Jerry Falwell in Heaven
Of course Jerry Falwell is in heaven. I believe that, nothwithstanding the wags I overheard yesterday taking odds that he was off to hell, wags, who, in one profane statement manged to combine two sins -- gossip and gambling -- into one sentence.
I never liked Falwell, but if heaven was filled with only the people I liked, it would just be me, the wife and Jennifer Aniston rambling through Paradise every day. As a preacher, he never reached the oratorical heights of, say, the over-the-top Jimmy Swaggert, even when he wasn't confessing to trysts with a harlot, or the waterworks of that bizarro world Anna Nicole, otherwise known as Tammy Faye Bakker.
He seemed a little dour in the pulpit, Jerry did -- an occupational hazard for Pharisees, it seems to me. It's mean, exhausting work keeping track of how many of the masses are failing to tow the line. He seemed to reduce the Bible to an archaic rule book for a game that requires a little improvisational grace to play with any gusto.
On the other hand, when it came to things like ministries supporting pregnant women who wanted to keep their babies or give them up for adoption, as opposed to aborting them, the man put his money where his mouth was -- even if, many times, the money had to fit in his mouth when he already had a foot in it.
He was wrong on so many issues, and his very own theology made the phrase "Moral Majority'' an oxymoron. God is not now nor has ever been a member of the Republican Party (and God is too organized to be a member of the Democratic Party.)
But he loved Jesus, and I'm sure Jesus and he will have a little talk about some stuff in the hereafter. I imagine the conversation will be full of moments where Falwell slaps his forehead and says, "Oh! Now I get it!''
I never liked Falwell, but if heaven was filled with only the people I liked, it would just be me, the wife and Jennifer Aniston rambling through Paradise every day. As a preacher, he never reached the oratorical heights of, say, the over-the-top Jimmy Swaggert, even when he wasn't confessing to trysts with a harlot, or the waterworks of that bizarro world Anna Nicole, otherwise known as Tammy Faye Bakker.
He seemed a little dour in the pulpit, Jerry did -- an occupational hazard for Pharisees, it seems to me. It's mean, exhausting work keeping track of how many of the masses are failing to tow the line. He seemed to reduce the Bible to an archaic rule book for a game that requires a little improvisational grace to play with any gusto.
On the other hand, when it came to things like ministries supporting pregnant women who wanted to keep their babies or give them up for adoption, as opposed to aborting them, the man put his money where his mouth was -- even if, many times, the money had to fit in his mouth when he already had a foot in it.
He was wrong on so many issues, and his very own theology made the phrase "Moral Majority'' an oxymoron. God is not now nor has ever been a member of the Republican Party (and God is too organized to be a member of the Democratic Party.)
But he loved Jesus, and I'm sure Jesus and he will have a little talk about some stuff in the hereafter. I imagine the conversation will be full of moments where Falwell slaps his forehead and says, "Oh! Now I get it!''
posted by Michael Riley at 1:21 PM
12 Comments:
I think he took the down elevator..
I wonder if he'll still be a homophobe in Heaven
If there really is a Jesus, now that he's got direct access to Falwell, I expect him to grab Falwell by the throat with one hand and slap him repeatedly with the other while saying, "What the Hell did you think I was talking about when I went on and on about how to treat the poor you fat, rich jerk?"
Thanks for the memories, Jerry. Quotes from Jerry Falwell, America's best known Baptist preacher:
"We curse the darkness, we're against what the ACLU and Americans United are, and what the crazy runaway liberal judges are doing. We're going to train a few thousand Christian attorneys who are just as radical as the preachers."
"We're here to stay, we're going to bring this nation back and we couldn't care less what you [his opponents] think about it."
--Jerry Falwell, speaking about his new Liberty University Law School while at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, TX, August 24, 2004
"Obviously, I would tell our nation, 'Prepare to meet thy God.' America must return to God. We must return to America's obligation to the Creator, the One we originally recognized in the Declaration of Independence. We must recognize God's providential care of this nation and His blessing on our people."
--Jerry Falwell on "Old Time Gospel Hour," June 1, 1997
"Modern U.S. Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the founders had in mind in the First Amendment of the Constitution... [W]e must fight against those radical minorities who are trying to remove God from our textbooks, Christ from our nation. We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours."
--Jerry Falwell, March 1993 sermon
"Most American children do not know that this is a Christian nation... [O]ur Constitution won't work in Russia, won't work in Haiti, won't work in Iraq. It only works where the people believe in the Christ of the Bible. The United States of America."
--Jerry Falwell on "Sunday Live with Jerry Falwell," July 23, 1995
"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."
--Jerry Falwell
"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."
--Jerry Falwell, Sermon, July 4, 1976
"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."
--Jerry Falwell
"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariottiers."
--Jerry Falwell
"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals - most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men - that's their problem."
--Jerry Falwell
"Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them."
