger" he returned
to Carson-Newman in the fall of 1936 "with a new sense of
purpose and finished his undergraduate days as a serious
student and campus leader."8
Marney was very involved in his college church both
in the areas of music and education. After his graduation
in 1938 Marney decided to pursue work as a full-time
educational director in a church, this at a time when
churches were just beginning to establish major educational
programs with full-time professional direction. In the Fall
of that same year he took a position as Educational Director
in the First Baptist Church of Kingsport, Tennessee. It was
in Kingsport that Marney met Elizabeth Christopher, a young
music teacher and a Presbyterian. They developed a
friendship that led to courtship, and later to marriage in
1940. During the time Marney was working at First Baptist
in Kingsport the pastor of the church became ill. Although
he had very little experience preaching, Marney assumed the
preaching responsibilities. The congregation was pleased
with his preaching, and their encouragement led Marney to
decide to attend the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
in Louisville, Kentucky in the fall of 1940.
While Southern Seminary had previously experienced
controversy over the rise of critical scholarship9, the
school had also produced scholars of international renown.
In addition to the able W. O. Carver in Comparative
Religions, Hersey Davis in New Testament Studies, and Harold
Tribble in theology, Marney came under the influence of S.
L. Stealey in Church History. It was in history that Marney
chose to pursue an emphasis, and after his Th.M. he went on
to complete his Th.D. in 1946. His dissertation was
entitled "The Rise of Ecclesiological Externalism to 337
A.D.", and his biographer suggests that his historical
bearing was essential to the pastoral minister he became.

The dissertation deals with the emergence of church
offices and organizational patterns during the first four
centuries of the Christian era. The focus of the
dissertation explains much of Marney's lifelong interest in
early church history, and particularly his familiarity with
the work of the great German scholars Adolf von Harnack,
Hans Lietzmann, Johannes Weiss, and Reinhold Seeberg. His
own Baptist heritage led him to take seriously questions of
freedom and authority in the early church, as well as the
question of pluralism in its ministry. The dissertation
also explains Marney's familiarity with the Ante-Nicene
church fathers and his special attention to Irenaeus.10

While a student at Southern, Marney held pastorates
in Fort Knox and Beaver Dam, Kentucky. It is important to
note that his pastorate in Fort Knox brought him into
contact with the military. His first hand experience with
the needs of military personnel prompted him to take up
military preaching missions and speak to military chaplains
throughout the rest of his life.
Shortly after receiving his doctorate Marney
accepted a call to the Immanuel Baptist Church in Paducah,
Kentucky. The church was considerably larger than the
pastorates he had served as a student in seminary. John
Carey underscores the poverty that was widespread in this
area of the country as the most prominent impact on Marney
during these two years, 1946 to 1948.11 It was also during
his Paducah pastorate that Marney began speaking at youth
gatherings and on college campuses, a pattern that he
maintained throughout most of his ministry. Marney, while
in Paducah, also became acquainted with James A. Berry, who
would become his colleague as Minister of Music both in
Austin and in Charlotte. Berry, then a student at
Westminster Choir College, had married a young woman from
Immanuel Church. This association with a classically
trained musician, and the fact that Marney did much to
formalize the worship services at Immanuel, suggests that
his interest in worship and liturgy was beginning to grow.
Although Marney surely learned a great deal from the
Paducah pastorate, the brevity of time he spent there
limited the impact he could make upon the congregation and
the town.12 At age thirty-two, with his doctorate and two
year's experience in a large congregation, Marney was ripe
to move into a prominent parish. His small-town mountain
upbringing was tempered with a good education and a mind
that was voracious. However, his call to the First Baptist
Church of Austin, Texas did not portend to be a parish of
great sophistication. The article announcing his coming to
Austin in the church's newsletter suggests that the
congregation was as impressed with the fact that Marney was
an ex-football player as they were that he was particularly
equipped with gifts of intelligence.13 The introductory
article does, however, reveal a fundamental aspect of the
ministry the church expected from its new pastor: pulpit
excellence. "It appears that in this case the man and the
church are admirably fitted. It is understood that in
calling Dr. Marney the intention is not to have a church
administrator, nor a pastor, but while those functions are
under his charge, the main interest is a powerful pulpit
ministry."14
It was as a preacher that Marney made his greatest
mark on the First Baptist Church and the city of Austin.
Building a competent team of associate ministers, Marney was
free to focus on the task of proclamation. During this time
his preaching gifts began to be valued far beyond the local
context of Austin's First Baptist Church. His popularity as
a speaker at universities and youth gatherings continued to
expand, as did his invitations to speak among the military
services. In keeping with standard practice in Baptist
churches at the time Marney frequently led revival meetings
in churches of his pastor friends.
By 1953 Marney had developed such a following in
Austin that he successfully launched a new television
program called "These Things Remain," sharing the title with
his first book published a year earlier. According to those
who remember the program, he took a topical approach,
discussing subjects of broad popular interest such as
relationships in the family or moral concerns. His down-to-
earth appeal and the power of his personality resulted in an
expansion of his television ministry to a wider audience.
In the Spring of 1955 he went to New York to tape a show for
CBS, debuting to a national audience. A newsletter article
reveals the congregation's pride in Marney's pioneering
media success:

DR. MARNEY RETURNS FROM NEW YORK
Dr. and Mrs. Marney have returned to Austin from New
York where Dr. Marney appeared on a CBS TV program entitled
"Lamp Unto My Feet." The local TV program "These Things
Remain" has created such a broad interest in the area of
religious broadcasting that Dr. Marney was interviewed in
Austin last March by one of the CBS representatives
regarding the National Broadcast.
This experience illustrates again the ever increasing
influence of our church under the leadership of Dr.
Marney.15
Marney's writing added to the expansion of his
influence as a contemporary preacher with a message. His
first book, These Things Remain, is a collection of sermons
demonstrating a style which was concrete and imaginative,
but also bore down on some profound truth with force of
argument and intensity of conviction. Two sermons from this
work demonstrate two of the marks of Marney's proclamation
that became distinctive. "God's Strong Hands" is a sermon
replete with sensitivity to the painful predicaments of
human life. In cascading pathos he catalogues the real
sufferings of ordinary people, employing striking images
such as "white knuckles," "whiskey bottle bulging pocket,"
"eroding waste of great washing grief," until he senses the
audience has had enough. Then he delivers the contrapuntal:

Melodrama? Tinted by imagination? Dreamed-up
emotional binge? Bid for sympathy? Scum of the earth?
Riffraff getting what they deserve? Tales told by an
overwrought fanatic?
Not on your life! Rather, the cross section of memory
of any honest workman in any kind of pastorate through any
ten-year span of life.16
"All the Sons of Earth" reveals another
characteristic mark of Marney's proclamation: the prophetic
ethical edge. This sermon, first delivered well before the
Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education
(1954), in a city, although not in the traditional deep
South, nevertheless with an undeniable history of racism, is
a broad-side against racial prejudice. But instead of
focusing on the immediate problem of segregation, Marney
came at the problem of prejudice "from a different
direction."17 With a sweeping grasp of the history of
western civilization Marney set out the great struggle for
liberty taken up in late medieval Europe by the Waldensians,
the Anabaptists, and the peasants. He recalled the progress
gained on behalf of the working poor by Wesley and
Whitefield during the industrial revolution in England.
Then on to the shores of America, he traced the work of John
Leland on behalf of religious liberty, and that of Henry
Ward Beecher and Horace Greeley in the abolition of slavery.
Thus he made a case that a fight had been made against
prejudice, "and we have been in the fight."18 Finally,
though, he came to the ensconced prejudices in which the
church was guilty of complicity.

