Criswell: His Life and Times

Preface

How does a boy born in virtual poverty in the middle of nowhere, far out on the Southwestern plains, rise to become the pastor of one of the most famed churches in the Western world, building it into the largest and most influential pulpit in all the land? This is the story of that one somebody who, through the power of his personality and persuasion and his deep and abiding convictions, made a difference in his world. W. A. Criswell grew up in a devout home where his father was a loyal devotee of J. Frank Norris, and his mother was a fierce defender of George W. Truett. ¹ These two iconic figures of early-twentieth-century American ecclesiology served as Criswell’s ministerial models throughout his entire life. Norris’s fundamental theology and tenacious tendency to confront error influenced much of Criswell’s own approach to ministry—but, at the same time, Criswell was keen at adapting Truett’s statesmanlike stature and unique ability to survive, remaining untouchable, serenely above the fray of confrontations and conflicts. Those familiar with these three men can trace the qualities of Norris and Truett as they morph, in a sense, into one somebody named W. A. Criswell.

In the library of those individuals whom I respect and admire deeply, Criswell is high on the shelf. In fact, you have to reach very high to find him. As his pastoral successor in Dallas, it was an unspeakable joy to have him at my side as my biggest asset and greatest supporter. Perhaps only someone who lived on the inside of First Baptist Church in Dallas can appreciate the true genius of his unparalleled life and ministry. There have been several gifted, bona fide theologians in the past century as well as a number of unusually gifted, servant-hearted pastors. However, W. A. Criswell stands alone among them in the coupling of these two God-given traits. I preached hundreds of sermons from the same pulpit from which he preached thousands as I loved and lived life with him in the relationship of father and son. However, if you are looking to read a hagiography of this man, you will most likely not appreciate this volume. Like all of us, he made mistakes, said and did things which called for repentance, and lived with his own unique regrets. In the midst of his greatness, he was, as James said of the great prophet Elijah, a man with a nature like ours (James 5:17).

My own personal history with Dr. Criswell and my role as his pastoral successor in Dallas provide a unique perspective in the formulation of this biography. My first encounter with him occurred more than fifty years ago in 1968. I was a young college student, having just surrendered my life to the gospel ministry. My own pastor in Fort Worth, W. Fred Swank, was scheduled to speak at a large banquet at the First Baptist Church in Dallas and asked me to drive him to the event. Criswell ushered us into his office, and no young priest meeting the Pope in Rome could have been more impressed than I was that evening. I still keep in my desk a letter he wrote me three days later, saying, You have a wonderful future and should make a good ready for it. Then in 1969, when he published his best-selling book Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True, my brave, eighteen-year-old fiancée Susie purchased a copy, drove to Dallas, marched into his office unannounced, and asked him to sign it for me as a Christmas present. To this day I see it on the shelf every morning when I sit at my desk. During the 1980s, when I was the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Criswell adopted me as one of his own. For several successive summers, Susie and I vacationed with the Criswells. These excursions took us all over the world to such places as Israel, Jordan, England, France, and many cities in America. While in London in the summer of 1988, Criswell, by his own detailed admission, had a supernatural encounter with the Lord in the middle of the night, revealing who his pastoral successor should be. The next morning, he wrote in his own hand a letter describing it, which he sent back to the church. That letter, now framed, hangs on my study wall. In 1993, after fifteen fruitful years of ministry in Fort Lauderdale, I was called to be the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, and shortly thereafter Criswell retired from the pastorate after fifty years of ministry in Dallas. And on a cold January day in 2002, it was my privilege to bring a message at his memorial service.

Many remember Criswell as a church builder, the founder of a college, the author of more than fifty books, the most influential Christian church leader of the twentieth century—as someone with a number of unparalleled achievements and attributes. But I knew the man in his pajamas on Saturday nights at the parsonage on Swiss Avenue, when I would stop by and slip in the back door. He would be in his study. We would go over my message for the next morning and then kneel beside his couch, where he would lay his hands on my head and pray for me. I remember him holding the hands of a dying man or woman whom he had pastored for decades, whispering words of comfort into their ears in their last moments on Earth and then, with tears rolling down his cheeks, begin to sing to them some great hymn of the faith. I remember him in restaurant after restaurant, making his way to the back to tenderly thank a bus boy for his consecrated service. Above everything else, he loved people, regardless of who they were or from whence they came.

