Ralph Henderson Langley, the dynamic Baptist pastor who served churches in Florida, Texas, and Alabama for 65 years, has died in Huntsville, Alabama, aged 94. He was senior pastor, then pastor emeritus, of First Baptist Church, Huntsville, from November 1979. He passed away at Crestwood Medical Center on January 13 after a short
illness.
Born on December 26, 1922 at Opelika, Alabama, Ralph was the second of three sons of John Caloway Langley and Augusta Ann Henderson Langley. His parents hailed from farm families in nearby Camp Hill. The young Ralph joined some distinguished relatives. In 1922 his mother’s uncle, the Rev. Wilson Monroe Blackwelder, was pastor
of First Baptist Church, Huntsville. Through Caloway’s mother Lucy, Ralph had a second cousin attending Harvard Law School, soon to be a leading politician in the U.S. Senate, then the House, and later known nationally as a spokesman for the elderly: Claude Pepper.
Caloway Langley worked for the Opelika Post Office and Gussie was a devoted homemaker. Ralph’s elder brother John C. Jr. was four years older than he, his younger brother James two years younger. All three boys were fun-loving and bright, the whole family active at First Baptist Opelika, where both parents taught Sunday School. Ralph felt the call to preach at age 13, though he didn’t tell anyone until a year later – around the time his admired brother John C., just home from his sophomore year at Auburn University, died from appendicitis. It was a loss felt long
after 1937, and spurred Ralph to use every opportunity.
Classmates began calling him “Parson”, a nickname he proudly carried. Before that he’d thought of becoming a dentist or a lawyer. As things turned out, it would be his winning smile and personality, public speaking skill (honed on the nationally ranked Opelika high school debate team), and, not least, his passion for the Christian faith that led to his true vocation. In summer 1941 he gave his first sermon in Banks, Alabama, riding his bicycle 167 miles round trip: it was a short sermon but a memorable milestone.
To earn money for college, Ralph worked at several jobs – in the Pepperell textile mill, for A&P grocery stores, and as a counselor at the Alabama Baptist Children’s Home in Troy. Partly on the advice of his Opelika pastor James Leroy Steele, he turned down scholarships to both the University of Alabama and Troy State Teachers College, in favor of attending the small but respected Baptist junior college north of Asheville,North Carolina: Mars Hill College. Here he quickly became a campus leader, notably in the Baptist Student Union (BSU).
A failed romance at Mars Hill led him to look west to continue his education. In fall 1943 he entered Baylor University in Waco, Texas, as a junior, majoring in Bible with a minor in English. To no one’s surprise, his scholarship and achievement grew. A ministerial student, he served as president of the English honor society and president of both the local and the Texas state Baptist Student Unions, played varsity tennis, and was elected to Who’s Who and the Honor Council. In 1945 he was chosen by popular vote to be “Mr. Centennial” for Baylor’s hundredth year.
Even before graduating in 1945, Ralph caught one of the biggest waves to hit Baptist life in the twentieth century, latterly known as the Youth Revival Movement. Church revivals weren’t new at the time, but all-student-led meetings – young people reaching out as teams beyond their own churches – was a novel concept. Indeed, youth leading youth would be a key concept throughout Langley’s ministry.
It was in 1944 that a small group of Baylor students, including Ralph, had begun praying for their campus, town, and nation. They organized a city-wide revival in Waco for April 1945. The successful outcome was repeated in Waco the next spring, then in Dallas, then Houston with huge crowds attending. The fervor spread to other Texas cities and campuses, and then across the Southeast: hundreds of revivals took place over the next decade, led entirely by young people, as organizers, preachers, musicians, prayer teams, and seminar leaders. Among the original participants, treated like celebrities, were Jack Robinson (All-American basketball player), Bruce McIver (Ralph’s friend from Mars Hill), B.O. Baker (preacher and song leader), his brother Dick Baker (singer and composer), Charles Wellborn (outstanding intellect of the group), Howard Butt Jr. (of the wealthy Texas grocery family), Frank Boggs
(singer), and Ralph Langley; others in the first wave included Jess Moody, Jimmy Allen, and Buckner Fanning. Langley was particularly admired as a public speaker.
All these young men gained platform experience, team and management skills, and devoted friendships to last a lifetime. With so many positive decisions for Christian vocation, the Youth Revival Movement helped fill church pews, seminaries, pastorates, the home and foreign mission fields, businesses, recording studios and even the
national airwaves with faith-centered work for generations. Legacies have continued to the present day, including modern summer mission programs and Christian contemporary music, kick-started by WORD Records of Waco co-founded in 1951 by Jarrell McCracken.
