Honoring Walker L. Knight

Note: This article has been adapted from two papers delivered at a meeting of an informal group of 30 persons (most religious journalists), who worked for and with Walker Knight.

By Emmanuel L. McCall, Sr., Vice President     Baptist World Alliance

            June 20, 1995 was a momentous day in the life of Southern Baptists. On that afternoon, the SBC in annual session passed a “Resolution On Racial Reconciliation on the 150^th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention.” The SBC repudiated its racist past, asked African-Americans for forgiveness, and pledged complete allegiance to scriptural teachings regarding race.

            One person who must have found redemption in the passing of that resolution was Walker L. Knight. As editor of the Home Missions Magazine, Walker had suffered much as he wrote voluminously on matters of racism in America and the need for racial reconciliation in the SBC. His efforts were not well received. They caused numerous cancellations of the magazine, ostracism, and public scorn.

            I first met Walker in 1966. He had come to Kentucky to interview an interracial group of pastors who had been part of the Louisville Baptist Interracial Pastors Conference. This group. begun in 1962 under the leadership of Dr. John Claypool, had been very instrumental in helping Louisville avoid the racial trauma that occurred in other southern cities during the 1960s.

            At its height, the conference had about 800 clergy including church staffs, denominational staffs, seminary faculties, and retired clergy in its membership. A united front was presented to the churches of both races about reconciliation.

            Walker’s interview covered about eight pages in print and pictures. Other articles about race relations were in that January, 1967, edition of Home Missions. What really angered many Southern Baptists was the cover picture of Dr. William Holmes Borders, African-American pastor of the Wheat Street Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA. Many Baptists cancelled their subscriptions.

            Walker, however, was undaunted by the negative reactions. He had the support and encouragement of the HMB executive Dr. Arthur Rutledge and the good will of many of the staff. Most of all he had his own sense of God’s purpose and his personal integrity.

            It was during this time that the false dichotomy between evangelism and social action raised its ugly head as a way to impugn the integrity of racial reconciliation. Walker demonstrated his theological abilities and drew upon the gifts of the Christian Life Commission and seminary staffs. There were ample men and women who were committed to interpreting scripture with integrity. He had a ready reserve of competent scholars. Beyond these, he found support from other SBC organizations, especially Woman’s Missionary Union.

            When I think of Walker Knight, I think of the host of men and women in the SBC who were stalwarts in ministries of racial reconciliation—Victor Glass, Wendell Grigg, Arthur Rutledge, Wendell Belew, Hugo Culpepper, John Claypool, Henlee Barnette, Marie Mathis, Alma Hunt, John Havlik, T.B. Maston, Foy Valentine, Guy Bellamy, Carolyn Crumpler, and Carlisle Driggers.

            The list of those who have given their lives in ministries of racial reconciliation is extensive.[1] Only God knows them all by name. But high in my mind, because of the vehicle he used and the awareness he created, has to be Walker L. Knight.

By Jim Newton, Religious Journalist (ret.)       Clinton, MS

            Professionally and personally, Walker Knight was and is the best editor and the finest Christian I have ever known. No other editor of a Baptist publication has done as much to motivate, educate and encourage Baptists to improve race relations during and after the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

            For 23 years as editor of Home Missions magazine published by the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, Walker Knight did more to improve race relations than all other Baptist editors combined. Yet because of his modesty and humility, few Baptists who were not active before he retired as editor of Baptists Today in 1988 know or remember the significant role he played in Christian ethics. Today at age 85, he is publisher emeritus of Baptists Today, and his mind is as sharp as ever.

            These are audacious words of praise for a religious journalist many Baptists, especially those not involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, may not know or remember. And that is the point of this article: there are Baptists among us who are rewriting history to eliminate facts and trends that do not fit the new directions Baptists have by majority vote chosen to follow during the last two decades. As a denomination, Baptists are in danger of forgetting people like Walker Knight who had the courage to take a stand on controversial issues.

            When Baptists Today celebrated its 25^th anniversary in 2008, the magazine paid tribute to his role as founding editor and publisher. But very little has been published about his pioneer days as editor of Home Missions and MissionsUSA. The North American Mission Board discontinued the publication in 1997. During his 23 years as editor, Walker Knight spoke out editorially with courage, prophetic vision, and wisdom.

            Walker Leigh Knight, a native of Kentucky who grew up in the newspaper business working for his father, felt God was calling him to the ministry when he was a journalism student at Baylor University following World War II, but he did not feel called “to preach.” The field of “religious journalism” did not even exist as a career option in those days, as editors of all Baptist publications were former pastors, not trained journalists. He served as associate editor of The Baptist Standard from 1949-1959. In 1959 he became associate editor of Home Missions, and was promoted to editor in 1960.

