So, Jerry Falwell is gone, and even in his passing, the fella stirs up contention.
There are countless obituaries out there for all to read, and I have no interest in adding to them. I also have no interest in revisiting some of the nasty exchanges in which I have taken part over how best to respond to the passing of this exceptionally influential figure.
Jerry Falwell was one of those relatively few individuals who becomes so iconic that he ceases to be real. He was the first television evangelist of whom I ever heard, back when I was a kid. His “Old Time Gospel Hour” (which aired regularly throughout the early 1980s on Sunday mornings) was one of the few religious programs I ever saw in my high school years. For most of the Reagan era, Jerry was the public face of activist Christian conservatism. His indefagitable energy, his willingness to go into hostile media environments, and his intuitive understanding of how to apply political pressure made him extraordinarily influential extraordinarily fast.
Falwell was alternately loathed and loved because he had a larger-than-life personality. One of the best things that can be said of him was that he “dreamed big”, founding Liberty Baptist College (later Liberty University) and the Moral Majority that played such a vital role in the conservative resurgence of the 1980s. Another bit of praise: he rejected the idea that Christians ought to be quietist, ignoring the rough and tumble world of politics. He insisted that Christians had not only the right, but the obligation to become involved in shaping the culture. His primary concern was the erosion of sexual morality, of course, and those of us who call ourselves left-wing Christians do not give that concern primacy of place. We are far more deeply grieved by the plight of the poor than the private use of the pelvis. But we share with Falwell a belief that as Christians, we ought to bring our passionate faith commitments into the voting booth.
Falwell, famously, stayed in dialogue with his opponents. But dialogue, while a virtue in and of itself, isn’t always enough. The goal is dialogue that leads to enduring change. The best tribute I’ve read comes from one of my heroes, Mel White of Soulfource. White worked for Falwell for years before coming out of the closet, and remained hopeful till the end that Jerry, who renounced the racism of his youth, might also someday renounce the anti-gay bigotry of his mature years. He writes in the Advocate:
I was in the dentist’s chair when I heard that Jerry Falwell passed away. I couldn’t believe that I started crying. I had to find an office and I just cried. I was trying to think, Why the heck am I crying? I think I was crying for his family. He was a great father and husband, and he was a really good pastor—I’ve been going to his church for years, so I know—and he was a really good president of a university. There are 20,000 students at Liberty University, which Falwell founded, and they all like him.
I knew there would be just a huge hole in Virginia and in Lynchburg, and I felt for those people. But at the same time I was feeling more strongly that now we’ll never have a chance for Jerry Falwell to say, “I was wrong. I did wrong, and I said wrong, and I’m sorry. God creates gay people and loves them just like she created them. I’m not going to say anything more against gay people because I was wrong.†Imagine the consequence that would have had for so many people. Falwell was the face of homophobia.
Falwell was the face of many things. He was no fraud; there were no secrets in his closet, he wasn’t in it for the money. He was a true believer, a fellow member of the body of Christ. He was also deeply and profoundly wrong, and he did a tremendous amount of damage. Like Mel White, I am sorry that Falwell never got the chance in this life to reconsider publicly his views.
I prayed a lot for Jerry Falwell over the years, largely because as his brother in Christ, I was so angry at him so much of the time. In my head, he was the one Christian I least wanted to be like. He ceased to be Jerry Falwell the man, and became Jerry Falwell the symbol of intolerance and hate. While there is some legitimacy to that view, I can’t forget that the Apostle warns us against division in the body of Christ. I wrote in 2005:
I know that part of me likes to poke fun at Falwell because frankly, he embarrasses me. As an evangelical surrounded by folks more liberal on theological and cultural issues than myself, I find myself constantly lumped together with him. (If I had a dollar for every time a non-believer has said, “Hugo, now you’re sounding like Falwell”, I could afford, well, a nice dinner out for my fiancee and myself.) I don’t like his style, I don’t like his politics, and I think he misreads Scripture and gives other evangelicals a bad name in the public sphere. But I also recognize that this embarrassment is, at least partially, my own sinful pride at work. I don’t want other folks to think I’m at all like Jerry Falwell because I think my views are subtler, more compassionate, more evolved, and frankly, more congruent with the spirit of Christ than his. That’s arrogance and hubris, and it’s something I need to cop to and for which I need to repent. Paul tells us that the body of Christ is a unit made up of many parts. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” And though it is hard for me to believe sometimes, progressive Christians cannot say to a Jerry Falwell, we don’t need you. Sometimes I have my own uncharitable suspicions as to which part of the body of Christ Falwell represents, but I know that he and I and our churches share the same God, often pray the same prayers, and are struggling to discern divine will in our lives.
Peace to Jerry Falwell, may God grant him rest and may eternal light shine upon him. Peace to his family and friends who mourn his loss. Peace to the millions whom he marginalized and judged, may they know that they are loved and accepted — just as they are — by the same God who brought Jerry home.
UPDATE: And I’m sorry that in the thread about Jerry Falwell at Feministe, I made the mistake of calling down “shame” on those who celebrated Falwell’s death. I ought to know better than to use that word in particular. There’s far too much shame in the world, far too much of it imposed by men who look like me (and believe in my God and make love as I make love) on those who aren’t men (and don’t look like me, worship another God or none at all, and make love differently.) My anger and my haste made me forget that. I’m not only sorry for having offended, I’m sorry I used words that would inevitably be offensive. It was stupid and wrong. No excuses.
