by Michael E. Schepis
As the movements who were influenced by the controversial Baptist leader, J. Frank Norris, grow older, there is also a renewed interest in Mr. Norris. Among those publishing studies about him is Michael Schepis, author of J. Frank Norris, The Fascinating, Controversial Life of a Forgotten Figure of the Twentieth Century. Schepis has deep roots in the independent Baptist movement, and he has that in common with other Norris biographers. However, he also possesses a rare collection of over 500 audio recordings of Norris, 60-70 years old, and many heard only once. The book itself contains information from these recordings, as well as 75 photographs and a foreword written by former Tribune editor and BBFI founder James O. Combs.
This is an excerpt from J. Frank Norris, The Fascinating, Controversial Life of a Forgotten Figure of the Twentieth Century, by Michael E. Schepis, 2011 by JFrankNorristhebook.com, LLC
Four Preachers Meet with Pope
On August 19, 1947, J. Frank Norris boarded an American Airlines plane in New York for a trip that would include a conference with Pope Pius XII to discuss the threat of Communism and talks with Jewish and Arab leaders regarding the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. The trip made stops in London, Rome, Jerusalem, Palestine, Egypt, Babylon (Iraq), and Greece. Accompanying Norris on this trip were G. Beauchamp Vick, Temple Baptist Church, Detroit; Luther C. Peak, Central Baptist Church, Dallas; and Wendell Zimmerman, Kansas City Baptist Temple, Kansas City.1
Norris, in an address later in Fort Worth, said that when the group landed at the airport in London, there were four men to greet them from the Ford Motor Company with a new Lincoln car and another car to carry the baggage. The company had reserved a room in the finest hotel in London for their stay. They were driven to their destinations in England and Scotland. The company repeated this when they landed in Amsterdam, where two men met and drove them wherever they needed to go through Holland and Belgium and then on to Paris. Another car drove them over the Alps of Switzerland to Italy and on to Rome. This was repeated again when they landed in Athens and Egypt. Norris said that he did not know that his friends from Ford would be providing this service for him at no cost.2
The visit with Pope Pius XII by the four Americans took on historical significance at the time, as a report of the meeting was broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company.3
In a report to the congregation at First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Dr. G. Beauchamp Vick related some of the details and his impression of the visit with the pope. He said, “The summer home of the Pope was about a 15 mile trip from Rome. When we went in he was seated behind a small desk in an ordinary chair. There were four chairs arranged on the opposite side of the desk. We went in and shook hands with him. He was very gracious in welcoming us. He spoke very good English. After the meeting he very graciously invited us back to see him on any of our future visits to Rome. We said we’d be very happy to accept that invitation if events made it possible.”4
Though the press focused on the events in Rome, the greater immediate issue to Norris was the Jewish-Palestine tension in the Middle East. The question of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine was under discussion by the United Nations. President Truman asked Norris for his views on the issue. After returning from the talks in Jerusalem, Norris sent a letter to Truman outlining the Palestine situation. Upon receipt of the information the president sent a personal letter stating, “I deeply appreciate having the benefit of this expression of your views because I know that you have given long and extensive study to the Jewish Palestinian question.”5
Prayer Changes Things
Norris had a great sense of humor and exhibited it often when speaking publicly and in private conversations. He combined humor with a fascinating incident that occurred to illustrate a point he was making in a sermon he preached on July 25, 1948. He was speaking on the topic of how prayer changes things. In the middle of the sermon, he called for Reginald Woodworth to come to the platform. I was fortunate to have known Reg and his wife, Dorothy, back in the seventies and eighties. Reg and I were teachers at a college in Springfield, Missouri (Baptist Bible College). Dorothy was the bookstore manager at the time. He was quite a character, as all who knew him would attest. He had a way of being humorous in so many situations that people got accustomed to laughing just at the mention of his name. During one semester, we were teaching classes in the same building, and often we would hear uproarious laughter coming from his classroom. At the time of this sermon, Woodworth held the position of business manager at the seminary that used the facilities of the First Baptist Church. The description of this incident related during that Sunday evening service went like this:
Norris: “Prayer changes things! Reg Woodworth, I want you to come up here. I want to give you (the audience) the greatest real example of how prayer changes things. I wouldn’t tell this if I didn’t have a witness because it’s incredible, impossible to believe. I got in to Chicago. I went in to use the telephone in the Union Station. I phoned out to the Chicago airport and said I have a ticket on your plane and am now leaving. I told him how fast I’d get there. He said if you will get here within a certain time, I forget now—twenty or thirty minutes—you’d make it.”
