W. A. Criswell

Wallie Amos Criswell, Ph.D. (December 19, 1909 – January 10, 2002), was an American pastor, author, and a two-term elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1968 to 1969. Supporters have described him as the patriarch of the "Conservative Resurgence" within the SBC.

Criswell was born in Eldorado, Oklahoma, but was mostly reared in Texline in Dallam County, the most northwesterly community in Texas. As a teenager, he felt the divine call to enter the Christian ministry as a teenager. Criswell was licensed to preach at the age of seventeen and soon thereafter held student pastorates at Devil's Bend and Pulltight, Texas. He would also serve as pastor of First Baptist Church Mt. Washington (near Louisville, Kentucky), First Baptist Church of Chickasha, Oklahoma, and First Baptist Church of Muskogee.

In 1944, he became the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, where he remained until semiretirement in 1995. During this period, the church's membership grew from 7,800 to 25,000. The church expanded to multiple buildings in downtown Dallas, and becoming a well-known Southern Baptist megachurch. The popular evangelist Billy Graham has been a member of the Dallas congregation since 1953.

Criswell was instrumental in the rightward shift of the Southern Baptist convention that began in the late 1970s. He published fifty-four books, including an annotated "Criswell Study Bible". He received eight honorary doctorates. He founded Criswell College, First Baptist Academy, and KCBI Radio.

In 1974, First Baptist called the minister James T. Draper, Jr., to become associate pastor, with the intention of preparing Draper to succeed Criswell as full pastor at some point in the future. Draper soon concluded that Dr. Criswell was not yet ready to retire. So Draper accepted the pastorate of the nearby large First Baptist Church of Euless, a suburban community near Fort Worth in Tarrant County, where he served until 1991. On Thanksgiving weekend 1990 on Sunday of that weekend the church unanimously called Joel C. Gregory (B.A., summa cum laude, M.Div, Ph.D.) as pastor of First Baptist Dallas. Dr. Criswell assumed the title "Senior Pastor" with the clear understanding that he would cooperate with a short transition. Dr. Gregory resigned the church on Wednesday, September 30, 1992, citing the unwillingness of the senior pastor to complete the transition. The story of this two year period is reviewed in Joel Gregory's best-selling 1994 memoir, "Too Great a Temptation" (Fort Worth: The Summit Group, 1994). This memoir was subsequently adopted as the basis of the script for the play "God's Man in Texas" by David Rambo.

According to Rick Warren, his call to full-time ministry came as a 19-year-old student at California Baptist University when, in November 1973, Warren and a friend skipped out on classes and drove 350 miles to hear pastor Dr. Criswell preach at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco.cite web
title = Interview with a Missions Leader
work =
publisher = Woman's Missionary Union Website
date=
url = http://www.wmu.com/rickwarren/
format = HTML
accessdate =2007-12-18] Rick Warren stood in line to shake hands with Dr. Criswell afterwards.

Warren went on to found the 22,000 member Saddleback Church in California, one of the most famous and influential churches in the world. In his book, "The Purpose Driven Church", Warren referred to Criswell as the "greatest American pastor of the twentieth century."

Southern Baptist Convention presidency

Dr. Criswell served two times as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest American Protestant denomination with 16 million members. Draper also served two terms as the SBC president.

Theology

Criswell's theology is best described as conservative and evangelical. He believed in Biblical inerrancy, the eternal security of the believer, and Jesus Christ as the authority of spiritual truth and the sole path to salvation of sinful mankind.

Criswell's theology and ethics reflect the era in which he lived. Unlike his predecessor, George W. Truett (1876-1944), at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Criswell preached dispensational premillennialism from the pulpit. Truett had reflected a postmillennial approach to escathological questions, whereas Criswell drew upon the theology of C.I. Scofield and patterned his preaching to fit with the direction fundamentalism had taken. A comparison of the beliefs of Truett and Criswell provides us with a picture of how American conservative Christianity had changed sociologically during the twentieth century. Postmillennialism, it could be argued, provided an optimistic view of the transformation of this world by Christ through the mission work of his Church, whereas premillennialism is more pessimistic, focusing on an escapism via a "rapture" in which true Christians will be removed from this world. Fact|date=July 2008 |washburnmav

Another arena in which Criswell's preaching reflected his culture is his views on race. Criswell was openly critical of the movement toward racial equality during the 1950s. He denounced from his pulpit the writings on racism by Thomas Buford Maston, a Professor of Ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, who was calling for Christians to take leadership and influence in the civil rights movement in America. Fact|date=July 2008 |washburnmav

Politics

Criswell sometimes got involved in political campaigns. In 1976, he urged from the pulpit the election of the Republican U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, Jr. (1913–2006), an Episcopalian, rather than the Southern Baptist Democratic nominee, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Carter nevertheless won the electoral votes of Texas, the last Democrat to have done so.

In the 1980s, he continued to support Republican presidential nominees Ronald W. Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush.

Criswell quotations

"God sends people into our lives just when we need them, to say the right word, His word, just when we need it."

"When our trials come, when we feel pain and suffering, when our tears flow again, it is our joy and comfort to lift our faces heavenward and to go on standing on the promises of God."

Selected works

*"Why I Preach the Bible Is Literally True"
*"Criswell's Guidebook For Pastors "
*"Standing on the Promises: The Autobiography of W. A. Criswell "

Sources

# [http://www.wacriswell.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/About.Home.cfm About W.A. from W.A. Criswell.com]
# [http://www.siteone.com/religion/baptist/baptistpage/Portraits/criswell.html ]
# [http://www.sbc.net/criswell/news.asp BP New Release and Tribute upon Criswell’s Death Article on Church History and W.A. Criswell]

References