I know about railroad tracks and inheritances, share
croppers and tenants. I have heard Black Maria's scream as
she roared down Madison to pick up a load of flotsam. I
have heard the "thwack" as a club met a head outside where I
preached in the slums. I have smelt the fourth floor of a
broken-down tenement_and I tell you, my Master did not
intend this.19
But Marney saved his most scathing words for those within
the church who fan the flames of prejudice.

The Church was not meant to serve as a seedbed for
prejudice.
Wherever it is that children learn to be little white,
American, Southern provincials; wherever they learn that to
be thus is to be thrice-blessed of Jehovah; wherever they
learn that ours is always right and best, biggest and
purest, and the only right one_wherever they learn it, let
it not be in the Church.
Teachers, I plead, do not teach my little girls this.
They have only begun to suspect it. Don't teach them that
in church. The Church must produce better fruit.20
Even as "God's Strong Hands" brought together a
stalwart faith in God and a keen sensitivity to human pain,
"All the Sons of the Earth" joined a deeply personal
commitment to following Jesus and a strong conviction about
social justice. At the conclusion of "All the Sons of the
Earth" Marney recognizes that all humanity has a long way to
go before learning to live together, but he courageously
stakes out his own position. He seems to draw a line in the
sand over this matter of truly wanting a Christ-like regard
for all persons.

I do not have it yet; nor do my people have it. A
place where we are so close to Him and each other that our
selfishness is gone, and our prejudices evaporate, and our
brotherhood appears, and we begin to look like Him.
I do not have it yet, but I want it, for me and mine.
And if my people do not want it, if they cannot abide my
wanting it, then are there still brooks and ravens and
widows' cruses of oil for those who want it and will come
apart to take it. In proportion as the Church of Christ
wants it, "a mighty healing is at work in the land."21
Increasingly, Marney found that he enjoyed writing.
He followed These Things Remain with his first book about
the intricacies of family relationships, entitled Mothers
and Sons.22 Then in 1957 he published Faith in Conflict,23
an imaginative little book that sought to deal with the
philosophical issues of science, evil, culture, and death.
It reflects Marney's wide and vigorous reading as well as
his engaging style. His last book from the Austin years was
another dealing with family relationships in the light of
biblical insight, Dangerous Fathers, Problem Mothers and
Terrible Teens.24
In addition to his widening acclaim as a powerful
preacher, Marney gave considerable attention to more mundane
aspects of the pastor's work. While he was in Austin, First
Baptist Church sponsored a number of missions, some of them
preaching posts in the city's slums, some of them ethnic
congregations, and at least three new congregations in the
growing affluent suburbs of Austin. During this same time,
the church maintained close ties to missionaries in China
and South America. Frequently, the church sponsored
emphases in personal evangelism, training lay persons to
share their faith and bring unchurched people into the
fellowship of the church.
Marney also pioneered in bringing a more liturgical
style of worship to the First Baptist Church. Early in his
tenure he set out his intention to foster worship that was
both warm and "dignified."

In order to acquire dignity, depth, feeling, and
consciousness of God in a worship service, must a church
sacrifice warmth, friendliness, cheer and that
neighborliness so essential to the life of a People's
Church?
Indeed not! Since when is there conflict between true
dignity and warmth; when does depth contradict true
friendliness; in what place does sincere feeling oppose good
cheer; and how can the desire to be conscious of God be
contrary to a common neighborliness?
{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}Most churches that follow no
precise liturgy or ritual have made a practice of pitting
warmth against dignity and neighborliness is frequently
valued higher than consciousness of God.
{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}It is the conviction of this
minister that a non-ritualistic Church must have both sets
of worship elements: The Divine dignity, depth, and
awareness of God; the Human warmth and neighborliness. One
side need not be sacrificed to the other.25
Although there is no written record of Marney's
counseling ministry, his visits to the hospitals, or
funerals and weddings, we may assume that he kept a hectic
schedule of these pastoral tasks. With a church of some
4000 members, and a weekly attendance of over 1500, the
demands must have been great for the individual care of
these members. Marney also developed, while in Austin, a
habit of cultivating close ties with other ministers,
foremost among whom were Blake Smith, pastor of University
Baptist Church and Ed Heinsohn pastor of University
Methodist Church. Also, as pastor of the First Baptist
Church, he often gave counsel to the leaders of the state
government and the business community.26
With the great acclaim Marney had gained in his ten
years in Austin he received many overtures to move. After
initially declining, he decided in the Spring of 1958 to
accept a second invitation to become the pastor of the
Meyers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. He
left a great legacy in Austin and seemed always to carry a
big piece of Texas with him the rest of his life.
The Charlotte church was a very different
congregation from the one Marney had served in Austin.
Instead of a downtown First Baptist Church made up of a
diverse cross-section of the city, Meyers Park was an
affluent suburban church made up of the city's economically
elite. Instead of the leaders of government, it consisted
of leaders in business and commerce. Instead of an old
traditional congregation, it was a young, self-consciously
progressive congregation. Later Marney would note that
Paducah had taught him about poverty, Austin about race, and
Charlotte about economics.27
One thing his new position had in common with his
ministry in Austin was the stress laid upon the pulpit
ministry. Marney was joined in Charlotte by two of his
colleagues from Austin, James Berry as Minister of Music,
and Charles Schwantes as Church Administrator. These, along
with other program leaders, constituted a staff able to
carry out a vast array of programs requiring very little
oversight from Marney. This arrangement left him free to
focus on preaching and writing, the two areas in which,
during his Charlotte years, he was the most prolific and
productive of any period in his ministry.
Whereas during his Austin decade Marney became a
regional celebrity, in Charlotte he became a national
ecumenical figure. Increasingly, Marney became estranged
from his Southern Baptist roots during this period. One
incident of the period illustrates his growing disaffection
with those he still claimed as his own people. Leading up
to the presidential election of 1960 Southern Baptists
voiced wide-spread opposition to John F. Kennedy's
candidacy. In October of that year Time magazine featured
Southern Baptists, and Marney was listed among the five most
influential Baptist preachers in America. However, Marney
was highlighted for his distinctively progressive stance on
race and the openness he practiced toward other
denominations. The article quoted Marney referring to
Baptists as extremists "Holy Roller Catholics who are
creating an emotional authoritarianism which is far more
rigid than Roman Catholicism."28 While he continued to be
sought after as a speaker in many Baptist colleges and
universities, it was clear that Marney was becoming further
alienated from the mainstream of Southern Baptist
institutional life.
But if his influence was waning with his
denominational family of origins, he was waxing all the more
prominent in ecumenical circles. During his last years in
Austin Marney had captured the attention of some noted
religious leaders beyond the South,29 but during his decade
in Charlotte his notoriety reached its zenith. He spoke in
the chapels of leading universities in the east, including
Duke, Yale and Harvard, as well as those at Chicago and
Vanderbilt. He was a regular speaker at Princeton and Union
Theological Seminaries,30 and preached on a number of
occasions at the Riverside Church in New York. His
biographer records that, "He was one of two final candidates
considered by the President and Fellows of Harvard to
succeed George Buttrick as Preacher to the University and
Pastor of the Memorial Church."31
His writing output, too, during this period was the
most prolific of his career. Marney continued to submit his
sermons to print, and during his Charlotte years he
published Beggars in Velvet,32 He Became Like Us,33 The
Suffering Servant,34 The Carpenter's Son,35 and The Crucible
of Redemption.36 But his published sermons were augmented
by two important works of practical or pastoral theology.
Structures of Prejudice,37 published in 1961, was a reasoned
and disciplined analysis of the theological and ideological
roots of major modern prejudices. In turn he treats
materialism, provincialism, institutionalism, and
individualism as prejudices in particular areas of human
understanding and relations. For each of these prejudices
he prescribes a theological therapy: for materialism, an
incarnational realism which allows for the extra-rational;
for provincialism a higher, more universal sense of
community; for institutionalism, a humbler more relative
attribution of value; for individualism, a broader and
deeper understanding of personality. This battle to break
down the obstinate prejudices of human life was one he waged
to the end of his days, at times almost despairing. In his
last book he wrote, "Listen! I have wasted half my ministry
away from home talking my gospel to people who are kept from
hearing me by the stereotypes they have made that I cannot
fix. And I've spent half my life at home saying again to
people what they did not hear me say."38
Marney's other pastoral theology work from his time
at Meyers Park is entitled The Recovery of the Person39,
published in 1963. It is a lively dialogue between the
major voices of modern theology from Schliermacher to Barth
and those of the longer tradition of biblical, patristic and
reformation thinkers. Humanity is the subject; anthropology
is the over-arching category. But Marney's treatment of
humanity (humanism) is not secular or "Godless," but rather
an inspired recovery of the deep dimensions of human
personality which cannot be grasped apart from the moral
aspects of relatedness to others, and the transcending
aspects of meeting The Other. For Marney, biblical
categories were best suited for this task. He locates our
common humanity between Adam and Christ:

