Biography
Wallie Amos Criswell was born on December 19, 1909, in Eldorado, Oklahoma, the only child of a barber, Wally Amos Criswell, and his wife, Anna. The family was poor. His father moved the family to Texas when Wallie was a small boy, and they settled in Texline, a town in the Panhandle, in the northwest of the state. It was a place of windswept plains, with a few thousand people. As a child, he was a talkative and a lively boy. He was converted at the age of ten, and he felt a call to preach almost at once. He was a boy who liked to talk, and he used to preach to the chickens in the yard. He was a good student, with a gift for memory. He attended the local school and graduated from high school in Amarillo.
He studied at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas, where he took his degree in 1931. He was a leader in the school, and he was active in debating. He went on to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky, where he took a master's degree in 1934 and a doctorate in 1937. At the seminary, he met Betty Harris, a student and a gifted pianist, whom he married in 1935. They had a daughter, Mabel Ann. He began to preach in small churches in Kentucky. He was a quiet student, who read widely. At the seminary, he was troubled by the liberal theology that some of the teachers held, and he chose to take a firm stand for the authority of the Bible.
He served as pastor of a church in Chickasha, Oklahoma, from 1937 to 1941. He then moved to the First Baptist Church in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he served for three years. In 1944, at the age of thirty-four, he was called to be the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, which was among the largest churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. He succeeded George W. Truett, who had been the pastor for forty-seven years, and who died in 1944. It was a daunting task, to follow a giant. He served in Dallas for fifty years, until his retirement in 1994. He was a commanding figure, with a rich voice and a flair for the dramatic. Under his leadership, the church grew from about seven thousand members to more than twenty-six thousand. It was one of the largest Protestant congregations in America.
He was a preacher of great force. He devoted himself to expository preaching, and he preached through the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, over a period of seventeen years. He believed in the literal truth of the Scriptures. He was one of the leading voices for the inerrancy of the Bible in the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1969, he published a book, Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True, in which he set out his view. He was elected president of the convention for two terms, from 1968 to 1970. In the following decade, he was a firm supporter of the conservative resurgence, which began in 1979 and which brought the convention back to a conservative view of Scripture. He was a friend and an ally of Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler and Adrian Rogers. He also founded the Criswell Bible Institute in 1970, which later became Criswell College, to train ministers.
He held a record that includes a serious failing. In the early years of his ministry, he was a supporter of racial segregation. In 1956, he addressed a gathering of the South Carolina legislature, in which he spoke against integration, and used harsh language against those who favored it. It was a speech that he would regret. In the 1960s, he changed his mind. He came to see that segregation was contrary to the Scriptures. He said so publicly. He welcomed Black members to his church. He later said that he had been wrong and that he had been influenced by his upbringing. His change of heart was a sign that he could be open to correction.
He was a man of great energy and warm humor. He was also a man who could be vain. His critics said that he was too theatrical in the pulpit and too fond of the praise of men. He also was a man who held strong views, and who could be hard on those who differed. He faced a number of personal trials, including a long struggle with the loss of his hearing and with a number of illnesses. In his later years, he suffered from poor health. He retired as pastor in 1995, and he was named the pastor emeritus. He died on January 10, 2002, in Dallas, at the age of ninety-two.
His life shows the effect of a man who held one pulpit for half a century. He defended the Bible in an age of challenge and was willing to confess his errors.