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By Bill Berkowitz
Not long after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson's 700 Club. Here's what Falwell told Robertson's viewers: "The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this...throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. 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...all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'" Falwell added: "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." According to the Washington Post, Robertson agreed with Falwell's remarks saying "Jerry, that's my feeling." Robertson added: "I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population." The immediate reactions to Falwell's remarks were shock, disbelief, anger and nearly universal condemnation. On Monday, September 17, Falwell issued his first apology.
An outraged Geraldo Rivera, who has hosted Falwell on his television program dozens of times during the past few years, led off the final segment of the night's program by roundly criticizing the Rev. Falwell's "insane" remarks. Rivera said he was "ashamed of having called him my friend." He was also concerned that Falwell's remarks were truly representative of the real Falwell, not the one who appeared on his show and other mainstream programs and softened his message. Rivera asked Falwell, "What were you thinking? How can you minister to others?" Rev. Falwell first replied that he had done 14 interviews with various media outlets and that he had been "up all night." Rivera, who wouldn't let him slip and slide his way around the questions, was clearly nonplused by the Rev. Falwell's opening comments. Falwell then quickly reversed field and admitted that he totally regretted the comments - he should not have made them, should not have mentioned groups by name, and "does not for one moment believe that any one else" other than the terrorists were responsible for the horrendous attacks. "I misspoke," Falwell said. "I ask God's forgiveness and yours." Falwell's stint on "Rivera Live" came as the result of the boatload of criticism that had been coming his way since word of his 700 Club appearance got out in the media. Everyone from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and People for the American Way to FOX News Channel's popular conservative talk-show host Bill O'Reilly and talk-radio's number one purveyor of overheated rhetoric, Rush Limbaugh, have criticized the Rev. Falwell's remarks. Not all on the right have come down on the Revs. Falwell and Robertson. In the September 20 issue of CFI Report, a publication of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute, longtime anti-gay activist Robert Knight wrote a commentary headlined "Of God and Evil." Knight quotes Marvin Olasky, the guru of "compassionate conservatism" and right-wing columnist Cal Thomas who agree with Knight that that Falwell and Robertson were being unjustly pilloried by the liberal press.
Knight closes by supporting Revs. Falwell and Robertson "right to speculate on whether the attacks represent God's judgment on America." He praises them for "addressing difficult, even apocalyptic topics." Knight thinks that the timing was bad and the naming of names wrong, leaving "themselves open to misinterpretation and attacks on their character by naming specific groups."
According to Knight, "it would have been enough to cite the evils of abortion, pornography, homosexuality, adultery and other sins that are flourishing in America." Rev. Falwell, Knight maintains, has manfully apologized" and Robertson "has distanced himself from the remarks." In the end, Knight writes: "we hesitate to cast stones at our Christian brothers, since they will be getting plenty from 'mainstream' media and even from fellow Christians." On Friday, September 14, the morning after Falwell's comments, I wrote a column headlined, "Rev. Falwell's hate and cowardice" which appeared in my regular slot at Working Assets' working for change.com. Due to its subsequent and prominent placement on Yahoo!, the column drew thousands of visitors to the site and a huge response from readers. While the Rev. Falwell's statements disturbed some, the majority who responded accused me of being anti-Christian, anti-Bible, anti-free speech, and/or anti-the Rev. Falwell. Not all the critics were unkind - some wished nothing but God's blessings for me and my family. I will spare you the more vicious comments. Why did I write the original column? The answer is simple. I wrote it because I was infuriated that in a time of grief and confusion, a man as influential as the Rev. Falwell would hunt for scapegoats. I wrote it because the rhetoric of hate threatens democracy. Over the past two-dozen years, Jerry Falwell has become as American as fast food outlets and heartburn. When people think of major conservative Christian political figures, he, along with Robertson, are more often than not the first names to come to mind. And, as was clear in the response to my column, when the Rev. Falwell speaks, many Americans listen and accept it as gospel Not long after his original comments, the Rev. Falwell issued a series of apologies. They are an interesting case study. In the first, on September 17, he maintained that his comments were "taken out of their context." I read his statement as one of those now-that-you-caught-me-I'd-better-kind-of-sort-of apologize statements that Dr. Laura Schlessinger puts out whenever she's called on the carpet for anti-gay slurs. One thing we do know. His statements on the 700 Club were not the product of being caught off guard. According to About.com's John Aravosis, the Rev. Falwell actually "acknowledged at the very beginning of his remarks that he knew what he was going to say would upset a lot of people." He says [I was] "sharing my burden for revival in America on a Christian TV program, intending to speak to a Christian audience from a theological perspective about the need for national repentance." Would his statements have been more acceptable if he hadn't mentioned the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way by name? And, despite the disclaimer, the Rev. Falwell's Monday morning statement once again criticized Roe v. Wade, saying "we have expelled God from the public square and the public schools… [and] have normalized an immoral lifestyle God has condemned." Is this an apology or a reiteration?
On Rivera Live, after the initial mumbo-jumbo, there was no dancing around and no equivocation on the part of the Rev. Falwell. He mentioned several times that he had been preaching the gospel for 45 years. An apparently mortified Jerry Falwell was seeing all that he had built going down the tubes. Now, along comes the September 20 edition of Falwell Confidential, his e-mail newsletter. Falwell quotes from a NewsMax.com story by Carl Limbacher who asked: "How come the so-called American Civil Liberties Union screams and moans if something obscene does not receive taxpayer funding, but it never seems to be around when something patriotic is censored? What will it take to convince lily-livered liberals that America does indeed have enemies and must stop coddling them if it is to survive?" Falwell: "That's a legitimate question especially at this time when our nation continues to mourn the devastating loss of life in New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania as a result of calculated acts of war against America." Fundamentalism threatens democracy Fundamentalist fanaticism is a threat to democracy. Frederick Clarkson, veteran journalist and author of Extreme Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, told me that "The framers of the constitution, seeking to inoculate the new nation against the ravages of a thousand years of religious warfare in Europe, and 150 years of religious persecution in the theocratic original thirteen colonies, sought to create a culture and a constitutional and legal bulwark against the pitting God against God." Clarkson: "In the present climate, if we are not careful, we could lose our tradition of religious pluralism, and trend towards a religious and legal culture of intolerance that apes the Taliban [of Afghanistan] in more respects than we can even imagine at this point in time." The rest of America has now become aware of what the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community has known about danger behind the hate-filled rhetoric of many fundamentalist Religious Right leaders. Consider this. If as the Revs. Falwell and Robertson contend, God is no longer protecting this nation because certain types of people are disobeying His laws, then it follows that the people leading us down this destructive path should be constrained. Fundamentalist fanaticism, coming from any quarter, can lead directly to the erosion of democracy. Bill Berkowitz is an Oakland-based freelance writer covering the Religious Right and related conservative movements. |
Even during an American tragedy, the Rev. Jerry Falwell still finds time to spit venom at gays and liberals 
Tim LaHaye 
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