RALEIGH - W.W. "Bill" Finlator, the outspoken former pastor of Raleigh's Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, and one of the South's leading liberal preachers during the 1960s civil rights movement, has died at age 93.

Finlator, a passionate preacher, controversial pastor and longtime political activist, died Monday night of pneumonia after a period of declining health, said his son, Wallace Finlator Jr., a Raleigh environmental lawyer.

The Rev. Finlator, a Louisburg native who grew up in Raleigh, led Pullen for 26 years, from 1956 to 1982, during which he championed civil rights and opposed the Vietnam War.

In his active retirement, Finlator continued writing and speaking out against war, poverty and the death penalty, and in favor of civil liberties, women's rights, workers' interests, and the separation of religion and the government. He was a frequent contributor of opinions in the editorial pages of The News & Observer.

"He thought the German theologian Karl Barth was right that a preacher should preach with a Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other," Wallace Finlator Jr. said Tuesday. "He thought of himself as imitating Jesus, and trying to bring justice to the poor and peace to the world."

Finlator last year was among the original inductees into Raleigh's Hall of Fame. Before taking Pullen's pulpit, he led congregations in Pittsboro, Weldon and Elizabeth City.

Many Christians and other North Carolinians disagreed with Finlator's liberal views and his political activism. Most of his own deacons did, too, when they pressured him to retire a generation ago after he called on the federal government to deny funding to the University of North Carolina system for its shortcomings in achieving racial integration. By implication, he had faulted his church's next-door neighbor and the employer of many of its members, N.C. State University.

One mock epitaph offered when he retired was, "In this grave lies W.W. He's no longer here to trouble you, trouble you."

A 'free pulpit'

But the "very individual individual" was a towering figure among the South's politically minded clergy, and one of North Carolina's most fervent activists.

"Bill Finlator was a fearless man, and a gentle man," said one of his closest friends, fellow pastor Bob Mullinax of Raleigh, the former executive director of the state Baptist Convention's Council on Christian Higher Education. "He could bristle in the face of social injustice, and melt when a friend walked into the room."

Because Finlator routinely led his peers in insight and courage, Mullinax said, he often was misunderstood as a troublemaker and an irritant. His frequent attempts to introduce liberal-minded resolutions to the annual Baptist State Convention, for example, rarely succeeded immediately. But sometimes the group adopted his views a decade or more later.

"He was a preacher, a writer, a prophet and a good friend to many beyond his congregation," Mullinax said. "We will miss him badly."

William Wallace Finlator was born June 19, 1913, in Louisburg to a devout Baptist family. As a student at nearby Wake Forest College, Finlator wasn't sure he wanted to be a minister. But once so called, he never stepped back. He earned his divinity degree at the leading Southern Baptist seminary of the day, in Louisville, Ky.

On his return to North Carolina, he pastored churches in Weldon, Pittsboro and Elizabeth City before accepting the invitation to lead Pullen Memorial in Raleigh. One reason Finlator was attracted to Pullen was that church leaders promised him a "free pulpit" to speak his mind.

Once established at Pullen, Finlator was able to criticize powerful friends without losing them.

"Bill Finlator's value, in great measure, lies in the fact that he makes you think," one of those friends, former UNC President Bill Friday, said when Finlator retired. "He stirs people where they need to be stirred."

Finlator acknowledged that he enjoyed doing the stirring. "I'm not afflicted with overweening humility and self-effacement," he once said. "On the other hand, I can't do the things I have done and avoid publicity. When you speak on issues of great concern, that is the time for vigorous statements, not namby-pamby mutterings."

When a church board member asked Finlator whether he preferred a photograph or a painted portrait at his retirement, he replied, "How about a stained-glass window?"

Over the years, Finlator was the target of pickets, hate mail and midnight telephone threats, none of which deterred him.

"In my dreams, I wanted to be something the Bible called a prophet," Finlator said last year. "I wanted to be the kind of person that read deeply and tried to relate the prophetic words of the Bible to what is happening in the world."

Though his political views might have been more palatable in the more liberal enclaves of New England, Finlator never forsook North Carolina or his independent Baptist nature.

Because of Finlator's controversial sermons on racial and social injustice, his became a familiar name in North Carolina and beyond. From behind the pulpit, in the pages of newspapers and in countless protests, Finlator challenged Baptists to reject conventional attitudes and raise their voices against inequities large and small.

The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union was formed in his church. He invited the National Organization for Women to meet there. He was chairman of the N.C. Advisory Committee on Civil Rights.

"He was part of a generation of preachers who came out of the progressive-to-liberal stream in Southern Baptist life," said Bill Leonard, Wake Forest University divinity school dean. "They stuck their necks out when it wasn't safe and spoke in ways that gave courage to a great many others."

Forced retirement

At the heart of Finlator's Southern Baptist roots was a belief that people had the right to interpret Scriptures in the light of their own understanding and to speak out when conscience dictated.

Speak out he did. During Finlator's tenure at Pullen, dozens of families left the church, angered by his views.

Concerned that Finlator's views were pushing people away, a committee of the deacon board eventually called their pastor to a meeting. They begged him to vary the subjects of his sermons. Finlator listened. Then he asked the deacons to pray with him.

"Father, I thank you for these good people and the burden they have shared," he said. "But Father, I pray that you will give me the courage to go on preaching the sermons you have laid on my heart, even if every member of the church leaves."

Eventually, Finlator paid a price for his outspoken views. In 1979, he sent a letter to President Carter urging the federal government to put financial pressure on the state university system to more fully integrate. Some church members, many of whom worked at N.C. State, were so angry that they began to push for his retirement. They succeeded in 1982, a year ahead of his original plan.

Still, other church members remained fond of him. He was invited back to preach several times, and Pullen's fellowship hall was named in his honor.

In his retirement, Finlator and his wife Mary Lib attended Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, a liberal stronghold.

At home in Raleigh, he read widely in philosophy and classic literature, as well as the leftist publications The Nation and The New Republic. He wrote fiery and reflective dispatches for the religious and secular press. And each morning he made his wife a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee.

Last year, Finlator and his wife moved from their home in Raleigh's Cameron Village neighborhood to Springmoor, a Raleigh retirement community.

"She said, 'He loved me, he loved his children, and he loved Pullen Church,' " his son said Tuesday.

In Finlator's final sermon at Pullen, "My Departure Is at Hand," he told his congregation, "I have often been in the fray -- not often enough for my conscience; too often, perhaps, for some of you. I leave you with a deep sense of gratitude and finality."

For the many followers of Bill Finlator, that gratitude is mutual, and now eternal.

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Finlator is survived by his wife of 64 years, Mary Elizabeth "Lib" Finlator; his son, Wallace Finlator Jr.; two daughters, Elizabeth McCutchen of Farmville, Va., and Martha Finlator of Alexandria, Va.; and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, 1801 Hillsborough St., with a reception to follow in the church's Finlator Fellowship Hall.