Biographies

Translate this page into another language by clicking.

Biographies of Men that God Used

Biographies of Great Preachers

Baptist Preachers and some who preached like Baptists:

Click for great site on biographies of Baptist

Legacy of a Preacher

Click... Sovereign Grace Baptist Biographies

Click Image above for biographys of the... Worlds Greatest Preachers

ATTENTION: COMING FROM OTHER WEBSITES
You must use either the TAB or back ARROW button on your browser if you wish to return to this page,
as there are NO navigational links.

Worlds Greatest Preachers

Enjoy Portraits Of Great Preachers

Listed By Dates of Birth

Click Names Below To View

THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH(Christ to A.D. 500)
Ignatius(35-107)
Polycarp(69-155)
Quintus Florens Tertullian(160-220)
Chrysostom (John of Antioch)(347-407)
Patrick(389-461)

DARK AGES OF THE CHURCH(A.D. 500-1000)
Columba(521-597)
REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH
(A.D. 1000-1500)
John Wycliffe(1320-1384)
John Huss(1369-1415)
Girolamo Savonarola(1452-1498)
Ulrich Zwingli(1484-1531)
William Tyndale(1494-1536)
Martin Luther(1483-1546)
Menno Simons(1492-1559)

ENLIGHTMENT OF THE CHURCH(A.D. 1500-1600)
John Calvin(1509-1564)
John Knox(1513-1572)

WORD GROWTH IN THE CHURCH(A.D. 1600-1700)
Roger Williams(1603-1684)
John Bunyan(1628-1688)
Richard Baxter(1615-1691)
George Fox(1624-1691)

SANTIFICATION OF THE CHURCH(A.D. 1700-1800)
Susanna Wesley(1659-1742)
Alexander Mack(1679-1735)
David Brainerd(1718-1747)
Jonathon Edwards(1703-1758)
George Whitefield(1714-1770)
John Wesley(1703-1791)

TRUTH PREVAILS IN THE CHURCH(A.D. 1800-1900)
John Newton(1725-1807)
Robert Raikes(1736-1811)
Francis Asbury(1745-1816)
William Carey(1761-1834)
Christmas Evans(1766-1838)
Robert Murray McCheyne(1813-1843)
Adoniram Judson(1788-1850)
Peter Cartwright(1785-1872)
David Livingstone(1813-1873)
Charles Grandison Finney(1792-1875)
Stephen Paxon(1837-1881)
Robert Moffat(1795-1883)
Jeremiah McAuley(1839-1884)
Charles Haddon Spurgeon(1834-1892)
Absalom Backus Earle(1812-1895)
Adoniram Judson Gordon(1836-1895)
Dwight Lyman Moody(1837-1899)

EVANGELISM OF THE CHURCH(A.D. 1900-2000)
John Jasper(1812-1901)
Thomas DeWitt Talmage(1832-1902)
James Hudson Taylor(1832-1905)
Samuel Porter Jones(1847-1906)
John Gibson Paton(1824-1907)
William Bradford Booth(1829-1912)
John Hyde(1865-1912)
Benajah Harvey Carroll(1843-1914)
John Wilbur Chapman(1859-1918)
Albert Benjamin Simpson(1884-1919)
Cyrus Ingersoll Scofield(1843-1921)
Amzi Clarence Dixon(1854-1925)
Reuben Archer Torrey(1856-1928)
Frederick Brotherton Meyer(1847-1929)
C. T. Studd(1860-1931)
James M. Gray(1851-1935)
William Ashley Sunday(1862-1935)
Jonathan Goforth(1859-1936)
Paul Rader(1879-1938)
William Edward Biederwolf(1867-1939)
T. T. Martin(1862-1939)
Melvin Ernest Trotter(1870-1940)
Henry Clay Morrison(1857-1942)
Reuben (Uncle Bud) Robinson(1860-1942)
George W. Truett(1867-1944)
George Campbell Morgan(1863-1945)
Lee Rutland Scarborough(1870-1945)
Rodney (Gypsy) Smith(1860-1947)
William Bell Riley(1861-1947)
Louis S. Bauman(1875-1950)
Evan Roberts(1878-1950)
William Leroy Pettingill(1886-1950)
Harry A. Ironside(1876-1951)
Lewis Sperry Chafer(1871-1952)
John Franklyn Norris(1877-1952)
Thomas Todhunter Shields(1873-1955)
William Reed Newell(1868-1956)
John Edward Brown(1879-1957)
Louis Entzminger(1876-1958)
William Graham Scroggie(1877-1958)
Mordecai Ham(1878-1959)
Ernest Ira Reveal(1880-1959)
Robert Pierce Shuler(1880-1965)
Martin R. De Haan(1891-1965)
Charles Frederick Weigle(1871-1966)
Robert Reynolds Jones(1883-1968)
Charles Edward Fuller(1887-1968)
Alva J. McClain(1888-1968)
Walter Lewis Wilson(1881-1969)
William Culbertson(1905-1971)
Dallas Franklin Billington(1903-1972)
Fred Sheldon Donnelson(1897-1974)
George Beauchamp Vick(1901-1975)
Gaylord Ford Porter(1893-1976)
Oliver Boyce Greene(1915-1976)
Robert Greene Lee(1886-1978)
John Richard Rice(1895-1980)
Bascom Ray Lakin(1901-1984)
Faithful Women(OT, NT - Today)

Biographies on Believer's Web click logo below:

Baptist Historians

Baptist Historians click here

Thomas Armitage
Issac Backus
David Benedict
John Callender
J. M. Carroll
John Comer

William Cathcart
John M. Cramp
Thomas Crosby
Robert Semple
Thieleman J. van Braght

Baptist Historians

William Cathcart's Essays on the Novatianists, Donatists, Albigenses, Henricians, Petrobrussians, and the Anabaptists. Must reading for any Baptist History student.

Biographies of the Baptized Believers

Click... Baptist History Homepage Biographies

Click... California Baptist Biographies

Here I've chosen to single out one of my most famous heroes:
Pastor Del Wray

QUOTING DR. HOMER RITCHIE WHO SUCCEED DR. J. FRANK NORRIS.

"Contrary to what his critics and enemies wrote or stated, Dr. Norris was a kind, generous,
compassionate and Spirit-filled man. I have seen him weep over the lost and downtrodden. He led
his church to feed thousands of poor, hungry people. I witnessed on many occasions when he
would give needy people his last dollar. On the other hand, he courageously and aggressively
exposed social evils, religious racketeers, charlatans, liberal professors in Southern Baptist schools,
denominational leaders, and deceivers who taught heresies. At times his methods were
objectionable to some people who did not agree with his strong Biblical views. That’s nothing new.
Christ’s critics and enemies tried on several occasions to kill Him and finally succeeded at Calvary.
The same was true of Stephen, Paul, the Apostles, the true prophets of Israel, the martyrs, and
faithful men and women of God in the Bible."

Click picture below to read the complete biography of J. Frank Norris

J. Frank Norris
Born in 1877, died in 1952.

A Picture of E. Y. Mullins - J. B. Gambrell - J. Frank Norris

[From Inside History of FBC, Fort Worth and Temple Baptist Church, Detroit, p. 45.]

Lorene Rains, (left) Secretary to Dr. J. Frank Norris (right)

Dr. Norris and William Jennings Bryan at First Baptist Church in 1924.

