J.+Frank+Norris

=J. Frank Norris (1877 - 1952)=

Norris was converted at a Baptist revival meeting in the early 1890s, and in 1897, he became pastor of Mount Antioch Baptist Church in [|Mount Calm] in Hill County, Texas. [|[3]] The following year he enrolled in Baptist-affiliated [|Baylor University] in Waco, which he attended from 1898 to 1903. He then earned a [|Master of Theology] degree from [|Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] in [|Louisville], [|Kentucky]. In 1905, Norris returned to Texas as the pastor of the McKinney Avenue Baptist Church in [|Dallas]. He resigned that post in 1907 to become editor of the //Baptist Standard//. Norris is credited with ending the Texas Baptist newspaper war, with moving [|Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary] from Waco to [|Fort Worth], and with persuading the state legislature to abolish racetrack gambling. In 1909, Norris sold his interest in the //Baptist Standard// and accepted the pastorate of the First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, where he served for forty-four years until his death. In 1912, Norris was acquitted of [|arson] and [|perjury] charges related to fires that respectively destroyed his church auditorium and severely damaged his home. A second fire razed the structure in 1929, and rebuilding began at the advent of the [|Great Depression]. [|[4]] Norris was also the radio pastor of, variously, KFQB, KTAT and then KSAT (not to be confused with KSAT in [|San Antonio] ), [|[5]] where he started the first regular radio ministry in the United States in the 1920s. The height of Norris's career came in the 1920s, when he became the leader of the [|fundamentalist] movement in Texas by attacking the teaching of "that hell-born, Bible-destroying, deity-of-Christ-denying, German rationalism known as [|evolution] " at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Because of his attacks on Baylor and denominational leaders, Norris and his church were denied seats at the annual meetings of the [|Baptist General Convention of Texas] in 1922 and 1923. In his 1926 sermon series "Rum and Romanism," Norris attacked [|Mayor] [|H. C. Meacham] of Fort Worth, whom he accused of misappropriating funds for [|Roman Catholic] causes. That same year, Norris killed lumberman Dexter Elliott Chipps, a friend of Meacham, in Norris's church office. Norris claimed Chipps had threatened his life, and when Norris was tried for murder, he was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. [|[6]] During 1928, Norris campaigned against the election of the [|Democrat] [|Al Smith] to the presidency and voiced anti-Catholic views from the pulpit, his radio station, and his weekly newspaper. [|Herbert C. Hoover], the [|Republican] nominee, won the election and carried Texas as well, the first member of that party ever to prevail in a Texas general election. In 1935, Norris accepted the pastorate of a second church, Temple Baptist Church in [|Detroit], [|Michigan]. By 1946, the combined membership of the two congregations was more than 26,000. For sixteen years, Norris commuted by train and plane between the two churches. In September 1947, while on a tour of Europe, Norris secured an audience with Pope [|Pius XII] and declared that the pope was "the last [|Gibraltar] in Europe against Communism." Thereafter, Norris took the position that communism was more dangerous than Catholicism, and some of Norris's erstwhile allies, such as [|Toronto] evangelist T. T. Shields, criticized him for his "folly." [|[7]] In the late 1930s, Norris organized a group of independent, [|premillennial] Baptist churches into the Premillennial Missionary Baptist Fellowship (later the [|World Baptist Fellowship] ), in an attempt to combat what he believed were socialist, liberal, and "modernist" tendencies within the [|Southern Baptist Convention]. After [|World War II], when [|John Birch] , a graduate of his seminary in Fort Worth, was killed by the Chinese communists, Norris renewed his attack on communist influences in the United States. Norris's [|premillennial] views [|[8]] led him to urge President [|Harry Truman] to recognize and support the new state of [|Israel]. Norris published a religious newspaper, // [|The Searchlight] //, the front page of which had a picture of Norris grasping a [|Bible] in one hand and a searchlight in the other while [|Satan] cowered in the opposite lower corner. Norris died of a [|heart attack] while attending a youth camp at [|Jacksonville], [|Florida] in 1952. He was succeeded at the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth by Homer Ritchie, who pastored the church for thirty years. [|[9]] || http://media.sermonindex.net/3/SID3587.mp3 || ===Sources=== http://media.sermonindex.net/3/SID3587.mp3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Frank_Norris ||
 * [[image:J.Frank Norris.jpg width="228" height="310"]] || J. Frank Norris was born in [|Dadeville] in [|Tallapoosa County] in eastern [|Alabama], but the family shortly moved to [|Arkansas] and then back to [|Columbiana] in [|Shelby County] in central Alabama. In the late 1880s, the Norrises purchased land near [|Hubbard] in [|Hill County] , [|Texas] , about thirty miles north of [|Waco] , where they farmed. [|[1]] James Warner Norris was an alcoholic, and Frank Norris claimed that his father once beat him severely after he had emptied his liquor bottles. In 1891, both were shot by an acquaintance of Warner Norris, and Frank said he did not fully recuperate for three years. [|[2]]
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