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Jerry Falwell

American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Jerry Lamon Falwell (11 August 1933 – 15 May 2007) was an American pastor, Southern Baptist, televangelist, founder of the Moral Majority and Liberty University, and a prominent conservative activist.

God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country. If [there is] any place in the world we need Christianity, it's in Washington. And that's why preachers long since need to get over that intimidation forced upon us by liberals, that if we mention anything about politics, we are degrading our ministry.
So-called gay folks would just as soon kill you as look at you.
The homosexuals are on the march in this country. Please remember, homosexuals do not reproduce! They recruit! And, many of them are after my children and your children.
I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

Quotes

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  • The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country. If [there is] any place in the world we need Christianity, it's in Washington. And that's why preachers long since need to get over that intimidation forced upon us by liberals, that if we mention anything about politics, we are degrading our ministry.
    • Sermon, Lynchburg, Virginia, (July 4, 1976), quoted in William R. Goodman Jr.; James J. H. Price (1981). Jerry Falwell: An Unauthorized Profile. Lynchburg, VA: Paris & Associates. p. 91. 
  • The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.
    • Listen, America! (1981)
  • The homosexuals are on the march in this country. Please remember, homosexuals do not reproduce! They recruit! And, many of them are after my children and your children.
  • You'll be riding along in an automobile. You'll be the driver perhaps. You're a Christian. There'll be several people in the automobile with you, maybe someone who is not a Christian. When the trumpet sounds you and the other born-again believers in that automobile will be instantly caught away - you will disappear, leaving behind only your clothes and physical things that cannot inherit eternal life. That unsaved person or persons in the automobile will suddenly be startled to find the car suddenly somewhere crashes... Other cars on the highway driven by believers will suddenly be out of control and stark pandemonium will occur on … every highway in the world where Christians are caught away from the drivers wheel.
    • Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ (1983) as quoted in "Does Reagan Expect a Nuclear Armageddon?" by Ronnie Dugger in Washington Post Outlook (April 8, 1984)
  • Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.
    • Crossfire (May 17, 1997)
  • He [Tinky Winky] is purple—the gay-pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle—the gay pride symbol.
    • "Parents Alert: Tinky Winky Comes Out of the Closet" (February 1999), National Liberty Journal, quoted in "Gay Tinky Winky bad for children". BBC News. February 15, 1999. 
    • Referring to Tinky Winky, a character on the children's program Teletubbies
  • Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time — calling upon God.
  • And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize.
  • CNN (September 14, 2001)
Falwell: "If we decide to change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation was built we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us as he has in the past."
Amanpour: "So you still stand by that."
Falwell: "I stand right by it."
  • Interviewed by CNN's Christiane Amanpour about his current feelings regarding blame for the September 11th attacks, and whether or not he still feels as he did when he made the conversial statement cited above (May 8, 2007) (video recording). This statement attesting that he still blamed so many was made one week before his death.
  • The true Negro does not want integration ... He realizes his potential is far better among his own race ... It will destroy our race eventually ... In one northern city, a pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife ... It boils down to whether we are going to take God's Word as final.
    • Quoted in "The Nation's Best Bible College Gets Low Grades on Racial Diversity" The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, vol. 31 (2001), pp.43-45
  • I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I read enough by both Muslims and non-Muslims, [to decide] that he was a violent man, a man of war.
    • Interview (September 30, 2002) on 60 Minutes (October 6, 2002). The following Friday, Mohsen Mojtahed Shabestari, the spokesman of Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa for Falwell's death, saying that Falwell was a "mercenary and must be killed," and, "The death of that man is a religious duty, but his case should not be tied to the Christian community."
  • You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops and I am for the President—chase them all over the world, if it takes ten years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.
  • And the fact that John Kerry would not support a federal marriage amendment [prohibiting gay marriage], it equates in our minds as someone 150 years ago saying I'm personally opposed to slavery, but if my neighbor wants to own one or two that's OK. We don't buy that.
  • I have been on record all 54 years of my ministry as being opposed to dual covenant theology... I simply cannot alter my deeply held belief in the exclusivity of salvation through the Gospel of Christ for the sake of political or theological expediency. Like the Apostle Paul, I pray daily for the salvation of everyone, including the Jewish people.
    • Response to a Jerusalem Post (March 1, 2006) article which portrayed him as endorsing a "dual covenant" theology in which Jews are saved with a "special relationship with God and so need not become Christians to get to heaven." in The Jerusalem Post (March 2, 2006)
  • Today the world has gone sex crazy. Illicit sex has become the downfall of many in the Bible. Movie stars not married to each other, having babies and making headlines all over the world as though they were doing some great thing. Big deal! Just another moral pervert. And for them to become heroes for our kids. My wife and I will be married 49 years the next anniversary.
    • Televised sermon at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia (June 25, 2006), as quoted in "Falwell on the "moral pervert[s" in Hollywood: "[Y]ou almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore" at Media Matters for America (June 27, 2006)]
  • You know, you almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore. Ellen [Degeneres], and all the rest. I love them, pray for their souls, but they're immoral. And the Hollywood scene — five and eight and 10 marriages — not something to be emulated.
    • Televised sermon at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia (June 25, 2006), as quoted in "Falwell on the "moral pervert[s]" in Hollywood: "[Y]ou almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore" at Media Matters for America (June 27, 2006)
  • Since Jesus came to the earth the first time 2,000 years ago as a Jewish male, many evangelicals believe the Antichrist will, by necessity, be a Jewish male. This belief is 2,000 years old and has no anti-Semitic roots. This is simply historic and prophetic orthodox Christian doctrine that many theologians, Christian and non-Christian, have understood for two millennia.
    • Quoted in "Religion, Politics a Potent Mix for Jerry Falwell" by Steve Inskeep in Morning Edition on NPR (June 30, 2006)
  • I believe in the premillenial, pre-tribulational coming of Christ for all of his church, and to summarize that, your first poll, do you believe Jesus coming the second time will be in the future, I would vote yes with the 59 percent and with Billy Graham and most evangelicals.
    The second question, you asked, "Do you think he is coming in your lifetime?" I would vote neither yes nor no. I would vote I do not know, because Jesus said, "No man knows the day or the hour." So the bottom line is, I believe that we ought to be living every day as though this is the crowning day. But we should also be planning and working with the next generation in mind, because we do not know.

