Book Reviewed by Darold Morgan,
Richardson, TX
Thy Will Be Done: A Biography of George W. Truett
By Keith E. Durso
Mercer University Press, 2009.
This book begins, “For Baptist Christians who like George W. Truett, are both Christians and Baptists, and are ashamed of neither.” As Baptists celebrate in 2009 the 400th anniversary of their organized church life, here is a timely, well-written, captivating, and balanced biography of one of the best-known preachers and pastors the Baptist tradition has ever produced.
Truett was the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, for forty-seven years. He was known for his preaching skills, denominational leadership, and his civic influence.
Truett’s prestige was confirmed by the recent naming of the theological school of Baylor University as the George W. Truett Seminary. A part of the massive Baylor Medical Center in Dallas is known as the George W. Truett Hospital, mainly because he was the leading proponent of a Baptist hospital in Dallas early in the twentieth century.
In these days when there are few Baptist heroes, it is refreshing to read about Truett’s world-wide influence in that time-frame both in Baptist and ecumenical circles. Constantly there is the refrain in Durso’s book that Truett personally wanted to be known simply and primarily as the pastor of a Texas Baptist church.
The author takes us back to Truett’s early days in North Carolina and Georgia, with major influences being a godly set of parents and preacher relatives who grounded him in Baptist principles. When he moves to North Texas there comes a dramatic moment in the First Baptist Church of Whitewright when the church ordained him to the ministry despite his vehement objections. Not many men entered ministry in this fashion, but the obvious principle in Truett’s life is that friends and associates saw his potential before he himself did.
And as they say—the rest is Baptist history! Baylor University, the call to the Dallas church, its extraordinary growth, his concepts of stewardship and mission outreach, civic leadership, denominational developments, the incessant demands of revival movements, his chaplaincy in World War I, the eventual presidency of the Baptist World Alliance with preaching missions around the world—all combine to lead the reader through the life of a preacher and pastor almost unparalleled in Southern Baptist (SBC) life.
Add to this list his leadership (along with B.H. Carroll) in both the establishment and growth of the Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. One needs also to mention his involvement in the beginning of the Annuity Board of the SBC. His appeal to the convention to establish one of its boards in the “far west,” led to the starting of the Annuity Board right across the street from his church. He served as the chairman of the Annuity Board’s Executive Committee for over twenty-five years!
All through these multiple years are the staggering challenges of moral, ethical, and theological issues—two world wars, prohibition, evolution and Darwinism, the great depression—and then there is J. Frank Norris, whose personal opposition to Truett is all but a classic example of hatred and jealousy, grounded in some of the later issues of theological Fundamentalism in the infamous SBC takeover!
Durso’s presentation of Truett’s most famous address on Religious Liberty in 1921 is worth the price of the book.
Truett was preeminently a powerful preacher, buttressed by a spiritual dynamic, stemming from a radiant prayer life built around the title, Thy Will Be Done. In his time this combination was genuinely successful. Whether or not this approach would work in this multi-cultural and diverse age we currently face is debatable. But this volume is a genuine pleasure to read and mull over.
