W.A. Criswell
Senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas for 50 years and SBC president (1968–70). The patriarch whose theological authority the resurgence co-opted — and whose early approval of Roe v. Wade he later reversed.
View in the interactive map →W.A. Criswell was the most prominent Southern Baptist pastor of the 20th century. He led First Baptist Dallas from 1944 to 1994 — half a century — building it into the model of the Southern Baptist megachurch. He was an outspoken segregationist in the 1950s and 60s, and remained a committed racial conservative throughout his career. Criswell was the SBC's most prominent inerrantist — his 1969 book 'Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True' became a foundational text. In this sense he provided the theological framework the resurgence would later institutionalize. But there is a deeply inconvenient fact in Criswell's record: after Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, news reports quoted Criswell saying: 'I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.' Coming from the SBC's most authoritative conservative voice, the statement undercuts the idea that evangelical opposition to abortion was immediate; Randall Balmer argues it was organized later, partly for political purposes. Criswell's legacy is a contradiction: inerrantist theology that enabled the resurgence; racial conservatism that reflected the SBC's segregationist history; and a position on abortion that refutes the mythology the movement later built around it.
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Connections from W.A. Criswell
- influenced → SBC Conservative Resurgence (1979) — Criswell's inerrancy theology — articulated in his 1969 book — provided the doctrinal framework the resurgence made a litmus test for institutional control.
- influenced → Rick Warren (1980) — In November 1973, 19-year-old Rick Warren drove 350 miles to hear W.A. Criswell preach in San Francisco; Criswell singled him out and prayed over him. At Criswell's 2002 memorial Warren said Criswell 'was my father in the ministry. It was under him that I actually felt called to be a pastor,' and credited him with developing 'the most widely copied model' of a church. Warren founded Saddleback in 1980.
Sources
- Southern Baptist Convention resolutions on abortion (texts, 1971–) — Wm. Robert Johnston (archive of SBC resolutions) (1971)
- How Southern Baptists became pro-life — Baptist Press (2015)
- Thy Kingdom Come — Randall Balmer (2006), pp. 12-14
- Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 90-91