--Jerry Falwell, on CNN's Crossfire, May 17, 1997
"The decline in American pride, patriotism, and piety can be directly attributed to the extensive reading of so-called 'science fiction' by our young people. This poisonous rot about creatures not of God's making, societies of 'aliens' without a good Christian among them, and raw sex between unhuman beings with three heads and God alone knows what sort of reproductive apparatus keeps our young people from realizing the true will of God."
--Jerry Falwell, "Can Our Young People Find God in the Pages of Trashy Magazines? No, Of Course Not!" Reader's Digest, Aug. 1985: p142-157
“You know when I see somebody burning the flag, I’m a Baptist preacher I’m not a Mennonite, I feel it’s my obligation to whip him. In the name of the Lord of course. I feel it’s my obligation to whip him, and if I can’t do it then I look up some of my athletes to help me. But, as long as at 72 I can handle most of the jobs I do it myself, and I don’t think it’s un-spiritual. When I, when I, when I hear somebody talking about our military and ridiculing and saying terrible things about our President, I’m thinking you know just a little bit of that and I believe the Lord would forgive me if I popped him.”
--Jerry Falwell, September 25, 2005 in a sermon to his Thomas Road Baptist Church congregation
OMG..is that last anon blogger papinian resurfacing? Don't worry, Falwell won't be in your "Catholic" heaven but you two may be meeting somewhere else anyway so it really doesn't matter...
Here are a few more:
"The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior."
-- Jerry Falwell, Listen, America!
"I had a student ask me, 'Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?' Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, cited in Cary McMullen, "Falwell: Now Is the Time for Gospel," in the Lakeland (Florida) Ledger (November 12, 2001), quoted from Randy Cassingham, This is True (18 November 2001).
"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, blaming civil libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to which Rev Pat Robertson agreed, quoted from John F Harris, "God Gave US 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says," The Washington Post (September 14, 2001)
"If we ever opened a meeting with a prayer, silent or otherwise, we would disintegrate."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, address to the Religious Newswriters Association in New Orleans, explaining why Moral Majority meetings do not open with prayer. People for the American Way says it has yet to find anyone who has made a stronger case against the proposed school prayer Constitutional amendment. Cal Thomas, director of communications for Moral Majority, said his group did not open meetings with prayer because it is a political organization that includes Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Protestants, and some "non-religious" members. "What kind of prayer would we use?" he asked. Quoted from "Falwell Arms the Opposition," San Francisco Chronicle, September 19, 1982.
"Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)
And I think anonymous and I use the same source. ::wink,wink::
dg wrote:
"OMG..is that last anon blogger papinian resurfacing?"
No, it's not papinian. "Anonymous" and I both got our quotes at the same web site and believe me, papinian wouldn't be caught dead there.
You mean spirited conservatives, OOPS I mean LIBERALS never cease to amaze me.
It so nice to see the the LIBERAL HYPOCRITS , are still out there.
Hey, at least we can spell! And I thank my un-vouchered, No Child Left Behind-free public school education for that fact.
- Ray, the LIBERAL HYPOCRITE
Ray
It's nice to see you havn't changed your playbook. Nothing important to say just attack.
Has if ever occured to you that I do that just to rattled your cage, and let you exposed your self as the empty hatful wind bag that you are.
THANK YOU FOR BEING SO EASY.
anonymous wrote:
"It's nice to see you havn't changed your playbook. Nothing important to say just attack."
Hey, it's not my fault if you're wearing shirt with a big red bulls-eye target painted on it!
"Has if ever occured to you that I do that just to rattled your cage,.."
Present tense: "rattle", not "rattled". And no, you do it because you can't spell and no level of excuse-making is going to change that fact. My cage remains unrattled.
"...and let you exposed your self as the empty hatful wind bag that you are."
Umm, I think you tried to write "hateful" but your second grade education prevented you from spelling it correctly.
"THANK YOU FOR BEING SO EASY."
Thank you for the entertainment!
We are sometimes misguided human beings. Jerry Falwell had a passion for God, and in his passion, sometimes said and did some (in my opinion) strange things. We've all met someone like that, only with Mr. Falwell, his words and actions were televised, so they came and stayed with people, and were interpreted according to the belief system of the person interpreting.
Mr. Falwell and those on television who feel they represent God have an unbelievable responsibility. It's not like they can be those sports icons on the Nike commercials who say "I'm not a role model", because like it or not, they are.
I am not going to pass judgement on Mr. Falwell about "which elevator he took" because only god knows for sure. What I do know is that he was passionate about what he said, and stood up for what he believed in.
I did not agree with everything he said (ugh - the Tinky Winky thing still makes me crazy when I think of it!).
Ray said something about Jesus slapping him around...that could be, for incidents aforementioned here. but He may also embrace him for the things he did right. And he did do some things right, things that may not have been captured by any camera. here's hoping, for his sake, anyway.
Margaret
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