RIP

Pastor Bob Criswell

Now and then, I get curious about random and not-so-random people from my past, and I wonder what might be going on with them these days. When it's older people who were old back when I knew them, I wonder whether they've died with the unceasing passage of time. Today, my thoughts turned to one of the longest-lasting pastors of my old church, Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church: Robert Criswell who, as it turns out, died in 2022 at the age of 82. By the time my mother had died, Pastor Criswell had retired in New York State. In PCUSA, pastors rotate in and out, never finding a permanent home, but Bob was with our church for more than a decade. I wasn't very politically aware when I knew him; these days, I think he'd fit neatly into the "left-liberal" box. That's fine for me on a theological level since I'm an off-the-scale religious liberal (pluralist, nonliteralist, etc.) but not a political liberal. Now, when I think back to a lot of the tensions and conflicts that would simmer and flare in our congregation, I see them as happening along political lines. 

Pastor Criswell didn't let his physical limitations get in the way of his preaching. It may not be obvious in the above photo, but he had a strangely shaped lower jaw that occasionally made it hard for him to contain the occasional blob of drool that would glop out of his mouth while he was talking. This wasn't a frequent thing, and from the front, I'm pretty sure none of it was visible from the pulpit while he spoke. I also recall one gathering of the Session (council of active elders) in which he suddenly ripped out a long, luxurious fart that went on for five seconds. Everyone was too polite to say a thing. I, at first, couldn't believe what I was hearing and, for a brief instant, wondered whether it had been a fart at all. During one communion, the pastor's robe's sleeve caught on the chalice, and the thing tipped over, spilling grape juice (no wine—we're timid Protestants) everywhere. Pastor Criswell calmly refilled the chalice from the nearby pitcher. I don't mention these things to besmirch the pastor's memory; my point is that the guy was as human as everyone else. 

In the Presbyterian church, there are two types of elders: ruling elders (me and other elders) and teaching elders (ministers, pastors, reverends). The will of the congregation is expressed through a polity of elders who all manage—in our church, anyway—councils of laypeople and inactive elders: worship council, outreach council, property council, etc. It's not exactly a representative system, though: elders hear the will of the laity but are allowed to vote their conscience. This is very different from a congregationalist polity in which the direct-democratic will of the congregation is law. I remember, back when I was a Baptist, how the congregation decided by acclamation who its next pastor was going to be.

All that said, I got along well enough with Pastor Criswell; when I was an active elder during his ministry, I would often serve as a liturgist, standing alongside him to help serve communion. I haven't been an active elder in years, and these days, I wonder whether I'm even an elder anymore. The vow you take in the ordination ceremony means that, technically, you're an elder for life, but I think my own vow was hollow from the beginning: I became an elder when I was still in high school, and I recall vainly bragging to various friends and teachers about being ordained, thus entirely missing the point of my ordination. Idiocy has been a signal trait of my life, and I started being an idiot back when I was a kid. When my Korean Christian relatives later found out I'd been ordained an elder, they reacted with confusion because of the biblical injunction that elders be actual older folks (1 Tim. 5:1, but seen in conjunction with other mentions of presbuteros/πρεσβύτερος, i.e., elders, in that book; see 1 Tim 5:17-19)—something Korean Presbyterians are more literal about.

Well, I haven't been churchy for years, but finding out, earlier today, that Pastor Criswell had died in 2022 left me feeling a bit sad. On a happier note, the man had lived an earnest and full life; being the pastor of our politically mixed and often-contentious church meant being on call 24/7. I wouldn't want that job and would probably end up throttling any lay member who got on my nerves. Pastor Criswell was a far better man than I'll ever be.