Fort Worth's power elite, the "top dogs of the city" met daily at the opulent Fort Worth Club. In July 1926, Mayor H.C. Meacham chaired a "closed door off the record" meeting with more than 30 of the club's most influential members. The subject? What could or should they do about the city's J. Frank Norris problem. They felt the out-of-control preacher was doing great harm to their city. Norris would later refer to this as a deep laid conspiracy. One of the attendees was a big and tall man named D.E. Chipps, who, with Norris, had a mutual appointment with destiny.
The first half of Apparent Danger details the history and rise to power of J. Frank Norris and how he not only became the pastor of Fort Worth's First Baptist Church, but how he used newspaper and radio to become nationally known as "the pastor of America's first megachurch." Norris was an eloquent and persuasive speaker and used his talent to grow the church from several hundred to almost 8,000 loyal fanatics in just a few years. One source referred to Norris's flock as "Baptists on steroids." With contacts such as William Jennings Bryan, FDR, and leading pastors in major cities like New York, J. Frank was building a foundation for himself to become the national leader of the fundamentalist movement at a time when evolution and prohibition dominated the social and political news. And then, D.E. Chipps walked into Norris office and the remainder of the book deals with the Texas murder trial of the decade.
F. Lee Bailey is credited with saying something like, "After the first trial, the matter of guilt or innocence is no longer important." For Norris, the first trial was in the media and public opinion. Meacham hired a team of crack defense lawyers to help with the prosecution. That's right, help for the district attorney. Can you imagine Bailey, Cochran, et al, helping prosecute O.J. Simpson? Norris's flock, both local and national, pitched in and hired him a dream team of former prosecutors to help with the defense. It gets curiouser and curiouser! Which leads us to the title of the book, the doctrine of "Apparent Danger": "You can believe your life is in danger by reason of actions of an adversary and kill him, only to discover afterward you were laboring under a misapprehension; yet the homicide you have committed is justified in the eyes of the law."
Article comments
1 - Miss Bob Etier
Chipps? Chip? Is there a connection there. According to the latest conspiracy theory regarding this case...
2 - John Vaughan
As a former student and graduate of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Ft Worth I have known about Dr J.Frank Norris and First Baptist Church of Ft Worth for a long time. That said, in chapter 1 of my book Megachurches and America's Cities (1983) I gave an overview of "Megachurches of the Past." Also in Chapter 1 of my next book, The World's 20 Largest Churches (1984)a list of early megachurches was given. In both books First Baptist Church of Ft Worth was included among the churches. However, it is inaccurate to state that the church was America's first megachurch - even among non-Catholic churches. Not only were there Catholic churches with more than 10,000 attendance there were more than a dozen non-Catholic U.S. megachurches before First Baptist Church of Ft Worth - both black and white. While it is true that the history of the congregation and its pastor are due more mention that they have received it would not be historically true to identify the church as our nation's "first megachurch."
3 - David Stokes
Dr. Vaughan:
First, I want you to know that I am an admirer of your body of work, especially on the subject of large congregations. So I venture a few answers to your thoughts about J. Frank Norris and the use of the description ?America?s First Megachurch? with the deepest respect for your point of view.
Furthermore, my oldest daughter married a ?Vaughan? and 2 of my soon to be 7 grandchildren bear that surname. So we may be distantly related ☺.
I have used, in the title of my book ?APPARENT DANGER?The Pastor of America?s First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920s,? the label ?megachurch? correctly, according to my understanding of the term.
I distinctions between some of the examples you cite and what I see with Norris? church in the 1920s. First, I think there is a difference between a large congregation and the idea of a megachurch. There were, as you have shown with your excellent research on the subject, many large churches in America before Norris? First Baptist (Fort Worth, Texas) rose to prominence?from Plymouth Congregational in the days of Henry Ward Beecher, to Russell Conwell?s congregation in Philadelphia, to several African-American congregations too often overlooked.
However, Norris? church was the first, in my opinion, to determine via his vision to be a ?megachurch? (and, admittedly, that term dates back maybe to the 1950s) on purpose. In other words, there had been large gatherings of congregants throughout our nation?s history, but I am using ?megachurch? in a broader sense?one that includes numbers, but also design and vision.
It was Norris? stated purpose to build ?the largest Sunday School in the world.? Beecher, et al, had large followings, but a constant search for methods to draw such crowds was not part and parcel of their ministries.
Because the idea of a megachurch is, in itself, a ?modern-ism? unique to the last half of the 20th century and our current day, I think the case can be confidently made that Norris was the first such pastor to have as his specific ambition to build what we would now know as a megachurch.
And as you well know, megachurches are generally envisioned, and to a large part dominated by a key charismatic leader.
Beyond this, Norris was the first ?megachurch? pastor to tap into the power of the media as do so many of his ancestors today. From radio, to his tabloid, to his wide travels?it is clear that he wanted his church to have an influence beyond its local confines. This is another mark distinguishing the modern megachurch from the various large churches that came before.
Of course, I use and understand ?megachurch? as a uniquely ?Protestant/Evangelical? concept, so this would preclude Catholic congregations.
I could, of course, have added the word ?modern? to the title, as in: ??The Pastor of America?s First MODERN Megachurch???but I think that would be a redundancy, seeing as the nomenclature is itself fairly recent. -- DRS