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 (SBC) from 1968 to 1970. 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 New Mexico, attending school across the border in Texline in Dallam County, the most northwesterly community in Texas.Criswell, W. A. Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True. Nashville: B&H, 1969. It was not uncommon at the time for people to name their boys with initials only, so he was named "W. A.". Years later, when pressed for an explanation as to what the letters stood for, he quipped "Wallie Amos", and it stuck. As a teenager, he felt the divine call to enter the Christian ministry. Criswell was licensed to preach at the age of 17 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 was called to replace George W. Truett as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, already at that time the largest non-Catholic church in America, 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, and was, for many years, the largest church in the world. The popular evangelist Billy Graham joined the church in 1953 and was a member of the Dallas congregation for 55 years.
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 of 1990, the church called Joel C. Gregory (B.A., summa cum laude, M.Div, Ph.D.) to be the Pastor of First Baptist Dallas. Dr. Criswell was then called "Senior Pastor." These titles were by vote of the congregation and the deacons. After two years it became clear the Criswell was not going to resign. Gregory decided to resign rather than throw the church into turmoil. His version of his two-year period at First Baptist Dallas is reviewed in his 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. 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."
Dr. Criswell served two times as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest American non-Roman Catholic denomination with 16 million members. Draper also served two terms as the SBC president.
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 reflected 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 eschatological questions, whereas Criswell drew upon the theology of C.I. Scofield. A comparison of the beliefs of Truett and Criswell provides us with a picture of how American conservative Christianity changed sociologically during the 20th century. Postmillennialism, popular around the turn of the last century, expressed an optimistic expectation for the social transformation of this world by Christ in the present day through the missionary work of his Church; but the two World Wars dealt this view a near-fatal blow. Premillennialism offered a more pragmatic view of the limited scope of possible social reform, looking ahead to the rapture in which Christians are removed from the world before the end-time judgments of the tribulation and Armageddon, after which Christ himself returns to transform the world and establish his kingdom.
Criswell's preaching also reflected his culture as societal attitudes evolved on the issue of racial integration. While he never spoke in support of segregation from the pulpit, Criswell was at first privately critical of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board and of federal intervention in Southern segregation. In 1953 he made an address denouncing forced integration to a South Carolina evangelism conference and then to the South Carolina legislature. Taken aback by negative reactions and distorted accounts of his remarks in the press, Criswell did not publicly address the issue for many years, claiming he was "a pastor, not a politician." However, upon his 1968 election as president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the SBC's endorsement of racial equality and desegregation, he announced to the press, "Every Southern Baptist in the land should support the spirit of that statement. We Southern Baptists have definitely turned away from racism, from segregation, from anything and everything that speaks of a separation of people in the body of Christ." Criswell's first sermon after his election as SBC president was titled "The Church of the Open Door," emphasizing that his church already had many non-white members and was open to all regardless of race. He asserted publicly, "I don't think that segregation could have been or was at any time intelligently, seriously supported by the Bible.
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.
"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."
