Wallie Amos Criswell Jr. (December 19, 1909 – January 10, 2002), known to the world as W.A. Criswell, was an American Southern Baptist pastor who led First Baptist Church of Dallas for nearly five decades.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest expository preachers of the twentieth century, Criswell served two terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, founded Criswell College, and became a defining figure in the SBC’s Conservative Resurgence, a movement that reshaped the denomination for generations.
[IMAGE: W.A. Criswell preaching at First Baptist Church Dallas]
W.A. Criswell at a Glance
| Personal | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Wallie Amos Criswell Jr. |
| Born | December 19, 1909, Eldorado, Oklahoma, USA |
| Died | January 10, 2002, Dallas, Texas (age 92) |
| Resting place | Sparkman-Hillcrest Cemetery, Dallas |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Bessie Marie “Betty” Harris Criswell (m. 1935, d. 2006) |
| Children | One daughter, Mabel Ann Criswell |
| Parents | Wallie Amos Criswell Sr. and Anna Currie Criswell |
| Education | |
| Bachelor’s | Baylor University (B.A., magna cum laude, 1931) |
| Graduate degrees | Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Th.M. 1934, Ph.D. 1937) |
| Ministry | |
| Church | First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas |
| Years as pastor | 1944–1991 (senior pastor to 1995; Pastor Emeritus 1995–2002) |
| Denomination | Southern Baptist Convention |
| SBC President | 1968–1970 (two terms) |
| Career | |
| Books | 54 published works |
| Honorary doctorates | 8 |
| Founded | Criswell College, First Baptist Academy, KCBI Radio |
Who Was W.A. Criswell?
W.A. Criswell was a Southern Baptist pastor, author, and denominational statesman best known for leading First Baptist Church of Dallas from 1944 to 1991, one of the longest and most influential pastorates in modern American church history. He built a reputation as a master expositor, once spending 17.5 straight years preaching through the Bible verse by verse, starting in Genesis and finishing in Revelation. Along the way, he became a driving force behind the Southern Baptist Convention’s shift toward theological conservatism in the late twentieth century.
What Was Criswell’s Real Name?
His full given name was Wallie Amos Criswell Jr., named after his father. As a boy, family and church members began calling him by his initials, “W.A.,” and the nickname stuck for the rest of his life and ministry. Southern Baptists who never met him simply knew him as Dr. Criswell.
Early Life and Background
Criswell was born on December 19, 1909, in the small town of Eldorado in Jackson County, Oklahoma, to Wallie Amos Sr. and Anna Currie Criswell. His mother was the daughter of a Confederate Army surgeon, and family history and Southern culture shaped much of his early worldview.
At age 10, Criswell professed faith in Christ at a revival meeting. Just two years later, he publicly committed his life to ministry. He was licensed to preach at 17 and took on part-time pastorates in the small Texas communities of Devil’s Bend and Pulltight while still a teenager, ministering to congregations even before he’d finished college.
[IMAGE: Eldorado Oklahoma small town early 1900s]
Education
Criswell put himself through college by working at three Texas churches at once, graduating magna cum laude from Baylor University in Waco in 1931. He continued his theological training at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, earning his Th.M. in 1934 and his Ph.D. in 1937.
It was in Louisville, while pastoring at Mount Washington Baptist Church, that Criswell met his future wife. Bessie Marie “Betty” Harris was the church’s pianist and an education graduate of Western Kentucky University. The two married on Valentine’s Day in 1935.
Ministry Career and Professional Journey
Early Pastorates in Oklahoma
After completing seminary, Criswell pastored First Baptist Church in Chickasha, Oklahoma, from 1937 to 1941, then moved to First Baptist Church in Muskogee, Oklahoma, from 1941 to 1944. His preaching during these years caught the attention of Southern Baptist leaders far beyond Oklahoma’s borders.
First Baptist Church, Dallas (1944–1995)
In October 1944, First Baptist Church of Dallas called Criswell to succeed its legendary pastor, George W. Truett, who had led the church since 1897. Following a figure as beloved as Truett was no small task for a relatively unknown Oklahoma pastor, but Criswell grew into the role and then some.
[IMAGE: First Baptist Church Dallas historic sanctuary]
Under his leadership, First Baptist Dallas became the largest congregation in the Southern Baptist Convention, at its peak claiming nearly 30,000 members and occupying five city blocks in downtown Dallas, along with close to 30 mission congregations. Criswell preached more than 5,000 sermons from that pulpit over the decades, building a national reputation as one of the era’s most gifted expository preachers.
He served as senior pastor until 1991, was given the title senior pastor emeritus status transition in the mid-1990s, and became the church’s first official Pastor Emeritus in 1995, a role he held until his death in 2002.
