Walker Knight, founding editor of Baptists Today, has a magnet on the refrigerator in his Decatur, Ga., home. It reads: “Peace like war must be waged.”
The magnet correctly attributes the quote to Walker L. Knight. A friend brought it to him from Israel.
When visiting Walker in his home recently, I asked how his quote had made the journey from his mind to Israel and back to his own refrigerator.
Walker said he used the line first as part of a theme interpretation for a Woman’s Missionary Union event in the 1970s. He then put it into print in Home Missions magazine, the popular and sometimes controversial publication he edited at the time.
John Nichol, then pastor of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, where Walker has been a member since 1959, picked up the quote and used when speaking to the First Baptist Church of Calhoun, Ga., where Bob Maddox was pastor and Jack (son of Jimmy and Rosalynn) Carter was a member. (Bob became a speech writer and religious liaison for President Carter.)
The line — “Peace like war must be waged” — was used by President Carter in a March 1979 speech hailing the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, following the Camp David Accords in which Carter brought the leaders of those nations, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, together.
From that speech, the quote has been picked by many. It was even put on a magnet in Israel. It is wise advice from a wise man.
Walker Knight is a person of wisdom, courage and compassion. I consider it an honor to carry on the work he began 25 years ago in founding the news journal Baptists Today.
