BAA Bestows Truett Awards

By Meg Cullar

Photograph (Walker) by John Pierce/Baptists Today

The Baylor Alumni Association will honor two Baptist leaders with the George W. Truett Distinguished Church Service Award. The awards are traditionally presented at Baylor’s May commencement exercises and are meant to honor individuals who exemplify the life and career of the late George W. Truett and reflect the true meaning of Baylor’s motto, "Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana."

This year’s recipients of the Truett Award are both Baylor graduates: Dr. William M. (Bill) Hinson '53 and Walker L. Knight '49.

Hinson is the CEO and vice chair of the Haggai Institute, one of the world's largest church training organizations, which equips church leaders in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In working with the organization, he has made more than fifty around-the-world trips. He served as president of the organization from 1995 to 2001.

Hinson has said that he believes his role in life is to encourage others. "On my tombstone, I would like to have written: an encourager for Christ," he told the Haggai Institute's publication. He said that a healthy ego is important in a leader. "As Christians, we should have the biggest, strongest egos we can—and that's different from being egotistical," he said.

A high school football standout, Hinson came to Baylor on a football scholarship and decided to be a preacher after, as a sophomore, he was selected by his fellow students to speak at a campus-wide revival. After graduating from Baylor, Hinson earned a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctor of ministry degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Beginning in 1956, he served as pastor at several influential Florida and Louisiana Baptist churches -- Wayside Baptist in Miami, First Baptist of Fort Lauderdale, and First Baptist of New Orleans. A nationally known speaker and pastor, he was instrumental in helping John Haggai found his organization when Hinson was pastor in Fort Lauderdale.

Hinson also served as special assistant to the president of Baylor from 1986 to 1989 and as an executive assistant to Paul Meyer, president of Success Motivation Institute Inc., before joining the Haggai Institute in 1995.

Hinson is married to the former Bettye Schauberger '52 of Waco, and they have two grown children and six grandchildren.

Walker Knight grew up around the newspaper business in Henderson, Kentucky, working at night as a reporter while still in high school. He went on to become someone who was described as "the foremost religious journalist in the country" by his nominator, Ella Wall Prichard '63.

After graduating from Baylor, Knight worked briefly at a newspaper in Marlin before becoming associate editor of the Baptist Standard in 1950. He was editorial director of Home Missions magazine, a publication of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, from 1959 to 1983. He left that organization in the midst of the fundamentalist takeover to found an independent publication called SBC Today, now Baptists Today.

Current executive editor of Baptists Today John Pierce said, "During his time as editor of Home Missions magazine, Walker set a new standard for Baptist journalism by writing about the social contexts in which missions occurred and by employing talented photojournalists to further communicate the emotional aspects of the stories."

Pierce added, "His attention to changing attitudes about race and gender roles made his work controversial among some Baptist leaders at the time."

In leaving a secure job to start the independent publication, Knight took a bold leap of faith, Pierce said. "He has been willing to take risks and make sacrifices in response to his calling," Pierce said. "To the larger Baptist family, Walker is highly respected for his journalistic skills, deep commitments to justice, and personal integrity."

Knight ended his editorship of Baptists Today in 1988, but continued as publisher and then later returned as interim editor in 1997. The author of several books, Knight also served as the first president of the Whitsett Baptist Heritage Society. He has won many other awards, including the Religious Freedom Award from the Associated Baptist Press (ABP) in 1979, election into the ABP’s Mainstream Hall of Fame in 2004, and the Judson-Rice Award in 2008 from Baptists Today.

One of the most widely known phrases that Knight wrote, in an editorial, is more often attributed to a U.S. president than to its author. In the Home Missions magazine in the 1970s, Knight wrote the phrase, "Peace, like war, must be waged." The phrase was picked up by the pastor of his church, Oakhurst Baptist in Decatur, Georgia, who used it at a speech in another church. There it was noticed by a speech writer for Jimmy Carter, and the phrase was used by President Carter in a March 1979 speech about the Camp David Accords.

Knight was married for sixty-four years to the late Nell Knight and has four children, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.