Title: Apparent danger
Description: In July of 1926, the pastor of the largest Protestant church in America -- in fact, the nation's first such megachurch -- shot an unarmed man to death in his church office after an argument over a sermon. The preacher, who already by then had a well-deserved notorious reputation, was indicted for murder and faced the death penalty. The story was page-one news across the country. In fact, it may be the most famous story and courtroom drama you have never heard. Using more than 6,000 pages of newspaper articles, court records, and a variety of other published works, author and minister David Stokes vividly recreates the life of the fundamentalist movement’s most controversial figure.
 From his pulpit at First Baptist Church in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, John Franklyn Norris -- "J. Frank" as he was known -- waged war against a culture that was changing dramatically. Many loved him; many more hated him. Norris had been a polarizing figure for many years by the time he fired three fatal shots into the frame of a man who opposed one of his sermons. Years before, the preacher had been indicted and tried for arson, accused of burning down his own church, ultimately being indicted and tried for perjury in a related case. These stories were so big in the year 1912 that even the sinking of the Titanic could not move them off the front page of many newspapers.
 By the summer of 1926, J. Frank Norris was poised to become America’s premier protestant leader, following the death of William Jennings Bryan. All of it, though, changed in a moment of violence one sweltering hot Saturday afternoon, when Dexter Elliot Chipps walked into J. Frank Norris’ office for the first and last time. An escalating conversation gave way to gunfire and Chipps was dead. - Publisher.
Subjects: Trials, litigation, Trials (Murder)