NORRIS, JOHN FRANKLYN (1877–1952). John Franklyn Norris, fundamentalist Baptist preacher, was born at Dadeville, Alabama, on September 18, 1877, the son of Warner and Mary (Davis) Norris. He and his family moved to Hubbard, Hill County, Texas, in 1881. After graduation he attended Baylor University from 1898 to 1903. From 1902 to 1905 he attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he earned the master of theology degree. In 1905 Norris returned to Texas as the pastor of the McKinney Avenue Baptist Church in Dallas. He resigned in 1907 to become editor of the Baptist Standard. Between 1907 and 1909 he is credited with ending the Texas Baptist newspaper war, with influencing the transfer of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from Waco to Fort Worth, and with helping to abolish racetrack gambling. Norris sold his interest in the Standard in 1909 and accepted the pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth in that same year. His tenure as pastor extended from 1909 until his death in 1952, a period of forty-four years.

After 1911 Norris developed the reputation of a sensationalist and controversialist. He was involved in numerous social and civic reform activities, including prohibition and gambling reform. He led his Forth Worth church to establish a ministry to servicemen stationed at Camp Bowie (Tarrant County)qv during World War I. He began the first regular radio ministry in the United States in the 1920s and openly supported the Ku Klux Klan. He preached to crowds that numbered up to 10,000 and was pastor in Detroit (Temple Baptist Church) and in Fort Worth simultaneously in the 1930s-flying back and forth at a time when air travel was in its infancy. When his church was destroyed by fire in 1912, Norris was charged with arson. After a protracted trial, he was acquitted. By 1920 he had rebuilt his facilities to include a 5,000-seat auditorium, a gymnasium, and a swimming pool. The revolving electrical sign and the spotlight mounted on the roof of the church became trademarks of his style. The 1920s marked the apex of Norris's career. During the decade he became the leader of the fundamentalist movement in Texas by attacking the alleged teaching of evolution at Baylor University. As a result of his controversial methods in criticizing Baylor, denominational leaders, and Texas Baptist policies, Norris and the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth were denied seats at the annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1922 and 1923. In 1926, during the height of a controversy involving Norris, Mayor H. C. Meacham, and anti-Catholicism, the Fort Worth pastor shot and killed D. E. Chipps, one of Meacham's friends. Norris was indicted for murder on July 29 and acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

During 1928 Norris actively campaigned against the election of Al Smith to the presidency. His anti-Catholic views, voiced from the pulpit, his radio station, and his weekly newspaper, led the Republican party to honor him for his role in defeating Smith. In January 1929 Norris suffered the loss of his church facilities by fire for the second time in his tenure at the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth. Rebuilding the church during the height of the Great Depression was one of the greatest challenges of his career. When the new facilities were occupied in 1932, they bore little resemblance to the grander edifice of the 1920s. In the latter part of the 1930s Norris organized the World Missionary Baptist Fellowship, a group of independent, premillennial Baptist churches, to combat socialist, liberal, or "modernist" tendencies within the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1939 he began urging the United States to support and assist her European allies. After the war, when John Birch, a graduate of his seminary in Fort Worth, was killed by the Chinese communists, Norris launched a renewed attack on Communist influences within the United States. His premillennialist views led him to urge President Harry Truman to recognize and support the new state of Israel. Dissensions among his leadership led to a major division in his organization in 1950. This split resulted in the formation of a rival group led by his former assistant, Beauchamp Vick, based in Springfield, Missouri. Norris and his group continued to operate from Fort Worth. Norris died on August 20, 1952, of a heart seizure while attending a youth camp at Jacksonville, Florida. His death marked the end of an era of religious controversy in Texas.

The Tornado Texas will never forget!

JOHN FRANKLYN NORRIS
1877 - 1952

John Franklyn Norris was born in Dadeville, Alabama, 1877, but spent his childhood and youth in Hubbard, Texas, where the crusading spirit of the old West gave him life's direction. As a boy he was shot three times when horse thieves were attacking his father because he testified against the gang. Mrs. Norris knew her son was going to live and be a preacher, even though the doctors gave him up to die.

He graduated from Baylor University, and was valedictorian of his class at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He was ordained to the ministry in 1899 and soon thereafter began his long stormy career by serving as editor of "The Baptist Standard." He crusaded against the liquor traffic and horse racing, leading to passage of new laws in Texas. Norris aided Dr. B. H. Carroll in the founding of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1909 he accepted the pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas, and remained there until his death. Norris continued his crusade against corruption in city politics. Twice his church was burned to the ground, but he rebuilt it. An unruly mob gathered on a Fort Worth street and an agitator offered $1,000 to the person who would shoot J. Frank Norris. Upon hearing about the mob, Norris went to the street corner and, in view of the crowd, bought a newspaper and turned to read it leaving his back as a target. On another occasion a crowd gathered in the town hall and threatened to hang Norris. He strolled into the meeting and sat in the first row. The dynamic preaching of Norris gave him the reputation of being able to draw a crowd of 5,000 to 10,000 any place in Texas.

In 1935 Norris also accepted the pastorate of Temple Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan, and held joint pastorates for fifteen years of these two great churches separated geographically by thirteen hundred miles. During those years the attendance of each Sunday School reached over 5,000 weekly under the leadership of one pastor, and constituted the world's largest Sunday Schools. His newspapers, The Fundamentalist and The Searchlight, claimed to have the largest circulation of a religious newspaper west of the Mississippi.

A master pulpiteer, Dr. Norris was a fierce opponent of Communism, Catholicism, liberalism, and evolution and was acclaimed to be one of the twentieth century's outstanding leaders of Bible fundamentalism. In 1939, with the aid of Dr. Louis Entzminger, he organized the Bible Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, an institution which excelled in the training of young preachers. Many of the graduates of this school have built some of the largest churches in America.

Norris was a personal friend of world leaders such as William Jennings Bryan, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. He preached to state legislators and is credited with personally swinging the Texas vote from Al Smith, the Catholic candidate, to Herbert Hoover in 1928.

A friend of world leaders, a compassionate soul winner, and a Bible expositor, Dr. Norris died in Keystone, Florida, August 20, 1952 and was buried in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, August 24, 1952.

Portrait and Biography from Christian Hall of Fame, Canton, Ohio.

J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial that

Captivated America

Chronicles the trial of the Baptist fundamentalist, who in a moment of violence, killed the Dexter Elliott Chipps in his church office.In the 1920's, the Reverend J. Frank Norris railed against vice and conspiracies he saw everywhere to a congregation of more than 10,000 at First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, the largest congregation in America, the first "megachurch." In a moment of violence one sweltering Saturday in July, Norris shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office. Norris was indicted for murder and, if convicted, would be executed in the state of Texas' electric chair. Learn about this courtroom drama pitting some of the most powerful lawyers of the era against each other with the life of a wildly popular, and equally loathed, religious leader hanging in the balance.

Move mouse over book and click to open

Click book to open and read:

Click contact to communicate with us.

The Shooting Salvationist - J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial that Captivated America

The Shooting Salvationist chronicles what may be the most famous story you have never heard. In the 1920’s, the Reverend J. Frank Norris railed against vice and conspiracies he saw everywhere to a congregation of more than 10,000 at First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, the largest congregation in America, the first “megachurch.” Norris controlled a radio station, a tabloid newspaper and a valuable tract of land in downtown Fort Worth. Constantly at odds with the oil boomtown’s civic leaders, he aggressively defended his activism, observing, “John the Baptist was into politics.”

Following the death of William Jennings Bryan, Norris was a national figure poised to become the leading fundamentalist in America. This changed, however, in a moment of violence one sweltering Saturday in July when he shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office. Norris was indicted for murder and, if convicted, would be executed in the state of Texas’ electric chair.

At a time when newspaper wire services and national retailers were unifying American popular culture as never before, Norris’ murder trial was front-page news from coast to coast. Set during the Jazz Age, when Prohibition was the law of the land, The Shooting Salvationist leads to a courtroom drama pitting some of the most powerful lawyers of the era against each other with the life of a wildly popular, and equally loathed, religious leader hanging in the balance.

