Фалуэлл, джерри

The Falwell legacy

Falwell Sr. died in 2007, and his efforts to combine his religious and political commitments fell to his son, Jerry Falwell Jr., who as president of the Christian college Liberty University has been outspoken in his support of Donald Trump.

This resulted in criticism from some students, faculty and alumni of Liberty University. Concerns were also aired over Falwell Jr.‘s behavior and financial dealings, although he generally remained a popular leader within the Liberty community.

Much like his father, Falwell Jr. was outspoken in his opinions on issues important to the religious right. He supported Second Amendment rights, to the point of advocating that students at Liberty University carry guns.

And he didn’t shy away from picking fights with other evangelical leaders. He verbally attacked Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who had criticized the Trump administration’s treatment of migrant children and families at the border.

Jerry Falwell Jr. speaks at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 21, 2016.
Rick Wilking/Reuters

Politics of morality

Political involvement was a shift for Falwell Sr., who as a fundamentalist Christian avoided political organizing as a matter of religious conviction. Fundamentalists, as distinct from evangelicals, tended toward separation not only from other Christians who didn’t share their particular brand of Christianity and its emphasis on theological, personal and social purity, but also from entanglements with the political world.

Thus, Falwell Sr.’s move into politics also entailed a shift in his theological perspective. He moved from a separatist stance that taught that God controls everything, including politics, to one that required human action to fulfill God’s intended destiny for America.

For Falwell Sr., and the mostly white, conservative fundamentalist and evangelical Christian world that his movement represented, these political battles were moral and spiritual battles intended to save America from the moral quagmire that they believed it was becoming.

Controversies

Homosexuality

Falwell believed that homosexuals are sinners who sin with other homosexuals, having homo-sex, which is sinful. In the Bible, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, says that homosexuals are wicked fornicators who are out to corrupt America (and the Americans within) with their sick homosexual homo-sex, forcing good heterosexual Christians into gay marriages before giving them «family planning» pamphlets from Planned Parenthood and subjecting them to mandatory abortions.

While the good Pastor did not actively promote ostracizing homosexuals from American society, he did regularly tell his many followers that they should ostracize homosexuals from American society. He backed up his bombastic rhetoric with both biblical passages and faith-based studies that prove homosexuals are all pedophiles that have AIDS and fill the Lord with wrath. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, being a loving God who loves the sinner but hates the sin, makes his wrath known by giving the homosexuals, who all have AIDS, AIDS. On other occasions, He (capital «H») lets Muslim terrorists fly planes into buildings that have homosexuals, people who tolerate homosexuality and homosexuals who tolerate homosexuality in them. The planes containing the Muslim terrorists probably also contain homosexuals, people who tolerate homosexuality and homosexuals who tolerate homosexuality, but only the Lord knows for sure.

September 11th attacks

On an episode of Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club, aired a mere three days after the 9/11 attacks, Falwell said he believed that it was not just al-Qaeda to blame for the recent terrorist attacks:

“

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 – all of them who have tried to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’

”

After heavy criticism from the liberal media for the above speech, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said and that he was not sorry that he said it.

After heavy criticism of the speech and the apology, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said, he was not sorry that he said it, and that next time God would make it much worse, with bigger planes hitting larger buildings.

After heavy criticism of the speech, the first apology, and the second apology, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said, he was not sorry that he said it and that next time God would make it much, much worse, with bigger planes hitting larger buildings and He would give both the people in the planes and those in the buildings AIDS.

After heavy criticism of the speech, the first apology, the second apology, and the third apology, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said, he was not sorry that he said it, and that he was going to Heaven to get the Lord to jump-start the Rapture.

Barry Goldwater

In 1981, Senator Barry Goldwater, far from being a social conservative in his old age, won the praise of the liberal media with his utterly idiotic remark that «Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.»

Работает

• Пылающая церковь . Удар, 1971 г.
• Захват города для Христа . Ревелл, 1973.
• Комментарий Библии свободы к Новому Завету . Коллекция Нельсона, 1978.
• Слушай, Америка! Даблдэй, 1980 год.
• Феномен фундаментализма . Даблдэй, 1981.
• Обретение внутреннего покоя и силы . Даблдей, 1982.
• Комментарий к Библии свободы . Коллекция Нельсона, 1982.
• Когда слишком больно плакать . Tyndale House  (в) 1984.
• Мудрость для жизни . Виктор Букс, 1984.
• Отступая от веры . Tyndale House  (в) 1984.
• Защитники Бога . Виктор Букс, 1985.
• Если я умру, прежде чем проснусь . Коллекция Нельсона, 1986.
• Феномен фундаментализма / Возрождение консервативного христианства . Книжный дом Бейкера  (in), 1986.
• Сила для путешествия . Саймон и Шустер, 1987.
• Новая американская семья . Слово, 1992.
• Пост может изменить вашу жизнь . Regal, 1998.
• Достижение своей мечты . Мировые издатели, 2006.
• Строительство церквей динамичной веры: учебное пособие из пяти занятий . Мировые издатели, 2006.
• Журнал Dynamic Faith . Мировые издатели, 2006.