Dr. Criswell was known as a great preacher and pulpiteer. Few, if any, could ever rise to the occasion like this remarkable man. And issuing out of all his sermons was his unique appeal to trust in Christ as a personal savior. Anyone and everyone who sat at his feet over the course of time can repeat the words of invitation that followed his Sunday sermons:

In just a moment we shall stand and sing our hymn of invitation, and while we sing it, a family, you, a couple, you, or just one somebody, you, to give your heart to the Lord, to place your life in the fellowship of this dear church, to answer God’s call. Upon the first note of the first stanza, come to Jesus. The stairway on the side, from the front, from the back, many will come. Into the aisles on the lower floor, come as God presses His appeal to your heart. Make it now. Come now. Do it now while we stand and sing . . . come now, just one somebody, you.

What was said of good King Josiah can certainly be said of W. A. Criswell: Now before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might . . . nor after him did any arise like him (2 Kings 23:25). Had he gone into politics, Criswell would no doubt have been a United States senator—or perhaps president. Had he entered law, he may well have risen to sit on the Supreme Court. Had he gone into business, he would most likely have built a Fortune 500 company. But from his earliest recollection, all he ever felt the Lord calling him to do was to be the pastor of a local New Testament church. Before him there was no one like him, and now, more than twenty years after his death, there has not arisen anyone to take his place in American ecclesiology. If I could have one more conversation with him, I would simply say, Dr. C, there was just . . . one somebody, you!

1. For a more detailed explanation of these two iconic figures of the first half of the twentieth century, see O. S. Hawkins, In the Name of God: The Colliding Lives, Legends, and Legacies of J. Frank Norris and George W. Truett. Norris was the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas (1909–1952), and Truett was the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas (1897–1944). Their lives were lived in controversy and constant conflict with one another.

Introduction

It was a cold, wind-swept, winter evening in 1921, way out on the wide-open Texas plains in the little community of Texline. The old-timers were fond of saying that the terrain was so flat out there that you could stand on a brick and see the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Pacific to the west.

The little family had gathered around the dinner table for the evening meal. At one end of the table sat Wally Amos Criswell with a copy of The Searchlight alongside his plate.¹ At the other end of the table sat his wife, Anna Currie Criswell, who—not to be outdone by her husband—had brought to the dinner table a copy of the Baptist Standard, the weekly Texas Baptist magazine.² And between them, seated in his regular place on the side of the table, was twelve-year-old W. A. Criswell. The discussion that was about to ensue was an almost nightly occurrence for the young lad as he intensely listened and watched as though he were viewing a tennis match, with volleys back and forth as his mother and his father argued over whether J. Frank Norris or George W. Truett was the greatest. Criswell would later say, As a boy, growing up there were two tremendous heroes in our house. My father admired Frank Norris and he did it inordinately. . . . My father thought Frank Norris was the greatest preacher that ever lived. My mother was just the opposite. My mother thought that Frank Norris was the Devil incarnate and that all he wanted to do was tear up our Baptist convention.³

So, from his earliest recollection, W. A. Criswell was fed a steady diet of animated debate between his father, a faithful and ardent supporter and defender of Norris, and his mother, an equally convinced and passionate devotee of Truett. The evening meal took on the same climate as another meal two millennia earlier in an upper room on Mount Zion, when Jesus’s disciples argued among themselves about which of them would be the greatest in the coming kingdom. Such arguments usually end in frustration and failure. But these nightly debates around the dinner table in Texline seemed to forever sear into a young boy’s mind the attributes and attitudes, as well as the pits and pitfalls, of the two greatest pastoral titans of the first half of the twentieth century.

On this particular evening in Texline, the elder Criswell began to read from The Searchlight about the brewing evolution controversy at Baylor, the state’s largest Baptist college down in Waco. A prominent professor, Grove Samuel Dow, had recently published a book entitled Introduction to Sociology.⁴ Within its pages, Dow blatantly argued in favor of evolution. This sent Norris on the warpath. Father Criswell feverishly read excerpts of the book from Norris’s tabloid, stating, in Dow’s words, that prehistoric man was a squatty, ugly, somewhat stooped, powerful being, half human and half animal, who sought refuge from the wild beast first in the trees and later in caves, and he was half way between an anthropoid ape and modern man.⁵ W. A. listened in wide-eyed amusement as his father hailed the courage of Norris in exposing the blatant heretical teachings infiltrating the young Baptist minds at Baylor while excoriating Truett for his silence and perceived cover-up concerning the beloved Baptist institution.