America’s history is punctuated, and at times littered, with the stories of religious leaders of every denomination, stripe and reputation. From Cotton Mather and Charles Wesley to Billy Sunday and D.L. Moody to Oral Roberts and Jerry Falwell, a nation born out of a desire to worship God as we are inclined to do so has given rise to some interesting personalities.

Among the most flamboyant, notorious and controversial of these was “Dr.” J. Frank Norris, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas. He was, inarguably, one of America’s first “megachurch” pastors, but he was much more than that. He was also a showman, muck-raking journalist, astute businessman and, in the minds of some, a murderer.

Pastor David Stokes,* a man who grew up in fundamentalism and one who was well-acquainted with the reputation of J. Frank Norris, has written a mesmerizing book about the sensational murder trial of the pastor from Fort Worth as he stood to account for the shooting of D. E. Chipps with a pistol from his desk—right in the pastor’s office. The Shooting Salvationist is impeccably researched from the archives of Ft. Worth and Austin, Texas newspapers, Norris’ own Searchlight tabloid and numerous other documents located in the archives of the local libraries, the University of Texas at Arlington and the Arlington Baptist College.

The book is not intended to be a treatise on southern fundamentalism, the gifts of Norris or the history of religion in Texas or elsewhere. Instead, it is clearly a historical work with nary a suggestion that it was being written by a minister—let alone one who can trace his spiritual heritage back to the doorstep of the infamous “Texas Hotel,” located very near Norris’ office. It is a work of history and fact that has the feel and vibe of a John Grisham novel about some sort of trial in a hot and humid southern town.

Every generation or so, Hollywood takes the story of some real or imagined colorful religious icon and makes a movie about it. Works like “Elmer Gantry,” “The Apostle” and “Leap of Faith” are examples. If ever there was a book that was ready to be turned into this generation’s “Elmer Gantry” it is The Shooting Salvationist. In fact, the book reads much like a movie script with a precise coverage of detail that can, at times, be almost mind-dulling. Stokes expertly captured the feel and atmosphere of American life during that era from his examination of the Scopes Monkey Trial to the heydays of Ft. Worth’s rise to prominence to the powerful influence of the tabloid style of journalism then practiced by the likes of William Randolph Hurst and Norris himself.

Norris’ story
The story begins with a look at Norris’ fascination with William Jennings Bryan, who was winding down his public career as the lawyer who represented the plaintiff in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial. Norris had a yearning for notoriety and attention that flew right past simply having a strong ego or excessive self-confidence. As such, he constantly looked for ways to find the limelight, to attach himself to others who would bring him acclaim and an attitude that gave little thought to representing the softer and more humble attributes of the gospel he thundered from his pulpit. Stokes gives the reader insight into Norris’ childhood and early days, which would later encourage inferences as to why he ended up shooting a man in what appeared to many to be cold blood. The author tracks and traces the meteoric rise of Norris’ career to assume the role as one of Texas’ most influential pulpiteers, as he took on the role of pastor of First Baptist Church of Ft. Worth.

Norris quickly made a name for himself by combining lead articles in his weekly periodical, The Searchlight, with sensationalist sermons that were promoted and then printed in it. He would foreshadow sermon topics and promise scandalous revelations about local politicians and businessmen that he called out by name from his pulpit. Accuracy of speech was not an encumbrance to Norris and innuendo and suggestion were tools he artfully deployed when speaking and writing. As a result, he made myriad enemies with people of influence across Texas.

Ultimately, one of the most pivotal experiences of his life, and the source of the topic for this book, occurred when Norris shot D. E. Chipps after Chipps allegedly threatened him and perhaps even made a move toward him with the intent to do the minister harm. Interestingly, not even twenty-four hours later, Norris was back in his pulpit—soon to face the charge of first degree murder and the possibility of the death penalty. Stokes masterfully reveals different facets of Norris’ complex personality. As the trial unfolds in Arlington—moved there to find a better venue—we see a man who was unrepentant and arrogant, charming and witty, and even at times frail and sickly. Indomitable, he took on the trial process and its tapestry of politics, law and theatrics and made his case through his attorneys. Truly, it was the O. J. Simpson trial of his day.

In the end, though Norris was acquitted, Stokes never quite answers the question of whether or not the flamboyant preacher indeed murdered the oft-drunk Chipps. Certainly, reasonable doubt existed and, at the same time, the specter of plausibility as the facts of the trial and the testimony of the witnesses played out.

Value for fundamentalists
So why is such a book featured in a fundamentalist website in the form of a review? I admit that the book was quite different from what I anticipated. This is a secular book—that does not even covertly defend or explain Norris’ theology. Nor does it give a rolled-eye or an up-turned nose toward Norris’ excesses and arrogance. The author simply lays out precisely what happened and lets the reader draw his own conclusion. The book reads like a crime novel, only it’s true. It is peppered with the earthy, and at times blasphemous, language of the unconverted. It doesn’t hold back on the details of hypocrisy, yet it doesn’t try to portray the story as a microcosm of a bigger movement. This book is simply about J. Frank Norris and his murder trial, nothing more or nothing less.

Yet, for those who might be familiar with Norris and the fundamentalist names of that era ranging from Jones, Rice, Vick, Sunday and others, the book offers fascinating insight into the cradle of modern fundamentalism—particularly of the Southern variety. We see ego and the KKK, cantankerous spirits and pragmatic methodology, raw ambition and yet, a concern for reaching others with the gospel. It’s hard at times to sift through the debris in search of the good elements, but it does help us understand the nature of many who lay claim to the title of “fundamentalism” today. Indeed, many of the same tactics, techniques, manipulation and even mannerisms still exist in some branches today.

Norris, post-trial
At the conclusion of the book, one is left slightly unsatisfied. Unsatisfied that we don’t have a sure conclusion as to the guilt or innocence of the “preacher.” Unsatisfied that we don’t have a lot of additional insight into Norris’ activities, or even accomplishments, after the trial. Unsatisfied with the lack of dogma or conclusions that would allow us to agree or disagree with the author. Obviously, that was his intent.

Norris went on to found a movement of Independent, fundamentalist Baptists. That movement split in the 1950’s and the Baptist Bible Fellowship based in Springfield, Missouri formed. The remaining movement became the World Baptist Fellowship and Arlington Baptist College became their flagship institution. Norris was the pastor and co-pastor of the Temple Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan whose pulpit he shared with G. Beauchamp Vick—the eventual lead pastor and the first president of Baptist Bible College in Springfield. Today, that same church bears little resemblance to its famous pastor of years gone by and is known as Northridge Church, led by Pastor Brad Powell—himself the son-in-law of a firebrand fundamentalist icon—the late Wally Beebe. The roots of many in today’s fundamentalism and evangelicalism can be traced back to one J. Frank Norris, the shooting salvationist.

If you are into history of any sort, curious about the origins of today’s fundamentalism or simply interested in one of the most colorful and controversial characters in American religious history, read this book. It is not a brief tome, but it kept my attention from start to finish.

In an interesting twist of irony, the school founded by one of America’s most flamboyant and controversial religious leaders has just hired another one of America’s most flamboyant and controversial leaders to serve as its provost and vice-president—Ergun Caner. Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Notes
* David Stokes is a friend and colleague of mine. In addition, I was once active within the Baptist Bible Fellowship and served as the senior pastor of a Baptist Bible Fellowship affiliated church.

Another review

The Reverend Doctor J. Frank Norris was many things in the 1920s: a pastor who led the nation's first megachurch, a provocative publisher, and a pioneer broadcaster. With the flair of a great showman, he railed against vice and conspiracies he saw everywhere to a congregation of more than 10,000 at First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. His church served as a venue for a steady stream of politicians and perfomers, from William Howard Taft to Will Rogers, but Norris himself was by far the biggest attraction. Following the death of William Jennings Bryan, he was poised to become the leading fundamentalist figure in America. This changed, though, in a moment of violence one sweltering Saturday in July when he shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office.

