{"id":9034,"date":"2007-05-15T14:05:01","date_gmt":"2007-05-15T21:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9034"},"modified":"2007-05-15T14:05:01","modified_gmt":"2007-05-15T21:05:01","slug":"televangelist-christian-leader-jerry-falwell-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9034","title":{"rendered":"“Televangelist, Christian Leader Jerry Falwell Dies”"},"content":{"rendered":"

How’s Larry Flynt doing?  From NPR’s glowing, non-biased encomium<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, a pioneer among televangelists who later became a leading voice in the national debate over Christian values, has died at the age of 73. Falwell was found unconscious Tuesday in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.\n<\/p>\n

\nA fundamentalist preacher, Falwell burst onto the national scene in 1979, when he launched an organization he presumptuously called the Moral Majority. Critics liked to say that it was neither. What is undisputed is that the Moral Majority became the vehicle that carried millions of born-again Christians out of their separatist tendencies and into the center of political activism.\n<\/p>\n

\nThey did it by bringing politics to the pulpit, getting churches to hand out voter guides, and creating get-out-the-vote drives that would become the envy of many a politician. The religious right was born \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Falwell became its chief spokesman. The goal was to overturn the Supreme Court’s ban on school prayer and reverse the nation’s direction on feminism, abortion and gay rights.\n<\/p>\n

\n“I believe that homosexuality is moral perversion,” Falwell told NPR in 1996. “I think it is a violation of the laws of nature, as well as the laws of God. I do not think that that gives me permission to be unkind or ungracious to a person who may be living a homosexual lifestyle.”\n<\/p>\n

\nIn some ways, Falwell was an unlikely religious leader. He was born Aug. 11, 1933, and grew up in Lynchburg, the son of a one-time bootlegger who hated preachers. His grandfather was a staunch atheist.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut Falwell heard the call while listening to a radio preacher. He built a church from scratch \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thomas Road Baptist \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Lynchburg. It grew to a mega-church of well over 20,000 members. He started a Christian school, then a college and most recently a law school, raising much of the money from his television ministry. Critics said he spent more time asking for contributions than ministering to viewers.\n<\/p>\n

\nFalwell followers saw him as a capable defender of decency and of godly values, but he often had detractors gnashing their teeth. He once told a gathering of ministers that the anti-Christ is a Jewish male who is alive in the world today.\n<\/p>\n

\nTwo days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, during an appearance on Pat Robertson’s television show, Falwell claimed that the attack was God’s judgment on America’s immorality.\n<\/p>\n

\n“I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians, who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d all of them who try to secularize America \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”\n<\/p>\n

\nLater, Falwell apologized, saying his remarks were insensitive and that he never meant to blame anyone except the terrorists.\n<\/p>\n

\nBarry Lynn, leader of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has been one of Falwell’s harshest critics over the years. Lynn says Falwell was wrong about everything, but he does give Falwell credit for standing up for his beliefs.\n<\/p>\n

\n“He was the key point-man in the creation of the modern-day religious right. And for a lot of Americans, he will be forever the face of the religious right,” Lynn said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWow.  A shorter version might have read, “This son of a bootlegger and grandson of an atheist, the man responsible for giving rise to godbotherers in politics and breaking down the sacred separation of church and state, died today, leaving behind a legacy gleaned mostly from begging.\n<\/p>\n

\n“On the plus side, though, he seemed to believe his own presumptuous bullshit.  So, you know, you gotta give him that much.”\n<\/p>\n

\nNow, I’m no fan of Falwell’s, but the guy built his ministry from nothing, and opened a private university and law center.  His arguments generally came from a strict (though by no means “fundamentalist,” as NPR would have it) adherence to his Christianity and its principles and teachings.\n<\/p>\n

\nSeems to me he deserved a more even-handed obituary than the one funded by our tax dollars and filtered through the progressive cheesecloth that makes up much of NPR these days.\n<\/p>\n

\nI’m sure others will have more to say.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if certain bloggers were celebrating just a bit by taking their vaginas out for a nice lunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How’s Larry Flynt doing?  From NPR’s glowing, non-biased encomium: The Rev. Jerry Falwell, a pioneer among televangelists who later became a leading voice in the national debate over Christian values, has died at the age of 73. Falwell was found unconscious Tuesday in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. A fundamentalist preacher, Falwell burst onto the national scene in 1979, when he launched an organization he presumptuously called<\/p>\n

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