Walker Knight, Founding Editor of Baptists Today Newspaper, Dies at 95

Walker L. Knight, a trailblazer in establishing a free and independent Baptist press, died Dec. 1 at age 95.

Knight, a 60-year member of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia, was born with ink in his veins. His father worked as a managing editor in Kentucky. Knight followed in his footsteps, graduating from Baylor University’s school of journalism and working as editor of an Air Force publication and a Texas country weekly.

He went to the Baptist Standard, published by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, in 1950. He served as associate editor under David M. Gardner, who held the post 1944-1954, and stayed on to work under E.S. James, editor from 1954 until 1966.

In 1960 Knight succeeded a retiring John L. Caylor as secretary of the department of editorial service of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board. One of the denomination’s oldest entities, the HMB merged in 1997 with the Brotherhood Commission and Radio and Television Commission to form the SBC North American Mission Board.

As editor of Home Missions magazine, later called Missions/USA, Knight and his staff exercised editorial freedom to cover stories they believed advanced the cause of home missions. For Knight and his editorial team, that meant dealing openly with racial attitudes, national ethical concerns, women’s role in ministry, social justice issues and an openness to new ideas.

Knight’s forthright approach sometimes put him at odds with conservative pastors, churches and denominational leaders holding to a less holistic view of missions. A 1967 cover story on civil rights leader William Holmes Borders, pastor of Wheat Street Baptist Church in Atlanta and spokesman for the city’s poor and dispossessed, prompted hundreds of readers to cancel subscriptions and calls for Knight to be fired.

Emmanuel McCall, an African-American minister who served on the executive staff of the Home Mission Board from 1968 until 1991, described the magazine as “perhaps the most effective communication piece that caused Southern Baptists to become more open and sensitive to racial reconciliation.”

Knight retired early after nearly 34 years in denominational journalism — including 24 years at the Home Mission Board — to pursue his long-time dream of establishing an independent Southern Baptist newspaper to fill what he saw as a void between the narrow focus of SBC missions magazines and narrow geographical interests of Baptist state newspapers.

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