By Greg Warner
Associated Baptist Press
The Biblical Recorder, newspaper of North Carolina Baptists, will choose some of its own directors in a move to preserve its journalistic freedom, say the newspapers leaders.
Beginning this fall, the 172-year-old newspaper will nominate four people to open seats on its 16-member board, bypassing a convention nominating committee the leaders fear is stacking the board with “agenda-bearing conservatives.”
The cost will be significant, however. The Recorder, with an annual budget of about $900,000, will likely lose a total of $400,000 in funding from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina over the next four years.
The move-invoking an unusual option in the convention's bylaws-will not negate the newspaper's relationship with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, which still can elect or reject the newspaper's nominees. But it will give the Recorder some insulation against censorship in the theologically diverse but deeply divided convention, its leaders said.
“In most other state conventions where agenda-bearing conservatives have gained control of the state paper's board, they have either muzzled the editor through censorship, or replaced him with someone who could be counted on to promote the party line,” said editor-president Tony Cartledge. “A free Baptist press was lost in those conventions.”
Baptist newspapers and news services have been a frequent battleground in the Southern Baptist Convention's controversy between conservatives and moderates, which now has migrated to the state conventions.
Cartledge informed the committee on nominations in late January of the Recorder's December decision. The newspaper's directors acted under a 1992 amendment to the convention's governing documents which allow its 12 affiliated agencies to nominate up to 50 percent of its directors. In return, the entity gives up a similar percentage of its funding from the convention during the time those directors serve-four years in the Recorder's case.
The newspaper is the first North Carolina agency to exercise the option. But in a similar action, the Baptist Retirement Homes of North Carolina recently voted to start naming its own trustees. Meanwhile, a convention committee is studying its relationships with five affiliated colleges.
“We exercise this option with deep regret,” said Joe Babb, chairman of the Biblical Recorder board, “not only for the loss of funding but for the increasing polarization in BSC life that has led us to believe that, for the time being, this decision is necessary in order to safeguard and preserve the charter principles of a free press for the future. We have no agenda for changing our relationship to the BSC.”
Typically, each president of a North Carolina Baptist entity gives the nominating committee a list of potential trustees-generally twice as many as the number of vacancies-and the committee usually nominates people from that list.
Last year, however, the committee nominated people from those lists for every entity except the Recorder, Cartledge said. “The committee accepted only two of the eight names submitted by the Recorder and excluded the other six without providing any rationale for doing so.”
“As for why these good people were excluded, all we have to go on is the chairman's statement to Conservative Carolina Baptists [on Oct. 20] that the committee wanted to put more conservatives on the Biblical Recorder board,” Cartledge said.
Several other agency presidents were surprised when the committee rejected some of their nominees as well. The committee said some were excluded because they belonged to churches affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, which has an open policy toward homosexuals.
But none of the Recorder's excluded nominees were members of Alliance churches, Cartledge said.
If the North Carolina Baptists vote this fall to reject the Recorder's nominees, he said, convention bylaws require their replacements come from the newspaper's list of other recommended directors.
Cartledge said having conservative directors for the newspaper is not the issue.
“I have recommended a number of conservative candidates in past requests, and they have served well,” he said. “But when presenting potential candidates, I have always told the nominating committee that whether a board member favors conservative or moderate theological positions is not an issue to me. What is important is that the person appreciates traditional Baptist distinctives and is committed to the mission of the Biblical Recorder.”