Archive: Spurgeon Dunnam, 1943-91

The Rev. Spurgeon M. Dunnam III, editor and chief executive of the United Methodist Reporter, died November 25 from complications following surgery to remove blood clots from his lungs. He was 48.

Mr. Dunnam had led the Dallas-based Reporter since 1969. He had joined the staff four years earlier while a student at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology.

During his tenure as editor the newspaper grew from a regional publication reaching 80,000 subscribers to a national newsweekly with more than 500,000 subscribers.

UM Evangelist Ed Robb called Spurgeon Dunnam “an outstanding journalist who took a small regional church newspaper and turned it into the most widely-circulated church newspaper in the world. Personally, I appreciated that his newspaper’s coverage of my ministry was always balanced and fair.”

The Reporter’s Coverage wasn’t limited to the United Methodist Church. In 1983 Mr. Dunnam’s staff began investigating the National Council of Churches (NCC). The resulting coverage, including an editorial by Mr. Dunnam calling for structural reforms, was cited as a significant factor leading to reorganization of the ecumenical body the following year.

Roy Howard Beck, the Reporter’s journalist who broke the NCC stories, said, “Spurgeon’s unique and quirky personality, razor-edged mind and insatiable drive—that only death could stop—unleashed a force within American Protestantism rarely seen in history.

“For a quarter century, he boldly confronted virtually every institution and group within the church in matters of Christian integrity. Few escaped the sting of his pen. Opponents feared him. Friends were kept off guard. Yet his creation of the Reporter breathed life into the church and worked against schism by giving voice to so many otherwise muted concerns of leaders and members. During a period when group-think and timidity prevailed it is difficult to overestimate the courage and genius it took to stake out what Spurgeon called ‘the militant middle’ of the 1970s and 1980s.

“In my own quarter century in journalism I never worked for anyone so bold and so capable of hooking a person into passionate adventure. Ours were righteous crusades that nonetheless were full of the flaws and uncertainty of human existence.”

In 1987 and again in 1990 Mr. Dunnam went to South Africa as part of a World Methodist Council delegation to discuss the abandonment of apartheid with the South African head of state.

Mr. Dunnam was also an elected director of the Global Ministries board and represented that board in September as a member of the delegation which helped consecrate the first United Methodist congregation in Russia.

Dr. Paul Morrell, senior minister of the First UM Church in Carrollton, Texas, said, “Spurgeon had a genuine interest in missional concerns. There’s little question in my mind that he came back from his sabbatical in Africa with a renewed perspective of what the church ought to be.”

During the past decade Mr. Dunnam helped launch three additional religious newspapers: the nondenominational National Christian Reporter in 1981, the biweekly United Methodist Review in 1983 and the monthly United Methodist Record in 1991.

Since 1983 he also served as chairman of the board of Religious News Service, the nation’s only wire service specializing in news of religion.

He was ordained an elder in the North Texas Annual conference in 1969 and remained active in conference agencies.

Good News Media Service and United Methodist Media Services