Falwell’s fatal sin

For years, a handful of Liberty students and alumni had lobbied the school’s Board of Trustees to remove Falwell. But his family name, political connections and financial success at Liberty, including an endowment that grew to $1.6 billion, made him untouchable.

This summer, as Falwell’s indiscretions mounted, the trickle of criticism became a flood. Calling his behavior “appalling,” a congressman urged him to resign. So did prominent evangelicals, and an alumni-led petition, urging Falwell “to stop this infantile behavior and lead our alma mater with dignity as your father did,” drew nearly 40,000 signatures.

“Falwell’s zipper has been down for a long time,” wrote Calum Best, a 2020 Liberty graduate, in an online opinion column. “We’ve seen everything, and it’s too disturbing to stay quiet.”

Then came the revelations of the affair with Granda.

The irony was almost too obvious. As Falwell benefited from Liberty’s growing reputation as a center of Christian conservatism, he appeared to be flouting the very beliefs that accounted for its moral power.

When a conservative Christian gets snared in a sex scandal, critics immediately cry “hypocrisy!”, as if one sinner’s fall discredits an entire faith.

But Jerry Falwell Jr. wasn’t a hypocrite. He never pretended to be holier than thou. Like many successful capitalists, he believed that money made him invulnerable.

His fatal sin wasn’t hypocrisy, it was hubris.

Social and political views

A summation of Falwell’s political views, taken from his book America: A History of Americans being American (1984), follows (emphasis added):

In 1776 in the year of our Lord, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Pilgrims (good Protestants all) kicked the King of England, an Anglican (ick!), out of America because he was not American enough to be an American, and America is for Americans.

He went back to England with his tail between his legs, surrendering to George Washington after he dumped tea in Boston Harbor because tea is for homosexuals and Europeans, and Americans, being neither homosexual nor European, drink coffee. This had the double effect of winning the war against the foreign invaders and poisoning the Indians, who didn’t keep copies of the Bible beside their beds, when they came down to wash there red-skinned skin in the ocean.

After pushing the Limeys and the Indians out of America the Americans, lead by Thomas Jefferson (a Christian) and his twelve apostles (Christians all), founded America based on Biblical Law, as it appears in the One True Bible, the Bible, with particular focus on Exodus, Leviticus, Joshua and select passages from the Pauline Epistles.

Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, stands for everything that America stands for: obedience to authority, military might, trickle-down economics, and killing commies.

Families

Jerry Falwell opens a Republican Party fundraiser with a joke on the size and shape of his wife’s rump. (Punchline: «The Aristocrats!»)

Falwell strongly advocated beliefs and practices he felt were taught by the Bible. He believed in the quintessential patriarchal family in which the man of the house is the man of the house, and as the man of the house brings home the bacon to the woman in the house, the housewife, who cooks up that bacon in the kitchen in the house for the man of the house. In her spare time, that is the time left over after taking care of the man of the house in his house where he is the man of the house eating the bacon that she cooked in the kitchen in the house where she cooks the bacon brought home to the house by the man of the house, she is expected to raise the children until they’re old enough to attend a Christian school, where they are taught the Truth that God made everything in six days.Darwinism is a dirty lie, terms like «secular humanism» and «liberal Christianity» are synonymous with «sin», and Paul said that Jesus said that they, the little men of the house and little women in the house, should be good little men of the house and good little women in the house until they’re old enough to be the man of the house or the women in the house.

Falwell’s Moral Majority was founded on four basic tenets: pro-family, pro-life, pro-defense, and pro-Israel. These four tenets are all based on a literal reading of Scripture, that Scripture being the Bible, that Bible being the King James Version, that King James Version being in English, that English being American English, and that American English King James Version Biblical Scripture being literal.