Biblical man is aware, long before the Coming, that his
Head has not yet appeared, but he longs for him, strains
after him, and always is man who participates in that from
which he came (Adam) and that manhood to which he is called
(Christ).
Everywhere one sees biblical man, he is in this tension
between his oldness and his newness, and Christ, the New
Man, the Only Man, is the face of the man that can emerge,
the man who can be precisely because he cannot stay as he
is. Biblical man is always Adam and Christ and somewhere in
between. His calling is to a new humanity.40
The Recovery of the Person is a work concerned with grasping
the human, recognizing that a full humanity leads inevitably
to the humanity of God. Both humanity and God are grasped
only as they are subjects and objects in a relationship of
persons.
His hectic schedule of preaching and writing
probably contributed to a catastrophic health crisis in the
Fall of 1966. Marney suffered a heart-attack which
incapacitated him for months. In its wake he developed
further complications that led to lung surgery and colon
problems. While the church offered him all the time he
needed to recover before returning to the pulpit, Marney
decided in the Spring of 1967 to resign his responsibilities
and move into a new direction different from his more than
twenty-five year stint in the pastorate.
A scene from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress had
captured Marney's imagination for some time: Christian's
visitation to the Interpreter's House. Marney became
convinced that there was a place in contemporary
Christianity for a way-station, a safe place for a person to
deal with the inner struggles and relational problems in the
presence of spiritual counsel and guidance. Marney
envisioned his retreat center as especially helpful to
ministers, but its program was later expanded to include lay
persons as well. Through grants and support of the United
Methodist church and the American Baptist Churches, Marney's
vision of the Interpreter's House became a reality at
Lambuth Inn, one of the old historic hotels on the grounds
of the Methodist Conference Center at Lake Junaluska in the
mountains of North Carolina.
Marney continued to travel the country speaking,
preaching and teaching during his years as director of the
Interpreter's House. He was an adjunct faculty member at
Duke Divinity School, and wrote two books, The Coming
Faith41 (1970), and Priests to Each Other42 (1974). But he
spent much more of his time on essays and papers that were
delivered at Interpreter's House for participants in the
counseling and support groups. The ministry of
Interpreter's House was shared with a national audience
through a segment of Bill Moyers' Journal broadcast on
public television December 26, 1973. Moyers was a student
at the University of Texas in the 1950s while Marney was
pastor at First Baptist Church of Austin, and the two men
continued a friendship until Marney's death.
Marney's ministry at Interpreter's House was the
culmination of an aspect of pastoral care which he had
cultivated from his earliest years as a pastor: ministry to
ministers. The center of Marney's work during this segment
of his ministry was the nature of the church in general and
the nature of the pastoral ministry in particular.
Confronted with pastors in varying states of brokenness,
Marney came to a clear and poignant understanding of the
promise and peril of the church's ministry. He became
convinced of the deep-seated institutional problems that
faced ministers, whom he called "tragic men" who live in
"tragic houses."43 The great contribution of Interpreter's
House was its pioneering in bringing together mental health
resources and the deep healing balm of honest faith and
placing them at the disposal of broken persons in Christian
ministry.
For his work, throughout a life time, but especially
at Interpreter's House, the University of Glasgow in 1976
conferred upon Marney the degree of Doctor of Divinity, the
first American pastor since Harry Emerson Fosdick to receive
the honor. His work at Interpreter's House was also to be
the basis of his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale in 1980, but
that was not to be. Marney died from a heart attack at his
desk at Lake Junaluska on July 3, 1978, preparing lectures
for a ministers' convocation at Furman University. It seems
he died with his mind engaged and his message in process,
focused to the end on the meaning of Christian ministry.

A PILGRIM'S RUCKSACK

After offering up a number of parables of the
Kingdom of God, Matthew's Gospel has Jesus offering next the
following example of a wise householder, or steward:

