Falwell dead at 73
Jerry Falwell, fundamentalist televangelist and founder of the Moral Majority — the conservative lobbying organization that is said to have initiated, on a major scale, the politicizing of the Christian right — died Tuesday at 73.
Falwell’s legacy: faith, hate or Teletubbies?
Jonathan Mandell (CNN) May 16, 2007 — “When I have children one day,” Samantha Krieger of Dallas, Texas, wrote to CNN.com, “they will know of the legacy that Dr. Jerry Falwell left.” But what will that legacy be?
To Krieger, who had personal connections to Falwell — she attended the college he founded; he officiated at her wedding; her husband was his nurse — the evangelist “was a great leader and hero.”
Victoria Kidd of Winchester, Virginia, believes the exact opposite: “The damage he has done to the Christian faith is immeasurable,” she wrote to CNN.com
Others would prefer to think that he has no legacy at all.
Read more.
In memorium, a couple of Falwell’s greatest rants:
“The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country. ”
“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
“If I were doing something that the Bible condemns, I have two choices. I can straighten up my act, or I can somehow distort and twist and change the meaning of the Bible.”
I wonder which of the two choices Falwell opted for in that last one?