Jerry Falwell (foreground), points at a homosexual while a framed photograph of Jerry Falwell (background, available from Falwell.com for $149.95), glares in disapproval at someone who is tolerating homosexuality.

1. Взгляды

Фалуэлл придерживался патриархальных взглядов на семью. Основой семьи должна была быть церковь, которой отводилась роль не только места для отправления культа, но и центра общественной жизни. Фалуэлл был яростным противником абортов, борцов за права сексуальных меньшинств, феминизма и светского характера школьного образования. Он также был известен последовательной поддержкой республиканцев, в частности считается, что «Моральное большинство» внесло существенный вклад в победу Рональда Рейгана на выборах 1980 года. В 1985 году в разгар апартеида Фалуэлл выступил против экономических санкций в отношении ЮАР. Он обосновывал это тем, что апартеид будет меньшим злом, чем возможное сближение ЮАР с Советским Союзом.

Rise of the religious right

Scholars such as sociologist Martin Riesebrodt have argued that movements such as the Moral Majority were “patriarchal protest movements,” intended to reestablish the leadership and authority of males in their families, in government and in religious institutions.

The emergence and popularity of the Moral Majority came at a time when there were growing efforts to establish the rights of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. The Moral Majority thus represented the conservative religious reaction to those efforts.

The Moral Majority from white fundamentalist, evangelical and Pentecostal Christians, although it also included conservative Catholics and mainline Protestants. It thus mobilized a broader conservative religious and political coalition than just white conservative evangelicals.

Throughout its 10 years of existence, the Moral Majority became a decisive and powerful force within conservative politics and the Republican Party. Falwell Sr. and the Moral Majority worked with other equally conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christian leaders, such as James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly.

Ultimately, this broad coalition of conservatives – mostly white Christians – came to represent the “religious right.” It has had an enormous impact on both the Republican Party and on public policy more generally since its founding.

President Reagan shakes hands with the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., right, during a convention of National Religious Broadcasters on Jan. 30, 1984 in Washington.
AP Photo/Ira Schwarz

For example, Republican candidates for office, dating back to Reagan and George H.W. Bush, recognized the power of the religious right as a voting bloc, and routinely visited evangelical and fundamentalist institutions such as Falwell’s Liberty University and Bob Jones University in South Carolina.

Further, it was the efforts of the Moral Majority and other important organizations within the broader religious right – such as Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and Dobson’s Focus on the Family – that led to the defeat of legislation such as the Equal Rights Amendment and efforts to block legislation furthering LGBTQ rights. Similar issues echo today as well, presented in the guise of religious freedom for evangelical Christians.

Споры

В 1983 году Фалуэлл подал в суд на порнографический журнал Hustler и его директора Ларри Флинта за клевету за карикатуру на пьяного и кровосмесительного человека. Суд закончился в 1988 году, с решением ( (еп) Hustler Magazine против Фалвелл ) в Верховном суде Соединенных Штатов о признании защиты карикатур со стороны Первой поправкой .

Его критиковали за то, что он утверждал, что Бог наказал Америку во время терактов 11 сентября 2001 года из-за геев и абортов .

Он вызвал некоторую полемику из-за критики Мухаммеда в 2002 году. Затем он извинился перед мусульманами за то, что он сказал о Мухаммеде, и заявил, что не собирался оскорблять «искренних и законопослушных» мусульман.

В 2006 году его дружба с гватемальским диктатором Эфраином Риосом Монттом была подвергнута сомнению журналистом из Christianity Today .

Downfall(well)[edit]

If there are two things that make evangelicals really uncomfortable, it is alcohol and sex. The yacht photo contained both. Outrage was widespread in the evangelical community, and consequently, Falwell took an «indefinite leave of absence» from the university.

On August 24, 2020, Falwell resigned as president of Liberty University, and withdrew from the university’s board or directors. To add insult to injury, Lynchburg, Virginia, where the school is located, went blue for the first time in over 70 years during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, rejecting his favorite president.

In late October 29, 2020, Falwell Jr. sued Liberty University for breach of contract and bizarrely, given the complete lack connection of Liberty University to Falwell Jr.’s exhibitionist / cuckold lifestyle, defamation. Predictably for such a baseless lawsuit, it was dropped by December 2020.