While still at Baylor, Langley was on staff at Seventh & James Baptist Church. He attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth for his B.D. degree(1945-48), then Princeton Seminary in New Jersey for his M.Div. (1948-49, with a thesis on George W. Truett). Langley’s close friend and colleague during these years
was James Leo Garrett, later to be a distinguished professor of theology himself. Langley returned to Southwestern in late 1949 to begin his Th.D. (completed 1957, with a thesis on Jesus’s conflict with the Sadducees). Among dozens of revivals in the late 1940s and early 50s, he particularly valued speaking at Corpus Christi and Lubbock, Texas; Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma; Columbus, Georgia; Knoxville, Chattanooga and Jefferson City, Tennessee; Dothan, Alabama; and Miami, Florida. Thousands of young people came to know Christ or rededicated their lives.
The event sparking that Southern revival wave, BSU Week at Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly in summer 1946, also brought Langley together with Grace Austin Westmoreland of Statesville, North Carolina (1924-96). A friend from Mars Hill days, then a fellow student at Baylor, Grace excelled as a scholar and student leader in her own right. The pair shared a commitment to Christian service and were married at Mars Hill in May 1947. Bruce McIver was Best Man.
Langley’s gift for local ministry began while he was still an undergraduate, in the small town of Malone, Texas, near Waco. There in a church of 30 members he learned to
cope with strong characters. He continued conducting revivals at the same time,
under guidance from the state BSU office in Dallas.
Langley held his first fulltime pastorate from June 1951, at University Baptist Church in Coral Gables, Florida. Here he excelled as a leader of students and families, also finding time for deep-sea fishing, golf, and more revivals. The 1954 Miami youth revival even introduced a starry relative for publicity purposes – a supposed kissing cousin, Neva Jane Langley who was “Miss America” of 1953. The possibility that Neva was indeed Ralph’s 4th cousin, once removed, remains an attractive theory but is unproven. Both looked good in a swimsuit.
Ralph and Grace had two children, David (1949-2011), born in Ft. Worth, and Leanne (1953-), born in Miami. In fall 1955 the young family moved back to Texas, where Langley served as pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church (1955-58) and guided new growth. Subsequently his pastorate at Willow Meadows Baptist Church in southwest Houston (1958-79) became legendary. He helped the new church, planted by South Main Baptist, to expand from a school room to a purpose-built gymnasium, then a sanctuary. More widely, he reached out to inner-city children and youth, encouraged a medical mission trip to Honduras, built close ties with the Jewish community, ordained one of the first Baptist women ministers in Texas, and actively pursued social causes including school desegregation. In 1963 he was invited by John F. Kennedy to a White House conference on civil rights. Langley served as a trustee of the Memorial
Hospital system, was elected a “Man of the Year” by B’nai B’rith in 1971, and was on the Board of Trustees of Baylor University for three years from 1976.
Langley’s move to Huntsville, Alabama in 1979 consolidated his strengths – loving and cultivating people, shaping programs, supporting youth, and reaching outward. Under his leadership, FBC Huntsville completed their landmark bell tower, a citywide symbol, and built the Family Life Center. At his suggestion in 1990, the church founded the Langley Invitational Golf Tournament to raise funds for student mission work. Together with Rev. Julius Scruggs, he initiated a semi-annual pulpit exchange with First Missionary Baptist Church of Blue Spring. Langley retired as senior minister in March 1990, accepting the honor of pastor emeritus. Among churches he served as interim pastor are Second Ponce de Leon, Atlanta, FBC Roswell, Georgia, and FBC Dalton, Georgia. Grace Langley died in 1996, after which Ralph married Eula Plemmons of Roswell, Georgia.
Langley is survived by his wife of 19 years, Eula Plemmons Langley; daughter Dr. Leanne Langley and son-in-law Paul Scruton, with grandsons William and Michael Scruton (Southampton, UK); granddaughters Lana Michelle Rodriguez (Cesar Rodriguez) and Lacy Parris Langley, with great-grandsons Erick, Preston, and Tyler Rodriguez (Houston,Texas); brother James A. Langley (Washington, DC) with nieces Carol Langley, Jane Langley Smith and Marilyn Langley and nephew James Langley Jr.; and stepsons Scott and Kevin Plemmons (Roswell).
A Memorial Service will be held at First Baptist Church, Huntsville, on Wednesday January 18 at 11 a.m. with visitation at the church on Tuesday, 4-7 pm. Interment will be at Maple Hill Cemetery, Huntsville, following the service.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Missions and Outreach program of First Baptist Church, Huntsville.
