The Sins of Walker Railey
I had to know: Did the minister of the church I grew up in try to murder his wife? I told him I thought he was guilty. “I hear what you’re saying,” he said.
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Because of the importance of First Church within the denomination, many of the congregation are ordained ministers who are retired or working in other areas of the ministry. Among that group Railey was a polarizing figure. The Reverend Howard Grimes, who taught Christian education at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology for 33 years, calls Railey “one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Protestant preacher in the latter half of the twentieth century. He had become God for a lot of people and maybe me.” The younger clergymen in the congregation—Railey’s contemporaries—tended to look at him with less awe and with more than a little resentment. “His popularity at First Church was such for many people that they lost all sense that he had any imperfection,” says Reverend Spurgeon Dunnam III, the editor of the United Methodist Reporter. Dunnam and Railey had jostled for power in the corporation that is buried inside the denomination. “The politics of the church are so subtle that only the most astute and discerning could understand what was going on. Walker was very analytical and perceptive; he took to that process very early. In the course of numerous different meetings it became clear to me his primary agenda was to be elected to the episcopacy as soon as possible. He campaigned for it by accepting speaking engagements here, there, and everywhere. He seemed incapable of saying no to serving additional outside responsibilities. His ambition was so completely unchecked.”
Within a few years of his arrival at First Church, Railey had become one of the most prominent churchmen in town, rivaling even W.A. Criswell, at the immense First Baptist Church a block away. “In the past, whenever something religious would come up, the press would ask Dr. Criswell what he thought of it. Pretty soon they stopped that and started asking Walker Railey,” says the Reverend John Holbert, who taught Railey Hebrew at SMU and who sings in the choir at First Church. Railey served as president of the Greater Dallas Community of Churches. He was on the United Methodists National Board of Global Ministries. He was selected to preach Protestant Hour sermons on a nationwide Christian radio network. Already his name was widely known among Methodists as a man destined not just for the bishop’s chair but for something more—for greatness, in whatever form that might assume.
And yet there were extraordinary pressures that were at work and were already evident in Railey’s personality. Several times he told Gordon Casad that the congregation at First Church “could never forgive even one bad sermon,” so he slaved over his lessons, polished his delivery, choreographed his gestures, until each one of them was a characteristic Railey gem. Once, in the receiving line after the eleven o’clock service, a seminary student asked what it took to preach a sermon like the one he had just heard, and Railey answered candidly, “About thirty-five hours.”
In a church with a congregation of nearly six thousand members and a $2 million budget, a pastor spends a considerable amount of time visiting hospitals, preaching funerals, counseling troubled youngsters, running administrative meetings, setting budget goals—it’s a demanding occupation. Railey had a staff of 65 people to assist him, but just keeping the staff appeased was a full-time job. “He was the kind of preacher who knew everybody’s name,” says Diane Yarrington, John Yarrington’s wife and Peggy Railey’s closest friend. “He wrote hundreds of personal notes to people all the time—on your birthday you’d always get a handwritten note from Walker. He would make a special trip to a high school to see a play that one of the Sunday school children might be in. He spent hours and hours a day doing that kind of thing. And of course it wore him down.”
Railey found in the church the loving family he himself had never known as the child of alcoholic and often neglectful parents. John Yarrington became “the older brother I never had.” Howard Grimes was “a real father to me.” Mrs. Knox Oaxley was “my Dallas mother.” It was typical of Railey to seek out such ersatz family members. He wanted to be loved and esteemed; he also wanted to return to his congregation the steady, attentive care he had craved as a young boy. By pouring that kind of love on the thousands before him, it was as if he were ministering to the angry and neglected child inside himself. He would not let them down, as he had been let down. When, in times of grief or trouble, a parishioner would stumble or his faith would fail, Reverend Railey was there—strong, certain, and unwavering. His faith was a compass point by which others in the church could steer their fragile beliefs. In these ways Walker Railey became something larger than himself and, subtly, something other than himself.
Because behind the public face of this caring, highly blessed young man, with his beautiful wife, his charming children, his prestigious job, his important future, there was another Walker Railey. This was a man so besieged by the doubts and worries he held aside during the day that he seldom enjoyed an untroubled night’s sleep. This was a person seen only occasionally by people close to him—his staff, for instance, who idolized him and were sometimes crushed by a volcanic temper that slept and slept then suddenly savagely erupted, usually over some small point such as the lighting in the sanctuary or the presentation of the budget. Nor were these eruptions followed by periods of remorse, which would have made them easy to forgive; instead, a certain cool satisfaction took hold of him. He would not call back the rain of shattering insults that led to tears or angry resignations. In the recent past when this other defiant, uncaring, self-centered Walker Railey had gained ascendancy, friends had talked him into seeing a psychiatrist, to help him “cope with stress.” Lately, however, when many of those closest to him had suggested that he go back to the psychiatrist, that he slow down, that he take a sabbatical, he had coldly cut them off.
When word of another Railey outburst circulated among the congregation, it was usually seen as more evidence of his temperamental genius. How insidious that must have seemed to him! Whatever fault he confessed to, whatever awful behavior he committed, only brought him new credit. Or perhaps—and this is the worst thing that can happen to a preacher, it is where he crosses the line between serving the forces of good and serving those of evil—perhaps he had begun to believe in his own perfection. Some of the other ministers in the congregation suspected that Railey had become one of those preachers who see themselves as God’s special messengers, one of those who “become so convinced that they are so holy that they are above the standards they have to preach,” as Spurgeon Dunnam observes. “The sin is to become as God, as one who would take God’s place. Anytime a human being reaches that level he sets himself up for a fall.”
On Easter Sunday, three days before the attack on Peggy, Walker Railey preached what would be his last sermon. In the days to come, it would be reinterpreted in ways that no one in the congregation that morning could have imagined. On this holy day, which is set aside for hope, love, and rejoicing, the cast of characters who would figure in the tragedy were all in place in the sanctuary, about to begin a weird and—one could believe—demonic journey into a world of passion, violence, and madness. Just before the eleven o’clock service, the seventh of a series of threatening letters addressed to Railey was slipped under Gordon Casad’s office door. “EASTER IS WHEN CHRIST AROSE, BUT YOU ARE GOING DOWN,” the note said. There was already a police guard in the church, but the possibility that the author of those threats had walked unnoticed into the church offices left the staff and the police unnerved. They were even more surprised when an associate pastor, acting on a hunch, ran upstairs and typed out the same message on an IBM Selectric on the third floor. The type face appeared to be the same. Whoever was sending the notes was probably a member of the congregation—perhaps even a member of the staff.
Railey, a medium-size, balding man with intense blue eyes, was pale and thin-lipped but apparently determined to preach. He borrowed an ill-fitting bullet-proof vest from a woman police officer and strapped it on like a corset beneath his Easter vestments.
Few people in the congregation knew about the threats, but most sensed that something was wrong as soon as they entered the sanctuary. Councilman Holcomb noticed that Railey did not enter the procession behind the choir as he usually did. Instead, the choir came in alone, and the pastoral staff entered through a side door—without Railey. “I kept noticing these men standing beside the doors,” Holcomb recalls. “I kept thinking I knew these men, but they’re not from the church.” Later he recognized Investigator Steve Torres as one of the officers who guard the city council. The congregation rose to sing the doxology, and when they sat down Railey abruptly appeared in the pulpit.
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