"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes."
And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been
trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a
household who brings out of his treasure what is new and
what is old." (Matthew 13:51-52 NRSV)
Carlyle Marney was a scribe who had been trained for
the kingdom of heaven. What is more, he was without peer as
a Baptist pastor (perhaps as a Christian pastor, though I am
not equipped to make that claim) steeped in the history of
Christian thought and practice through the centuries. He
was at once familiar with Irenaeus, Tertullian and Augustine
from the patristic period, and Harnack, Brunner and Barth,
his contemporaries. He was as intimate with the theology of
the classical reformers as he was versed in the modern
idioms of psychology of religion, existentialism, and group
therapy. He was both a classical rhetorician and an
employer of the media of radio and television. Marney was a
householder who brought out of his treasure what was new and
what was old.
Marney got his understanding of the church through
the ages despite his context as a Southern Baptist. He once
accused that the one thing he held against his religious
heritage was that it never taught him about the "great
church." His extraordinary familiarity with church history,
vis-a-vis the relative lack of interest among most Southern
Baptists, gave rise to an apocryphal claim that Marney,
while a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
had read all the church fathers in the original Greek and
Latin. Later, on a visit to the seminary a student asked
Marney whether or not the story was true. Marney said of
his response: "I took him by the arm, led him to an
isolated corner where no one could hear us, looked him in
the eye and said, 'Son, it's a lie.'"44
Not only was Marney familiar with the history of the
church, he made it a point to learn the great outlines of
world history. I have already mentioned how he treated
complicated moral issues like racism in the light of the
broadest possible sweep of the human story.45 He augmented
a near encyclopedic grasp of history with a working
knowledge of the disciplines of science. Both his spoken
and his written works exhibit familiarity with evolutionary
biology, physics, and the social sciences. Although he
clearly understood the limits of science, he demonstrated a
great respect for its contributions to human understanding
and development.46 Marney was a humanist, and he sought
with great vigilance a better understanding of human nature
from any source he suspected would be of help.
Although the influences on Marney's intellectual
development are exceptionally broad, his focus remained
pastoral. His work, however near the boundaries of his life
and times, was clearly directed toward contributing to an
understanding of Jesus Christ, the Christian gospel, and the
community derived from Christ and the gospel, the church.
Subsequently, it is possible as well as profitable to
identify some of the primary characters and forces from the
history of pastoral care which were central to Marney's
ministry.
First and foremost, Marney was a preacher. Although
I have not found one instance of Marney's quoting St. John
Chrysostom, his practice of preaching more closely resembles
that of the fourth-century master preacher than that of any
other patristic figure. Marney's Ph.D. dissertation had
focused on the pastoral task up through the fourth century,
particularly relating to pastoral offices and authority. It
appears that he shared with John a conviction that
appropriate pastoral authority cannot derive from external
forces, but from personal relationship and persuasion. John
writes,

{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}For Christians above all men are
forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force.
When secular judges convict wrong-doers under the law, they
show that their authority is complete and compel men,
whether they will or no, to submit to their methods. But in
the case we are considering it is necessary to make a man
better not by force but by persuasion (emphasis mine). We
neither have authority granted us by law to restrain
sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it,
since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil,
not by force, but by choice.47
Always a guardian of the personal, Marney respected
the freedom and dignity of other people. His well-known
habit of bending the knee before any child he met
demonstrates his regard for others and their unique personal
power.48 Despite this habit of respect, perhaps because of
it, Marney displayed a remarkable array of rhetorical gifts,
another trait he shared with John the Golden Mouth. His
powerful deep bass voice is a wonder to listen to; "like
God's, only deeper." But he also had a peculiar use of
cadence and meter, at times lilting and pastoral, at times
forceful like a Gatling gun. Then his use of words is
remarkable. Marney had a way of lassoing a word, breaking
it like a mustang, and reining it in for peculiar use. He
liked hard short Anglo-Saxon words, like "kept," as in a
"kept clergy."
James I. McCord, who first met Marney when he was
president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and
kept up his colleagueship and friendship with Marney during
his time as president of Princeton Theological Seminary,
noted that Marney's rhetorical skills at times could be
intimidating

{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}We asked him to join the Austin
Seminary faculty, with responsibility for a course in
preaching, but soon discovered our mistake. Marney was a
great preacher, but no one could imitate him. He used words
as building blocks, piling one upon the other, and the
effect was powerful. His poor students tripped and fell
time and again as they tried to follow the master
wordsman.49
Another incident confirming the power of Marney's rhetorical
abilities comes from the oral tradition. A woman once said
about Marney's preaching, "I just love to hear Dr. Marney
preach. I don't understand what he's saying, but I love to
hear him say it." No doubt Marney's love affair with
history, especially the patristics, equipped him with many
of the classical skills of rhetoric and public persuasion.
Two other figures from the patristic period figure
largely into Marney's pastoral theology: Irenaeus of Lyon
and Augustine of Hippo. From Irenaeus Marney developed an
incarnational foundation which permeated his thinking.
Early in his ministry, while in Austin, Marney worked on an
ecclesiology which he first set out in a series of sermons,
and later developed into a longer more careful work.50
Therein he works out an incarnational theology consistent
with the famous notion of Irenaeus that Christ "made himself
equal with man, that man, by his likeness to the Son, might
become precious in the Father's sight."51 What is more,
following his teacher from Southern Seminary, W. O.
Carver52, he underscores that the incarnation is an on-going
reality in the life of the church.

The greatest conceivable loss to Christendom has
resulted from the unthinking acceptance of the heretical
view that the incarnation is an event closed with the
ascension. It has never closed. God never closes anything
until it is finished and incarnation is not finished. He is
here, where he said he would be, indwelling his own. There
is a permeating principle of continuousness all through the
Gospel.53
Marney's strong incarnational bent led him
increasingly toward what he called a "Christian humanism,"
rooted in the second-century views of Irenaeus. To the
question, Can we recapture a proper understanding of
personality?, he answered, "Not without a twentieth-century
extension of a very old theme. We will, given the Son,
establish the Person in the Father by a second-century view
of the Incarnation."54 Again, he refers to the theme "sung
most gloriously in the second century at Lyons by
Irenaeus."55 "What he was, that he also appeared to
be{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}not despising or evading any
condition of humanity."56 Increasingly, toward the end of
his life, Marney became suspect of talking about God,
recognizing that glib speech about God is pretentious at
best. But he never ceased to speak clearly and passionately
about human personality, for he had discovered early on a
christological foundation from which to address the thing
which God addressed in the whole of salvation history:
humanity.
Although Marney placed great stock in the
incarnational theology of Irenaeus, he tempered his great
hope in humanity with the more sober view of human nature of
Augustine. Marney's familiarity with Augustine was largely
devotional, that is, he read and understood Augustine as an
exemplar of Christian faith.57 But Marney's realistic
opinion of human sin is Augustinian to the core. He saw the
great flaw of humanity in terms of a split, a great chasm
between intention and accomplishment, between nobility and
bestiality, between power and fragility. He often expressed
this core contradiction in graphic terms.