Quotes about Falwell

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Listed in alphabetical order by author or source.
 
They have the right to organize, they have the right to proselytize, they have the right to select and work for candidates they like, they have the right to vote, they have the right to make sure folks who agree with them also vote. Jerry Falwell has already declared, “We absolutely are going to deliver this nation back to God in 2008!” If the people who are not social dominators and right-wing authoritarians want to have those same rights in the future, they, you, had better do those same things too, now. You do have the right to remain silent, but you’ll do so at everyone’s peril. ~ Bob Altemeyer
 
The social dominators want you to be disgusted with politics, they want you to feel hopeless, they want you out of their way. They want democracy to fail, they want your freedoms stricken, they want equality destroyed as a value, they want to control everything and everybody, they want it all. And they have an army of authoritarian followers marching with the militancy of “that old-time religion” on a crusade that will make it happen, if you let them. ~ Bob Altemeyer
 
I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass. ~ Barry Goldwater
 
If you gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox. ~ Christopher Hitchens
 
The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you’ll just get yourself called Reverend... People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. ~ Christopher Hitchens
 
Why, hello, Reverend Fraudwell, you old money-grubbing pervert! ~ Fred Phelps
  • So what’s to be done right now? The social dominators and high RWAs presently marshaling their forces for the next election in your county, state and country, are perfectly entitled to do what they’re doing. They have the right to organize, they have the right to proselytize, they have the right to select and work for candidates they like, they have the right to vote, they have the right to make sure folks who agree with them also vote. Jerry Falwell has already declared, "We absolutely are going to deliver this nation back to God in 2008!" If the people who are not social dominators and right-wing authoritarians want to have those same rights in the future, they, you, had better do those same things too, now. You do have the right to remain silent, but you’ll do so at everyone’s peril. You can't sit these elections out and say "Politics is dirty; I’ll not be part of it,” or “Nothing can change the way things are done now." The social dominators want you to be disgusted with politics, they want you to feel hopeless, they want you out of their way. They want democracy to fail, they want your freedoms stricken, they want equality destroyed as a value, they want to control everything and everybody, they want it all. And they have an army of authoritarian followers marching with the militancy of “that old-time religion” on a crusade that will make it happen, if you let them. Research shows most people are not in this army. However Americans have, for the most part, been standing on the sidewalk quietly staring at this authoritarian parade as it marches on.
    • Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarians (2006), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 246-247
  • For Falwell and the religious right, the tension between adhering to a literal interpretation of the Bible and allowing the compromise inherent in mainstream politics never fully eased. In a pluralistic democracy, the voice of every participant has a priori equal standing. Yet with its insistence on the inerrancy of the Bible in public policy, the religious right raised the specter of theocracy. To deal with the competing demands--theological and political--Falwell, like Pat Robertson later in the 1980s, simply opted to adopt two contradictory positions, one intended for his core audience and one suited for public consumption, and hoped no one would notice. After backing Briggs's and Bryant's campaign to ban gays and lesbians from teaching positions in the public schools and repeatedly in sermons and fund-raising letters harping on the homosexual threat to children, Falwell told the Washington Post, "I have no objection to a homosexual teaching in the classroom as long as that homosexual is not flaunting his lifestyle or soliciting students."
    • John Gallagher and Chris Bull, The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s (1996), Ch. 1
  • Falwell generally escaped censure for such blatant contradictions because the press was often reluctant to take him to task. When his statements and motives were called into question, he has adhered to the premise that the best defense is a good offense. Instead of answering the substance of charges, Falwell would simply suggest darkly that his critics were part of a liberal conspiracy to repress the role of Christians in government. Responding to attacks on his political views in a 1976 sermon, Falwell said, "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country."