Saturated with vivid detail, The Shooting Salvationist skillfully explores the events leading up to one of the most intriguing -- yet largely forgotten -- crime stories in America's history. Set...

Full Description: The Shooting Salvationist chronicles what may be the most famous story you have never heard. In the 1920's, the Reverend J. Frank Norris railed against vice and conspiracies he saw everywhere to a congregation of more than 10,000 at First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, the largest congregation in America, the first "megachurch." Norris controlled a radio station, a tabloid newspaper and a valuable tract of land in downtown Fort Worth. Constantly at odds with the oil boomtown's civic leaders, he aggressively defended his activism, observing, "John the Baptist was into politics."

Following the death of William Jennings Bryan, Norris was a national figure poised to become the leading fundamentalist in America. This changed, however, in a moment of violence one sweltering Saturday in July when he shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office. Norris was indicted for murder and, if convicted, would be executed in the state of Texas' electric chair.

At a time when newspaper wire services and national retailers were unifying American popular culture as never before, Norris' murder trial was front page news from coast to coast. Set during the Jazz Age, when Prohibition was the law of the land, The Shooting Salvationistleads to a courtroom drama pitting some of the most powerful lawyers of the era against each other with the life of a wildly popular, and equally loathed, religious leader hanging in the balance.

The Shooting Salvationist

“For all the colorful characters who became part of Fort Worth’s history, surely none surpassed J. Frank Norris, the fiery fundamentalist preacher at Fort Worth’s First Baptist Church in pure outlandishness. His oratory and penchant for publicity brought thousands into his congregation and at one point, First Baptist was among the largest churches in the world, a mega church before the phrase was coined. Unfortunately, for all his oratorical skills, Norris’ horizons were limited by several criminal indictments brought on by his tendency for violence.

In this book David Stokes tells the J. Frank Norris story.
If I hadn’t grown up in Fort Worth, I would have thought someone made all this up but no one did.
It really happened.”

FROM THE FOREWORD by Bob Schieffer (CBS News)

Click book below and see how J. Frank Norris was falsely misrepresented:

Late in 1926, Dexter Eliot (D.E.) Chipps, a divorced lumberman, walked into the First Baptist Church office of the nationally renowned fundamentalist preacher J. Frank Norris. He was there to warn the preacher against his continuing his attacks on the Fort Worth mayor and other political crones that Chipps considered his friends. What exactly happened in that office is a matter of dispute, but what isn't in dispute, is that Chipps was never to leave that building alive. Either in self defense or with murderous intent, an unarmed D.E. Chipps was shot, shot three times, shot by J. Frank Norris, shot with a gun he kept in a drawer in his desk. The story of the killing, the tensions that caused it and trial that followed - a trial as notorious in its day as any.
Account of a highly publicized 1926 murder in Fort Worth, Texas, and the trial of accused killer J. Frank Norris, a fiery fundamentalist preacher.

Norris, whose Fort Worth church reputedly attracted more parishioners than any other in the United States during the 1920s, preached a gospel of hatred against African-Americans, Catholics and other targets. Using a newspaper he founded and a radio station, he reached audiences in a similar manner as Jerry Falwell decades later. Regularly inserting himself into controversies about the direction of Fort Worth government and business, Norris collected enemies and friends with equal aplomb. A lumber tycoon named Dexter Elliott Chipps became one of the enemies. One day in 1926, Chipps, known for his drinking, womanizing and large physical presence, called Norris at church to announce he would be walking over for a talk. When he arrived, Chipps apparently warned Norris to withdraw certain criticisms of Fort Worth leaders. Claiming to fear for his life, Norris pulled a gun and shot the unarmed Chipps dead in the church office. The criminal trial moved from Fort Worth to Austin because of prejudicial publicity. Journalists from around the nation and world covered the trial, which centered on the question of whether Norris had killed Chipps in self-defense. The jury acquitted Norris, who then remained active in fundamentalist church circles and right-wing political circles until his death in 1952. Sharing the spotlight in the narrative are the Chipps family members, church employees and congregants loyal to their minister, Fort Worth social and political big shots and well-known lawyers on both sides of the case.
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-The-Shooting-Salvationist-J-Frank-2076301.php#ixzz1zPJIxevr

Gunfire and Brimstone

Fort Worth preacher J. Frank Norris paved the way for today’s televangelists. But he’s probably best known as the defendant in a wild 1927 murder trial.

Born in Alabama in 1877, John Franklyn Norris moved with his family when he was a young boy to Hubbard, a small community southeast of Hillsboro. Norris’s father was a sharecropper and a bad drunk, from whose example Norris acquired a lifelong detestation of alcohol. Norris discovered his religious calling early, at a revival meeting in 1890. He entered Baylor University in 1898 and a year later had his first pastorate, in nearby Mount Calm, at the ripe age of 21. In 1905 he took a master of theology degree from Southern Baptist Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky. The top in his class, he gave a valedictory address on “International Justification of Japan in Its War With Russia.” That must have been a spellbinder.
After a four-year stint at the McKinney Avenue Baptist Church in Dallas, Norris jumped to Fort Worth’s First Baptist Church. Here he would accomplish his rapid climb to acclaim and influence as well as put his life at risk with his combative zeal. Within just two years Norris had turned himself into a sensation—and made a lot of bigwigs in Fort Worth very angry when he denounced Hell’s Half Acre, a swath of bars, whorehouses, and gambling establishments that were sources of sin and income for city leaders. The consequences were swift and dire. In 1912 Norris’s church was burned to the ground, his house was damaged by fire, and two bullets shattered the stained-glass windows of his study. Though as was often the case with Norris, it’s not clear who had done what. (There were rumors that Norris himself was the author of some of these actions.)
None of these events deterred him. By the mid-twenties Norris oversaw a virtual communications empire. Besides producing a steady stream of articles for his tabloid, The S light, he broadcast sermons and political rants on his radio station, KFQB, which billed itself “Keep Folks Quoting the Bible.” Everything came to a head in the summer of 1926, after Mayor H. C. Meacham sought to heavily tax Norris’s empire. Norris responded by accusing the mayor of graft and dropping hints about a sexual relationship between Meacham and a young woman. The mayor retaliated by firing several employees of his department store for refusing to give up their membership in the First Baptist Church. This kind of heavy-handed tactic only gave Norris another reason to bash the mayor, which he did on an almost daily basis. Many people in Fort Worth wanted Norris dead, and one of them, a friend of the mayor’s named D. Elliott Chipps, decided to deal with Norris personally. Known to be belligerent when drinking, Chipps confronted Norris in his church office on a hot July afternoon in 1926. The visit ended when Norris fired three bullets into Chipps’s body, an act that captured the nation’s attention.
This event happens on page 108 of The Shooting Salvationist, and for the next 214 pages we are presented with every scrap and fact available, including a detailed play-by-play of the contentious trial held in Austin in January 1927. For data and context, Stokes has gone back to the microfilm copies of newspapers of the period. This is hard, grinding research (done in part by paid researchers), but the payoff is not particularly insightful. The whole book (which was self-published last year in significantly different form under the title Apparent Danger) has a kind of faded Front Page quality. Cliff-hanger chapter endings and hokey chapter titles—“Extra, Extra, Read All About It!” “Hello Chief, Let’s Go,” “If You Do, I’ll Kill You”—do little to increase interest. Too often Stokes seems to be the captive of background research. You can almost hear index cards being turned over as he reports the rise of the council-manager form of city government in the twenties and the political campaigns of forgotten figures like Lynch Davidson and Dan Moody. And as with the other books on Norris, the man himself remains elusive.
Stokes wants us to see Norris as a “sobering reminder that any cult of personality . . . is fraught with peril.” But Norris, I think, was something else: a figure who bridged fire-and-brimstone sermonizing with the modern communication techniques of print and radio. In many ways he was the prototype of the modern megachurch minister. What he was not was a crazy cultist like David Koresh, who holed up in his own little Alamo, or that nut job in West Texas who dressed all his women like calico extras in a wagon train western and married more than his share of them.
It’s easy today to dismiss faith fanned by the flames of old-time religion. Sinclair Lewis did it in Elmer Gantry (published in 1927, the year of the Norris trial), whose protagonist was an unscrupulous, showboating preacher. But in that distant time, the power of fundamentalist theology was palpable. Revivals in Texas were sources of great energy and consolation. Although I was bored with the plain-vanilla sermons of the resident pastor of the Protestant church my family attended in Lucas, in Collin County, I was much impressed with the summer revivals held in an open wooden tabernacle in Forest Grove, a few miles north. Those preachers were rhetorical geniuses with staying power; they never closed out the night’s session until a sufficient number of sinners had come forward to be saved. Once, at another revival, I heard a former member of the Bonnie and Clyde gang talk of sin and redemption.
That was a long time ago, but I still remember the excitement of those blazing-hot summer nights of fervor and entertainment. I wish Stokes had been able to get across some of this. Perhaps it really will take a novelist’s skill to bring J. Frank Norris to life on the page.

