Memoirs of Jerry Falwell

As the daughter of a non-denominational pastor, I have many fond memories of the more zealous brethren.\nSome of them were clever zealots who brightened up life with their off-kilter humor, such as my youth pastor who fried an egg on the church camp basketball court one day when the western Kansas temperature reached 105 degrees.\nOthers were nutters who seemed to be some malfunctioning species of Borg, such as Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, who I remember fondly for their extraordinary talent at keeping our hometown of Topeka entertained with their self-parody.\nI do not, however, have any fond memories of Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who died May 15.\nYes, the man pulled many outlandish stunts in the name of zealotry. For starters, he was at the front of the “Clinton Chronicles” scandal, wherein he funded and publicized a documentary that featured people falsely suggest then-President Bill Clinton was involved in drug-smuggling operations and was causing many of his dissenters to run for their lives. And of course, who could forget his denouncement of the purple Teletubby for being gay?\nBut despite his appearance as a match with Fred Phelps in the realm of religious wackjobbery, Falwell does not fall into the same category. Unlike Phelps and his Westboro gang, many people took Falwell seriously. \nEarly last week, Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson sent out a press release commending Falwell’s contributions, saying, “Because Jerry, and his Moral Majority, were the first ones out of the trenches in the culture war, they got shot at repeatedly by the national media and by liberal church leaders. But he always weathered the onslaught, permanently stamping the conservative American church with respectability on social action.”\nFalwell has always had his loud-mouthed media-candy subculture of followers, but “respectability” isn’t the first word a substantial portion of evangelicals whom I’ve known associate with the man.\nMost people realize Falwell was never representative of America’s “moral” or general Christian voting population, but few realize exactly how poorly he represented the groups whose mention bring his face to mind: “evangelicals,” “fundamentalists,” the “Religious Right.” \nThe media’s common portrayal of evangelicals as emotionally-driven zombies is not entirely devoid of truth, due in large part to Falwell’s immense effect on the movement.\nBut many evangelical Christians found themselves between a rock and hard place regarding Falwell’s influence. Some were far more liberal than Falwell told them – and the media – was appropriate, making them hesitant about their religious identification. Still others agreed on some of his political positions, e.g. pro-life activism, Zionism and skepticism about homosexual rights, but didn’t want to be connected with him because they had broken away from any number of his other “traditional” views. But the majority of evangelicals didn’t even associate their movement with him in the first place: they considered him as a phony.\nEvangelical Christians can think for themselves – Falwell only discouraged free thought and gave the media false impressions of the faithful.\nThe man is dead. May his legacy die with him.