However, at the other end of the table, Mother Criswell proved to be a formidable foe as she praised Truett for his denominational loyalty and went on the offense against Norris for his motives and methods, which, in her mind, were designed simply to create division and diversion among the Baptist faithful. Truett’s constant attempts to avoid controversy and conflict at almost any cost appealed to her inner desire to live at peace with all men. When it came to open conflict and debate, Truett, as was his custom, remained in the background.⁶

W. A. Criswell went on from those dinner-table debates to become arguably one of the most influential Christian voices of the last half of the twentieth century. Later inheriting the pulpit of George Truett, Criswell built the largest church in America, numbering 25,000 members at its zenith, while maintaining his own statesman-like presence and, at the same time, incorporating the fire-brand fundamentalism and church growth principles of Frank Norris.

In a very real sense, Criswell lived his entire life with the two warring influences of Norris and Truett fighting for control within the inner recesses of his own heart and mind. He was an avowed fundamentalist when it came to theological and doctrinal matters, always elevating doctrinal loyalty above denominational loyalty. But at the same time, he fashioned himself after Truett when it came to avoiding personal conflicts and remaining above the fray as much as possible.

Influences in childhood often have lifelong repercussions. Etymologically, we derive our word influence from two words in Latin, in and flow. This brings to mind the word picture of a mighty, vibrant, crystal-clear river flowing deep and wide. Its rapid current flows powerfully, circumventing all obstacles in its path. This river is fed by several smaller tributaries, streams, and creeks, which, upon arriving at the river, merge and are carried away in its flow. For Criswell, the influence of the deep rivers of Norris and Truett worked similarly. He was carried away in their flow as he rode the rapids of his own life.

Rivers provide an interesting analogy for these three lives. In fact, what we will witness in the unfolding pages is a confluence of two lives into one. In nautical terms, a confluence occurs when two rivers flowing on their own course join to form one single channel. Two mighty rivers ran alongside each other for the first half of the last century. Then, they converged together into one river that ran deeper and whose current ran faster through the remainder of the century. The conflict between Truett and Norris did not subside after their deaths. It continued to play out in the heart of Criswell as, in his own mind, these warring factions fought for prominence. It is difficult to imagine the power and influence that Norris and Truett had on more than one generation of the Baptist faithful. Their rivers were separate from each other and distinct in many ways. There were many wild rapids along the river of Norris’s life. He was cutting his own course and running over anything and everything in his way. Truett’s river was easier to navigate. He had no appetite for rough waters along the way. Criswell never really got away from those dinner debates; he took the best of both men, discarding the worst, far exceeding both of them in lasting gospel influence.

In public, Criswell praised Truett, his pastoral predecessor at First Baptist Church in Dallas. Every year for fifty years, on the anniversary of Truett’s death, Criswell honored him by preaching on some aspect of his life and ministry.⁷ While Criswell may have adopted Norris’s strident, fundamentalist theology, he modeled his style more on Truett.⁸ In his oral memoir, Criswell referred to his two mentors in the following way:

Ah, Frank Norris could do anything with a crowd. He could have them weeping. He could have them laughing. He could have them do anything, and when you listened to him you were just moved by him, you know, and you felt that way. He was a gifted man and knew crowd psychology, if there is such a term as that, how to manipulate people, but, oh, underneath Frank Norris there were personal attributes that were diabolical. They were vicious. But, Dr. Truett was the type of man who built. He was the type of man to build the institution, to build the school, to build the hospital, to build the church, to build the denomination, and I early sensed that it’s the kind of leadership we ought to follow.⁹

In true Truett fashion, Criswell was a builder who loved the Southern Baptist Convention.¹⁰

In private, however, another story emerged among his closest confidants. He may have been Truett on the outside, but he was Norris on the inside. Inwardly, Criswell was a flaming fundamentalist in the vein of J. Frank Norris. His father’s earlier pronouncements and prognostications never left him: Like Norris, he was passionate and borderline flamboyant in his stand on inerrancy, but unlike Norris he was not mean-spirited against his opponents.¹¹ He bemoaned Truett’s lack of theological curiosity and his total avoidance of exegesis in sermon preparation. He often lamented that Truett never preached an expository sermon, not one in his entire life.¹² When asked during the Conservative Resurgence of the 1980s where Truett would have stood in the widening denominational debate, Criswell was quick to say, He would have been solidly in the camp of the moderates and not on our side.¹³ When it came to biblical exposition, theological orthodoxy, premillennial eschatology, aggressive Sunday school organization and church growth, passionate evangelism, and public advocacy of doctrinal loyalty above denominational loyalty, Criswell was Norris incarnate.¹⁴ Ample evidence exists to suggest that the transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention beginning publicly in 1979, is, in a measure, an extension of the ministerial vision and methods of J. Frank Norris.¹⁵ And this vision and methodology were carried out by the titular head of the modern conservative movement, W. A. Criswell.