Southern Baptist Convention Leadership
Criswell was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1968 and served two consecutive terms, through 1970. By the 1960s, he had become one of the most powerful and recognized leaders in the entire denomination. Historians widely credit him as the father of the Conservative Resurgence, the movement that pushed the SBC toward a firmer commitment to biblical inerrancy starting in the late 1970s. He served on the boards of Baylor University, Baylor Health Care System, Dallas Baptist University, and The Baptist Standard.
Founding Criswell College and Other Institutions
Criswell didn’t stop at pastoring one of the country’s largest churches. He founded what became known as Criswell College, an institution committed to biblical inerrancy that trains pastors, missionaries, counselors, and church staff. He also started First Baptist Academy and KCBI Radio, extending his ministry well beyond Sunday mornings.
W.A. Criswell’s Books and Sermon Library
Criswell authored 54 books over his lifetime, most drawn directly from his verse-by-verse preaching through Scripture. His best-known works include The Bible for Today’s World, Great Doctrines of the Bible (edited with Paige Patterson), Five Great Questions of the Bible, Five Great Affirmations of the Bible, and Basic Bible Sermons on the Cross. He also served as editor of the Criswell Study Bible, a reference tool built on his commitment to biblical inerrancy that remains in use in churches today.
Today, the W.A. Criswell Sermon Library, maintained through wacriswell.com, gives readers free access to decades of his sermons organized by Scripture, date, and topic, from his earliest years in Dallas through his final sermons before retirement.
Was Criswell’s Predictions Accurate?
This question usually traces back to a mix-up between two different people who share the name Criswell. W.A. Criswell, the Baptist pastor covered in this article, did not write a book of psychic-style predictions. The famous “Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000,” a 1968 book claiming 87 percent prediction accuracy, was written by Jeron “Charles” Criswell King, a television personality known as “The Amazing Criswell,” who appeared in campy films like Plan 9 from Outer Space and made his living as a self-styled TV psychic, not a pastor.
The two men are unrelated, and confusing them does a disservice to both. Pastor W.A. Criswell’s public legacy rests on decades of biblical exposition and denominational leadership, not on forecasting future events. If you’re researching prophetic predictions and their accuracy, that trail leads to the entertainer, not the preacher.
W.A. Criswell’s Beliefs and Theology
Criswell held to biblical inerrancy as the foundation of his entire ministry. He famously told his congregation in 1970 that every sermon he had preached, and every sermon he would ever preach, came directly from Scripture, a commitment that shaped his approach to the pulpit for the rest of his career.
Theologically, he was a premillennial dispensationalist, holding that Israel and the church remain distinct in God’s plan and that Christ’s return would precede a literal thousand-year reign. That position influenced a generation of Southern Baptist preachers who followed him, including figures like Paige Patterson, who has openly credited Criswell as his mentor on this point.
Was W.A. Criswell a Calvinist?
The honest answer is: yes and no. Criswell described himself as a Calvinist and affirmed God’s sovereignty in strong terms, teaching that God foreordains and predestines according to His will. But he explicitly rejected Limited Atonement, one of the five points of classical Calvinism, and held a view of human free will that most strict five-point Calvinists would not recognize as fully Reformed. Those who knew him well have summarized it simply: he said he was a Calvinist, but his preaching and theology didn’t always act like it. The term meant something broader in Criswell’s era than it does among today’s more rigid “New Calvinist” circles.
Personal Life
Criswell married Betty Harris on Valentine’s Day, 1935, and the couple had one daughter, Mabel Ann, born in 1939. Betty was active in music ministry throughout their years together, having trained as a church pianist before their marriage. She passed away in 2006, four years after her husband, and their daughter Mabel Ann died the same year as her father, in 2002.
Biographers who have studied Criswell’s later years, including O.S. Hawkins in his authorized biography, have noted that his relationships with his wife and daughter were, at times, difficult and distant, something Criswell himself expressed regret over near the end of his life.
Influence and Legacy
Criswell’s legacy runs in two directions that don’t always sit comfortably together. Within Southern Baptist life, he’s remembered as perhaps the most influential architect of the Conservative Resurgence, the pastor who helped anchor an entire denomination back to biblical inerrancy at a moment when many feared it was drifting toward theological liberalism. Criswell College continues that mission today, training pastors and church leaders on the same foundation he built his own ministry on.
His expository preaching style, honed over 17.5 years of walking straight through Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, shaped how a generation of Southern Baptist pastors approached the pulpit. Names like Paige Patterson and Jerry Vines have publicly credited Criswell’s influence on their own ministries.
Criticism and Controversies
Criswell’s most serious and lasting controversy involves race. In 1956, at the invitation of South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, Criswell delivered a speech to the South Carolina legislature strongly defending racial segregation in churches, using language toward Northern integrationists that he later called shameful. He referred to the speech for the rest of his life as “one of the colossal blunders of my young life.”
