Debate over the role of women in ministry in Southern Baptist life has resurrected the dead.
One of the names most often tossed about this spring and summer as the SBC moved toward expelling churches that allow women to preach or carry the title “pastor” is Betty Criswell.
Known most often as “Mrs. Criswell” or “Mrs. C,” Betty Criswell was the wife of the legendary pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, W.A. Criswell. They served together at the downtown Dallas church from 1944 through 1993.
He died in 2002, and she died in 2006.
Betty Criswell
Betty Criswell had no official staff position at the church, but she held tremendous sway and taught a Sunday morning Bible class attended by hundreds and broadcast on local radio to thousands.
The question today is whether she, a woman, was exercising authority over men as a teacher — something the most conservative among today’s SBC believe the Bible forbids. W.A. Criswell was a self-described biblical inerrantist who led the charge against Baptist women in ministry amid the “conservative resurgence.”
In 1983, he appeared on a national TV documentary by Bill Moyers about the SBC. Moyers asked him about his biblical basis for opposing women in ministry. Criswell replied: “The Scripture says, you know, in 1 Timothy, chapter three, ‘For the bishop, the preacher, the elder, is to be the husband of one wife,’ and I say sarcastically, facetiously, if a woman can be the husband of one wife, ordain her, that’ll be fine. Just go ahead.”
A question of authority
Betty Criswell was not ordained. And she was not called a pastor. She did teach a class of adult men and women and was well-known for doing so.
This June, one of W.A. Criswell’s successors acknowledged the debate about Betty Criswell in a tweet: “Dr. and Mrs. Criswell seem to be getting a lot of attention these days in the SBC world. Most who are quick to comment on her class know very little about it and never knew either one of them. I knew them both … very well …. and if anyone is interested in the truth see below.”
That tweet from O.S. Hawkins pointed to an unattributed description of the situation below:
For those who are quick to refer to Mrs. Criswell’s large Sunday school class of men and women. Most have no idea of what they speak much less the context in which it occurred. This class was under the auspices and authority of the Pastor, her husband. Mrs. C had a “class pastor” always a male who ministered to the needs of the class. In addition she had a “class pastor-theologian” who sat by her in class and when any issue of doctrine or theology occurred in the text she deferred to him. For many years this position was held by the late Dr. Lamar Cooper, long-time professor at Criswell College. As to a female aspiring to become a “teaching pastor” of the church in the Sunday morning pulpit she would have been the first to oppose that.
Hawkins, who served as pastor at First Baptist from 1993 through 1997, went on to lead the SBC’s retirement and benefits agency and now serves as chancellor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written an expansive new biography of W.A. Criswell that will be published next year.
Hawkins may, in fact, be one of the last living people who knew Criswell best and seeks to honor his legacy. The forthcoming book is based, in part, on hours of recorded conversations with Criswell that never have been made public.
‘Nearly killed all he built’
Another person once close to the Criswells has written about how Betty Criswell teaching that co-ed class nearly ruined her husband’s legacy. That person is Paige Patterson, former president of Criswell College and former associate pastor at First Baptist Dallas.
On July 3, 2015, Patterson wrote in a letter to a North Carolina pastor: “As for Dr. Criswell, I never defended his position on (Mrs. Criswell’s Sunday school class). Not only was he wrong, but also the violence that he did to his own congregation by allowing Mrs. C to teach as she did is an ongoing saga of deep tragedy. He nearly killed all that he built.”
“The egalitarians work overtime to find every loophole and exploit it and now we have to be more careful than ever.”
The reason for concern, Patterson added, is avoiding even the appearance of violating Scripture: “The egalitarians work overtime to find every loophole and exploit it and now we have to be more careful than ever. Why not just be biblical? I will not allow a woman to teach men (in a formal setting to satisfy that Priscilla also taught Apollos) or to be in positions of authority over them.”