http://www.theshootingsalvationist.com/

SOME MISREPRESENTATIONS AND FALSEHOODS ABOUT

DR. J. FRANK NORRIS IN DAVID STOKES' BOOK, “APPARENT DANGER” –
WHICH PROVE THAT STOKES DOESN’T LIKE DR. NORRIS!
BY DR. HOMER RITCHIE.

I was the immediate successor to Dr. J. Frank Norris at the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas. The author of the book, “Apparent Danger,” Rev. David Stokes, never met Dr. Norris or personally observed his ministry. All he knows is hearsay and second-hand evaluations. These can be very biased and prejudicial, depending on one’s predispositions. Many people feel I have a more reliable and factual perspective of Dr. Norris’ life and ministry than any living person. This is true for two reasons: (1) I attended Dr. Norris’ seminary and heard him teach many classes, and I attended his church and heard him preach powerful sermons. I was fortunate to work on his church staff for over two years. He conducted a weekly staff meeting and I had the unique opportunity of observing him first-hand and evaluating him as a person, pastor and soul-winner; and (2) I wrote a book about him entitled “The Life and Legend of J. Frank Norris,” and did a massive amount of library research, as well as interviews with people who personally knew him. Contrary to what his critics and enemies wrote or stated, Dr. Norris was a kind, generous, compassionate and Spirit-filled man. I have seen him weep over the lost and downtrodden. He led his church to feed thousands of poor, hungry people. I witnessed on many occasions when he would give needy people his last dollar. On the other hand, he courageously and aggressively exposed social evils, religious racketeers, charlatans, liberal professors in Southern Baptist schools, denominational leaders, and deceivers who taught heresies. At times his methods were objectionable to some people who did not agree with his strong Biblical views. That’s nothing new. Christ’s critics and enemies tried on several occasions to kill Him and finally succeeded at Calvary. The same was true of Stephen, Paul, the Apostles, the true prophets of Israel, the martyrs, and faithful men and women of God in the Bible.
David Stokes characterized Norris as a killer/murderer. Webster’s Dictionary equates “killer” and “murderer” as synonyms. Norris was not a killer/murderer, and an unbiased Texas jury acquitted him of this charge. Several witnesses (hotel and church employees, etc.) testified to events leading up to the killing of D. E. Chipps and concerning the actual event testified that Norris killed a drunken, cursing and threatening would-be killer. It was self-defense.
I raise the unanswered question: Why is David Stokes now publishing a book calling Dr. Norris a killer? Norris killed Chipps in self-defense in July 1926 – eighty-four years ago. David Stokes betrayed his upbringing and joined the critics of Norris in an abortive attempt to discredit and scandalize the “greatest preacher of the twentieth century.” Norris’ record is written in Heaven and no one can distort, vilify or alter it.
The religious, political and cultural changes in America in the last fifty years have made it easier to vilify and misinterpret “religious fundamentalists,” portraying them as fanatics. Did David Stokes sense an opportunity to make money off of a book that besmears the image of a great patriot and defender of Biblical truth? You, the reader, will have to make that decision.
Stokes does not prove, and cannot prove, that Dr. Norris was guilty of murder. Norris was not guilty of first-degree murder (premeditated, with malice ahead of time). Norris was not even guilty of manslaughter (homicide without malice ahead of time). In fact, Dr. Norris was not guilty of anything at all! He simply acted in self-defense, sincerely believing that his life was in danger from Chipps. That is what the jury said. That is what the judge said. That is what the witnesses said.
Stokes does not prove, and cannot prove, that Dr. Norris was guilty. Instead he proves something else: that he, David Stokes, doesn’t like Dr. Norris. He proves that he doesn’t like Dr. Norris, and that is all he proves! He tries to get the readers of his book to dislike Dr. Norris too. That seems to be his only real argument against Dr. Norris. But not liking him doesn’t prove that he was guilty of murder! That just isn’t fair!

First, Stokes doesn’t like Dr. Norris as a person. He says in the preface (viii) that Dr. Norris’ church was a “cult of personality.” Nobody likes a “cult,” since it reminds us of Jim Jones, and so Dr. Norris and his church must have been bad. At least that’s what David Stokes wants us to believe.
Stokes tries to associate Dr. Norris with the Ku Klux Klan and says that there were KKK members in Dr. Norris’ church (pages 12, 53, 102). There may have been a few Klan members in the church in the 1920’s, but there weren’t any when I was there. And Dr. Norris himself was never a member of the Klan. But Stokes just uses the words “Ku Klux Klan” on the same page as the name “J. Frank Norris” to get the readers of the book to dislike Dr. Norris. This proves that Stokes really doesn’t like Dr. Norris. But that doesn’t prove that Norris was guilty of murder!

Second, Stokes doesn’t like the old-time fundamental Baptist religion. He says it had a lot in common with the Ku Klux Klan (page 51). Saying that may get some of the readers of the book to dislike Dr. Norris and his church. But it doesn’t prove Dr. Norris was guilty of murder.
David Stokes grew up in the Temple Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where Dr. Norris had been the pastor before Stokes was born. But somewhere along the line, Stokes turned against the old-time Baptist religion. Now he is the pastor of Fair Oaks Church near Washington, DC, the gathering place of politicians. His church is progressive. Even the word “Baptist” is no longer in its name.
But as for me, I’m proud to be an old-time Baptist. David Stokes has changed, but I haven’t changed. I am proud to be a Baptist just like Dr. Norris, and just like all the good preachers we used to have in our country not so very long ago. Stokes has turned against the old-time religion of his youth, but I haven’t! “Give me that old-time religion! It’s good enough for me!” Yes, Stokes doesn’t like Dr. Norris, and he doesn’t like his old-fashioned religion. But that doesn’t make J. Frank Norris guilty of murder!

