Jerry Falwell was seated in a hearing room on Capitol Hill, ready to testify on the tuition tax credit bill. The first question from its sponsor, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wasn’t about tuition tax credits at all, however. Moynihan asked why his name was on Moral Majority’s “hit list” of congressmen who are targeted for election defeat.
The question was good-natured and so was Falwell’s reply. But the point of his response probably was missed by most of the people in the room: it was that Moral Majority does not have a hit list; it never did, and never will. Moynihan had it confused with another organization.
A large problem facing Moral Majority as it regroups for the issue campaigns that he ahead is getting people to realize just what it is and what it is not. If a U.S. senator does not have it straight, is there any hope for the rest of the people?
Falwell himself has not made things easy. He is seen each week by millions in his role as Falwell the fundamentalist preacher on the “Old Time Gospel Hour.” Yet in his Moral Majority role, he wishes to be known as Falwell the concerned citizen, who is seeking to restore the country’s moral roots but not asking that all its citizens become born-again Christians.
Confusion is thus inevitable. But there have been truckloads of invective from commentators in the secular mass media accusing Falwell of the ultimate sin of a pluralistic society: trying to force everybody to believe in his brand of religion. Yet this is precisely what the Moral Majority has not been trying to do, and the prevalence of the myth betrays an astonishing ignorance of fundamentalist Christianity. The American press is not bashful about burrowing into any problem it lumbers upon, but the misconceptions in this case have been so virulent that there are those at Moral Majority headquarters who believe the problem is not ignorance but intent.
Falwell’s religious roots are in the Baptist Bible Fellowship, which has headquarters in Springfield, Missouri. It has some 35,000 churches in America, some bigger than Falwell’s. Its message is not only born-again Christianity, but separation from the world’s evil influence. This is what Falwell believes, and it is practiced at his church and his college. It is assuredly not what Moral Majority stands for.
For Falwell, the separation between his religion and his political activism in Moral Majority is so distinct that he can balk at inviting Billy Graham to preach in his Lynchburg pulpit (assuming Graham would accept) because of Graham’s association in his crusades with religious “liberals.” Yet without batting an eye, Falwell can walk into a synagogue and talk to Jews about Moral Majority. The press has failed to discern the crucial separation that Falwell sees between faith and politics.
The essence of the Moral Majority message is that the country is chopping off the Judeo-Christian roots that have nourished its political and legal vitality. Those roots must be made to grow back if the country is to survive. This is not Christianity, and, according to Moral Majority, people can march under that message without becoming Falwellian fundamentalists.
The question of whether the country can survive without its moral roots is at the center of the Moral Majority phenomenon. Yet that is seldom addressed by Falwell’s critics, probably because he has given them juicier targets to shoot at. On this central issue, however, the evidence is strongly in Falwell’s favor.
Harold Berman, a Harvard Law School professor, writes: “It is supposed by some, especially intellectuals, that fundamental legal principles … can survive without any religious or quasi-religious foundations on the basis of the proper political and economic controls and philosophy of humanism. History, however, including current history, testifies otherwise. People will not give their allegiance to a political and economic system, and even less to a philosophy, unless it represents for them a higher, sacred truth.”
That this country’s religious foundations (if not the daily practice of all the founding fathers) are Christian seems beyond dispute. Joseph Story, a U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1811 to 1845, wrote that “Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the first amendment to it … the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”
When leftward critics enter the constitutional arena to argue against Falwell, they usually wind up misreading the separation of church and state doctrine, which has nothing to do with keeping the influence of Christianity out of government. (Falwell heartily endorses separation of church and state.)
Cal Thomas, Moral Majority’s vice-president for communications and a former NBC correspondent in Washington, D.C., has found so much hazy reporting about Moral Majority in the popular press that he has begun slashing back. In an Indianapolis speech to Moral Majority organizers, Thomas said of the press, “Usually they are dumber than you are. They ask predictable questions and they don’t understand the answers. They’re more interested in their careers than in the issues.”
Thomas was asked to defend the new religious right during a debate at a recent Associated Press broadcast convention in Washington, D.C. He was told that Carl McIntire, the old fundamentalist firebrand of another era, would be appearing with him to defend the movement. That, said Thomas, “shows an incredible misunderstanding” of the 1980s fundamentalist phenomenon, and he turned down the invitation three times before finally agreeing to go. He said that putting what Falwell represents together with what McIntire represents is like asking Amos ’n’ Andy’s Kingfish to join Andrew Young in defending black issues.
Even the religious press sometimes has a hard time keeping things straight. The August issue of the United Presbyterian magazine A.D. carried a cover article entitled, “Moral Majority: Distorting Faith and Patriotism.” But the question might be asked, Who is distorting what? The cover photo accompanying the article is identified as a shot from the Washington for Jesus rally, and shows a crowd praying in charismatic fashion, with upraised arms. Other photos from the rally also appear.
The cover photo seems odd as a Moral Majority illustration because neither Falwell nor most of the fundamentalists he speaks for are charismatics. Besides that, Falwell wasn’t even at the rally, nor did Moral Majority sponsor it. The magazine’s editors had Moral Majority confused with the charismatic movement, a different phenomenon entirely.
