Jerry Falwell took no prisoners, at least where feminists, gays, the ACLU, pacifists, “moderate” Baptists, and other left-of-center folks were concerned.
Born again in the tradition of Independent Baptists, the far right of an already rightward denomination, he was a fundamentalist preacher, mega-church pastor, university chancellor, and religio-political controversialist, called to save souls and fight liberalism in the church and the world.
The Independent Baptist tradition is a collection of local congregations that began in the 1920s when the “Texas Tornado” J. Frank Norris broke with the Southern Baptists because they were too liberal! Falwell graduated from Baptist Bible Seminary in Springfield, MO, founded by Independent Baptists in the 1950s. He started Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA with a handful of members who met in a warehouse vacated by Donald Duck Bottling Company.
His rhetoric was that of fundamentalist evangelicals—hell-fire preaching with a call to faith in Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation. Baptisms mushroomed and Falwell had his first powerbase, conservative white southerners who agreed with his theological and moral vision of America as a “chosen nation” compromised by secularism, Hollywood, and the Democratic Party.
He carried that constituency into the New Religious Political Right with organizations like the Religious Roundtable and the Moral Majority, all part of the Republicans’ “Southern Strategy” instrumental in the elections of Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes. But his most lasting influence is no doubt Liberty University, a 20,000 student beacon to conservatism already impacting American political, legal and ecclesiastical life.
At his death the Thomas Road Church maintained connections with Independent and Southern Baptists, a relationship that Falwell renewed as the Southern Baptist Convention moved increasingly toward the theological and political right. Falwell himself was an early participant in efforts to “retake” the Southern Baptist Convention for classic fundamentalism and Republican politics. He rejected every Southern Baptist—Carter, Clinton, Gore—who ran for President of the United States, even questioning their credentials as born-again Christians.
A frequent speaker at Southern Baptist gatherings for the last two decades, Falwell advocated the departure of denominational moderates as a way of redirecting the Convention toward its fundamentalist roots. To the end he was a fundamentalist, affirming biblical inerrancy, Christ’s virgin birth, sacrificial atonement, bodily resurrection, and literal second coming. While he believed that Jesus’ return was just around the corner, the buildings at Liberty University were constructed in brick—a fundamentalist paradox extraordinaire. Amen.
Bill J. Leonard is dean and professor of church history at Wake Forest University Divinity School.
