Jerry Falwell

People For the American Way is preparing to move its headquarters to another location in Washington, D.C. , after more than 20 years in the same space. That has meant a monumental effort to sort through decades of accumulated paper and figure out what to do with video recordings in more formats than you could imagine – and endless save-or-toss decisions.

• a letter from Jerry Falwell urging his supporters to call Congress and oppose sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa in order to prevent a Communist takeover (an  accompanying 16-page “Fundamentalist Journal – Special Report” included a Falwell interview with the foreign minister saying that the West “has been doing the work of Moscow.”);
• a 1990 Christian Coalition leadership manual that includes the assertion that the relationship between employers and employees should be based on Bible verses telling slaves to obey their masters, no matter how harsh;
• a 1982 PFAW report on the Religious Right’s efforts to use the Texas textbook process to foist their ideology on American students nationwide (sound familiar?);
• books and campaign plans for the takeover of America by once-obscure Christian Reconstructionist figures who are now in the news thanks to the frightening ascension of followers like Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann;
• candidate questionnaires from Religious Right groups in the 1980s demanding to know whether politicians would support across-the-board tax cuts, a reminder that the Religious Right has been pushing Tea Party economics for a long time;
• a lavishly produced press kit for the 2006 opening of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, where a disturbing number of Americans have flocked to be mis-educated about biology, geology, and history; and
• in honor of Rick Perry’s recent prayer rally in Houston, a 1985 campaign flyer from the "Straight Slate" of candidates for Mayor and City Council, warning that Houston “has become the Southwest capital for homosexuality and pornography” and insisting that “We must not allow Houston to become another San Francisco!” (Current Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who was sworn in last year, is a lesbian who parents three children with her partner.)

Did you know that Canton, Ohio is the home of the Christian Hall of Fame? I didn't.

And the late Jerry Falwell is its newest inductee:

Dr. Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University, was honored in an induction ceremony for the Christian Hall of Fame on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at Canton Baptist Temple in Canton, Ohio.

Pastor Mike Frazier of Canton Baptist Temple presented a large portrait of Dr. Falwell to Jonathan Falwell, son of Jerry Falwell and pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. The portrait will hang in the halls of Canton Baptist Temple among a total of 124 enshrinees.

For many years, Canton Baptist Temple was one of the 10 largest churches in America. In 1966, Harold Henniger, then pastor, felt there should be some hall of fame in the United States to recognize the influence of the great heroes of the faith throughout the centuries. (The Football Hall of Fame for the National Football League is located in Canton). Today the church's Christian Hall of Fame is a broad-based representation of history makers and those who influence the world today, including the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, John Wesley and Charles Finney, among others.

“Jerry Falwell, Sr., is honored for having been one of the great heroes of the faith in the last century and this century until his death May 15, 2007,” said Mike Frazier, pastor of Canton Baptist Temple.

The induction ceremony was held during the annual meeting of the pastors of Baptist Bible Fellowship. The pastors rose to applaud in appreciation for the great contribution Jerry Falwell has made to the Fellowship.

“Jerry Falwell has done more for God than any other pastor in our Fellowship and perhaps has done more for God than any other man in our generation," Frazier said.

I saw this article in the Washington Post yesterday about the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed at Guantanamo Bay in which he attempted to find out if the judges were fans of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson because he felt that, if they were, he could not get a fair trial:

Invoking names such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the admitted organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, probed the private opinions of the military judge who is overseeing his case Tuesday in a series of sometimes testy exchanges during a hearing on the judge's impartiality.

Mohammed, wearing a black turban, began by asking Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann about his religious beliefs and whether he had any association with the religious organizations of Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell.

"If you are in one of those denominations, you are not going to be fair," said Mohammed, who switched between Arabic and English when he spoke to the judge. The judge said he had not belonged to any congregation for some time but had attended Lutheran and Episcopal churches.

I didn't write about it because I felt it was crass to try and score political points off the ramblings of a man responsible for thousands of American deaths ... but then again, I don't work for the Family Research Council:

What was most offensive was the subject matter of this interrogation-namely, the judge's personal religious views. "We are well-known as extremists and fanatics, and there are also Christians and Jews that are very extremist," Mohammed said. "If you, for example, were part of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson's groups, then you would not at all be impartial towards us." He also asked if the judge read books by Billy Graham or Pat Buchanan and wanted to know what movies he has watched. Col. Kohlmann rightly declined to answer. But this line of questioning seemed to ring a bell. It is reminiscent of the questioning, now abandoned, of judicial nominees about their religious beliefs by liberal senators during their confirmation hearings. But the Constitution is clear-"no religious test shall ever be required" for public office. The charge that only a radical secularist can be impartial on the bench, or that conservatives and evangelical Christians can never be, must be rejected from any source.

Forbes has been running excerpts from the new book “Falwell Inc.: Inside a Religious, Political, Educational and Business Empire” by Dirk Smillie.  The most recent excerpt recounts Falwell’s pioneering work in the field of direct mail and how he used wedge issues to raise millions of dollars: 

Falwell had the formidable talent of Jerry Huntsinger. Then 45, he was a former minister who lived on a farm near Richmond who had been taking advertising concepts from the for-profit world and applying them to nonprofit religious ventures. Huntsinger brought a novelist's touch to direct mail. He considered every fundraising letter a first cousin to the short story. "A short story has a problem that seems insurmountable, a sympathetic character that is a victim of the problem, complications and obstacles, but finally, a resolution." He advised his clients that emergency appeals work best because they give donors a feeling of "excitement at coming to the rescue."

Huntsinger was also a master at fine tuning the mechanics: the color of the envelope, the position of the address window, which paragraphs to indent, which sentences to underline. He knew how to lure a reader's eye just to where he wanted.

Huntsinger encouraged Falwell to focus on wedge issues in his mailings, excoriating the feminist movement and attacking homosexual rights, often equating both with the dangers of communism. As one letter stated: "Dear Friend: Homosexuals are on the march in this country. Homosexuals do not reproduce, they recruit, and many of them are after my children and your children….This is one major reason why we must keep "The Old Time Gospel Hour" alive…So don't delay. Let me hear from you immediately. I will be anxiously awaiting your reply."

The sense of impending doom the letter conveyed fit perfectly with Huntsinger's operating credo. It turned a pitch into a storyline (gays on the the march) with sympathetic characters (children) under threat from sex offenders (gay pedophiles). It was an emergency appeal that sought to panic his audience into coming to the rescue.