Even commentators closer to fundamentalism have not always taken time to aim straight. Robert Webber, a Wheaton College professor, wrote a book called The Moral Majority: Right or Wrong? In it he finds that Moral Majority fails to espouse biblical Christianity, and it is on that account that he is critical. It is not surprising Webber should detect this, because it is the whole point of the organization. Falwell stresses every chance he gets that it is not religious. Webber acknowledged that his book failed to make this distinction about Moral Majority, and said that if he had waited another six months before writing, the book would have been different. He said he based it largely on Falwell’s book, Listen, America!, published in December 1979, a few months after Moral Majority was organized. Listen, America! expresses Falwell’s concerns as a fundamentalist preacher, and it is not about Moral Majority at all. Cal Thomas conjectures that Webber’s book would have been different if only he had personally interviewed Falwell before writing it. Twice Webber was asked to come to Lynchburg, but he did not go.
(Falwell’s people know the value of personal acquaintance. The original manuscript of a new book by Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson, two staff members at Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College, [see accompanying review] slashed hard at liberal Harvard theologian Harvey Cox. Then Hindson and Thomas were invited to speak at Harvard. They were enthralled with Cox, and with his and some of his religion students’ spiritual depth. Hindson stayed on an extra day, and when he returned to Lynchburg, the book was changed.)
Despite all the misconceptions about what Moral Majority is, there are some substantial criticisms that Falwell brings upon himself. For one thing, the “Old Time Gospel Hour” is chronically short of money, and some of Falwell’s fund-raising letters are so strident they are silly.
One of those recent letters was on the subject of world hunger—a problem Falwell blamed on Communism. The strategy behind the letter seemed to be that if the heart-rending pictures of starving children accompanying the letter wouldn’t get you to part with your money, that old bugaboo Communism would. The letter noted, almost incidentally, that some of the money would not be spent to fight world hunger or the Communists at all; rather, it would go to Lynchburg, to support Falwell’s college and school.
Another Falwell letter, this one seeking money for Moral Majority, suggested that militant homosexuals were now more bold than ever because they thought Moral Majority was getting weak. Although Falwell the Moral Majoritarian recognizes the civil rights of homosexuals and Falwell the preacher separates the sinner from the sin, the letter was such a heavy-clubbed attack that it effaced all these distinctions.
This “crisis of the week” approach raised the eyebrows of Sen. Mark Hatfield, who has been concerned about the ethics of religious fund raising. It was his prodding that brought about formation of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (of which Falwell is a charter member). Hatfield twisted arms again during an ECFA speech in April, alluding to some of Falwell’s letters.
The pressure was felt in Lynchburg. The June mailing from Moral Majority was a positive-sounding summary of the organization’s achievements (it didn’t bring in as much money as the crisis letters), and the August mailing was little more than a birthday message to Falwell from Sen. Jesse Helms.
With his mass mailings and television programs, Falwell has direct access to his constituents, and he says he ignores the distortion he reads in the news media. Others in his organizations are much more bothered by it.
“We’ve got to start seizing the initiative and start framing the issues, and stop reacting to outlandish charges,” said Moral Majority’s executive director, Ronald Godwin. An administrator at Pensacola Christian College before joining Moral Majority, he brings a Ph.D. in planning and management from Florida State University to the organization.
One of Godwin’s goals is a tighter relationship between Moral Majority at the national level and its state and county affiliates. He said new contracts will be drawn up that will specify more clearly how the name can be used. The intention is to eliminate some of the embarrassments brought about by the Moral Majoritarians in Maryland, for example, who picketed a local establishment selling anatomically accurate gingerbread men.
One of those “loose cannons” rolling about the deck is Michael Gass, a Medford, Oregon, fundamentalist minister who heads that state’s Moral Majority chapter. Gass has been making life uncomfortable for Mark Hatfield, who is the most prominent evangelical Christian in the Senate. Not one given to hyperbole, Hatfield called Gass “a wild man” who is trying to tine up an opponent to run against him in 1984 because of his liberal votes. This comes at a time when Falwell and Hatfield are establishing, in Hatfield’s words, “a marvelous working relationship and communication.”
(Gass apparently has been feeling the heat. He said in an interview that he has stopped commenting on Hatfield’s record because the press distorts everything he says. Gass did say, though, that he agrees with Hatfield much more than he disagrees with him).
Hatfield finds that Christian leaders who have recently awakened to politics are confused about just what that is. They will say they are not being “political” because they don’t endorse candidates or are not active in a political party, Hatfield said. “They will say one moment that government should be taken out of busing and civil rights and affirmative action. Then they say government ought to crack down on the pornographers, or the abortion law.… They are being political when they want an impact by a corporate state by a corporate action,” he said.
Hatfield finds that Falwell in particular has matured rapidly. “Starting with the homosexual issue, in which he was so shrill … the burn ’em at the stake type of thing … I think he has been able to delineate between the sinner and the sin, which I don’t think he did at first.” Hatfield also noted Falwell’s growing involvement in social problems, especially in the inner city.
Lately a number of commentators have begun to dismiss the religious right as an influence for the future, noting the financial difficulties of Falwell and others, and the fact that television audiences don’t seem to be as large as electronic churchmen sometimes claim. But that assessment could be classified as just another misconception of what motivates men like Falwell. For him, money has been chronically short ever since June 28, 1956, when the Thomas Road Baptist Church started up in the syrup-sticky confines of the Donald Duck Bottling Company building in Lynchburg. He and others like him are stirred not by their financial statements, nor by the rating sheets of Neilson and Arbitron, but by the feel of God’s hand upon their shoulders.
Moral Majority’s Godwin says that in hopes of having a deep impact on the 1982 Congressional election, the organization plans to start chapters down to the county level in every state by next year. That seems like an impossible goal, and even if they don’t accomplish it, it is clear that the folks from Lynchburg plan to be around for a long time to come.
