[Dialogue] {Spam?} Spong on Falwell

[KroegerD at aol.com]

May 23, 2007 
The Death of Jerry Falwell  

The Death of Jerry Falwell  
He represented everything that repels me about religion. He was  
closed-minded, bigoted and abusive as religious people tend to be when they  believe that 
they possess God's truth. Yet, I never disliked this man. He tapped  into 
something in the American psyche that, had he not done so, I believe,  someone 
else, perhaps worse, would have. His capacity to adjust to a changing  world was 
limited, but by couching his distress in the language of the Bible and  
religious piety, he made that limitation appear to be a virtue. Jerry Falwell  also 
showed some evidence of an ability to grow. While being easy to ridicule in  
learned circles, he nonetheless was able to gain the attention of the nation's  
power brokers from his headquarters in Lynchburg, Virginia. That was quite an 
 achievement since Lynchburg is a one TV station town not close to any major  
highway. It was here in that small city that his life and mine came together. 
 
In August of 1965, at age 34, I moved to Lynchburg to become rector of St.  
John's Episcopal Church in the Rivermont section of the town... I quickly 
became  aware of the 31 year old pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in the 
Fort  Hill section of Lynchburg. He had not yet achieved a national reputation 
but he  was a force to be reckoned with in local politics. Both of the 
Lynchburg papers,  the morning "Lynchburg News" and the afternoon "Daily Advance" were 
owned by the  Glass family. Carter Glass III was the publisher. The first 
Carter Glass, his  grandfather, had been President Wilson's Treasury Secretary 
from 1918-1920 and  then served as United States Senator from Virginia from 1920 
until his death in  1946. To say that Carter Glass III was a right wing 
ideologue is too liberal a  description to characterize properly his John Birch 
mentality. To Carter Glass  anyone disagreeing with him was "a communist." That 
included most of the members  of the faculties at local colleges, especially 
Randolph Macon Women's College.  He was particularly certain that those clergy 
who were theologically liberal  were communists. He thought Eisenhower had sold 
out the country to the  international communist conspiracy and that the 
Kennedy's were all Marxists. His  newspaper frequently interrupted news articles 
with heavy black brackets to  announce that the person whose name was appearing 
in that article had  "previously been identified with communist or communist 
front organizations." In  Carter's mind, these organizations included all labor 
unions, the Civil Rights  movement, all environmentalists, the National 
Council of Churches and even the  Democratic Party.  
In the mind of this publisher there was only one trustworthy preacher in  
Lynchburg and his name was Jerry Falwell. Just as the Hearst Press had earlier  
built up Billy Graham into a national figure so the Glass press built up Jerry  
Falwell into being a significant local figure.  
Jerry Falwell was an active opponent of integration, supporting the various  
church-sponsored "segregation academies" that sprang up throughout the south 
in  response to court ordered integration. Liberty Baptist University, the 
crown  jewel of Jerry Falwell's career, had its roots in this kind of racism. As a 
 super-patriot he was an outspoken enemy of communism that he always 
interpreted  as atheistic materialism. The right wing Lynchburg newspapers cheered him 
on. He  went so far as to condemn all efforts of black people around the 
world to  achieve their own dignity and independence from colonial rule. He 
referred to  the apartheid regime in the Republic of South Africa as the only 
bulwark against  communism on the entire African continent. He called the imprisoned 
Nelson  Mandela a "known communist" and said he ought to be in jail. So the 
local  papers' support for him grew and both his church and influence expanded. 
 
Jerry Falwell began his ministry by preaching to the town drunks who were  
picked up routinely in Saturday night sweeps by the Lynchburg police department. 
 After time for sobering, Falwell would threaten them with the literal fires 
of  hell to scare them into salvation. Many of them were in fact helped and in 
 appreciation they joined his church. He was also a showman-promoter of the 
first  order. Large advertisements for his church appeared in each Saturday 
paper,  offering a wide assortment of incentives to bring people to Sunday School 
and  Church at Thomas Road. One week, Miss America would be present in swim 
suit and  gown to give her witness, the next week it would be the Chaplain of 
Bourbon  Street. It was not unlike "marrying Sam," the preacher in Al Capp's 
comic strip  "L'il Abner," who offered to wrestle a bear for a higher wedding 
fee. These  tactics, combined with the popularity of his Old Time Gospel Hour 
radio program,  were the major building blocks in the Falwell rise to national 
prominence.  
While I lived in Lynchburg, Jerry Falwell was a loner who never attended the  
local ministers' monthly gatherings. When Martin Luther King was assassinated 
in  Memphis, the local newspapers editorialized that this 
communist-influenced,  racial agitator got what he deserved. The black community was about to 
explode.  The black clergy came to the ministerial association to ask for the 
support of  the white clergy in organizing a joint protest against the paper and 
memorial  service to honor Dr. King, to take place, not accidentally at a 
World War I  Memorial that was next door to the offices of the newspaper. The 
protest march  and the memorial service were held. Lynchburg had no riots, but 
Falwell was  conspicuously absent.  
Carter Glass III was actually a member of my church and as I made my views  
clear in an adult Bible class I taught each week, he began to attack me in his  
paper as regularly as he praised Jerry Falwell. Finally, however, his 
obsessive  behavior became so extreme that his family removed him as publisher and  
Falwell's champion disappeared. By this time, however, Jerry's national  
reputation was growing. Nixon carried Lynchburg in the 1968 election with George  
Wallace running a strong second and Hubert Humphrey a very distant third. That  
was Falwell's political world. He both reflected it and helped to create it.  
After I left Lynchburg in 1969, our paths still crossed from time to time. In 
 1991, while on a lecture tour for my book, Rescuing the Bible from  
Fundamentalism, I was invited to appear on ABC's Good Morning America with host  
Charles Gibson. Jerry Falwell was asked to be the defender of the literal Bible  
for this 5 ½ minute segment. It must have been good theatre since Charles Gibson 
 canceled his next guest and had us discuss the case for and against the 
literal  Bible for a second 5 ½ minutes. An 11 minute segment on Good Morning 
America is  very rare. Jerry was not a scholar but he made up for his lack of 
biblical  knowledge, as most fundamentalists do, with heat and passion. The 
audience's  response was terrific.  
Inspired by this exchange, I wrote Jerry a public letter urging him to join  
me in a series of national debates on the Bible. "You and I together, Jerry,  
could turn America into being a Bible reading nation once again," I said. 
Jerry  responded through the press with what I always thought was a great 
self-serving  line: "I do not want to lift Mr. Spong out of his anonymity," he said.  
As racial tensions faded Jerry, to his credit, abandoned his overt racism but 
 he always seemed to need a victim. The battle for justice for homosexual 
persons  provided Jerry with his new scapegoat. His attitude toward homosexuals 
was  cruel, vicious and breathtakingly uninformed, but he had lots of company 
in  Bible quoting circles. Homosexuality has been regularly attacked by 
religious  leaders both in the Catholic hierarchy and among Evangelical churches. 
Indeed it  was to defeat "the twin terrors" of abortion and homosexuality that 
fueled the  emergence of "The Moral Majority." Falwell also backed Anita 
Bryant's anti-gay  campaign in Orlando. At other low moments in his career, his 
homophobia  distorted his reasoning processes badly. On Pat Robertson's television 
program  he actually blamed the 9/11 attack on the fact that abortionists, 
feminists and  homosexuals, among others, had destroyed America's moral fiber and 
thus brought  this retribution on us. Even the Bush White House distanced 
itself from these  comments. When he attacked a children's television character, 
"Tinky Winky," as  a "media planned subversive campaign to legitimize 
homosexuality," his  credibility plummeted.  
When Jerry decided to publish his autobiography, he hired a ghost writer  
named Mel White, who earlier had ghosted Pat Robertson's autobiography. It was  
an interesting choice since a ghost writer had to be intimately involved in the 
 life of the subject while the book is being written. When the book came out, 
Mel  White also "came out" as a gay man and later organized something called  
"Soulforce" to work with churches to overcome ecclesiastical homophobia. He 
then  lobbied Falwell to get him to temper the excessive homophobia in his 
public  rhetoric. Mel White finally got Jerry to agree to meet with a large group 
of  "born again Christians," who also happened to be gay and lesbian. I don't 
think  Jerry thought there were such people. The format called for them to eat 
together  after the meeting was completed. As the event got closer, Jerry got 