    • John Gallagher and Chris Bull, The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s (1996), Ch. 1
  • While the outbreak of the mysterious and deadly disease in the early 1980s spurred many religiously motivated caregivers to new heights of compassion, Falwell used it to craft new fundraising appeals. In AIDS, religious conservatives like Falwell found the punitive manifestation for homosexual behavior for which they had been searching. No longer, they reasoned, could homosexuals pretend that homosexuality was without consequences. AIDS and homosexuality would become virtually synonymous in the rhetoric of the religious right and in the nation's consciousness. Ignoring the inconvenient facts that many people with AIDS are not gay, that the vast majority of gay men would never contract HIV, and that lesbians are at extremely low risk, Falwell and his colleagues on the right played AIDS as divine retribution for sodomy. In a 1987 fund-raising letter, for instance, Falwell accused gay men of donating blood because "they know they are going to die--and they are going to take as many people with them as they can."
    • John Gallagher and Chris Bull, The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s (1996), Ch. 1
  • At its apex in 1979, Falwell's Old-Time Gospel Hour raised $37 million on 2.5 million appeals, a sum unimaginable for a gay organization. Yet throughout the 19705, the show was in and out of receivership. The pressure of mounting debt drove Falwell, whose penchant for overspending was as great as his gift for overstatement, to rely ever more heavily on solicitations stressing the alleged gay threat to American families. As Falwell's financial problems forced him to retreat from the public stage, the religious right's baton passed to the biblical reconstructionist Pat Robertson. Though he owed much to Falwell's trailblazing evangelism, Robertson, who practiced faith healing and speaking in tongues, would soon eclipse him as an entrepreneur and political preacher. Vowing not to repeat Falwell's mistakes, Robertson allowed the Christian Broadcasting Network to grow at a slow but steady rate. Until 1984, when he changed his party registration from Democratic to Republican, he largely abstained from Falwell's vituperative style of political activism.
    • John Gallagher and Chris Bull, The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s (1996), Ch. 1
  • I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
    • Barry Goldwater (July 1981), in response to Falwell's opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, "Every good Christian should be concerned"; quoted in Ed Magnuson, "The Brethren's First Sister," Time magazine (July 20, 1981)
    • According to John Dean, Goldwater actually suggested that good Christians ought to kick Falwell in the "nuts", but the news media "changed the anatomical reference."
      • Dean, John (2008). Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches. Penguin Group. "I know because I was there when he said it." 
  • The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you’ll just get yourself called Reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God’s punishment if they hadn’t got some kind of clerical qualification. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.
  • On Tuesday, May 14, the old fat false prophet Jerry Falwell died and entered hell. As the old preacher used to put it, he split hell wide open... Hell from beneath was moved to meet Falwell at his coming, rousing the dead, even those that used to be big-shots on Earth, now in hell, greeting him with such words as these: 'Why, hello, Reverend Fraudwell, you old money-grubbing pervert!' ... As a young preacher in Springfield, Missouri, Falwell was a true Calvinistic Baptist preacher who believed and preached the truth. But he saw early on that his lust for power and lucre could never be satisfied if he was faithful to the word of God. And so the old fool, like the false prophet Balaam, sold his soul for a mess of free will-ism, God loves everybody-ism, Arminianism, lies -- sold his soul for lies."
    • Fred Phelps, leader of Westboro Baptist Church
    • "Jerry Falwell Split Hell Wide Open." WBC Video News. Westboro Baptist Church (May 18, 2007).
  • While liberals appeared to be safely in power, feminists could perhaps afford the luxury of defining Larry Flynt or Roman Polanski as Enemy Number One. Now that we have to cope with Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms, a rethinking of priorities seems in order.
    • Ellen Willis "Lust Horizons: Is the Woman's Movement Pro-Sex?" (1981), No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992)
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