W. A. Criswell was George W. Truett in public and J. Frank Norris in private. Outwardly, like Truett, he sought to avoid confrontation at all costs and was keen to let others do his bidding down in the trenches while he sought to remain serenely above the fray. He carried himself with an air of sophistication, and his very presence in any room reeked of authority and demanded attention in the same way as his famed predecessor. Like Truett, he was a survivor. In fact, this trait of survival, accompanied by Criswell’s unique ability to hunker down and wait out major controversies and conflicts, is legendary to those of us who have been close observers of his life and ministry. One former staff member made the sage comment that if the whole world were one game of musical chairs with billions of people involved and only one chair, when the music stopped no one would have to guess who would be in that chair: it would be W. A. Criswell.¹⁶ That may well be hyperbole, but the truth remains that when all the smoke cleared, Criswell had a way of being the one still standing, emerging stronger than ever. But make no mistake—in the end, and underneath it all, Norris’ hard-edged faith inspired a generation of fighting fundamentalists that included W. A. Criswell.¹⁷

Perhaps one of Criswell’s greatest contributions, and where he left a lasting influence, was that he made fundamental theology respectable. He brought it from the brush arbor back woods to the forefront of intellectual debate and theological thought. He did this in a myriad of ways. He read the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek with fluency. He showed the world that one could interpret the Bible literally and could, at the same time, be extremely knowledgeable and well-read in the fields of literature, languages, science, history, humanities, and other areas of the liberal arts. He could hold his own in the company of most well-educated people. As Joel Gregory observed, in Criswell the right wing of American Christianity had a genuine Ph.D. who could quote Shakespeare and Browning by the mile from memory as well as he could the Apostle Paul.¹⁸ Added to all this was his vast knowledge of music, the arts, and antiques; among his most prized possessions was Meissen china service acquired from a dealer in Bavaria, and he was also a connoisseur of any and every variety of oriental rugs.¹⁹ When he spoke from his photographic memory on most all subjects, he did so with an air of authority coupled with a childlike curiosity. Unlike most of his fundamentalist forefathers, he advocated for biblical orthodoxy from the platform of a winsome personality coupled with an unparalleled depth of knowledge, bringing a level of intellectual respectability to fundamentalist thought that had been lacking for generations.

As a student at Baylor, Criswell visited the First Baptist Church in Dallas during a Baptist youth convention and, although he never had a personal conversation with Dr. Truett, he was in his presence on a few occasions. It was his visit to First Baptist Church in Fort Worth during a high school band trip from Amarillo that made a lasting impression on the young, soon-to-be pastor’s mind, cementing once and for all the validity of his father’s admiration for Norris. Seeing the standing-room-only crowd of thousands, hearing Dr. Norris’s powerful and persuasive message in person, and watching masses of people respond to the invitation with tears of repentance was an experience he had never encountered—and it was one he never forgot.

Although Criswell never had an extended conversation with George Truett, he treasured a chance encounter with Frank Norris that occurred in 1952. Criswell had been the pastor of the Dallas Church for eight years and had rocketed to national attention for the rapid growth of the church and his broadening media ministry. Truett died in 1944, and Norris remained pastor of the Fort Worth congregation. While returning from a luncheon, Criswell entered the church on the side door of Patterson Street and walked up the steps and down the hall to his office. There were chairs positioned along the wall in the hallway next to his secretary George Foster’s office. Here people would sit to await appointments or meet with church personnel. There was a man sitting in the hallway with a hat pulled down on his head. Upon entering his office, the pastor phoned via intercom across the hall to Mr. Foster’s office to inquire as to who was seated in the chair outside his office. Oh, replied the secretary, That is just some bum that wanted to talk to you. I told him to take a seat there and wait. Criswell replied, George, I think that man is Dr. Norris! Criswell stepped into the hall, Norris stood and took off his hat, whereupon Criswell profusely apologized for having him wait and warmly invited him into the inner sanctum of his office. Norris related that he was waiting on a train connection back to Fort Worth and had some time and simply wanted to come by and say hello. He shared how proud he was of the young Criswell, how he listened to him weekly on the radio and shared in every victory God was giving him as though it were his own. They knelt by the desk, Norris prayed for him, and as quickly as he arrived, he was off to catch his train. The next week Norris flew to a preaching assignment in Florida and died alone in a small motel room outside of Jacksonville.²⁰

