Agent of Intolerance

Reverend Jerry Falwell died today, and I am embarrassed to admit that I felt a bit of joy in that… there are two immediate points of discussion here… what does that say about me that I actually found pleasure in someone’s passing, and what does it say about the person who passed?

Quite sad on both counts…

It is commonly taught that one should not speak ill of the dead, but is it wrong to comment on their legacy? Is everyone to be mourned respectfully? Is there no accountability?

I will not mourn this man… Instead I will mourn the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and American soldiers who are engaged in a bloody conflict directly as a result of Falwell’s neo-conservative dogma…

Am I giving him too much credit? I think not…

Above all, Falwell was the Godfather of right wing religious intolerance… With his launch of the Moral Majority in 1979, Falwell made it perfectly acceptable to preach hate and discriminate against those who refused to embrace his mythology. His legacy is the creation and development of a sociopathic movement that made him wealthy while disenfranchising millions of women, minorities, gays, immigrants and those of alternate faiths… in short, it was not the work of Jesus that Falwell was engaged in, but the work of a bigot. Falwell used his pulpit to preach for segregation, and had a segregated church until the 1970’s. His ironically named “Liberty University” prepared students to be “warriors” for the Christian right. He financially supported far right Zionist movements in Israel and apartheid in South Africa.

No doubt this particularly odious man will be mourned by some as a man of God, as someone who brought positive things into this world… When I look back upon recent history, I see a quarter century that has not been good to those opposite our guns or interests… One can draw a direct line from the rise of the Christian right in the early eighties to the administration of George W. Bush… Is it any wonder that Bushco operates in complete denial of science and reason? Is it any wonder that we have become the village idiot that the rest of the world ridicules? Violent, boorish, arrogant, in debt up to our eyeballs, and drunk with power… but with God on our side…

Falwell loved to portray himself as bold, warm, and vivacious… ready to do the Lord’s work… What he was on the inside was an entirely different story… An insidious man who used the literal words of Jesus Christ and his Apostles to do the exact opposite of Christ’s teachings… Beneath that brash exterior laid a dyed in the wool judgmental fundamentalist who saw no side but his own…

I remain baffled as to how the Christian right can be so overwhelmingly pious and yet be completely in denial of what Jesus actually stood for… tolerance, charity, forgiveness, kindness, protection of the meek, TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK…

Did “Dr.” Falwell and his church stand for any of these things? You decide… Here are a few of his greatest hits in the form of quotes…

“God is a Republican” – 1979

“Jesus was the First American.” – 1977

On the Civil Rights movement: “I do question the sincerity of people like the Reverend Martin Luther King… – 1965

His TV show promoted his political “philosophy,” which included propping up the old pro-apartheid regime in South Africa… “Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a phony.” – 1985

“The Beast (The Antichrist) when comes he must be, of necessity, a Jewish male” – 2006

On Education: “I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we don’t have public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.” - 1979

“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.’” – Post September 11, 2001

“The (gay-oriented) Metropolitan Community Churches are brute beasts and a vile and Satanic system that will one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven…” – 1984

Regarding the “Global War on Terror”: “Blow them all away in the name of the Lord.” 2004

On organized labor: “Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money. When people get right with God, they are better workers.”

And last but not least… “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”

There are those who will think I have gone too far here, and it could be argued that I have… But let me leave you with this to ponder… Jerry Falwell did not murder anyone with his bare hands, but he did a great deal towards the creation of a society where (to steal a lyric from Matt…) killing is considered progress… Words and deeds do indeed have meaning and consequences… Dressing up hate and intolerance and selling it as religion is the worst kind of blasphemy… If he had wanted to pursue his vile doctrine he should have become a huckster politician and left God out of it… if only out of respect…

I have become intolerant of his intolerance…

Sad but true… Jerry Falwell left the world a better place by having left it.