Criswell had inherited a congregation at First Baptist Dallas that was, in the words of his own biographer, “steeped in the spirit of Southern culture” and included deacons who had been active Ku Klux Klan members. For over a decade, he did not publicly break from that culture. That changed in 1968, when Criswell preached a sermon declaring First Baptist Dallas open to people of all races, a moment his later biographer described as one of the defining addresses of his life. At a press conference that same year, when asked directly whether he still held his earlier views, Criswell said plainly, “I’ve changed. I have enlarged my sympathies and my heart during the past few years.”
Historians and Southern Baptist scholars today treat this history honestly rather than erasing it, presenting Criswell’s early segregationist positions alongside his later public reversal and his broader theological legacy.
W.A. Criswell’s Cause of Death
Criswell died on January 10, 2002, at the age of 92, at the Dallas home of his longtime friend, caretaker, and real estate developer Jack Pogue, who had taken Criswell into his own home during the final years of his life. He had battled colon cancer since 1998 and had been in frail health for more than a year prior to his death, with several hospitalizations for digestive and cardiac problems. His death came without a single dramatic event, more the culmination of prolonged declining health in his early nineties.
W.A. Criswell’s Net Worth
No verified net worth figure exists for Criswell. Unlike some later megachurch pastors whose compensation became a matter of public controversy, Criswell’s finances were never a significant point of public scrutiny during his lifetime, and no official records of his personal wealth have been published.
W.A. Criswell Quotes
“Before I introduce my sermon, I just want to say one thing to you dear people. As long as I have been your pastor for these 27 years, every sermon that you have heard me preach has been from the pages of this Holy Book; and I promise as long as I am your pastor, every sermon you will ever hear me preach will be from the pages of this sacred Book.”
“I’ve changed. I have enlarged my sympathies and my heart during the past few years.”
Interesting Facts About W.A. Criswell
- He didn’t speak until he was four years old, according to family accounts, but went on to become one of the most recognized voices in American Protestant preaching.
- He was licensed to preach at 17, years before finishing his college degree.
- He preached through the entire Bible, cover to cover, over the course of 17.5 years of Sunday mornings.
- He earned eight honorary doctorates over the course of his career.
- He’s frequently confused online with an unrelated TV personality of the same surname who made unrelated psychic predictions, a mix-up that persists in search results today.
W.A. Criswell Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1909 | Born December 19 in Eldorado, Oklahoma |
| 1919 | Professes faith in Christ at age 10 |
| 1926–27 | Licensed to preach; begins part-time pastorates as a teenager |
| 1931 | Graduates magna cum laude from Baylor University |
| 1935 | Marries Bessie Marie “Betty” Harris on Valentine’s Day |
| 1937 | Completes Ph.D. at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; becomes pastor in Chickasha, Oklahoma |
| 1939 | Daughter Mabel Ann Criswell is born |
| 1944 | Becomes senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas |
| 1956 | Delivers controversial pro-segregation speech in South Carolina |
| 1968 | Publicly reverses his position on race; elected SBC president |
| 1970 | Completes second term as SBC president |
| 1991 | Steps down as senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas |
| 1995 | Named the church’s first Pastor Emeritus |
| 2002 | Dies January 10 in Dallas, Texas, age 92 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was W.A. Criswell?
He was an American Southern Baptist pastor who led First Baptist Church of Dallas for nearly five decades, served two terms as Southern Baptist Convention president, and became a central figure in the SBC’s Conservative Resurgence.
What was Criswell’s real name?
Wallie Amos Criswell Jr. He went by his initials, W.A., from boyhood onward.
What did W.A. Criswell believe?
He held to biblical inerrancy as the foundation of his ministry and was a premillennial dispensationalist, meaning he taught that Christ’s return would precede a literal thousand-year reign and that Israel and the church remain distinct in God’s plan.
Was W.A. Criswell a Calvinist?
He described himself as a Calvinist and affirmed God’s sovereignty strongly, but he rejected Limited Atonement and held views on human free will that most strict five-point Calvinists would not fully embrace.
Was Criswell’s predictions accurate?
The famous “Criswell Predicts” prophecy book belongs to a different person entirely, television personality Jeron “Charles” Criswell King, known as “The Amazing Criswell.” Pastor W.A. Criswell never published a book of psychic predictions.
What was W.A. Criswell’s cause of death?
He died January 10, 2002, following prolonged health struggles that included colon cancer since 1998 and cardiac and digestive problems in his final years.
Who was W.A. Criswell’s wife?
Bessie Marie “Betty” Harris Criswell, whom he married on Valentine’s Day, 1935. She passed away in 2006.
What was W.A. Criswell’s legacy?
He’s remembered as one of the most influential expository preachers of the twentieth century and the pastor most credited with launching the Southern Baptist Convention’s Conservative Resurgence, alongside a well-documented and later reversed history on racial segregation.
