How the Biblical Recorder helped fry Chick-fil-A

The North Carolina Biblical Recorder almost made itself Chick-fil-A central.

It began quietly on July 2 with publication of a puff piece by Recorder Editor Allan Blume about Chick-fil-A chief operating author Dan Cathy, which said in part:

"We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. ... We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized. "We intend to stay the course," he said. "We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles."[22]

The Biblical Recorder's online presence is small (comparable to Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson's one-man blog), and the article attracted little attention.

On the same day, the watchdog group Equality Matters published an article detailing donation of almost $2 million to anti-gay groups by the WinShape Foundation, Chick-fil-A's charitable arm. Specifically:

• Marriage & Family Foundation: $1,188,380
• Fellowship Of Christian Athletes: $480,000
• National Christian Foundation: $247,500
• New Mexico Christian Foundation: $54,000 
• Exodus International: $1,000
• Family Research Council: $1,000
• Georgia Family Council: $2,500

The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Press reposted the Biblical Recorder story on July 16. The Baptist Press has a more significant Web readership, and the issues raised by the article began attracting considerable attention. The Biblical Recorder began publishing almost every Baptist Press article on the subject, thus vigorously promoting Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, and failing to enlighten its readers about the true sources of the anger directed at Chick-fil-A.

Apart from a contrived argument (overlooking the Equality Matters material and more inflammatory Cathy statements on June 16) that the original story had been "distorted" by mainstream media, the Recorder appears to have taken no actual editorial position of its own.

Fortunately, immediate past editor of the Biblical Recorder Norman Jameson took one on twitter:

Exactly. Southern contrived chicken. Unenlightening, even if it did produce record one-day profits for Chick-fil-A.

What N.C. Southern Baptist fundamentalists want in an editor?

About the abrupt resignation of North Carolina Biblical Recorder Editor Norman Jameson John D. Pierce of Baptists Today writes

In 2000, Herb Hollinger retired from the helm of Baptist Press — the Southern Baptist Executive Committee public relations arm that masquerades as a legitimate news service. In a meeting shortly afterward, longtime editor of Louisiana's Baptist Message, Lynn Clayton, asked then-SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman what kind of person would be chosen to lead BP.

Without hesitation, Chapman responded: “Someone loyal to me and the conservative cause.” While he expanded on that response, there was no mention of competence or experience, just loyalty to those looking for help in carrying out their Fundamentalist agenda. Chapman found such a person in Will Hall. North Carolina will find one too.

The right fluff

A state Baptist newspaper getting called out for excessive fluff is not surprising. A self-proclaimed fundamentalist doing the calling is downright shocking.

A letter to the editor in the Biblical Recorder, the state Baptist paper in North Carolina, carries the headline, "Too much fluff." The letter is from Shelby resident Bill Rhymes, who identifies himself as a Sunday School teacher and choir member of Zion Baptist Church. Rhymes says he has been a Baptist for 74 years and taught Sunday School for 60 years.

"What concerns me are the last two editions of the Biblical Recorder," Rhymes writes. "Inside was page after page of 'fluffy' writings about by-laws, rules, etc."

An editor's note at the end of the letter says the paper is required by the Baptist State Convention bylaws to print proposed changes to the convention's Articles and Bylaws at least twice.

In newspaper lingo, stories with little news value are often called fluff pieces.

While that might indeed fit the bylaw changes mentioned by Rhymes, his reasoning is completely different. He said after seeing the information, he asked himself, “What could all of this possibly mean for bringing people to know and love Jesus Christ?”

Rhymes said he wondered who would read the information and what Jesus would think about all the "excess garbage in what is supposed to be an inspirational publication about Him."

"I’m afraid He would have said, 'I never said these things, I never mentioned petty mounds of rules and bylaws about following Me.' Jesus would have said, 'I spoke the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. That is all you need for salvation with Me.'"

Interestingly, the comments section focuses on Rhymes' view of salvation and quickly becomes a debate between opposite sides in the Southern Baptist Convention controversy.

More revealing is the last part of the editor's note, which says printing the proposed bylaw changes is "a laudable safeguard and should inspire trust in the process by which this Convention of churches conducts the business that enables them together to care for others, share the gospel and dare to attempt great things for the Kingdom."

Now that is fluff.

The Biblical Recorder Editor's Journal

The first editor of a state Southern Baptist newspaper to publish a blog as part of his publication was Tony Cartledge of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder.

He called it The Editor's Journal [nonworking link] and supported an associated community of bloggers aptly termed "BRBlogs," whose members included the late W.W. Finlator and a woman named Rosemary Yelton, who wrote one brave, eloquent entry on Nov. 15, 2006.

She gently upbraided the North Carolina Baptist State Convention for "action regarding gay-friendly churches." It was one of a series of actions which included expelling Finlator's Pullen Memorial Baptist Church for the congregation's "unqualified acceptance of homosexual Christians and their full participation in the life and work of the church"

Yelton reflected on Donald Miller's use of a confessional both on campus, "not so accept others' confessions of previous sins, but to apologize for our actions (current and historical) as Christians ... . She then wrote in a post that save for quotation here apparently no longer exists anywhere on the Web:

From my own confessional booth I would like to say to all of you that this news from the Baptist convention is going to upset, anger or turn off ... I'm sorry. I'm sorry that we Baptists feel the need to separate ourselves from the very one we should love.

Neither Ms. Yelton's post nor Finlator's entries nor the work of Cartledge there in that blog space are available on the Web because in its more recent site redesign, the Biblical Recorder abandoned all of that blog's prior content, possibly consigning it to oblivion.