When faith lives with men, she becomes aware of the
mighty contradiction that splits man down the middle, and
then faith must learn a thing or two. Man the full, grand
one is also and simultaneously a little man. The one who
can create can kill. The historian who remembers is
frequently the play actor who pretends; the honorable one is
sometimes especially tiresome. The ingenious and skillful
craftsman is in the same body also a plunderer; and that one
who longs and desires is also the idle, lazy one; while man
the wise is simultaneously man the foolish one_and
everywhere, homo-erector, the upright one, becomes homo
crepitans, the creaking, rattling one, if he lives.
Meantime he can so easily become the dead one. If a germ
bites, if a gland like a peanut withers, if a valve closes;
or if he is punctured or jolted; if he misjudges time,
space, or speed; if he eats too much or too little, or waits
long enough between breaths, he dies, we call it, and begins
to turn to mineral. Yet he lives like a god, and his
deepest grief, desire, and agony, is that he cannot be God.
He lives in a mighty contradiction! And the chaos we decry
lives within us.58
This vision of the human split and divided against
itself is a theme expressed in anguished honesty by
Augustine in his Confessions. Of the human capacity for
self-delusion he writes, "{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}O Lord,
you were turning me around to look at myself. For I had
placed myself behind my own back, refusing to see myself."59
And again, of the contradiction he laments, "My inner self
was a house divided against itself."60
If Marney shared a similar diagnosis of human sin
with Augustine, he also shared a similar prescription for
healing. Both Marney and Augustine place great emphasis on
the adequacy of God's provision for human salvation in Jesus
Christ, but the difficulty lies in a weakness of will.
Augustine writes, "For in this case the power to act was the
same as the will. To will it was to do it. Yet I did not
do it."61 Marney, too, often spoke of our inability to live
the truth we know. He once quipped, "It has been thirty
years since I have asked God to 'fix' anything in the South.
He has a majority of Baptists-Methodists alone down
there."62 Human hope lies in a turning, an on-going
conversion to Christ, a constant leaving of our idols and
joining the movement of God. Here, in the centrality of
conversion, Marney agreed with the great Augustine, and
brought a greater integrity to what has long been a
characteristic tenant of Baptist theology.
If Marney had a sober view of human nature, he more
than compensated with his high view of personality. In his
very first book, These Things Remain, he wrote:
"Forgiveness happens only between concerned personalities.
God and me; you and me{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"} If
forgiveness can happen only between personalities, it is
because personality only can effect redemption."63 Later,
his work The Recovery of the Person, laid a foundation in
the doctrine of the incarnation for the highest view of
human personality, the vehicle God chose to enter into human
experience and redeem humanity. We might say that Marney
inverted the famous quote from Lucy in the "Peanuts" comic
strip: "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand."
Carlyle Marney envisaged a humanity that even God might not
be able to stand; but God's love for persons is
unassailable.
Two aspects of Marney's pastoral vision underscore
his high view of persons. One is historical, the other is
personal. Pastorally, Marney had a keen curiosity and a
profound sympathy for persons in all stations of life. This
sensitivity he has in common with the Gregory the Great,
whose classic work Pastoral Care64, catalogues scores of
different types of persons and the particular pastoral need
of each. Although Marney does not refer directly to
Gregory's method, it is probable that he was familiar with
it, and it is clear that he employed it. Personal
testimonies abound about Marney's ability to engage people
from both the highest and the lowest of social, educational
or economic circumstances. In Austin he cultivated the
spiritual lives of the state's most powerful politicians as
well as the dweller in urban poverty. He was as comfortable
addressing congregations in the world's most elite
universities, or playing on the floor with children. In the
words of Jim Sapp65, a member of Highland Park Baptist and
Marney's colleague at First Baptist Church of Austin in the
late 1940's and early 1950's, "Marney loved people!" Of
course Marney's life work, written, spoken and acted,
attests to his indefatigable determination to break down
prejudices and recover respect for persons. The historian,
Sam Hill, when pressed to recall his profoundest
recollection of Marney, was reduced to this one simple
sentence: "Golly, he could make you feel good."66
Of the Reformers who influenced Marney's thought and
pastoral practice none was more influential than Luther.
Again it is the human frame that Marney studies with the
help of Luther. Among his favorite references to Luther,
one of the most frequent was to the effect that human beings
will always have some God, or an idol.67 And even at their
best, human beings can use their best for the worst, as
Luther made plain in his famous indictment of "Reason, the
great whore."68 But if he joins Luther in his skepticism
regarding innate human goodness, Marney also joins him in
his great affirmation of God's saving grace. In questioning
the footings of nineteenth-century liberal views of rosy
humanity, Marney reminds us of Luther's insistence that
"'The Word must do this thing, not us poor sinners.'
Anything less that still has hope is a sort of happy
humanism; in extremis it longs for an earthly Eldorado; and
so does Karl Marx."69 Thus he affirms with Luther that
"though I am redeemed from sin, yet am I not redeemed from
sinning."70
Another debt to Luther came with Marney's recovery
of a radical version of the doctrine of the priesthood of
all believers. In Marney's words, "The temple has always
been downtown."71 He saw the renewal of the church and the
redemption of the world in a movement of lay people engaged
in the structures of power in the world, not merely to
convert them to Christianity, but to bring love and meaning
and hope to the places where change can happen. Marney's
last book, Priests to Each Other, was a reformulation of his
view of the church and its ministry. As the title suggests,
he believed a recovery of the priesthood of every person was
the key to the church's regaining its essential character
and mission.
While Marney drew on Luther's theology more than any
other reformer, he also counted the leaders of the radical
wing of the reformation as great moral and spiritual heroes
as well. He saw their struggle for freedom of conscience as
a vital installment on the march against prejudice and
bigotry, especially in its ecclesiastical institutional
forms.72 In his typical hard-hitting style, Marney quotes
Ignatius of Loyola on the church's authority over the
individual conscience. Ignatius wrote, "To make sure of
being right in all things, we ought to hold by the principle
that the white that I see I would believe to be black, if
the Hierarchical Church were so to rule it."73 Both his
personality and his training in the Baptist tradition led
Marney to protest against any such authoritative claim on
the individual conscience. Throughout his life he often
articulated as one of his own guiding principles a
commitment to "follow new light into any place as soon as I
knew it to be new light."74
Despite Marney's exceptional understanding of church
history and his thorough employment of the theological
tradition of the ages, Marney was not a traditionalist in
any strict sense. He was as thoroughly liberal as he was
thoroughly historical. Perhaps this antimony is at least
partially explained by his great debt to, and appreciation
of, Adolf von Harnack, the German theological historian.
Marney believed that American nineteenth century liberalism
failed largely because it never grasped the depth of those
figures behind contemporary (Neo-orthodoxy) theology. He
wrote, "We do not yet know the men who made contemporary
theology happen_the men behind Barth, Tillich, Bultmann."75
The key to a proper Christian humanism, for Marney, was the
primacy of the personal. He suggested that modern theology,
especially in America, failed to grasp the rootedness of
Christian humanism in a theology of incarnation, that God is
essentially personal, and a christology of the new being,
that Jesus Christ was the head of a new humanity. Without
these underpinnings a Christian humanism failed to remain,
in any sense, Christian; it became, in Marney's words, a
"premature humanism."76
Another powerful influence on Marney's pastoral
theology was existentialism. Here again, Marney mined the
forces beneath the full-blown existentialist movement.
While he was still in Austin, he preached a series of
sermons on Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist.77 Later in
life Marney would often refer to Miguel de Unamuno, Camus,
Jaspers, and Heidigger. He saw their contribution as a new
realism: "These men are realists, all of them, for they
have this informing principle: they are fascinated by,
attracted to, horrified with, life as they know it, and this
is the essence of neorealism: to include the seeker with
the object of his quest in this human situation as real."78
Marney also drew on the theologians of personal
encounter, chief among them Martin Buber. He considered the
work of Emil Brunner, especially Divine-Human Encounter, as
an important text emphasizing the personal. And he spoke
reverently of that great Anglican, his "paterfamilias, grand
William Temple."79 Marney reveled in what he called a
"theology of meeting," and he was markedly enthusiastic
toward anyone who highlighted this aspect of personal
encounter.
No doubt Marney's great stress on the personal, both
in theology and the practice of ministry, led him to his
last tour of service at the Interpreter's House, a retreat
center in the mountains of North Carolina. The most modern
influence on Marney's pilgrimage was psychological therapy
and group dynamics. While still in Austin, Marney began to
read in earnest the work of Freud. Victor Frankl's
experience of hope and meaning in the Nazi concentration
camp, a hope rooted in a simple prayer and the little
kindnesses shown between prisoners, left a powerful
impression on Marney. After a serious health crisis in 1966
Marney determined to open a retreat house for people in
crisis. His approach would consist of in-depth theological
interpretation and personal encounter in groups. He
required time spent in physical labor by those able, as a
part of their healing experience.
Marney envisioned his retreat center modeled on a
scene from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Two aspects of
this sixteenth century classic became the guiding principles
for the retreat experience: unconditional acceptance and
reliance on every detail of life as the raw material of
grace. Bunyan's Christian stands before the narrow way when
he meets Goodwill who says to him, "We make no objections
against any, notwithstanding all that they have done before
they come hither; they in nowise are cast out."80 Then,
when Christian becomes weary from his burdens and the strain
of the journey, he comes to the house of the Interpreter,
who "would show him excellent things."81
Marney used these images from a sixteenth century
classic of dissent to create a place for recovery from
crisis and renewal of spirit. One of the best vignettes of
the ministry of Interpreter's House has been preserved in a
television broadcast highlighting the center's work.82 In
the context of group therapy, persons are able to speak of
their anger and hurt in a safe context. Over and again the
themes of the conversation are the conflict between roles
and personality, between doing and being. And each time the
conversation is brought back to the centrality of persons in
relationship.

