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Yesterday on tv someone said, "Wherever Jerry Falwell ended up today he's probably surprised."
But let's hope he's not too surprised.
Jerry Falwell knows he deserves eternal damnation of Hell. As do all the people who pretended that he was a decent man, and the hateful and damaging things that he said and did over the years was just business. As if what you say on TV and do behind closed doors isn't you, it's a game, especially if you're wearing a cross on the lapel of your three-piece suit.
Jerry Falwell was a southern man who hated anything that wasn't white, conservative, and giving him money, power, or attention. During Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign in Selma in the '60s, Falwell called MLK a faker, and just a few years ago he called the National Organization for Women, the National Order of Witches. And the years in between Falwell seemed his best to try twist the bible and the constitution in ways that would benefit his pocket.
If God has the ability to show grace and forgiveness, He's gotta be working overtime today if He is considering admitting someone like Falwell into Paradise.
Falwell called the ACLU an antichrist group responsible in part for 9/11, he said "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals", he said "most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home", he claimed that "our grandchildren will laugh at those who predicted global warming", he thought that Bishop Tutu is "a phony, period, as far as representing the black people of South Africa", called the prophet Mohammed a terrorist, and said that the Antichrist will be Jewish: "In my opinion, the Antichrist will be a counterfeit of the true Christ, which means that he will be male and Jewish, since Jesus was male and Jewish."
However when you read the definition of the Antichrist you see words like "prodigious tyrant", "arch-enemy of Christ", and read how the Bible describes the antichrist as someone "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped.... And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given to him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations...", I ask you, doesn't that sound way more like the recently deceased pastor than any Jew you know?
Would Jesus have been against the Civil Right's Movement in 1958? Falwell was. Even back then he was far more interested in politics and keeping minorities down thru things like segregation than focusing on spirituality and equal rights: "If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God's word and had desired to do the Lord's will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made.... The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line."
And when the truth didn't agree with his political agenda, Rev. Falwell spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to smear politicians through lies and exaggerations, like when he helped fund the Clinton Chronicles, a deceitful campaign against then-President Clinton. that was discovered to have bribed two Arkansas state troopers to lie about Clinton's sex life and say that the President had been involved in murdering Vincent Foster, the White House Counsel.
Al Sharpton said yesterday on Larry King that despite the numerous debates that he had over the years that when the cameras were off Falwell would ask the minister about his family and clearly had some good in his heart.
So fuck Al Sharpton too.
It's bad enough we have politicians and talking heads pretending that now is the time to be gracious to a dead man who was never gracious when he was alive. But to have a minister who wants to pretend that this hateful representative of the Church was anything but racist, selfish, and evil is ridiculous. And just one more reason why separation of church and state is so important, and why when religious leaders and government are combined, the results end up corrupting both institutions.
It's times like this that people say, "oh let's be good Christians and forgive our enemies during the wake of their death," which is a nice sentiment, and probably more in line with the teachings of the sweeter parts of the Bible, but clearly I'm not that evolved.
I say if you want to show unbelievable forgiveness and love for the despised, how about giving that love to people who could actually benefit for it, like the homeless, which LA has more than it's share.
Jerry Falwell has gotten more than enough passes during his life, he doesn't deserve any more in death.
AP photo by Doug Koontz