cold feet.  He may well have been under pressure from his religious 
constituency to back off  from this compromising behavior. He finally agreed to 
continue with the meeting  but he canceled the banquet because, he said, the Bible 
forbade him "from eating  with sinners." "Who can he eat with," people wondered. 
"Jerry, can you even eat  alone?"  
Religion so often legitimizes hatred. It did for Jerry who called the Prophet 
 Mohammed "a terrorist" and said that the anti-Christ would be a Jewish man. 
It  also legitimizes prejudice against people of color, women and homosexuals 
who  have been regularly victimized by Bible quoting true believers. It 
relegates its  religious enemies to the regions of hell as their just due. Jerry 
Falwell was a  voice for this kind of religion. It is a point of view that is 
receding in  public life in America today, as always happens, the victim of its 
own excesses.  Jerry Falwell did not live to see its full but coming demise, 
but it is  inevitable. Jerry, rest in peace!  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Rudyard from South Africa writes:  
A brief note from a South African who has benefited from your e-mailed  
articles. Thank you for spelling out a different theological approach so clearly  
and sincerely. I will be obtaining your new book as soon as it becomes 
available  here.  
I have become rather sad and angry about the way in which clergy and church  
lay leaders have sold members down the river for so many years. People have 
not  been encouraged to question, doubt, and debate, but have been presented 
with a  party line and told to believe it or else! The average church member has 
never  been exposed to the theological teaching you and many theological 
schools  present. Certainly in South Africa, the majority of Christians are  
fundamentalist/evangelical types, who are totally dismissive of anyone who  thinks 
differently. I find it more and more difficult to minister to my  congregations 
with integrity, and look forward to retiring in a few years time!  
Dear Rudyard,  
Thanks for your e-mail. It is good to hear voices like yours coming out of  
Africa. You are not alone, for Africa has produced gigantic figures like 
Desmond  Tutu, Njongonkulu Ndungane, Khotsu Mkullu, and other great Christian 
leaders.  Sometimes Western evangelicals and fundamentalists, under the pressure of  
ecclesiastical debate, try to project the picture of both certainty and  
unanimity among African Christians, whom they claim to be their allies in the  
struggle to preserve the literal Bible. That is simply not an accurate picture  
as your letter reveals and as my knowledge of African Christianity has 
convinced  me. I remember well when a Kenyan bishop named Henry Okullu phoned a woman 
in  his diocese from my office to tell her that his experience with women 
Anglican  priests in America had convinced him that he should ordain women when he 
 returned to Kenya. All Henry needed was experience. When he got that he 
began to  act in a new way. That will be the destiny of those African leaders who 
will  lead that continent tomorrow. I hope you will not retire until you see 
the fruit  of your own labor becoming available to all the people of Africa.  
It is, however, true to say now that so much of African Christianity is  
rather fundamentalist. I am embarrassed when I hear Nigerian Anglican Bishop  
Peter Akinola utter things that are breathtakingly uninformed about both the  
Bible and about homosexuality. There are two kinds of ignorance. One is the  
ignorance of not knowing. That is easily remedied by gaining knowledge that was  
not previously available. The other kind of ignorance that Bishop Akinola  
demonstrates is that he does not know that he does not know. That is the  ignorance 
of fundamentalism because the assumptions they make about the Bible,  for 
example, convince them that they already have all the knowledge they need.  
This kind of African fundamentalism results primarily from the fact that the  
Christian missionaries who came to Africa, at least from England, were 
primarily  fundamentalist and evangelical missionaries, who proceeded to impose 
their  narrow and uninformed views about both the Bible and Christianity on the 
African  converts. Neither these missionaries nor their present-day disciples 
seem to be  aware of the revolution in biblical scholarship that has occurred 
over the last  200 years, to say nothing of the revolution in knowledge itself 
and in the way  we perceive the world which has occurred over the last 500-600 
years. Because of  the thought of people like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, 
Darwin, Freud, and  Einstein, just to name a few, we cannot make the claims we 
once made either for  God or for the Bible. The colonial powers that ruled 
Africa for so long did not  introduce this kind of education into their English 
African schools because the  primary teachers in these schools were these 
missionaries and they were  themselves unlearned in these areas. That isolation from 
knowledge will not  endure. In an era of Google, the Internet and much travel, 
Africa will not long  remain captive to this pre-modern mentality. When the 
transition comes, as it  inevitably will, I rejoice that you and people like 
you will be there to help  the new knowledge and the new consciousness to 
develop..  
I will be in South Africa on a lecture tour in October of 2007. I hope we  
will have a chance to meet on that occasion.  
My best,  
John Shelby Spong 



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