Using Virginia’s unique «business conspiracy» law that makes it illegal for two or more people to conspire to harm the reputation of a business, Liberty University fired back on April 2021 by suing Falwell Jr. for 10 million dollars. The charges also included breach of contract and fiduciary duty. One of Falwell Jr.’s defenses in the «pool boy» affair (in an August 23, 2020 article in the Washington Examiner) was a claim, denied by Granda, that Granda was trying to extort money from the Falwells over the matter. The suit alleges that Falwell knowingly withheld this information during his contract renegotiation in 2019 — according to the lawsuit, had Liberty known «the full circumstances of Granda’s extortion of Falwell Jr.,» «the Executive Committee would have refrained from entering into the «. The lawsuit also complained that Falwell failed to disclose and address his issues with alcohol. In an additional sting for the Falwell family, a son of Falwell Jr., Trey Falwell, was dismissed from his role as a Liberty University vice president in April 2021.

Notes[edit]

1. Though it says in «Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.», Falwell did not turn the other cheek when he sued Liberty University for forcing him to resign.
2. The 20-something Granda, who had practically no business experience, was often referred in the media as the «pool boy», due to his prior occupation as a pool attendant before being hired by the Falwells for the very serious business venture.
3. Also bizarrely, the Falwell Jr. lawsuit took swipes at the Lincoln Project, prompting some fine mockery of Falwell from Lincoln Project senior advisor Kurt Bardella.

Примечания и ссылки

1. Произношение на американском английском транскрибируется в соответствии со стандартом API .
2. Роберт Х. Краполь, Чарльз Х. Липпи, Евангелисты: историческое, тематическое и биографическое руководство, издательство Greenwood Publishing Group, США, 1999, с. 239
3. Фрэнк Дж. Смит, Религия и политика в Америке: Энциклопедия церкви и государства в американской жизни , ABC-CLIO, США, 2016, с. 295
4. Марк Уорд-старший, Электронная церковь в эпоху цифровых технологий: влияние евангелических СМИ на культуру, ABC-CLIO, США, 2015, стр. 283
5. Джордж Томас Куриан, Марк А. Лэмпорт, Энциклопедия христианского образования, том 3, Rowman & Littlefield, США, 2015, стр. 738
6. Сэмюэл С. Хилл, Новая энциклопедия южной культуры: Том 1: Религия, Университет Северной Каролины, США, 2006 г., стр. 1977 г.
7. Брайан Стинсленд, Филип Гофф, The New Evangelical Social Engagement, OUP USA, США, 2014 г., стр. 111
8. Тимоти Дж. Деми, доктор философии, Пол Р. Шокли, доктор философии, Евангелическая Америка: энциклопедия современной американской религиозной культуры, ABC-CLIO, США, 2017, стр. 151
9. Пол Чарльз Меркли, Христианское отношение к государству Израиль, McGill-Queen’s Press — MQUP, Канада, 2001, стр. 202
10. Джон Дж. Миршеймер, Израильское лобби и внешняя политика США ,1861 г., 496  с. .
11. Рэндалл Дж. Стивенс, Карл Гиберсон, Помазанник: евангельская истина в светскую эпоху, Издательство Гарвардского университета, США, 2011 г., стр. 224-225
12. ↑ и (in) Мэри Джейн МакКей, на новостях CBS , 11 октября 2002 г..

Личная жизнь

В отличие от многих артистов Холлиуэлл каким-то чудом избегала сплетен, касавшихся ее личной жизни. О романах певицы информации почти нет, но ее стремление к совершенству широко обсуждалось в прессе.

Зарубежные издания периодически публиковали фото Джери, одержимую идеей идеального тела. При росте 156 см в разное время певица весила от 44 до 60 кг, а ее фигура колебалась от полноты до анорексичной худобы.

Только с появлением дочери по имени Блюбелл Мадонна, отцом которой был кинематографист Саша Джервази, Холлиуэлл перестала изнурять себя диетами и физическими упражнениями. Впрочем, к этому времени Ginger Spice уже заработала булимию, и сейчас ей приходится придерживаться сбалансированного рациона питания.

В установлении душевной гармонии Джери помогла йога и глава гоночной команды Red Bull Racing Кристиан Хорнер, в 2015-м ставший мужем певицы. Через 2 года после свадьбы у пары родился сын Монтагю Джордж Гектор, и в Instagram артистки появились десятки фотографий с симпатичным светловолосым ребенком.

Супруги вместе заботятся о детях от предыдущих союзов и стараются все свободное время проводить в семейном кругу.

Джерри Фалуэлл — сторонник Трампа и четыре других факта, о которых вы могли не знать

1) Он был ярый сторонник Дональда Трампа

Джерри Фалуэлл и его жена Бекки были горячими сторонниками бывшего президента Дональда Трампа. Фалуэлл поддерживал консервативную политику Трампа и называл его «американским миллиардером-синим воротничком» и «одним из величайших провидцев нашего времени». Он даже сравнил Трампа с Уинстоном Черчиллем и пригласил его произнести вступительную речь в Университете Свободы в 2017 году.

Фалуэлл активно продвигал большинство теорий заговора и ложных новостей, которые распространялись после пандемии COVID-19 в 2020 году. Он также решил вновь открыть Университет Свободы, несмотря на советы экспертов против этого, и подорвал воздействие вируса.

2) Он встретил свою жену, когда ей было 13 лет

Согласно книге Falwell Inc.: Внутри религиозной, политической, образовательной и деловой империиДирк Смилли, Джерри Фалуэлл познакомился со своей женой Бекки Тилли, когда ей было 13 лет. Пара начала встречаться, когда Джерри изучал право в Университете Вирджинии, а Бекки училась на первом курсе того же университета.

Пара вышла замуж в 1987 году в Молитвенной часовне Университета Свободы. У них трое детей: два сына, Чарльз Уэсли и Джерри «Трей» Фалуэлл III, и дочь Кэролайн Грейс. Пара оставалась вместе долгое время, даже после того, как всплыли обвинения со стороны Гранды.

3) Он имеет несколько степеней

Фолвелл окончил частную школу Lynchburg Christian Academy в 1980 году. В 1984 году он поступил в Университет Либерти, чтобы получить степень бакалавра искусств в области истории и религиоведения. В 1987 году он поступил на юридический факультет Университета Вирджинии, чтобы стать доктором юридических наук.

4) Он бывший президент Университета Свободы

После смерти отца в 2007 г. , Джерри Фалуэлл был назначен президентом Университета Свободы. Он занимал этот пост до своей отставки на фоне скандальных разногласий в 2020 году. Фалуэлл помог школе вырасти с 37 000 учеников до 90 000. Он также помог Университету Свободы привлечь 120 миллионов долларов в виде облигаций.

Во время пребывания Фолвелла университет также получил рейтинг AA от Standard & Бедные в 2010 году. Фолуэлл использовал этот рейтинг, чтобы получить освобожденные от налогов облигации для школы, чтобы модернизировать объекты, такие как центры для посетителей, медицинские и научные здания.

4) Его брат сейчас является пастором кампуса в Университете Свободы

Брат Джерри Фалуэлла , преподобный Джонатан Фолвелл, начал свою карьеру, став священником в баптистской церкви Томас-Роуд своего отца. После отставки его старшего брата попечители Университета Свободы назначили Джонатана пастором университета и вице-президентом по духовным вопросам в апреле 2021 года.

Джонатан получил степень бакалавра наук в Университете Свободы в 1987 году и степень магистра искусств. получил степень бакалавра религии в Баптистской теологической семинарии Liberty в 1996 году. Как и его брат, он также имеет юридическое образование в Университете Уильяма Ховарда Тафта в Санта-Ана, Калифорния.

From televangelist to political activist

Falwell Sr. was pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, a fundamentalist Christian megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. Along with several other , he enjoyed a large national following who tuned in to his weekly televised church service.

Rev. Jerry Falwell in front of a scale model of Liberty Village on May 30, 2002 in Lynchburg, Virginia.
AP Photo/R. David Duncan III

Coinciding with the popularity of Ronald Reagan, Falwell Sr. founded the Moral Majority in 1979 as a conservative Christian political lobbying group. Although the founding of the Moral Majority is popularly seen as an anti-abortion and pro-family movement, its real roots were different.

Falwell Sr. and other evangelical leaders felt the federal government was overreaching with its decision that “racially discriminatory” private schools, such as were being operated by evangelical groups, were not entitled to nonprofit tax-exempt status.

The Moral Majority ultimately expanded its platform from segregation in schools to include what is now a familiar agenda: supporting and sponsoring legislation for “traditional” family values and prayer in schools. It also opposed LGBTQ rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion and other similar social-moral issues.

Through his nationally televised church services, Falwell Sr. reached beyond his original followers to other groups that were in agreement with the conservative, pro-family, racial agenda of the Moral Majority.

The Trump effect

The spotlight on Falwell Jr. intensified when he became one of the first prominent evangelicals to back Trump in early 2016, surprising fellow Christian conservatives.

During a Trump campaign visit to Liberty, Falwell glowingly compared the candidate to his late father due to their shared propensity for eschewing political correctness.

Echoing his own self-defense, Falwell excused the twice-divorced casino magnate’s moral failings, praising Trump’s business success and arguing that Americans were electing a president, not a pastor. Falwell was fiercely loyal to Trump, appearing at campaign events with him and saying there was nothing the candidate could do to lose his vote.

“Our whole faith is based around the idea that we’re all equally bad,” he told CNN when asked about a videotape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women in the genitals. “We’re all sinners, we all need Christ’s forgiveness.”

Current and former Liberty officials, who asked not to be named, say Falwell’s personality changed as his political profile grew.

“The Jerry that I knew was very introverted, almost a loner,” said the former Liberty University official.

While acknowledging his wife’s affair, Falwell Jr. said this week that it was awkward to be thrust into the spotlight when he became Liberty’s president in 2007 after the death of his famous father.

“I quickly and unexpectedly went from being the lawyer working in the background on the business aspects of the school to becoming a very public person, having to overcome my fears of speaking in front of audiences of tens of thousands,” Falwell said.

Eventually, Falwell grew into the role, reveling in Liberty’s prominence as a political power center of evangelicalism. GOP candidates and officeholders often came to address Liberty students, and Falwell basked in the attention.

After he endorsed Trump, the media came banging down Falwell’s door, intrigued that a prominent evangelical – and a Falwell – would support the least conventionally religious candidate in the field.

“Then all of a sudden he’s on TV and introducing Trump at rallies,” said the former Liberty official. “That’s heady stuff, and I think he got reckless.”

The Moral Majority

Jerry Falwell Opposing the Equal Rights Amendment

Secular New Right leaders approached Falwell in 1978 and offered their backing if he could use his skills to head a national political organization that would link conservative evangelicals to the Republican Party. Falwell agreed and he formed his Moral Majority, relying primarily on his connections with fellow pastors in the Baptist Bible Fellowship denomination.

Falwell and the Moral Majority thus became the face of the Christian Right movement in America. For the 1980 elections he claimed to have mobilized as many as four million previously apolitical evangelicals. Some observers disputed that number, but, whatever the total, Falwell had certainly been the key figure to initially mobilize a large corps of activists who over time transformed the GOP and American politics more generally.

Yet Falwell’s political influence was never again as strong as it had been in 1980. Despite his continued support for Reagan and the Republican Party, Falwell and his supporters eventually became disgruntled with GOP leaders’ lack of commitment to social issues. Although Falwell and many others in the Christian Right believed that the GOP owed much of its success in the 1980s to the Christian Right, they did not believe that Republican political leaders were giving back much in return for this loyalty. Reagan legitimized the views of religious conservatives on many issues, especially when he espoused pro-life views and support for “pro-family” issues, but he did not put the social policy agenda on the front burner of his administration.

While the Republicans held the White House in the 1980s, support for the Moral Majority rapidly declined. Some opinion polls showed that support from Jerry Falwell actually hurt a candidate’s standing with voters more than it helped. Fewer and fewer candidates sought out Falwell’s backing in campaigns and many were quick to distance themselves from the controversial pastor. By late in the 1980s the Moral Majority had become a spent force in U.S. politics and, under financial pressure, Falwell closed down the organization in 1989. Soon after, the Reverend Pat Robertson, someone long seen as a rival to Falwell for the status of leading evangelical political figure in the United States, founded the Christian Coalition. Robertson’s organization quickly rose to national prominence and became a more formidable and effective political organization than the Moral Majority had ever been.

As a political figure, Falwell was far more effective at using mass media to draw attention to himself and his issues than he was at building a grassroots political organization. The Moral Majority had relied on media exposure for its stature and it had raised money primarily through mass mailings. The organization never built a strong and enduring grassroots network of activists—a key factor in the Moral Majority’s ultimate demise.

Holy career

Ministry

After graduating Lynchburg College, Falwell enrolled in Baptist Bible College in Missouri, later joining the vaulted rank of clergy.

In 1956, Falwell founded Thomas Road Baptist Church in an abandoned bottling plant, and today the church has 22,000 members.

In 1971, Falwell founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. The University provides an opportunity for students to gain the benefits of a rich and diverse academic environment while simultaneously offering the opportunity to become closer to God.

Moral Majority

The Moral Majority played surprisingly little role during the Reagan years. Falwell stepped down as its leader in 1987, and it was finally disbanded in 1989.