Word & Way
Overview
Word & Way is a Baptist news journal based in Jefferson City, Missouri, founded in 1896, that reports on Baptist life, religious liberty and state and national religion news. For more than a century it was the historic news journal of Missouri Baptists, closely associated with the Missouri Baptist Convention, and it publishes in print and online from Jefferson City at wordandway.org. Its name is also rendered Word and Way, the form used in most news references to the publication.
State Baptist newspapers such as Word & Way once formed the primary information network of Southern Baptist life, carrying denominational news, mission reports, editorials and church announcements to pastors and lay readers who had few other sources. Word & Way is notable among them for the length of its history, for the editorial stands it took on church-state questions, and for the legal and institutional conflict of the early 2000s, when it separated itself from Missouri Baptist Convention control and was eventually released from the convention's lawsuit, continuing as an independent Baptist news journal.
Founding and Early Role
Word & Way was founded in 1896. Early issues were published from Kansas City, Missouri, as surviving transcribed articles dated 1896 onward in the Wikisource library attest, before the journal became established in Jefferson City, the state capital, alongside the headquarters of the Missouri Baptist Convention. Through the twentieth century it was described in Baptist Press and Associated Baptist Press reporting as the official journal, and later the official news journal, of the Missouri Baptist Convention, although its editor Bill Webb observed in 2002 that it had never formally been granted that official title in its long service, even while functioning as Missouri Baptists' principal source of news.
The journal's ordinary work was denominational journalism: reporting the annual meeting and Executive Board of the state convention, the work of Missouri Baptist agencies and institutions, missionary appointments and activities, and news from local churches across the state. It also carried editorials through which Missouri Baptist opinion was formed on public questions. A documented example from March 1969 shows editor H. Ross Edwards using the journal's editorial page to oppose three bills before the Missouri legislature that would have supplied state financial aid to private or church-related educational institutions or their students, arguing that private causes should receive support from private sources and public institutions from the public. That position, separation of church and state in education funding, was a hallmark of historic Baptist advocacy for religious liberty, and Word & Way's editorial voice on such questions is part of its historical record.
Editors and Staff
The journal's editors were significant figures in Baptist journalism. H. H. McGinty edited the paper from Jefferson City around 1960, when he used its pages to comment on the geography and future of the Southern Baptist Convention. H. Ross Edwards was editor in the late 1960s. Bob S. Terry, later a prominent Baptist editor, served as editor of Word & Way and in that capacity held office in national Baptist press circles around 1990.
The longest-serving modern editor was Bill Webb, who began his tenure on March 1, 1996, and served for twenty years. Webb came to Word & Way as a veteran Baptist journalist, having previously worked as editor of the Illinois Baptist and as a staff writer for the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, later the International Mission Board. In May 2012 he was seriously injured in a cycling accident in Jefferson City, sustaining injuries to his face and head that required rehabilitation and left lasting effects, yet he returned to the editorship. In 2016 he won the Baptist Communicators Association's Frank Burkhalter Award for exceptional achievement in news writing, for a reflection on visiting a refugee camp in Jordan in 2013, and that year announced his retirement after two decades, during which he had also served on the board of Baptist News Global through the journal's partnership in the New Voice Media group of Baptist newspapers. Webb's editorship spanned the journal's most turbulent institutional period and defined its modern identity as an independent, professionally edited Baptist news source.
Coverage
Word & Way reports on Baptist life in Missouri and beyond: congregations, associations, the state convention and its successor and partner bodies, Baptist universities and agencies, and national Southern Baptist and broader Baptist affairs insofar as they affect Missouri readers. It has consistently covered religious liberty as a core subject, consistent with its founding-era editorial commitments and with the historic Baptist principle of church-state separation, as well as state and national religion news of interest to its readers.
Its partnership arrangements widened its reach. Under Webb, Word & Way was a partner, with two other Baptist newspapers, in New Voice Media, linked to Associated Baptist Press, the independent Baptist news service now known as Baptist News Global. Through such partnerships the journal's Missouri reporting reached a national Baptist audience, and national and international Baptist reporting, such as Webb's Jordan refugee-camp account, reached its Missouri readers. The journal has published in print by subscription and, in the internet era, online, where its reporting and commentary are available to readers beyond its traditional subscription base.
Separation from the Missouri Baptist Convention
The defining institutional event in the journal's modern history grew out of the conservative-moderate conflict within Southern Baptist life. In 2001 the trustees of Word & Way, together with those of Missouri Baptist University, the Windermere Baptist Conference Center and the Missouri Baptist Foundation, changed their corporate charters to become self-perpetuating, electing their own trustees rather than having trustees elected by the Missouri Baptist Convention; the Baptist Home retirement system had taken the same step in 2000. The Word & Way corporation itself had been incorporated in 2000 under former convention executive director Jim Hill, with charter language similar to Windermere's and, critically, without a clause requiring convention approval of charter amendments, a point that later proved decisive in court for Windermere.