We've got a genius. And that genius isn't institutional, or
structural, it's certainly not doctrinal. It's something
about man. . . And I love - the last thing I ever heard
Paul Tillich say in his lifetime, in a lecture, when he
said, "Christianity is not the salvation of the world, it
never was, but the person that Jesus Christ represents is."
Now, it's his personhood, it's his manhood we've missed.
And I hang around under that umbrella (Christianity),
because it's the most human example I can find.83
These are just a few examples of the vast treasury
from which Carlyle Marney drew in his struggle to live the
meaning of Christian discipleship and ministry. He was
truly a man of vast curiosity and expansive knowledge, but
he was able to focus these rich resources into a clear
emphasis on ministry as becoming human. Finally, he pressed
into the service of this renewal of personhood many of the
characters of the whole parade of human thought and
experience. He brought "out of his treasure what is new and
what is old."

CONCLUSION

Carlyle Marney was not without fault, and as a
minister he had blind spots and failings. However, a number
of aspects of his approach to ministry remain vitally
important in our day.
First and foremost, Marney is a sterling example of
the learned pastor. His commitment to knowing and
understanding the wide horizon of human intellectual inquiry
served him well as an interpreter. He made the Bible come
alive with his acute sense of the great sweep of the
biblical story. He knew the biblical languages, but he also
discerned the nuances of drama and character which
constitute the true depth of scripture's witness. He saw
the critical treatment of scripture, not as a threat, but as
an aid to fuller apprehension of the Bible's meaning. Then
his familiarity with the church's history, especially the
history of theological reflection, gives both a continuity
and comprehension to his grasp of the church's life and
ministry. Further, his broad knowledge of philosophy and
the humanities allowed him to place the church's story in an
appropriate context. Marney's grasp of the human
predicament was gained by careful reflection on some of the
world's best literature, both classical and contemporary.
He spoke to Bill Moyers of his commitment to a disciplined
approach to learning, and his advocacy of it for anyone who
wished to follow the Christian way:

I am convinced that a person who is committed to the work
and meaning of Christian symbols, who has done his
homework{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"} - by that, I mean, he's
stood with his hat in his hand before a competent
psychiatry, sociology, history, drama, art, theology - who's
done his homework, has more to say to, for, with, in behalf
of, on account of man, than from any other specialty he can
fill.84
As a matter of practical application, Marney was
clear that such learning was a matter of commitment and
sacrifice. In one of his groups at Interpreter's House he
was questioned about how a minister can get the homework
done in the midst of the time demands of an active parish.
Marney was completely prosaic, suggesting that the only way
he knew to do it is "to start earlier." He went on to say,
"I get to the office about 10:00 in the morning, put my mind
in neutral, and go wherever they shove me. But I can do
that only if I have five or six hours that belong to me."85
When he was a boy, he had a job at the local power plant
which required him to get up at 3:30 in the morning, a habit
he maintained into his adulthood. It seems that his early
morning regimen of study and writing was still in some sense
work at a power plant.
Another aspect of Marney's pastoral ministry with
great value in the contemporary setting is his emphasis of
the personal. Increasingly, the professional model of
pastoral ministry is being called into question. At the
same time the practice of ministry calls for ever-increasing
investments of time and energy in administration, programs,
and budgets. The role of pastor often impinges on the
relationships of pastors. And yet, none of the pastoral
tasks can for long remain pastoral without giving time and
place to cultivating relationships.
A true recovery of the personal entails much more
than performance of the formal duties of the pastor. Marney
knew that ministry to the masses must be augmented with one-
to-one encounters. He once reflected on the longing he
often experienced for the more personal contact of
counseling:

On the Sundays my ego could stand it, I looked out the
window of the sanctuary to watch the people going home after
Church School and before Morning Worship. But always my eye
fell too on another parade: the people dragging or pushing
their burdens into the Sanctuary, where across the French
Walnut pew tops I would have to face them presently. To
some, to many of them I wanted to call out, "Don't go in
there! Let's talk_'twould be better than this preaching at
all of us."86
On the other hand, Marney saw worship as the central
focus of recovering the personal. He rooted his view of
worship in the Hebraic notion of worship as encounter, the
worship place as the "tent of meeting." Especially through
symbol and liturgy, Marney believed, we are able to move
from the exterior to the interior. The worship place should
be a place to begin the process of divesting ourselves of
the layers of persona which keep us from encounter. He
loved to quote Unamuno to the effect that, "The temple is
where we go to weep in common."87 So whether the context of
ministry called for collective or individual address, it
must all be personal address.
One aspect of Marney's pastoral theology calls for
both respect and critique: his eschewing of the
institutional. Marney proved to be a prophet when, in
Structures of Prejudice (1961), he forcasted the demise of
the denominations. One of the most critical issues facing
the church at the end of this millennium is the loss of
allegiance to institutions of religion. All across American
society we are faced with diminishing loyalty to
institutions, brands no longer carry much weight, and
corporate mentality is a thing of the past. Indeed, we live
in a global marketplace, and the church is only beginning to
experience the impact of this shift.
At least part of Marney's lack of faith in
institutions is a balm for our sickness. He pointed out
that the denominations were little more than "bookkeeping"
services.88 Denominational labels are adjectives, not
nouns. The only important noun, according to Marney, is
human being. So his bittersweet dismissal of religious
institutionalism reminds us that if the institutions are
lost, what is most important need not be lost. But here we
must level against Marney a charge made often against him:
that he was long on diagnosis and short on cure.
While Marney grasped the frailty of any and all
human institutions, he also knew that institutions are
necessary. So the question arises, If the church's
institutions are moving toward an eclipse, what institutions
will take their place? This is precisely the quandary
moderate Baptists in the South are facing. If the Southern
Baptist Convention is a religious institution whose center
has collapsed, what will be built in its place? If the
American Baptist Churches have the same problems as the
Southern Baptist Convention, why affiliate with the ABC?
Marney faced this quandary himself, responding with his
typical humor:

