Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

"No Chicken Was Safe in Falwell's Grasp"
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

I've been looking for an unexpected comment about Jerry Falwell -- beyond the glorification of the right and the vilification of the left (in my view, both have valid points here; he was both powerful and full of hate) -- and finally I found one. It's by Zev Chafets, who has written about evangelicals and the Jews. After a wonderful riff about Falwell loving to eat ("No chicken was safe within Falwell's grasp, and he liked them deep-fried. I dined with him several times, and he ate with the aplomb of a fellow whose cardiologist was Jesus.") he settles in to his main point.

Falwell's Zionism was by no means inevitable. Before him, evangelicals reluctantly acknowledged that the Jews were God's chosen people, but many didn't quite agree with the choice. Falwell embraced the Jews of Israel (who appreciated his friendship) just as he embraced American Jews (who, by and large, spurned it). He could be acerbic about Jewish leaders — he called Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League a "damn fool" and pointedly told me that the comment was on the record — but he never let Jewish hostility shake his philo-Semitism. American Jews who now take evangelical friendship for granted need to know that it is, to a large extent, a grant from Jerry Falwell.

Falwell was always aware that he was under scrutiny. He hated crooked TV preachers like Jim Bakker, and he didn't have much use for hypocrites like Ted Haggard either. He was married to the same woman for nearly 50 years. He took in millions of dollars during his lifetime without a scandal — not bad for a televangelist.

Not everything Falwell said and did was commendable. He sometimes said stupid things, like his famous crack that 9/11 was the product of American immorality. He knew he was wrong, and he said so (just as he apologized for the segregationist views of his youth). Not every man of God has "I'm sorry" in his vocabulary. He never apologized for his beliefs, though, or his tough partisanship. He was a born-again Christian, an American and a Republican, in that order, and if you didn't like it, well, there were plenty of other places you could spend Sunday morning.

Labels: Interfaith Relations

Posted by B Feiler at 7:41 AM
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

0 Comments: