THE PASSING OF AN UGLY GIANT

OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

By Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho (ngier@uidaho.edu)

For a response to a Falwell apologist click here.

Click here for a humorous exchange about a guy

wanting to apply for the position of Anti-Christ.

Merciful Father, hear our prayer: Please let the death of your wayward servant the Rev. Jerry Falwell be a sign that an era has ended, and a new one has begun.

--Mary C. Schulken, Charlotte Observer (5/17/07)

 

The closest I ever came to Jerry Falwell was a 1983 debate I had with Cal Thomas, then the Vice-President of Moral Majority (1980-85) and now a nationally syndicated columnist. For the first time in my debating career I actually experienced stage fright, but after 15 minutes I recovered my confidence and made some good points. At the end of the evening, Thomas came over to me, put his arm around me, and said: "Nick, I would love to take a class from you sometime."  (Cartoon done by Bill Mitchell's "Left of Center.")

            Falwell himself, however, was rarely so gracious. Mel White, a speech writer who left Falwell's employ after coming out as gay, said that Falwell was always nice in person, but when he appeared in public he grew horns and a tail.

            In 1980 Falwell agreed with Bailey Smith, President of the Southern Baptist Convention, that God does not answer the prayers of Jews.  Falwell always condemned secular humanists, but for someone to restrict the actions of an omnipotent and free deity is the height of humanistic hubris.  My 1983 debate with Thomas was on the topic of the alleged threats secular humanism.

            In a 1958 sermon Falwell proclaimed that the segregation of the races was divinely ordained: "When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line." Here is yet another example of the arrogance, usually attributed to humanists, of fundamentalist ministers claiming to have the truth about texts written and transmitted by fallible human beings who were not witness to the events about which they were writing.

            In October, 2002, Falwell's statement that Mohammed was a terrorist caused protests in India that left 8 dead.  Of course the rioters themselves were responsible for the causalities, but Falwell was equally guilty for causing the reaction. The National Council of Churches condemned Falwell's remarks and was particularly concerned about the safety of its missionaries around the world.

        After the Holocaust, there is nothing uglier and more reprehensible than anti-Semitism, but the Jewish prayer example was only one of many.  Falwell was always in legal and financial hot water, and he objected to one ruling against him on the grounds that the judge was Jewish. In January, 1999, Falwell proclaimed that the Anti-Christ was now alive among us and that he was a Jewish male.  Falwell's clarification that Jesus was a Jew, so the Anti-Christ would also be Jewish, did not at all satisfy those who objected. 

Falwell was an outspoken supporter of South Africa's apartheid regime, paying personal visits to members of the racist government.  Falwell criticized the world-wide disinvestment campaign by calling on Christians to buy Krugerrands and reinvest in South Africa. He called South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a "phony." During his South Africa visit, Falwell ignored local churches that supported the oppressed blacks, and evangelical historian Richard Lovelace predicted that "his reputation is bound to suffer."

Falwell did not kind words for the women's movement, which he said was "mainly staffed by a large group of frustrated failures, many of them lesbians, and all of them anti-biblical."  The Bible he said called for the complete submission of women. He called National Organization of Women the "National Organization for Witches."

            His most famous offense was the linking of the 9/11attack to the ACLU, People for the American Way, pagans, abortionists, gays, and lesbians.  Addressing them directly, he said: "You made this happen."  Earlier Falwell had said that the sins of these same groups had led God to use the AIDS epidemic as a divine judgment for a world that had ignored the laws of God.

            Speaking about his brash statements to NPR on June 30, 2006, he said that "none of them [happened] by chance."  This makes all of his apologies for the statements above rather suspect. They all appear to have been shrewd PR calculations. For example, he apologized for his 9/11 statements, but then essentially repeated them, not once but twice, on NPR (6/30/06) and on CNN (5/8/07).  He once said: "Thank God for these gay demonstrators. If I didn't have them, I'd have to invent them. They give me all the publicity I need."

When Larry King was asked why he had Falwell on his show so many times, his response was: "He gets people mad."  Journalists such King are partially responsible for the fissures that Falwell and other preachers like him have created in American culture.

            Sadly, there are many evangelists waiting in the wings to take Falwell's place.  Douglas Wilson, pastor of Moscow's second largest church, is one of them.  His religious empire includes a K-12 Christian school and over 160 clones all over the country.  He has also founded New St. Andrews College, which will soon have campuses in other American towns and cities.  He is also co-author of Southern Slavery As It Was, a defense of slavery in the Antebellum South.

One of Wilson's books is entitled The Serrated Edge, in which he defends the use of cutting humor to advance the Gospel.  Wilson and Falwell are masters at applying their wicked blades to the body politic. Wilson, however, is different from Falwell in at least one respect: he has yet to apologize for any of his serial serrations. He warns his flock never to be embarrassed by what the Bible literally says, even if it means ancient laws that allows slavery or mandates capital punishment for homosexuality, adultery, child disobedience, and apostasy.

            In 1987, when Falwell dissolved the Moral Majority, he said: "I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the Religious Right had not evolved."  Yes, Jerry, we are all shuddering, but for the opposite reason.  David Kuo, an evangelical who once headed Bush's faith-based initiative, said that "Jerry Falwell almost single handedly blurred the line between Jesus and conservative politics to the detriment of both." Falwell's former Vice-President Cal Thomas sums it up best: "Little was accomplished in the political arena and much was lost in the spiritual realm."

Mary Schulken finishes her prayer: "We commend to you, Lord, the soul of your wayward servant. He had a profound influence on politics and culture in the past two decades.  But he led us by dividing us, and invoked your name to do it."