James M. Dunn is the president of the Baptist Joint Committee Endowment, with offices in Washington, D.C. He served as executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee from 1981-1999. In addition to his current role as president of the BJC Endowment, Dunn is Professor of Christianity and Public Policy at Wake Forest Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C.

A native of Texas, Dunn was born June 17, 1932, in Fort Worth. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Texas Wesleyan College; a Bachelor of Divinity and Doctor of Theology degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition, he has done postdoctoral study at the London School of Economics and Political Science changing his Th.D to a Ph.D.

Dunn has served as a pastor, a campus minister and college teacher. For 12 years, he was executive director of the Christian Life Commission, the social action agency of Texas Baptists. In 1980, he was named executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee. Among other awards and recognition, Dunn has received the Bowman-Moore Award for Excellence for the Texas Council on Family Relations and the Distinguished Service Award of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission. He received an honorary LL.D degree from Alderson-Broaddus College in 1990 and one from William Jewell College in 1996. In 1999, Linfield College honored him with a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree, and Central Baptist Theological Seminary conferred a D.D. degree upon him in 2001. In 2002 he received a D.D. from Furman University. In 1991, he received the Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy's Distinguished Service Award and a similar award from The Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Kansas City, Kansas. He has delivered the Staley Lectures on six campuses, Blake Smith Lectures in Austin, Clarence Jordan Lectures at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Stanley Stuber Lectures at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School.

In addition, he has appeared on all the major network television news programs including "The Today Show" and "Nightline" and has been a frequent guest on television documentaries.

Dunn was president of Bread for the World in 1985. He is currently on the advisory board of Judson Press and the board of the Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy and he has been chairman of the Ethics Commission of the Baptist World Alliance. He was a founder of the Texas Fair Campaign Practices Committee and for a decade was on the Division of Church and Society of the Texas Conference of Churches. He is president elect of the Whitsitt Society and serves on the advisory board of "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly."

He co-authored Politics: A Guidebook for Christians; Why I Am a Baptist; Endangered Species; Roots of Hope; An Approach to Christian Ethics; Equal Separation; the Fundamentalist Phenomenon; Teacher Renewal; and Soul Freedom: Baptist Battle Cry. He has been a contributor to such publications as The Journal of Church and State; The Southwestern Journal of Theology, Eternity, The Student, Review and Expositor, The Baptist Standard, and serves on the editorial board of Transformation: An International Dialogue on Evangelical Ethics, and SEEDS.

Dunn is married to the former Marilyn McNeely.