Falwell perfected the idea of “preaching to the choir,” when he found that television made the choir grow in size, and made himself extremely wealthy in the process. He caught wind in his sails because the evangelicals in the United States were increasingly restless after a self-imposed exile due to losses in the public forum connected to the Scopes Trial and the Repeal of the Prohibition Amendment in the first half of the century. Politics had proven too out-sized for the narrow fundamentalist theology embraced by evangelicals until then. Falwell simplified things for them: politics was Us vs. Them, Good vs. Evil, Conservatives vs. Liberals, Republicans vs. Democrats. He told his audience what they wanted to hear with his populist gospel: they were moral and they were the majority. His simplistic message combined with the emergence of a simpleton president and gained great clout.

The Rev. Falwell will most likely be remembered by those who embrace his politics as a great leader: unfortunately, he served the Republican Party more than God. Jesus (or Moses and the Prophet, or ________ [fill in the blank]) are more about reform about personal behavior than about condemning one’s political enemies. Falwell could support Republicans only by shutting out the philandering past of Ronald Reagan, the corruption of disciples like Ralph Reed, and the conviction of felons like Oliver North. He put aside Jesus’ words about feeding the hungry, about love of neighbor, and the need to avoid trust in earthly kingdoms in order to make his own twisted hatred of gays, lesbians, atheists and agnostics replace the gospel.

I am just as much a believer as the Rev. Falwell was, yet his legacy is the ridicule imposed on my faith and that of others like me who do not identify religion with one political party. Falwell gave religion a bad name among most of the people in the United States who do not believe in theocracy, preferring freedom of religion as a touchstone. I do not know if the deceased Rev. Falwell had a “Wolsey moment” before he died, but I would feel more confident about the salvation of his immortal soul if he had.