            What were the characteristics that made Walker Knight such a great editor and religious journalist?

• He led by example; and had extremely high professional standards.
• He had the courage to be prophetic regardless of the personal cost.
• He was a man of vision who was always looking to the future.
• He believed his calling was to be an “agent of change.”
• He was always secure and confident, never afraid of losing his job.
• He acted on his beliefs and his convictions, rather than reacting.
• He was a servant leader in his local church, putting into action the principles he espoused in his national publication.
• He was always fair, honest, and transparent, with no hidden agendas.
• He never played denominational or office politics.
• He was always fair and balanced in coverage of controversy.
• He was innovative and always willing to try new approaches.
• He cared about people, and always put others first.
• He was humble and modest, never egotistical or self-centered.
• He was gentle in his relationships, but forceful in writing editorials.
• He was an issue-oriented editor/Christian; he always saw the big picture.
• The one word that best describes him is the word “integrity.”

            Walker was one of the first Baptist editors to deal with the race issue. In the May issue of his first year, he wrote an editorial on “Containing the Race Issue,” stating “The specter of race prejudice stalks the nation and has made its home in the South. Christians face a crisis which will require all the grace we have, not only toward those of other races but toward those with whom we disagree.” He offered 16 practical suggestions.

            In September of 1962 a letter to the editor suggested that “it is wise for denominational leaders not to take a stand on integration because it would antagonize many of our people.” Knight’s response: “I have not taken a specific stand editorially favoring integration, but I feel that schools, churches, and businesses should be open to all people who want equal opportunities. I believe this is a moral problem and that possibly we should be antagonizing some of our people about the problem.”

            One of his strongest editorials, published in January of 1968, dealt with the need for Baptist pastors to speak out on controversial issues from a free pulpit. “Silent pulpits are captives of the culture of present society and to be silent is to imply that the Bible says nothing or if it does that the minister does not believe it. We lose our integrity by our silence and the church loses its integrity because it does not practice what the Scriptures teach. . . . We have failed to hold up before our people a clear picture of what it actually means to be the church in our day. Too often the church waits in silence as though it has a vested interest in the status quo, refusing to challenge the patterns of culture, hoping instead to avoid the necessity of tension-producing confrontation.”

            When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Walker responded with the weeping and wailing of a prophet crying in the desert: “Christians have reacted with a sense of shame, guilt and repentance wondering what they could have done or left undone to help create such a society where prophets of peace and nonviolence are killed . . . . Only a Christian and moral solution, only the changing of men’s hearts, only the application of the ethic of Christ, only the response of love can bring the necessary solution. Let us greet this tragedy and useless waste of life to purge our hearts of any and all attitudes and practices that would limit our witness to any and all persons. Let us confess and renounce the sin of prejudice that has separated us from our Negro brothers and has caused us to look the other way when they have been denied their civil and personal rights as men.”

            Over the years, the magazine generated incredible reader response because it dealt with issues that touched the lives of the readers. Issues like the sexual revolution, birth control and the population explosion, the influence of society on the church and the church’s lack of influence on society, the plight of Mexican-Americans who live in poverty and abuse by the migrant farm industry, urban decay and suburban extravagance, evangelism and social action, the struggle of American Indians for equality and dignity, violence and riots in America, the Hippie movement, the leisure movement, poverty in America, the world hunger crisis, ecology, pollution and the environment, the agony of the aged and aging society, the telecommunications revolution, women’s changing role in the church, capital punishment, the laymen’s revolution, the Christian and politics, changing ethnic patterns in America, cooperation with government organizations, Baptist involvement in the Ku Klux Klan, Baptist churches and “Christian academies,” violence in the family, and war in an age of nuclear proliferation.

            Perhaps the most beautiful writing ever published in the magazine was Walker’s 1972 poetic essay on world peace, entitled “The Peacemaker.” It was so good Jimmy Carter quoted it in one of his presidential addresses. Here is what he wrote:

            “It is not just hating war, despising war, sitting back and waiting for war to end. It is not just loving peace, wanting peace, sitting back and waiting for peace to come. Peace like war is waged. Peace plans its strategy and encircles its enemy. Peace marshals its forces and storms the gates. Peace gathers its weapons and pierces the defense. Christ has turned it all around. I am to love my enemy . . . do good to those who hate me . . . turn the other cheek. I am the peacemaker.”

            And that describes Walker Knight. He is the most Christ-like man I’ve ever known. I am proud and humbled to have had the privilege of working alongside this man of God whom I consider both my mentor and my beloved friend. Thanks be to God for Walker L. Knight.