W. A. Criswell took the best of George Truett’s builder mentality and statesmanlike demeanor. He coupled it with the fundamental fire and orthodox theology that accompanied the passionate perseverance of Norris, accomplishing over his fifty-year ministry in Dallas that which exceeded even his own most optimistic expectations. What Norris failed to do in his lifetime—influence the massive Southern Baptist Convention with his conservative theology—he accomplished vicariously through W. A. Criswell years after his death. On the outside, Criswell’s mother’s advocacy of Truett was ever-present. But on the inside, where it really mattered, his father’s continual and persuasive defense of Norris won the day. There were Truett and Norris, living in constant conflict and controversy in their day, whose lives ran parallel to one another and who both enjoyed the support of multitudes. But, in Criswell’s day, he had no peer. His own river of influence ran deep and wide as he stood alone above all the rest. In the end, it was just W. A. Criswell—that one somebody.

1. The Searchlight was a weekly tabloid published by J. Frank Norris, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Polemic in nature, it was the most widely read Christian weekly paper in the Southwest, with a weekly circulation of more than 100,000. For a time without any modern media such as radio, television, and internet, it is difficult to convey the power of persuasion that came from the pen of Norris in those days.

2. The Baptist Standard, more denominationally centered, was the paper of choice of the establishment Baptists in the state of Texas. It provided news of prominent pastors and promoted the work of the ministries of Texas Baptists, especially those of its colleges and universities.

3. Baylor University Program for Oral History, W. A. Criswell interview by Thomas L. Carlton and Rufus B. Spain, February 3, 1972, Dallas, Texas, 20–21.

4. Grove Samuel Dow, Introduction to Sociology (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, Co., 1920).

5. Dow, Introduction to Sociology, 210.

6. Keith Durso, Thy Will Be Done: A Biography of George W. Truett (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 187.

7. These messages honoring George W. Truett can be found at www.wacriswell.com and accessed free of charge. They reside there in manuscript form, audio, and video.

8. Barry Hankins, God’s Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), 132.

9. W. A. Criswell, oral memoir, no. 1, 21, Texas Collection, Baylor University Institute for Oral History.

10. David Louis Goza, W. A. Criswell’s Formative Role with the Conservative Resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention (PhD diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006), 31.

11. Goza, W. A. Criswell’s Formative Role with the Conservative Resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, 30.

12. W. A. Criswell, personal interview, Grace Parlor, First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, August 25, 1994.

13. Criswell, personal interview.

14. O. S. Hawkins, Two Kinds of Baptists: Re-examining the Legacies of J. Frank Norris and George W. Truett (PhD diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2020), 183–201.

15. Dwight A. Moody, The Conversion of J. Frank Norris: A Fresh Look at the Revival of 1910, Baptist History and Heritage Journal 45, no. 3 (Summer/Fall 2010), 59.

16. Paige Patterson, The Church at the Dawn of the 21st Century (Dallas: Criswell Publications, 1989), 24.

17. Joseph Locke, Making the Bible Belt: Preachers, Prohibition and Politicalization of Southern Religion 1877–1918 (PhD diss., Rice University, 2012), 360.

18. Robert Wuthnow, Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 345.

19. Among Criswell’s expansive collection of Meissen porcelain included china that belonged to Adolf Hitler.

20. Criswell interview, August 25, 1994. Criswell was fond of telling this story. The author heard him relate it on numerous occasions as a cherished memory and always with deep love and respect for Dr. Norris.

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

The year 1909 proved to be significant for Texas Baptists. The stars began to align in the denominational heavens as the legendary B. H. Carroll received a vote of confidence from the Baptist General Convention of Texas to move the Bible department from Baylor University to Fort Worth under the banner of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. ¹ With the help of George W. Truett, the perennial chairman of the board, the seminary would grow into the largest in the world. ² In the same year, J. Frank Norris was called to be the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, a pulpit from which he would attempt to rule Baptist life for the next almost half of a century, leading the church to be recognized as the largest church in the country for a significant period of time. Finally, out in the wide-open expanses on the border of the Texas panhandle, 1909 saw the birth of a baby named W. A. Criswell.

Criswell entered this world just a little over a generation removed from the Civil War. The State of Texas announced its secession from the Union on February 1, 1861, and a month later officially joined the Confederacy. The war years saw more than 70,000 Texans gird themselves in the gray uniforms of the South. But one of those clothed in gray was not its first President of the Republic and first Governor of the State, Sam Houston. Houston became the most prominent Southern Unionist in Texas. While he did advocate for slave property rights, he despised the Lincoln administration. He believed seceding from the Union was unconstitutional and felt certain the North, with its massive industrialization and advantaged population, would certainly defeat the South. He proved prophetic in his prognostications:

Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win