DECATUR, Ga. (ABP) — Associated Baptist Press presented its inaugural Greg Warner Lifetime Achievement Award in Religious Journalism to the long-time executive editor of the independent news service, forced by health issues to step down last year.
Greg Warner accepts lifetime achievement award from ABP.
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"This award will honor journalists whose body of work over the years has contributed in significant ways to the understanding of religion in America," ABP Executive Director David Wilkinson announced at an Oct. 23 banquet in Warner's honor in Decatur, Ga. "It will recognize persons who, with courage and integrity, have addressed important issues related to matters of faith, whose writing and reporting have consistently reflected the highest standards of journalism and whose work is consistent with the mission and values of Associated Baptist Press."
Wilkinson said criteria for the award, established by vote of ABP directors Oct. 22, "pretty much spell out" qualities that characterized Warner's nearly 30-year career as a Christian journalist.
Warner was the first permanent employee of the news service, formed in 1990 as an independent voice in Baptist journalism in response to the firing of two top editors of the Southern Baptist Convention's news service, Baptist Press. He helped build ABP into one of the nation's most respected voices in religious journalism.
Already a veteran of Baptist journalism when tapped by ABP's board of directors at age 35, Warner gained widespread respect among peers by winning numerous awards for journalistic excellence. What many readers didn't know is that much of that work was done despite significant physical pain.
Diagnosed with degenerative-disc disease and failed-back syndrome, Warner underwent the first of more than a dozen back surgeries in 1986. After his fourth lumbar spinal fusion in 2008, at age 53, he informed board members he would begin a 90-day sick leave and transition into permanent disability.
Warner told more than 100 friends and colleagues gathered in his honor that his last surgery has also failed, and he is scheduled to undergo another operation in the near future. He said being out of the pressures of daily deadlines, while difficult on a personal level, allows him to better manage chronic pain.
"When I entered this profession, all I wanted to do was make a difference," Warner said. "You believed that you could, and when we formed ABP in 1990 that was clear. We knew we could make a difference, and right away."
In later years, he confessed, that was "not so clear."
"It gets tougher and tougher to see how what we do as journalists makes a difference and why it's worth it," Warner said, "but you know where I have cast my lot."
"You know the principles that ABP and I have stood for: freedom of conscience, unfettered responsible journalism and the radical concept that the truth can take care of itself," he said. "It doesn't need our props, and telling the facts is its own justification. That's where I cast my lot, and I am grateful that you noticed."
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.