Missouri Baptist Convention messengers responded at the 2001 annual meeting by voting overwhelmingly to escrow approximately $475,000 in funds earmarked for Word & Way for 2002, part of a larger escrow affecting all five entities. The journal also depended on subscriptions, largely from the same Missouri Southern Baptists who had supported it through Cooperative Program giving. In April 2002 the convention's Executive Board voted to end recognition of Word & Way as the convention's news journal and to establish a new official publication, which became The Pathway. Editorially, convention conservatives charged that Word & Way promoted moderate and liberal viewpoints and neglected conservative ones; the journal's defenders presented it as an honest, dependable source serving all Missouri Baptists.
Litigation and Exclusion
On August 13, 2002, the Missouri Baptist Convention filed suit in Cole County Circuit Court against the five formerly affiliated institutions, seeking to force them to rescind their charter changes. Word & Way continued operating during the litigation from offices in the Baptist Building in Jefferson City, rent-free and without a lease, a fact noted pointedly by convention leaders. In November 2003 convention president David Tolliver informed editor Bill Webb that the journal's staff would no longer be allowed to attend convention meetings, including Executive Board sessions and the 2004 annual meeting, on the stated ground of prudence between litigants. Baptist observers described the exclusion of a Baptist publication from covering its own convention as unprecedented in Southern Baptist circles, and the journal protested that its staff, as members of convention churches, were entitled to attend otherwise open meetings under the convention's governing documents. Its reporters were again asked to leave an Executive Board meeting in April 2004, departing under protest.
The legal case turned gradually against the convention. Windermere was the first entity released, when Judge Richard Callahan ruled in its favour on March 4, 2009, holding that the convention was not a member of the Windermere corporation and that no contract bound the two, and the Missouri Court of Appeals later upheld the reasoning that a charter lacking a convention-approval clause could not be overridden. On April 23, 2010, by the dating of Baptist Press and Baptist News Global reports of the filing, convention attorneys filed a voluntary dismissal in Cole County Circuit Court releasing Word & Way from all claims. The dismissal was made without prejudice, preserving a theoretical right to refile, and convention counsel stated that the Executive Board continued to believe the breakaway had been wrong but had concluded that pursuing the newspaper's assets, principally a mailing list and ageing computers transferred in 2001, was not worth the cost, particularly since the convention's news journal was by then The Pathway. The journal's lead attorney, Jim Shoemake, welcomed the dismissal as an end to litigation for Word & Way.
Independent Continuation
Released from the lawsuit and separated from convention control, Word & Way continued as an independent Baptist news journal from Jefferson City, governed by its self-perpetuating board of trustees and supported by subscriptions and its readers rather than by convention budget allocations. Its post-separation reporting retained its focus on Missouri Baptist life, including coverage sympathetic to the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, the moderate body formed during the state conflict, as well as national religion news and religious liberty. That continuation distinguishes it from many state Baptist papers that ceased print publication or were absorbed in the digital transition; Word & Way survived both a denominational schism and a lawsuit while keeping its 1896 identity, name and Jefferson City base.
Industry Role
In the history of American religious journalism, Word & Way is a well-documented case study of the state Baptist newspaper: its editorial authority in the era when denominational papers shaped church opinion, its vulnerability when denominational politics polarised, and its reinvention as an independent journal sustained by a loyal readership. Its litigation is regularly cited in accounts of the Missouri Baptist conflict alongside the parallel cases of Windermere, Missouri Baptist University, the Missouri Baptist Foundation and the Baptist Home, because the five cases together tested how far a state convention's authority extended over separately incorporated agencies.
For working journalists, the episode of its exclusion from convention meetings in 2003 and 2004 is also cited in discussions of press access within religious bodies, since the journal was at once a party to litigation, a member institution of the community and a news organisation seeking to cover public denominational business.
Recognition
Recognition of the journal's journalism includes editor Bill Webb's 2016 Frank Burkhalter Award from the Baptist Communicators Association for exceptional achievement in news writing, awarded for his account of Syrian and other refugees based on his 2013 visit to a refugee camp in Jordan. The award, from the professional association of Baptist communicators, reflected the journal's ambition under Webb to practise original, on-the-ground reporting rather than only denominational record-keeping, and it came in the twentieth year of his editorship, marked by a reception at First Baptist Church in Jefferson City attended by colleagues and readers.
Availability
Word & Way publishes from Jefferson City, Missouri, in print and online at wordandway.org, where current reporting on Baptist life, religious liberty and religion news, together with subscription information, is available. Its archive reaches back to its founding in 1896, and transcribed articles from its early Kansas City-era issues, covering 1896 to 1980, are preserved in the Wikisource library for historical research.