Third, Stokes doesn’t like any of the witnesses that showed Dr. Norris was innocent. Dr. Norris himself explained that D. E. Chipps had made a move toward his hip pocket, as if going for a gun, but Stokes thinks that was a “calculated invention” on the part of Norris (page 159). How can Stokes know this 84 years later? Was he there? How does he know that Chipps didn’t make that move, and that Norris invented it afterward? Of course he can’t know and he doesn’t know, but he says it anyway – because Stokes doesn’t like Dr. Norris!
Stokes mentions Mrs. Frances (Fannie) Greer, but he doesn’t like her either. He says that Fannie had spent time in a sanitarium (page 325) as though there was something mentally wrong with her. In those days people went to a sanitarium for a rest. I knew Fannie Greer and there was nothing wrong with her. She was just as sane as Stokes or anybody else.
Stokes does not fully explain what Fannie said in the trial and afterwards, because her testimony would clear Dr. Norris! But I can tell you what Mrs. Greer said to me in 1991. Here it is – word for word,

“Sixty five years ago, on Saturday 17, 1926, I was working as a telephone operator in the Westbrook Hotel in downtown Fort Worth where D. E. Chipps lived. He was a wealthy lumberman and close friend to Roman Catholic mayor H. C. Meacham and other city officials whom Norris attacked and exposed. Mr. Chipps was a heavy drinker, rude, gruff and used foul language.
Chipps asked me to call Dr. Norris for him. I broke a rule and listened in on their conversation. Chipps spoke gruffly and angrily to Norris and said, ‘I am going to kill you if you don’t take back what you have said about my friends.’ Norris replied that what he said was true and he would not change his accusations. After hanging up, Chipps said to the room clerk, ‘I am going over to the church and kill Frank Norris _____ that __ __ _______ preacher.’” (Homer Ritchie, “The Life and Legend of J. Frank Norris,” published by Homer G. Ritchie, 7314 Durado Drive, Fort Worth, Texas 76179, 1991, pp. 163-164; phone (817)236-8536).

Mrs. Greer said under oath that she heard D. E. Chipps say to Dr. Norris, “I am going to kill you.” When the jury heard that, they knew that Dr. Norris had acted only in self-defense. He thought that Chipps had come to kill him. That is why the jury declared Dr. Norris not guilty of murder.
Stokes doesn’t like any of the other witnesses who showed that Dr. Norris was innocent of murder. He doesn’t like L. J. Nutt, who was there himself, and witnessed the shooting. Nutt explained that Norris was innocent, but Stokes doesn’t like him.
Stokes doesn’t like Fred Holland, who testified that Chipps had threatened Dr. Norris, and that he, Holland, had told Dr. Norris about the threat. That is why Stokes said that Holland only “supposedly” told Dr. Norris about this (page 298). Let’s face it, Stokes doesn’t like anybody who testified that Dr. Norris was innocent. That doesn’t seem fair to me. As far as I’m concerned, Stokes can like or dislike anyone he wants. But that doesn’t make Dr. Norris guilty of murder!

Fourth, Stokes doesn’t even like the prosecuting attorney, Bill McLean, who had argued that Dr. Norris was guilty. Stokes says that McLean admitted defeat in the face of the witnesses, saying, “The legendary lawyer seemed to give up at the end, virtually conceding the case” (page 357). In other words, Stokes said that McLean recognized that the evidence showed Dr. Norris was innocent, and so he did a bad job of attacking Dr. Norris. Stokes doesn’t consider the possibility that even the prosecutor saw that Norris was innocent, because Stokes simply doesn’t like Norris.
Fifth, Stokes doesn’t like the judge. He dislikes the judge’s remarks to the jury, saying that “the judge seemed to pick up right where McLean had left off” (page 358). In other words, the judge himself thought Dr. Norris was innocent. Stokes doesn’t like this, but he never explains why the judge made the statements that he did. Stokes doesn’t consider that the judge was rightly convinced of Dr. Norris’ innocence, and that the judge had spoken properly, because Stokes simply doesn’t like Norris.
Sixth, Stokes doesn’t like the jury. He suggested that the jury might have been biased from the beginning, that no one could get on the jury who didn’t believe in “apparent danger” (pages 250 and 251), glossing over the fact that both the prosecution and the defense examined the jurors, and both had equal say in who was on that jury.
The jury found Dr. Norris “not guilty.” Were they wrong? If so, why were they wrong? Stokes notes that the jury deliberated for only one hour and fourteen minutes (page 359). Presumably the jury was wrong about this and should have taken a lot more time. Stokes seems to suggest that they were wrong to reach a verdict so quickly. Maybe Stokes thinks they were wrong because they were old-time Texans with a pro-gun mentality. But he never says why they were wrong. Stokes doesn’t like the jury because he doesn’t like Dr. Norris, and they let him go.
In fact, the jury was right! Dr. Norris was innocent, as the witnesses had testified. The reason the jury took only a short time before giving their verdict was simple: the evidence was overwhelming and the facts were clear. Dr. Norris was innocent of murder, and there was no doubt about it. That is why the jury acquitted Dr. Norris after deliberating for only a little over an hour. It was so obvious that Dr. Norris was innocent that they didn’t need any more time to decide. The jury was right, and being sensible people, they didn’t need much time to reach their verdict. But Stokes doesn’t like the jury and their verdict, because he doesn’t like Dr. Norris, and that seems to be enough for him.
Stokes never explains why the judge and the jury were wrong! I guess they were old-time Texans, just like Dr. Norris was, and that is enough for Stokes to dislike. It is very clear, throughout the book, that Stokes doesn’t like old-time Texans.

Seventh and finally, David Stokes doesn’t like the American system of justice, and in particular he doesn’t like the way justice was done in Texas. In our American constitutional system of law, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty. Dr. Norris was innocent going into the trial. There he was found not guilty. He was innocent going out of the trial, and he was innocent for the rest of his life. Our law says that a man is innocent until proven guilty. But Stokes wants to convict Norris as guilty after he was acquitted as innocent!
Stokes is not satisfied with the American way. He doesn’t like Dr. Norris and he doesn’t like Dr. Norris’ religion. So he wants to reverse the jury’s verdict and convict Norris anyway. But not liking a man and not liking his religion doesn’t make him guilty of murder!
The witnesses testified that Dr. Norris was innocent. The judge and the jury agreed that Dr. Norris was innocent. But David Stokes doesn’t consider the fact that these people might have understood things correctly and judged rightly. Instead he simply ignores the witnesses, the judge, and the jury, as though they all went wrong. They were old-time Texans, and somehow that might make them wrong. Stokes never explains why the witnesses, the judge, and the jury were all wrong. He doesn’t prove that Dr. Norris was guilty, because he can’t. Instead, his book “Apparent Danger” merely shows his distaste for Dr. Norris as well as for the trial and Texan society itself. Stokes treats Dr. Norris as guilty simply because he doesn’t like him, doesn’t like the old-time Baptist religion, and doesn’t like the old West, Texas in particular! But that doesn’t make Dr. Norris guilty of murder, because he wasn’t guilty!
David Stokes definitely doesn’t like Dr. J. Frank Norris, and he doesn’t like the old Baptist religion. Perhaps this has come out of his personal experience in his family and in his own life. Whatever his personal reasons, Stokes is wrong to smear Dr. Norris as guilty of murder just because he doesn’t like him, and just because he has turned against the old-time Baptist religion. Stokes has made a serious and sinful accusation against Dr. Norris, and Stokes will have to answer for it when he appears before God.
As for me, I stand up for Dr. Norris and I will keep on standing up for him! David Stokes never knew him, but I did know him well, as a preacher and as a friend. As long as I am alive, this earth will never lack a man who stands up and says what is right and true. I will always love, respect, and defend Dr. J. Frank Norris. Stokes doesn’t like Dr. Norris, but I do, and I always will!

John Frank Norris

JOHN FRANKLYN NORRIS
1877 - 1952

He was called, “The Fighting Fundamentalist,” “The Texas Tornado,” “The Preacher,” “The Two-Gun Parson.” J. Frank Norris earned these titles during his 43-year pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas. His work as a fundamental Baptist crusader, pulpiteer, showman, editor, church and movement builder are the stuff of legend. He was listed 44th out of the 100 movers and shakers in the 150-year history of Fort Worth, Texas, by The City’s Magazine in 1999. It declared, “A true hellfire and damnation preacher, J. Frank Norris could easily be called the most controversial man who ever lived in Fort Worth.”
His life, ministry and influence are all part of the heritage of fundamental Baptists.