How much Betty Criswell submitted to the authority of her husband or of other male church leaders is a matter for serious debate. She was an independent woman, although conservative in her biblical teaching.
Racist teaching
So conservative, in fact, that Arlington, Texas, pastor Dwight McKissic weighed in on the debate to remind everyone the pastor’s wife taught the Curse of Ham as justification for the subjugation of Black people — as late as the 1990s.
He tweeted: “A friend of mine heard her teach the Curse of Ham to her class over the radio in the mid ’90s. I couldn’t believe that. So, we drove over to FBC Dallas and purchased the CD, so I could listen. While doing a lesson on curses in the Bible, she covered Noah’s curse on Ham and stated Africans were cursed as a result. I was dumbfounded. Not only did Dr. Lamar not correct her, he later called Mexicans by a derogatory racist term on the radio while teaching the class.”
“If you approve of her teaching under the authority of men, that’s our argument too.”
Racism aside, if Betty Criswell was teaching a co-ed class under the “authority” of men, how is that any different than women who preach at Saddleback Church in Southern California, McKissic wondered. “I don’t get your point about Dr. Lamar being in the class called the Pastor’s Class, while Mrs. C. taught heresy and he said absolutely nothing. And if you approve of her teaching under the authority of men, that’s our argument too…. therefore, it’s baffling why there’s opposition to Warren and others who allow similar practices.”
She outlasted the men
By nearly all accounts, Betty Criswell was a force to be reckoned with, a strong-willed woman who spoke (and taught) with authority.
One of the people who came to have the greatest disdain for Betty Criswell is Joel Gregory, the first in a line of short-term successors to W.A. Criswell. His story is told in a Texas Monthly article and in his own book, Too Great A Temptation.
One of the legendary stories told about First Baptist Dallas during those tumultuous years of Gregory in succession to Criswell concerns a large portrait of Gregory hanging in the chapel where the Criswell Class met on Sunday mornings. Whether apocryphal or factual, the story is told that the younger pastor’s portrait kept going missing and was found hidden in closets.
Betty Criswell outlasted her husband, Joel Gregory, O.S Hawkins and Mac Brunson. She taught her Sunday morning class up until just days before her death at age 93.
Lamar Cooper, who taught at Criswell College 33 years and also served in several SBC posts, died in 2022. His official obituary says: “He was a longtime member of First Baptist Church of Dallas, where he served as class minister, theologian in residence, and teacher of the Criswell Bible Class, which was broadcast on radio station KCBI.”
A ‘pioneer’ in women’s ministry
While W.A. Criswell is best known for his formal opposition to women in ministry, some Southern Baptists see him as a liberator of women.
W.A. Criswell
A 2016 Baptist Press story hailed Criswell as a “pioneer in utilizing women in ministry,” citing a lecture given in 2010 by Susie Hawkins, who is married to O.S. Hawkins.
BP cited Hawkins’ lecture to report: “In addition to hiring women, involving them in lay positions and including them on the platform alongside their deacon husbands who led in prayer on Sunday mornings, Criswell actively sought the input of key women in his church on a regular basis.”
And Susie Hawkins was quoted as saying: “He often prayed with the women staff members, spoke with them frequently and listened to their counsel. And he was equally engaged with the women in the church,” particularly through a “women’s council.”
Another irony of the modern era is that “women’s ministry” is thriving in many SBC churches while women in ministry are disallowed. These women’s ministries typically involve women socializing and studying with other women. They are not the co-ed classes of Betty Criswell’s experience.
What has changed in the SBC since the days of the Criswell Class at First Baptist Dallas is the expansive growth of complementarianism as an essential doctrine of the faith. Complementarianism teaches that God created women and men for uniquely different roles in church and home and God has ordained men alone to be the leaders.
While the SBC in days of yore had plenty of women teaching men — even in conservative churches — the embrace of complementarianism has so engulfed the denomination that even W.A. Criswell might be branded a heretic today.
Related articles:
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