The Rev. Dr. Jerry Fawell: Rest In Peace

I was reading the MSN Political Cartoons this week, and went through the cartoons on Rev. Falwell’s passing. Most were snide remarks about his politics, about how when he gets to heaven all the people that he didn’t like would be there. How he would get shown his in the end.

Bitter remarks from people who never have understood this guy.

And then there was the one from Gary Varvel, of the Indianapolis Star-News. A smiling, pudgy Falwell is at the gates of heaven, holding his Bible. In the background, in the gate, are bunches of smiling representatives of the Bible stories waving at him. St. Peter looks at him and says, “You’re going to enjoy this more than the book!”

It’s what I think is more likely to have happened when he got there. In the end, Falwell’s love of the Bible and strict interpretations of it from a particular theological understanding. Like anyone else who lived for the Bible, he will get a big surprise when he see the Increate. No matter what we think, we think too small. We get it wrong. Some, perhaps, more so than others.

Falwell erred in wanting to be the center of things. I think that his ego often got in his way, as it does for so many leaders. He couldn’t let the movement move on, a movement that was never his anyway. He was always more of a lightning rod for the press and the left than the real leader of the movement. Evangelical Christians were already in politics when Viguerie, Wyrich and what’s his name decided to form an organization to capture them for the Republican Party, settling on Falwell as their man to lead it. The issues were already there, too: abortion as a result of the atrocious Roe v. Wade decision (what a gross overstepping of the federal limits, and it set back the left since), homosexuality, evolution in schools, teaching standards. It was all about the children and it has remained so wherever it has had power.

All Falwell did was step in front of a movement that was already there and give it a national face. Ronald Reagan, in his famous “You can’t endorse me, so I endorse you” speech in Dallas, showed them a way to associate with a national figure. The guys in the background tied economic conservatism to Christians, and did so very successfully.

Falwell in many ways was just along for the ride.

But I think that he got seduced by the fame and limelight. He was never more than a pawn in other people’s games, I think: a very smart pawn, a brilliant man with great charisma. But he was a sheep playing with snakes, and never saw the way out.

When Operation Rescue showed that abortion itself could be the definition of the movement, with its much more aggressive actions against clinics and doctors, Falwell desperately tried to play catch-up to no avail. He ended Moral Majority not because he had accomplished his goals but because it was irrelevant.

Fundamentalists and the Neo-cons have always made strange bedfellows. For the most part, I’ve seen more corruption of the Christians than salting of the Neocons.

Yet, I find myself sorrowful at Rev. Falwell’s death. I made my degree by writing on him and the Moral Majority. My 75 page senior paper was on Moral Majority as a movement. I had four or five other papers, about 20 pages each, on different aspects of how the MM interacted with other parts of society. So I have a degree to thank him for.

I read a great deal on him. Not all of it kind in any way, and he could attract that type of reaction. He had that way of not getting upset. He went to Harvard and handled all the hecklers skillfully. He may have been a sheep but he was a confident, brilliant, and — quite frankly — incredibly gracious man. People would get increasingly angry and hurl abuse at him, and he would stay calm, smiling and in control of himself and the situation.

I think that this is what drives people to talk trash about him. It wasn’t really what he said: if you hear what he said in context, it’s not that surprising or even that inflamatory. I’ve always thought that the most distressing thing he ever said was that he would vote for Satan himself if he thought that the devil would pass his policies. I think that folks just love to tear at him. He wasn’t as silly as Pat Robertson could get, and I think that he was being honest when he said that he never said anything that he didn’t mean.

Well, excepting the weird Bill Clinton stuff. I guess that I missed all of that, being in another country a lot of that time. It was embarrassing. He was so desperately trying to get back into the limelight, like Kennedy’s speechwriter citing bad web rumours.

But I think that he got seduced by power and then was always trying to get back there. It was sad, really. He really was a powerful speaker and teacher. I grew up watching Old Time Gospel Hour on TV before church. My parents liked hearing him. This was before 1980 and Moral Majority, of course: my parents voted Carter both times.

In the end, that’s how I remember him. When he was younger, ready, before he was seduced by politics and fame. Before he became a man who needed to say things in outrageous proportions.

It’s odd, of course: I’m not part of the New Christian Right, the New Religious Right or the Republican Party. I was a young Reaganite in my day, but by the time I actually got to vote in a presidential election, I pulled the Libertarian lever. (So I’ve always liked Republican candidate for President, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, and still do: he’s clearly more interesting than any of the others, but ideas don’t run the government. Power runs things, and you have to have the power to pull it off. Too bad, really: he was against the “war” before we attacked, because he says that it’s Congress’s job to declare war and they no longer have the cajones to do it, preferring to let the Executive Branch take the blame. Idiots on both sides: thank God that someone like Paul still remembers what the Founding Fathers wrote down as the system of government.)

But I digress. This was a remembrance of Rev. Falwell.

I’ll miss him. I hope he has found his rest in the bosom of the Saviour.