W A Criswell and the "Nigger Nigger Nigger" strategy

I got the book today April 12. Will write a Criswell Redux soon. Hawkins does address Criswell 1956 race baiting speech and says it was one of WA top three regrets. Talks about Criswell sermon the Sunday after the JKF assassination, Nov 24 1963 where he dismissed it as result of atheistic communism. Cursory reading does not talk about Criswell and Bill Moyers. It does turn up some interesting stories about predecessor George W. Truett where the Truett legacy is diminished somewhat on the race issue.

O S Hawkins has written a biography of the mid 20th Century demagogue and influential Southern Baptist Preacher WA Criswell. An in house effort there is an exhaustive  review at Baptist News Global

    Criswell gave a scorching address at the 1956 statewide Baptist preacher's conference in Columbia SC where he said among other things "I wouldnt let my daughter within two city blocks of a big Black Buck"; and "You wouldnt call a chigger a chiggerow, now would ya." 

    He got hoots and howls on both counts and the next day at the invitation of Strom Thurmond addressed a joint session of the SC Legislature.

     My Dad's seminary proff at SEBTS at Wake Forest NC followed and said "WA Criswell doesnt speak for me."

    This episode has been thoroughly written up by Curtis Freeman of the house of Baptist studies at Duke University. You can google it up for the title Dead from the Neck Up.

     I have not read Hawkins book yet, just the review. But I will be surprised if I find reference to Criswell the race baiter in the hagiography, nor any imagination from an honest look at Wuthnow's Rough Country on how Texas Southern Baptists shaped the modern day Republican Party.

     I am convinced Robert Jones has Criswell's number in his piece of a couple years ago Shutting Down CRT Debate, Religion News. There he quotes the Lee Atwater memo where he famously said you can't say nigger nigger nigger anymore so the GOP has to come up with new issues and strategies to get in the head of the white working class vote. Abortion and Guns and Critical Race Theory put the sheen on the politics Criswell mastered at FBC Dallas and in the Southern Baptist Convention.

     There is a lesser version a twin sister of FBC Dallas and the Criswell strategy at FBC Spartanburg SC. There the Heritage foundation shows every sign of replacing the John Birch Society of Criswell's FBC Dallas and Trey Gowdy is the poster child. It is not insignificant that Billy Graham was a member of two Baptist churches: Dallas and FBC Spartanburg.

     Likely also missing from Hawkins account is reference to the book Dallas 1963 where the strong case is made Dallas Loaded the Gun, but Oswald pulled the trigger. The Sunday before the assassination Criswell preached a demagogic anti Catholic sermon. And criswell could be counted on in the shadows in all kinds of slime ball politics now championed by super Trumper Bobby Jeffress now in the Dallas pulpit.

    In the early nineties a British tv station came over to do a documentary on FBC Dallas, Criswell and Paige Patterson. I hope the bio explores that significant moment.

     What I would like to see is a biography that explores his relationship with Jesse Helms. Also widen to other leading SBC Churches beside Spartanburg to include Bellevue in Memphis and FBC Jacksonville Florida, home of the Eagle Forum Woman of the year for 2018 Tim Tebow's Momma Pam. Jerry Vines a pastor there came from West Rome Ga also infested with the Birch Society who congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is thick in the Criswell legacy.

     Hawkins makes a big do of Criswell torn between J Frank Norris and WA Criswell. Jill Lepore who's stellar recent history of America, These Truths, mentions Norris and how his fundamentalism shaped a voting block, and gives even greater attention to the sisters in the Cause, Phyliss Schlafly's Eagle Forum also entangled in Baptist Politics and the plowing of the SBC to make it fertile for MAGA land.

    So all the colorful stories aside including his challenge to young preachers to get em a good conservative woman cause the sex will be so good when they die they will have to haul em off in a wheelbarrow; the famous Wheelbarrow sermon.

     I was in the audience in San Antonio when he called preachers who didnt toe his literal interpretation of the KJV, He called em skunks. All them preachers about ten thousand of em who didnt know their ass from a Hole in the ground, they loved it.

      So Criswell could bring you tears while he dangled your soul over the bottom pits of Hell, but his preparation for Reagan and a more disastrous Donald Trump cannot be forgive. The Old Testament would define him as a Bastard for the best of the Baptist tradition, and Judge Frank Johnson and Abraham Lincoln would see him the same For America and any version of a more perfect Union.