Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell has come and gone. Few noticed his coming, many more noted his passing and not all of those did so in sorrow.

I hesitate to speak of him now because that is to honor him in a sense, but not to speak now is to pretend he didn’t matter. And he did matter. But what was the matter with Falwell?

As a child I was shocked when I first heard the old Baptist maxim (filched, unknowingly to me from the Old Bard) that “Even the devil can quote scripture.” I couldn’t really beleve that until Jerry Falwell shined a great light on that. There is another axiom that proclaims scripture alone is sufficeient for salvation. That is, if a person learns enough scrpiture, he or she can find the truth to eternal salvation. Jerry Falwell showed that reliance only upon scripture can create a “scripture savant”, an amazing and entertaining performer who hits all the right keys but doesn't really know what he is doing.

Falwell often preached from the top of a great pile of stones he had prepared to hurl at those who turned to abortion as a last desperate hope. Mostly poor, young, confused children themselves, whom he would blame as adultresses and condem to bear "their" child, who for many of them was not of their own intent. Then, after they birthed they could labor on and on endlessly through medical and educational and cultural and governmental and economic gestations seeking care and help for their child who was really sired by domination, disinterest and contempt.

Falwell also showed us that gays and lesbians were largely responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001. They brought this event upon all of us by their being alive, according to Jerry Falwell. But since Christians believe that all people were created by God and we know that approximately one out of every ten human beings are homosexual we must either assume that God is a failure at producing people – because a 10% rejection rate would be unacceptable ANYWHERE, by ANYBODY, or since scripture says all men are created in the image of God, then obviously God is telling us something about who “He” really is. God is gay? Well, obviously. How wonderful. Falwell though created god in Falwell’s own image. How sad. Falwell was truly a preacher of the little god.

©John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved