Retired Baptist World Alliance (BWA) General Secretary Denton Lotz has been honored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and affiliated religious-liberty organizations for his contributions to furthering global religious freedom.
He received the International Award for Religious Liberty on June 18 at a dinner in Washington, cosponsored by the Adventists in conjunction with their religious-freedom publication, Liberty magazine, and the International Religious Liberty Association.
Lotz currently serves as president of the association, which was founded by Adventists in 1893 but is nonsectarian and open to all supporters of church-state separation and religious freedom.
Lotz, who was named BWA’s general secretary emeritus upon his retirement in 2007, was awarded for making “religious freedom a major focus of his ministry as church leader and church statesman,” according to a BWA press release.
In his response, Lotz said the award was recognition of the role that Baptists have played in the defense of religious liberty since the founding of the Baptist movement 400 years ago.
“Baptists were a persecuted group,” he told the roughly 300 guests gathered in the ballroom of the Capital Hilton hotel. “We believe that where religious freedom is denied, all other freedoms are denied.” (ABP)
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