His family and youth

John Franklyn Norris was the oldest child in the sharecropper family of James Warner and Mary Davis Norris. He was born on September 8, 1877, in Dadeville, Alabama. He had one younger brother, Dorie, and a sister who died at an early age. His mother had a godly influence on him and often told him that one day he would be a great preacher. At age 11, his family moved to a farm near Hubbard, Texas. His father’s bouts of drunkenness caused much pain, deprivation and suffering to his family. It also helped breed a strong dislike of liquor in young Norris. At 13, J. Frank Norris was converted in a Methodist revival meeting conducted by J. A. Oswalt. Under the ministry of Catlett Smith, pastor of the Hubbard Baptist Church, Norris followed Christ in baptism. Shortly thereafter, he surrendered to preach.

When he was 15, he was shot in the stomach by a cattle thief. Norris’ father had testified against two thieves and they came to the farm to punish him. When Norris joined in the fight, he was shot and nearly killed. During the long recovery time, his mother constantly nursed and taught him. Her influence helped shape his values and theology.

Training and early ministry

At the age of 22, he attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas. While a student, he also accepted the call to pastor the Baptist Church of Mt. Calm, Texas, and was ordained. During this time he also met and courted Lillian Gaddy, a pastor’s daughter, and they were married in 1902. By the time he graduated from Baylor with honors in 1903, his church’s attendance was double the town population with a membership of 800 and he was the father of Lillian Norris, who was born that April. (The Norris’ also had three sons: Jim, 1906; J. Frank Jr., 1910, and George, 1916.)

That summer, the Norris family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he enrolled at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. There he was taught by B. H. Carroll, A. T. Robertson, E. C. Dargan and E. Y. Mullins. He completed the requirements for the Master of Theology degree and brought the valedictory address when he graduated in May of 1905.

A young pastor and editor

Immediately upon graduation from the seminary, he accepted the call to become pastor of the McKinney Avenue Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Thirteen attended his first service there. The work grew and flourished to a membership of a thousand. Two years later (1907), he was encouraged to take over the management of The Baptist Standard, a religious newspaper serving Baptists throughout Texas and the South. He purchased a controlling interest with funds he had inherited. He negotiated with other Baptist editors to purchase and merge their newspapers with his. He changed the format to include lots of news and it began to make progress. He also used the magazine to crusade for an end to gambling in Texas, which brought his publication much attention. Circula-tion grew from 16,000 to 38,000 and advertising revenue increased. In 1909, Norris was asked to speak before the legislature. The body soon voted to outlaw racetrack gambling in Texas. While editor of The Baptist Standard, Norris also assisted B. H. Carroll in his drive to establish the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1908.

The beginning of ministry in Fort Worth

In 1909, the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, “The home of the cattle kings,” the richest church in Texas, needed a pastor. They invited Norris to supply, then become a candidate. The church extended him a nearly unanimous call and he accepted. For the first two years, Norris described himself as “a typical city pastor. I was the chief after-dinner speaker. I had tuxedos, swallowtail coats, a selection of ‘biled’ shirts, several of them, and I would give $10 for the latest joke. I was, as I said, the main attraction at all the gatherings of the Rotarians, Lions, Kiwanis, Eagles. I was Will Rogers and Mark Twain both combined; they thought so; so did I.”

By 1911, this style of ministry left Norris very discouraged and restless. He reluctantly accepted the invitation to preach a meeting for Charlie Carroll, son of B. H. Carroll, in Kentucky. During that meeting, Norris had a burning bush experience with God and came home a new man. He said, “When I came back from Owensboro, after a month’s meditation on the banks of the Ohio, I decided I would enter the ministry. I began to preach the gospel after the fashion of John the Baptist in the wilderness of Judea. I didn’t use a pearl handle pen knife; I did what J. T. Pemberton said, I had a broad axe and laid it at the tap root of the trees of dancing, gambling, saloons, houses of ill fame, ungodly conduct, high and low, far and near. And you talk about a bonfire — the whole woods was set on fire … With all the intensity of my soul I waded into the thing, right and left, fore and aft, inside and outside. I asked no questions … and went in arm and hammer brand style. The crowds came; large numbers were saved!”

A perpetual crusader

A hallmark of the ministry of J. Frank Norris was his crusader mentality. He was constantly crusading for the fundamentals of Christianity against modernism, for right against wrong and good against evil. He crusaded against gambling, against prostitution, against liquor, against corrupt government, against international communism, against Roman Catho-licism, against the election of Roman Catholic Al Smith, against Baptist denominationalism and near the end, even against men from his own movement.
This crusading mindset accomplished three things. First, it helped him achieve victories against spiritual and social evil. Second, it helped him attract and hold large crowds so he could reach them with the gospel. Third, it brought conflict and controversy with opponents and the public.

Crusade against vice leads to arson

One example of conflict and controversy is Norris’ crusade in 1911 against Hell’s Half Acre, the 80 local houses of prostitution operated with little notice in downtown Fort Worth. Norris used his Sunday evening sermons to expose and humiliate the men who owned Hell’s Half Acre. He advertised sensational sermon titles like, “The 10 Biggest Devils In Town And Their Records Given.” Overflow crowds attended the services where Norris named the persons who profited and the city officials he believed were their cohorts. That summer he erected an enormous tent in a vacant lot near the Half Acre and preached a series of sermons on its sins and challenged the city to enforce the law. He also attacked the liquor industry and brought major Prohibition leaders to help. The city mayor, W. B. Davis, had the tent removed because Norris had not obtained permission to use the lot.

Norris then attacked the city administration, and in January, 1912, Davis threatened to have Norris hung. Two days later a fire was discovered at First Baptist Church, but was quickly put out. Three days after that, two shots were fired through the church study windows where Norris was working. On February 4, an explosion and fire burned the church to the ground. A month later, the Norris’ family escaped harm when their home was also burned. Norris himself was charged with setting the fires and lying about certain facts in the case. It was alleged that he wanted to build a new building and used the controversy to cover his guilt. In the trial, the preacher was acquitted by order of the judge.

Anti-Catholic crusade results in shooting

Another case of conflict and controversy was Norris’ anti-Catholic crusade in 1925. When the Fort Worth city council voted to buy a section of land from the Catholic Ignatious Academy for $90,000 more than the original price for the whole campus, many citizens felt it was nothing more than a gift to the Roman Catholic Church. Norris immediately began to attack Mayor H. C. Meacham for his Roman Catholic sympathies and associations. Dexter Chipps, a close friend of Meacham’s, became angry and called Norris, threatening to come to his office and settle matters. He did appear about 20 minutes later and exchanged words with Norris. In the tenseness of the situation, Norris reached for the pistol in his desk and fired four shots. Chipps was mortally wounded with bullets in his arm, abdomen and neck. In the murder trial, Norris claimed self-defense. The jury found him “Not Guilty.”

Denominational crusades lead to ouster

Norris also experienced conflicts with other pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1914, he was expelled from the Fort Worth Baptist Pastor’s conference. In 1922, the First Baptist Church was excluded from the Tarrant Baptist Association. Two years later, the church suffered the same at the hands of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The last censure included a statewide radio “hatefest” by Southern Baptist leaders that labeled Norris a liar, diabolical, thief, devilish, dastardly, corrupt, perjurer and reprobate. Issues included Norris’ campaign against other churches accepting his “disciplined members,” his failure to participate in financial giving campaigns sponsored by the denomination, his failure to use literature prescribed by the denomination (his only Sunday school book was the King James Version of the Bible) and his tactics in fighting modernism in the denomination’s schools.

