Dr. John E. Johns: A Legacy of Faithfulness

NOTE: It is a bit unusual for me to post funereal remarks, but in this case, John Johns lived his adult life at the intersection of the church and the academy, and in particular an academy (Furman University) and a church (First Baptist Greenville) in which I have served. These remarks are one of four contributions to the celebration and remembrance of his life in Daniel Chapel on the Furman campus on October 1, 2007. John's successor as Furman's President, Dr. David Shi, addressed John's "Legacy of Leadership." John's life-long friend and former student, Dr. Bernie Cochran, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Philosophy at Meredith College, spoke to John's "Legacy with Roots." And Dr. Jim Pitts, Retired University Chaplain and Professor of Religion Emeritus at Furman called our attention to John's "Legacy of Relationships."

October 1, 2007
Psalm 27; Jeremiah 17:7-8

When I joined the Furman faculty in the fall of 1988, I was surprised and a bit befuddled by the pervasive use of the language of “family” to describe this university. I was familiar with many images for a university (most of them positive), but “family” was not one of them. And as inviting and alliterative as the image of the “Furman family” was, I confess that I quickly became caught up in the suspicion and cynicism that dominates the intellectual and hermeneutical landscape of the academy and the church, and I concluded that the essence of the image of family was the prevailing paternalism and patronizing of “Father Knows Best.”

What I know now that I did not understand or appreciate then is the distinctive formative experience embedded in the metaphor of family for John and Martha Johns. As we have heard, John grew up in a very large family of orphans. His life and his faith were formatively shaped by his nuclear family’s living and loving and working in an institutional setting sponsored by Baptists to take in some of Florida’s most vulnerable children who became to John sisters and brothers, relatives and friends, loved and cherished as his very own and amazingly expansive family. John Johns’ formative experience of family was not the reactionary conservative ideal of the 1950s that I took it to be, or even the much older ideal of the southern plantation that I suspected, Damn-Yankee that I am. John grew up in Florida, remember, and Florida is not a “southern state.”

John’s take on the university as family was not so much paternalistic as it was maternalistic, as in alma mater, where everyone who came to learn or teach or labor or coach or serve or lead was taken in as a sister, a brother, a relative, in an amazingly expansive family, a kinship not built on blood or genes but on love and devotion to alma mater. It turns out that John's vision was not so much patronizing as it was matronizing—enfolding in the wings of alma mater. It is a vision of family that stands as a living expression of the final verse of the great Isaac Watts hymn adaptation of Psalm 23:

The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days;
Oh, may Thy house be my abode and all my work be praise;
There would I find a settled rest, while others come and go;
No more a stranger nor a guest, but like a child at home.

It is a vision of family grounded in the biblical witness to the people of God and the Baptist witness to the gospel that “whosoever will” is taken in. That’s the formative faithfulness out of which and in which John Johns lived and served and led.

But as most of us know, John had an uncanny knack for irreverent faithfulness as well. My friend David Matthews, one of my predecessors at First Baptist Greenville who was John’s pastor during his first ten years as President of Furman, remembers a conversation in which John explained to him that his success over the years in dealing with preachers was largely based on not arguing with them, because after all, John said, “You can’t argue with ignorance.” If you didn’t know John Johns, you could take that statement as an entirely stereotypical reflection of the intellectual arrogance and elitism that is epidemic in the academy. But if you were inclined to make a list of John Johns’ faults, elitism and intellectual arrogance would surely not be among them. John made that statement to his own preacher not in ridicule but in recognition—recognition that rational argument, so highly prized and frequently practiced in the academy and the church alike, is no antidote for agitation and emotion driven by anger, insecurity or ignorance. John was too wise and too secure to take the bait and argue, because John never got caught up other people’s anger or insecurity, much less their ignorance.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

Now, for those of you who are offended by salty language, I’m going to suggest that you cover your ears when I cover mine. In January of 1988, when I met President Johns for the first time as a part of the interview process for a teaching position at Furman, he caught me entirely by surprise when he announced, “Now we have the fundamentalists to deal with. Those bastards have been making life hell for some of us.” I can’t imagine what the look on my face must have been when the old bombardier dropped that sentence on me out of the blue. The next fall, my baptism into faculty politics came when I walked into the old mailroom in Furman Hall where a group of more wizened dons than I were discussing the disturbing word that a fundamentalist takeover of Furman’s board was already underway. “What do you think is going to happen?” someone asked the new guy. “I don’t know,” I responded, “but I’m glad John Johns is on our side.” “So, you think he’s on our side, do you?” asked a derisive voice, and everyone laughed. “Yeah, I do,” I said quietly, and I left the mailroom chastened and a bit ashamed that I sounded so naïve and trusting in the face of the gathering storm. And I went back to my teaching and writing and waiting and praying and agitating and emoting and hoping that in the end the old navigator would take the course that would bring this institution and our faculty lives and livelihoods safely through. And in the end, he did.

Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
yet I will be confident. . . .
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

My friend and predecessor Hardy Clemons tells the story of how he and John were at a picnic together the first year Hardy arrived in Greenville. In the course of the event, John sidled up to his new pastor and said to him, “Hardy, I don’t know you very well, but if you like, I’ll be glad to bring you a beer in a Pepsi cup.” Now, there’s a friend that many a pastor would love to have: irreverently faithful.

John has left us an invaluable legacy of formative faithfulness, irreverent faithfulness and abiding faithfulness.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is in the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Thank you, John. And thanks be to God!

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.