I’m done posting about Jerry.
A deeply Christian response to Falwell’s death, Hugo; thanks very much for sharing.
Falwell actually figures prominently in one of my very earliest memories of political engagement. I watching one of his taped fundraising specials–I have no idea why, as I never watched religious programs as a kid–in which he presented all sorts of presumably vital information about the Soviet Union and the need to defeat those who were undermining President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense proposal. (That dates the memory to around 1983, I guess.) I called the toll-free number, got all the documents he was telling us about in the mail, and ended up on his mailing list. I became, in short order, about as good a Republican as a 14-15 year old can be; I mean, I’d been interested in politics since I was quite young, but it was Falwell–this alternately passionate, avuncular, pious and jolly preacher from Virginia–who actually turned me into a campaigner. And since I still am, in a sense, a campaigner–though for some very different things!–I have to pay Falwell some props, for being there to show a young man that prayer and politics have something to say to each other, even if what he thought they said led him into an alliance with a party and movement that was more wrong than right.
Anyway, my two cents. I followed Falwell for a while–he did a brilliant show with Jesse Jackson on Nightline with Ted Koppel way back when that became a touchstone for our debate class in high school–but I can’t say I ever paid attention to the man after around 1987 or so, and neither did many others from what I can tell. The angry invective being heaped upon Falwell is directed for the most part, I think, at what you rightly identify as the symbol, the icon he became–and, to his discredit, fully and peevishly embraced–in his later years. Some purging makes sense, I suppose, but more than that, for a man who really had his greatest impact in a very different social world than we have today, seems unhealthy to me.
He was no fraud; there were no secrets in his closet, he wasn’t in it for the money.
I think Tammy Faye Bakker would differ with you on that.
Russell, you and i have come to many of the same positions, even as I have come from the secular left to the evangelical left, and you have made your own journey. I hated Falwell at the same age he inspired you, and we feel much the same way today…
Zuzu, you’re right that the Bakkers were sinned against. But Falwell wasn’t in it for the money, most scholars say — they say he was motivated by a desire to protect the Christian right from disrepute. He feared — rightly — that the PTL Club had the potential to discredit all televangelism, so he moved wih brutal swiftness to crush the Bakkers.
There’s also an element in that story of the hostility that many independent fundamentalists and Baptists have towards Pentecostalism. That was another dynamic at play.
BTW, Hugo, just curious: why is your apology to the Feministe readers you shamed posted here rather than at Feministe?
Zuzu, I’d be happy to post it at Feministe. I felt as if it would be unwanted given the heatedness of the climate there. Though I deserved to be called out on the way in which I expressed myself, I felt that some of the language used (the bit I quote above and other comments, which questioned my motives, etc) were venomous.
But I shall add it to the original thread.
I felt as if it would be unwanted given the heatedness of the climate there.
Not much of an apology if you can’t deliver it to the people who you pissed off, now is it?
Fair enough. It’s posted there now, or its in moderation purgatory…
Oral Roberts was *my first Televangelist. He bilked my favorite great-aunt out of a lot of money: she had none, so she gave much. Falwell wasn’t a con man. That’s the best I can say for him.
Falwell was an improvement, but he sounded too much like the churches-of-Christ preachers who had abused my soul at his worst, and too much like the First-Church Baptist Pharasees I’d known all-too-well growing up at his best. I cannot imagine how *anyone would follow the direction of such a man. I must in part credit Falwell’s “Moral Majority” with curing my adolescent dalliance with Movement Conservatism.
OK, that’s another good thing about him: he was so *clearly vile, vicious, self-righteous and priggish that his mere association with the Conservative movement could take a Reganite (son of a Goldwaterite) JROTC True-Believer with his own subscription to the Conservative Digest in the late 70′s (HS grad 1980), and turn him into a Social-Democratic Anarchist-sympathizer by 1986. I would add that, up until the last year of that period, my entire life experience had been in rural northwest Louisiana and environs.
I pray for the repose of his soul, and peace and comfort to those who mourn for him and because of him. God’s grace must cover all, else none shall be saved.
Satan’s already warming up another mouthpiece. You can hear ++Akinola practicing his vocalises in his latest interview:
http://www.anglican-nig.org/abujasynod_pressbrief07.htm
Why do I feel like I just read Darth Vader’s obituary? I’m only partly joking: Falwell, it appears, was a man of considerable talent and some integrity, yet he used his talent for evil. Which makes his death before he had the chance to renounce the dark side and undo some of that damage, perhaps a tragedy after all.
But Falwell wasn’t in it for the money, most scholars say
No, he was in it for the power. The money was a nice side bonus.
Hugo, forgiveness and compassion are wonderful responses to Falwell’s death. Making excuses and whitewashing are not. The man was an evil, racist, hateful opportunist.
Hugo, PLEASE stop apologizing for seeing someone you strongly disagreed with — and/or strongly disliked — as a human being. You weren’t in the wrong on that other board; they were. I intensely disliked Saddam Hussein, but I didn’t cheer when he died. (And, no, I’m not comparing Dworkin or Falwell with Hussein, either.)
Seeing someone else’s humanity demonstrates that you possess it yourself. Doing cartwheels because someone passed away is nauseating, and is a clear indication of someone who has let hatred devour her or him. You were right to call them onto the carpet for their words.