A consummate showman

Along with his crusading, J. Frank Norris excelled as a showman. Will McDonald described the services as “The best show in Fort Worth. Norris designed First Baptist’s Sunday evening services to attract people from outside the church … He advertised his sermon titles on a large canvas banner that stretched along the side of the church building. The provocative titles got Fort Worth’s attention … He treated the congregation to visual spectacles as well. Once, when a cowboy was converted, he had the horse brought into the service to witness the baptism … when Norris preached against evolution, he brought a monkey into the meeting. The monkey, dressed in a little suit, sat on a stool next to the pulpit. Each time Norris made a point against evolution, he turned to the monkey and asked, ‘Isn’t that so?’ Norris was quite the showman.”

A master pulpiteer

J. Frank Norris was universally recognized for his outstanding abilities as a speaker. George W. Dollar gave him high marks: “He developed a preaching style that has never been successfully imitated or analyzed; it defies attempts at either … To preachers it was a thing of envy and delight … He had more than pulpit charisma; he had the keenest sense of the thinking and expectations of his audience. He was able to command attention and to lead great crowds into enthusiastic acceptance of the truths he believed and preached. His voice was not beautiful, as was George W. Truett’s, but it was far more heart-rending and convincing … His courage in exposing sin was transparently clear to all and his fearlessness always appealed to the common people. His ability to make a service a command performance producing spiritual conviction, decisions, and church-wide applause and amens from all corners made him a preacher’s preacher without a single parallel.”

Dave Hardy cites Royce Measures’ evaluation of Norris’ preaching, “He was a pulpiteer of the highest order and was gifted in his ability to sway people to his point of view. People would come from far and near to hear him preach. Few men prior to the advent of modern mass communications reached the vast number of people that Norris did.”

Many who served with Norris, including BBFI founders G. B. Vick, R. O. Woodworth and John W. Rawlings, considered him the finest preacher they ever heard. This is high praise, considering that the First Baptist Church had such notable speakers as Billy Sunday, Wil-liam Jennings Bryan, T. T. Shields, R. A. Tor-rey, W. B. Riley, Sam Morris, Mor-decai Ham and J. C. Penney.15

Newspaper editor and broadcaster

J. Frank Norris used the media of his day to his best advantage. He not only edited The Baptist Standard, his church published a weekly newspaper as well. In 1914, the publication was named The Fence Rail. He changed the name to The Searchlight in 1917 and in 1927 it was changed again to The Fundamentalist. In his newspapers, he carried the latest religious news of interest to his readers and the sermons he preached, which were stenographically recorded and edited. Circulation at its highest was 70,000 per issue. In 1924, he also led the church to purchase and operate a radio station for a time. When it was sold, the church retained broadcasting privileges for the next 50 years. Norris had a daily program and broadcast his Sunday services.

Church builder

From 1911 forward, Norris determined to do everything he could to build the biggest church in the world. In 1913, he hired Louis Entzminger, already recognized for his organizational skills and passion for building Sunday schools. The attendance grew from 250 to over a thousand in one year. By 1920, the Sunday school reached 2,000 in average attendance.17 In 1924, he hired G. B. Vick to superintend the teen and young adult departments. Vick’s work brought in over 2,000 to his departments and the total attendance reached nearly 5,000.18 Total membership was listed at 8,400 in 1926.

In 1934, Norris assumed a second pastorate at the Temple Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan, and installed Entzminger to care for day-to-day operations. Two years later, he replaced Entzminger with Vick, who teamed with Norris to build the church to over a thousand within a year. The Detroit work grew steadily to an average of nearly 3,500 in 1949.20 Together, the two churches claimed 25,000 members, easily the largest congregation under one pastor in the world.

Movement founder

Because of his conflicts with the Southern Baptist Convention, Norris joined forces with other fundamentalists to form the Baptist Bible Union in 1923. This movement focused on the fight against modernism, but in 1932, it fell apart because of disagreement among its leadership. Thereupon, Norris founded “The New Testament World Fundamen-tal Baptist Mission-ary Fellowship,” creating a mission board and in 1939 a training institution called “The Fundamental Bap-tist Bible Insti-tute,” headed by longtime associate, Louis Entzminger. Later the fellowship took the name, “World Baptist Fellowship” and the school was renamed, “Bible Baptist Seminary.” Slowly this movement gained in adherents and fi-nances. As Norris grew older, he sensed the need to allow younger men into leadership roles. Vick became president of the school, W. E. Dowell became president of the fellowship and Noel Smith became editor of The Fundamentalist. In 1950, Norris became dissatisfied with the school’s bylaws and Vick’s leadership, installed his own documents and ousted Vick without the consent of the fellowship. This resulted in a schism within his movement, and the disaffected and ousted leaders formed their own group which was called, “The Baptist Bible Fellowship Inter-national.” Norris’ movement continued under his influence and he attacked his former associates as he had often attacked others who opposed him.

His last crusade

Homer Ritchie, who succeeded him as pastor in Fort Worth, describes Norris’ crusade against the alienated leaders when the split came: “Indulging in a bitter assault on the character of his opponents, he called various leaders in the new Baptist Bible Fellowship names so disgraceful that his antagonists considered them outrageous and even his friends felt them to be shameful. Among the infamous appellations were: ‘Jezebel,’ ‘boot licker,’ ‘radio fraud,’ ‘Absalom,’ ‘traitor,’ ‘arch-conspirator,’ ‘deep freeze,’ ‘filthy lucre,’ ‘picket fence,’ ‘weeds and diapers,’ and ‘know all.’ Each name related to some deed or attitude of his chief opponents. Norris considered this humorous; his enemies declared it was criminal and insane and many outsiders thought it was sad and tragic.”

His final days

In the aftermath of the stress created by the division of his movement, his health began to falter. He took time off in 1951 to rest. Some of his communications showed signs of incoherence. He toured Europe and the Holy Land for the final time in 1952. In August, he flew to Florida to speak at a youth camp in Jacksonville. He died at the camp on August 20, 1952.

Concluding thoughts
On August 12, 1952, the Fort Worth Star Telegram published the following statement regarding J. Frank Norris as part of its editorial: “The force of his personality was enormous. The controversies surrounding him were frequent and noisy. He had the faculty of binding his friends and followers to him with hoops of steel, and the kindred quality of making implacable opponents, whom he always nettled and sometimes frustrated. But deep in his character, whatever the controversies, was the spirit of the builder. He built in beliefs, in numbers, and in stone. These monuments remain.”

In Memory

Dr. Norris went to his reward in 1952. Regarding his home going, Walter M. Moore wrote, “Your friend and my friend has been promoted to Glory, “To Die Is Gain” was a favorite text of his. On Wednesday morning, August 20th, 1952, Dr. Norris laid down his Bible and slipped away to be with the Lord. He was a great preacher and Christian statesman. He fought a good fight. He finished his course. He kept the faith. He loved the cause of righteousness. He loved men. He counseled with presidents and kings. He mingled with the common herd. Dignitaries sought his advice, and common people heard him gladly.”
Dr. Norris left the earthly scene at 2:15 in the morning after preaching for Dr. Bob Ingle in Jacksonville, Florida the night before. Dr. Ingle had organized and built a great church in Jacksonville. Dr. Norris had had a tremendous influence on Dr. Ingle, and they had become good friends.
A few years after Dr. Norris’ death I preached for Dr. Ingle. After the night service, Mrs. Ingle told Mrs. Arnold that it was almost as if Dr. Norris had planned his home going from their city. He had preached a great sermon on Sunday night. After the service they had gone to a restaurant with Dr. Norris. He had been in high spirits, and they had had no idea that the next morning he would be gone.
A few years after Dr. Norris had gone to his reward, I attended a fellowship meeting in Fort Worth. In that meeting, one speaker after another said, “From Dr. Norris I learned to weep over souls. From Dr. Norris I learned how to lead people to Christ. I owe the ministry I have to the influence of Dr. J. Frank Norris.”

Again Email Us