Everywhere I go people ask me why I remain a Baptist. Being
a Baptist is like being in a dark, slimy well: it's cold,
clammy, uncomfortable and filled with lots of creepy things.
For years I tried to climb out, but it was hard: the walls
were slippery, I was half-blind, and there were impediments
everywhere. Finally, however, I got to the top. I looked
around at last to see what the world was like in other
denominations. After I had a good look_I just dropped back
in the well.89
So we must conclude, at least as far as his anti-
institutional views are concerned, that Marney was not very
constructive. But then again, he lived at the point of
church institutions' denouement; we are now well into the
next quarter of a century. Perhaps it is best to remember
that his time called more for diagnosis, while ours calls
for some sort of constructive engagement.
Finally, Marney is a champion of ministers
rediscovering their own humanity. Founded upon his
incarnational christology, Marney set a full humanity as the
goal of every Christian. He spoke of Christians as the "new
breed" of humanity.90 Therefore the role of the Christian
minister is first and foremost to become a person. This
realization leads inexorably to a reduction of what most
ministers see as their role. Marney came to see that too
often he had taken much more responsibility than was
necessary, or even appropriate. He wrote,

I know more now, I think, about how a person is put
together and why he is as he is. And radically, my mind has
changed about the bounds of my responsibility and the nature
of my calling and service. I am not God; I do not have to
"be a blessing"; I do not have to hear all who "offer" to
talk, or make a demand. I can say "no" to those who
threaten me overwhelmingly until we can find a better ground
to talk on, and I may even send some empty away, for I have
been emptied too. A man does not have to lie_and salvation
belongs to God.91
This relinquishment of responsibility can be
accomplished only where there is trust both in God's grace
and the gifts of the rest of the community. How can we
afford to be pastors, to represent Christ in the midst of
the brokenness of the world? How can we face so monumental
a task without being overwhelmed or becoming megalomaniacs?
Marney points us back to Luther, with his great discovery
and trust of the priesthood of all believers.

I would confidently advise that you have no ministers at
all. It would be safer and more wholesome for the father of
the house to read the gospel{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}
and{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"} to baptize those born in his
home, and so to govern himself and his according to the
doctrine of Christ even if they never did receive the Lord's
Supper{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"}. If in this way two houses,
three, or ten houses, or a whole city or several cities
agreed{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"} to live in faith and
love{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"} even if no ordained, shorn or
anointed ever came to them{SYMBOL 188 \f "Symbol"} Christ,
without a doubt, would be in their midst, and would own them
as his church.92
Although this is a radical call to those who believe
themselves called to nurture and edify the church, it is a
saving word if it serves to remind us that the real issue is
not how we own our responsibility for the church, but
whether or not we are a part of a church Christ would own.

FOOTNOTES

1Carlyle Marney, Priests to Each Other, (Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania: Judson Press, 1974).

2One could argue that Marney was not a Baptist, much less a
Southern Baptist, during his last years. In fact, his
biographer writes, ". . . at the beginning of his 1974
Dickson Lectures, he announced that it was the last time he
wished to be heard as a Baptist." [John J. Carey, Carlyle
Marney: A Pilgrim's Progress, (Macon, Georgia: Mercer
University Press, 1980), 110.] However, he did not move
toward identification with any other denominational entity.
The same is true of Roger Williams, who founded the first
Baptist church on American soil. He announced that he was
no longer Baptist, but never identified with another
organized religious structure, choosing instead to call
himself from that point on a "seeker." That is a term that
would properly apply to Marney as well.

3Carey, op. cit., 16 and 17.

4Richard Bondi, Leading God's People: Ethics for the
Practice of Ministry, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989),
uses an image similar to that of the boundary. Bondi speaks
of ministry from "the edge" and from "the center,"
indicating that ministry from the edge offers exceptional
possibilities for creativity, in addition to its being
fraught with certain dangers.

5Most of the early biographical details mentioned in this
essay come from John J. Carey, A Pilgrim's Progress, op.
cit. 11-17.

6Marney wrote about his early memories of this historic
incident, and the impact of those memories, in "Dayton's
Long Hot Summer: A Memoir," The Scopes Trial: Forty Years
After, Gerry Thompkins, ed., (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1965).

7Carlyle Marney, Structures of Prejudice, (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1961), 125.

8Carey, op. cit., 23-24.

9In 1879 Professor Crawford Toy was dismissed because of his
critical views in biblical studies, and in 1899 the
president of the seminary, W. H. Whitsitt, was dismissed
because of an historical dispute over the origins of
Baptists. For a discussion of these incidents see, Walter
B. Shurden, Not a Silent People: Controversies That Have
Shaped Southern Baptists, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1972;
Robert A. Baker, The Southern Baptist Convention and Its
People 1607-1972, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1974); and H.
Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, (Nashville: Broadman
Press, 1987).

10Carey, op. cit., 28.

11Carey titles his section on Marney's Paducah years:
"Kentucky Poverty: Immanuel Church, Paducah (1946-1948)."
He quotes from Marney's essay, "Dayton's Long Hot Summer":
"I learned all I know about poverty, hope, and native
dignity in a huge old church in Paducah." Carey, op. cit.
30.

12Two interesting side lights come from Marney's years in
Paducah. First, his sister, Evelyn, a trained church
musician, was Minister of Music at Immanuel during Marney's
pastorate. Secondly, Don Searles, who came to Austin after
Marney's tenure as pastor there, was first Minister of
Education in the Highland Park Baptist Church, then a
mission of First Baptist. Later Rev. Searles became the
Minister of Education at First Baptist in Austin. Searles
remembers a particular week night, as a youngster growing up
in Paducah, Kentucky, when his family, who had no
affiliation with a church at the time, heard a knock at the
door. Mr. Searles went to the door and met a man in his
shirt sleeves who said, "Good evening, I'm Carlyle Marney,
the new pastor at Immanuel Baptist. I would like to invite
you folks to come and be a part of the church." It is a very
vivid and fond memory for Searles who has spent the rest of
his life at First Baptist in Austin, serving in Marney's
wake.

13The Baptist Standard, First Baptist Edition, Vol. 60
(September 30, 1948), No. 40, 1.

14Ibid.

15The Clarion (First Baptist Church Newsletter), Vol. 20
(May 20, 1955), 3.

16Carlyle Marney, These Things Remain, (Nashville:
Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1953), 89.

17Ibid., 121.

18Ibid., 128.

19Ibid., 132.