Woodworth: “An impossible time.”
Norris: “It was an impossible time. I said, ‘Reg, don’t pay attention to the speed law because I’ll pay the fine. I’ve got to make that plane to make that appointment.’ Dorothy was with us.”
Woodworth: “Yes, sir.” (Laughter)
Norris: “And, I know she tells the truth.”
Woodworth: “I do too. I know she tells the truth.” (Laughter)
Norris: “I know she tells the truth—she’s here in the audience. Alright, as we drove up to the Chicago Airport I got out, rushed in, but the plane had left.”
Woodworth: “Yes, sir.” (Laughter)
Norris: “I rushed up to the attendant at the counter and said, ‘That plane to Detroit?’ He said, ‘It just left.’ I said I have to catch it. I said, ‘Where is the Superintendent, the high man in control?’ He said, ‘There he is in that office.’ I went to the office and said, ‘I am the man that phoned you. I have to catch that plane.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s already gone.’ I said, ‘Well, that doesn’t make any difference, call it back!’”
Woodworth: “That’s right.” (Laughter)
Norris: “He went in and radioed and that plane turned around and came back, didn’t it!”
Woodworth: “Yes, sir. I saw it. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it!”
Norris: “That’s the reason I want you to be here. I know you (the audience) wouldn’t take my word for it, but you know it happened, didn’t you?”
Woodworth: “Yes, sir. I stayed real close to him so everybody would know I knew him.” (Laughter)
Norris: “They made up the time. People met me when I arrived in Detroit. Now, here is the great illustration. There was a schedule for that plane to leave there at a certain minute. When the minute came, that plane took off.”
Woodworth: “Amen.”
Norris: “But, it was also in the predestinated plan of God Almighty that when I got there, He would put it in the heart of that manager to call that plane back. My friend, that’s how prayer changes things. I believe in the God today, the same God that told Joshua, ‘Command the sun to stand still and the moon to stand still in the valley of Ajalon.’ (Joshua 10:12). We have a God, my friend, who can change time and seasons. I’ll put my faith in Him!”6
This is but one of the many fascinating incidents that took place in the life of J. Frank Norris.
Dr. Norris meets Billy Graham
In 1950 on a trip to the Columbia, South Carolina, area, Norris heard thirty-one-year-old Billy Graham speak in an evangelistic rally and met with him afterward. In a letter to Graham the next day, he wrote, “You are intellectual both by birth and by training, but, most important you have heart and tenderness. The effect of your message on me was overwhelming. I found myself wanting to go up and repent of all my life.”7 In the same letter, Norris invited the young evangelist to come to Detroit and Fort Worth to hold meetings, where the entire membership of his churches would support the efforts. At the time, Graham was president of Northwestern College in Minneapolis. He had been converted under the ministry of Mordecai Ham, who was a close friend to Norris.
In his sermons and on radio, Norris began to laud Graham’s efforts and declared that the young evangelist was a premillennialist, preaching the same message he had been preaching all these years. In 1951, Graham held a crusade in Fort Worth. During the crusade, Norris contacted Ham to come to the meeting and mentioned that the young Graham had referred to his conversion under his ministry several times. Ham came to Fort Worth to hear his young protégé in the final days of the meeting.8
1. Louis Entzminger, The J. Frank Norris I Have Known for 34 Years (Fort Worth, TX: by the author, 1948)p. 14.
2. J. Frank Norris, Audio Record from the Heritage Collection at Arlington Baptist College, October 19, 1947.
3. Fundamentalist, September 19, 1947,
4. G . Beauchamp Vick, Audio Record from the Heritage Collection at Arlington Baptist College (n. d.).
5. Entzminger, pp. 342–344.
6. J. Frank Norris and Reginald Woodworth, Audio Record from the Heritage Collection at Arlington Baptist College, July 25, 1948.
7. Norris to Graham, Norris Papers, March 1, 1950. (Courtesy of the Heritage Collection, Arlington Baptist College)
8. J. Frank Norris, Audio Record from the Heritage Collection at Arlington Baptist College, March 18, 1951 and Norris to Ham, Norris Papers, March 11, 1951. (Courtesy of the Heritage Collection, Arlington Baptist College)