Religious communicator W.C. Fields dies at 96

NASHVILLE — W.C. Fields, a pioneer in religious communications and defender of an uncensored Baptist press, died Dec. 2 at age 96.

Fields, a native of Louisiana, served as a pastor of churches in Louisiana, Kentucky and Mississippi before becoming editor of the Mississippi Baptist Record in 1956. Three years later he was elected secretary of public relations for the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

He retired from the post in 1987 as vice president for public relations and director of Baptist Press, the denomination’s official news service.

With innovations such as setting up a media-style press room at annual meetings of the SBC, he built a network of Baptist journalism professionals trusted by people in the pew and respected by the secular press.

“Our role is to help these folks do a good job,” Fields reflected on his dealings with secular media in a Baptist News Global interview in 2015. “We have to be honest, transparent, trustworthy. Maybe that includes telling them some things Baptists wouldn’t want them to know, but they depend on their sources shooting straight with them.”

Quoted by Molly Worthen in “Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelism,” Fields argued a censored church media posed a threat to the core of Baptist identity.

“Our forefathers wisely protected and cherished free access to full information,” he wrote. “That structural freedom is linked to freedom of access to God, to an open Bible, to a divine right to private judgment in spiritual matters.”

Fields was preceded in death by his first wife, Rebecca Elizabeth Hagan “Libby” Fields. He is survived by his current wife, Lawana Jane House McIver; three children, nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. (BNG)