20Ibid., 132-133.

21Ibid., 138.

22Carlyle Marney, Mothers and Sons, (Austin: The Cumberland
Foundation, 1954).

23Carlyle Marney, Faith in Conflict, (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1957).

24Carlyle Marney, Dangerous Fathers, Problem Mothers, and
Terrible Teens, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1958).

25The Clarion, Vol. 0 (December 26, 1948) no. 51.

26Marney began a monthly pastor's luncheon to which working
persons were encouraged to invite their friends. The
luncheons were well attended by the leaders of government
and business. In January of 1974 Marney was invited back to
Austin to be the plenary speaker at a joint meeting of the
Texas Council of Churches and the Texas Constitutional
Revision Committee, bearing witness to his enduring
influence upon the public affairs of Austin and Texas.

27Carey, op. cit., 40.

28Time, (October 17, 1960): 88.

29In a church newsletter article from 1955 in Austin,
Professor James Muilenburg of Union Theological Seminary in
New York, who shared the podium with Marney at the Meredith
College School of Christian Studies, wrote this gracious
note about Marney's gifts: "It was a great pleasure to come
to know Dr. Marney in Raleigh. He is a most human
individual with a fine sense of humor, an eager curiosity in
almost everybody and everything, and a deep concern about
our contemporary life and thought in America. He has an
almost encyclopedic knowledge, and he brings this to bear in
an overwhelming fashion upon the problem of man and his
destiny." The Clarion, (July 15, 1955), no. 28.

30In a tribute to Marney, President James I. McCord of
Princeton Seminary wrote: "Although we could not induce him
to join our faculty on a permanent basis, he was present for
some important occasion each year for nearly two decades,
lecturing, preaching, counseling, and encouraging." See
Carey, op. cit., 152.

31Ibid., 47

32Carlyle Marney, Beggars in Velvet, (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1960).

33Carlyle Marney, He Became Like Us, (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1964).

34Carlyle Marney, The Suffering Servant,(Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1965).

35Carlyle Marney, The Carpenter's Son, (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1967).

36Carlyle Marney, The Crucible of Redemption, (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1968).

37Carlyle Marney, Structures of Prejudice, (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1961).

38Carlyle Marney, Priests to Each Other, op. cit., 80.

39Carlyle Marney, The Recovery of the Person, (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1963).

40Ibid., 66-67.

41Carlyle Marney, The Coming Faith, (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1970).

42Carlyle Marney, Priests to Each Other, (Valley Forge:
Judson Press, 1974).

43Carey, op. cit., 117.

44Carey, op. cit., 28.

45See above, 10.

46Faith in Conflict, op. cit. especially Chapter 1, 13-42.

47Saint John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, trans.
Graham Neville, (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's
Seminary Press, 1984), 56.

48Priests to Each Other, op. cit., 112: "The power of the
church truly lies not where I thought it to lie; it shifts
about wherever anyone is hearing and being heard_sometimes
its real power is embodied in a child less than three years
old. This is why you drop to your knee to seek his eye
level. How else can he give you his power?"

49Carey, op. cit., 152.

50In the Fall of 1952 Marney began a series of sermons
entitled "City of Light," focused on the nature of the
church (The Clarion, Vol. IV, October 10, 1952, No. 41).
Sometime thereafter he attempted to put the substance of
these sermons into book form. I have a copy of the
unfinished manuscript of City of Light, made available to me
by Browning Ware, the present pastor of First Baptist Church
in Austin. Marney had given a copy of the unfinished work
to a family by the name of Godfrey, and they in turn passed
it on to Dr. Ware. The manuscript has the following hand-
written note on the title page: "Dear Godfreys_There are
places herein where I now feel myself to have been wrong.
This will never come out "as is" - and the last half 'City
in the Wilderness' I still have to write. I'm sorry I do
not have an original copy as you wanted. This is about the
sixth writing. Marney."

51See Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume
II, "Ante-Nicene Christianity A.D. 100-325," (Grand Rapids:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1910), 553-558.

52W. O. Carver, The Glory of God in the Christian Calling,
(Nashville: Broadman Press, 1949).

53Carlyle Marney, City of Light,52, (unpublished manuscript
from early 1950s).

54The Recovery of the Person, op. cit., 85.

55Ibid., 95.

56Ibid.

57In a sermon delivered at First Baptist Church in Austin,
nearly twenty years after he had left there, Marney said:
"Augustine's been dead these 1700 years, and he still
beckons across the chasm to me to do better." Carlyle
Marney, "My Balcony," audio tape, First Baptist Church,
Austin, Texas, September 12, 1976.

58Faith in Conflict, op. cit., 48-49.

59Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin,
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961), 169.

60Ibid., 170.

61Ibid., 171.

62Priests to Each Other, op. cit., 113.

63These Things Remain, op. cit., 58.

64St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, trans. Henry Davis,
Vol. 11 in Ancient Christian Writers, ed. Johannes Quasten
and Joseph C. Plumpe, (New York: Newman Press, 1950. See
especially Part Three, "How the Ruler Should Teach and
Admonish His Subjects by His Holy Life."

65Jim, as a member of Highland Park and a contemporary of
Marney, has been an invaluable source of information on
Marney as a person. From him I have gotten vignettes about
Marney's horseback riding, his preaching to cowboys in West
Texas, his attention to children, and his respect for all
classes of persons.

66Carey, op. cit., 1.

67Faith in Conflict, op. cit., 39, also The Recovery of the
Person, op. cit., 128.

68The Recovery of the Person, op. cit., 51.

69Ibid., 46.

70Faith in Conflict, op. cit., 79. Here Marney offers a
variation on the phrase simul justus et peccator (at the
same time both justified and sinner): Semper justus; semper
peccator (always justified; always sinner).

71Audio tape, "The Interpreter's House," Lecture 2, Austin
Presbyterian Seminary Library.

72See page 10 above, also Structures of Prejudice, op. cit.,
121-170.

73Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, "Rule 13,"
quoted in Structures of Prejudice, op. cit., 121.

74The Coming Faith, op. cit., 141.

75The Recovery of the Person, op. cit., 41.

76Ibid.

77Noted in a tribute to Marney by James I. McCord, in Carey,
op. cit., 152.

78Structures of Prejudice, op. cit., 61.

79Ibid.

80John Bunyan, The Pilgim's Progress, (Old Tappan, N. J.:
Fleming H. Revell Company, 1974), 29.

81Ibid., 30-38.

82Bill Moyers' Journal, "The Interpreter," television
transcript, (Educational Broadcasting Company: December 26,
1973).

83Ibid., 6.

84Ibid., 3.

85"Recovery of Preaching," audio tape, Austin Presbyterian
Seminary Library.

86Carey, op. cit., 118.

87Structures of Prejudice, op. cit., 60.

88Priests to Each Other, op. cit., 117.

89Carey, op. cit., 138.

90Carlyle Marney, "The New Breed's Man," (New York:
American Baptist Convention, 1967), also The Coming Faith,
op. cit.

91Priests to Each Other, op. cit. 113.

92Quoted in The Coming Faith, op. cit., 163.

[End of Footnotes. End of File.]