ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130026
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
It has been 20 years since the man some would consider the "godfather of the religious right" made a decision to renounce what had been a tenet of his Christian faith - the commandment against mixing religion and politics.
"I had been taught in college by my theology professors that theology and politics don't mix," the Rev. Jerry Falwell said recently. "They didn't give me any verses and chapters on it, but I accepted it."
Faced with U.S. Supreme Court decisions outlawing teacher-led prayer in public schools and legalizing abortion, however, Falwell "became convinced that if pastors and religious conservatives did not get involved, that the country was in a moral tailspin out of which we would not recover."
Despite that conviction, he still faced a "philosophical barrier" to the idea of a clergyman involving himself in politics.
"I had to go back to the Scriptures and look for biblical support for this so-called separation of church and state. I began to search the documents of early American history to look for Constitutional support for it, and I found none in either place.
"I realized that we had been duped."
His job, he said, was convincing other pastors and lay church leaders of that conclusion, then moving them into activism.
By 1979, Falwell had the support of a group of influential conservative evangelical pastors and some conservative politicians in a bid to energize what he was to call the Moral Majority.
Falwell's was not a household name at the time, though he was already a pastor in what the Wall Street Journal was calling the "electronic church" with a television ministry that reached far beyond the doors of Lynchburg's Thomas Road Baptist Church.
In addition to those tasks, he told the board of the Moral Majority that he would commit himself to five years as president of that organization as well, attempting "to mobilize what turns out to be about one-third of the population of this country."
Only a year later, a newly important voting bloc - the religious right, led by the Moral Majority - was widely credited with putting Ronald Reagan in the White House.
Within five years, the Moral Majority had a mailing list of 7million and would eventually claim to have registered 8.5 million conservative Christians to vote.
Filling voting booths with like-minded religious conservatives was always the goal, Falwell said, whether they were Republicans or Democrats.
"The goal was voter education, voter mobilization, voter registration, voter involvement.
"Most of our churches are a typical cross-section of the populace - half Democrats, half Republicans. So, obviously, we could not become sectarian.
"The religious right movement could just as easily be a Democratic advantage today as it is a Republican one. It just happened back there that the Harry Byrds and Harry Trumans were disappearing from the Democratic Party.''
Democrats "began to embrace all the radical extremist groups in the country - the feminists, the homosexuals, abortionists, the left-wingers, you name it," Falwell said. "At some point in time, Christians that take their faith seriously could find very little reason to give support to Democrats.
"Then the Republican platform in 1980 under Reagan became a strong pro-life, pro-family platform. The Democratic platform became an increasingly anti-Christ, anti-God, anti-family platform. And that's where both of them are today.
"It is my hope that one day the Democrats and Republicans will both have platforms and policies that are supportable, and then it comes down to who are the most competent candidates."
Falwell was diverted from pursuing that political goal within a decade of Moral Majority's founding.
By 1988, as Ronald Reagan was finishing his second term, the Moral Majority was disbanded.
"We felt we had accomplished what we had set out to do," Falwell said. And he was facing a crisis back home in Lynchburg.
While heading the Moral Majority, "I really deserted my first calling," to lead Thomas Road church and Liberty University. Both "were languishing" even before the televangelist scandals of Jim and Tammy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart led to a dramatic $25 million a year drop in contributions to Falwell's ministries.
While Falwell was preoccupied with keeping his church and his university afloat, "out of the Moral Majority, other groups had emerged. The Christian Coalition is one of them. We didn't sit down and organize the Christian Coalition," Falwell said, but its executive director, Ralph Reed, learned some of his lessons at Falwell's knee. While he was a college student organizing conservatives on campus in the mid-1980s, Reed was tutored by such speakers as Falwell and Jesse Helms, whom he brought in to fire up the troops.
Christian Coalition and "a host of other such groups around the country ... spun out of Moral Majority, and have taken it to a higher level," Falwell said. "Or perhaps to a lower level in terms of activity, [mobilizing] grass-roots participation. Both higher and lower. It is far more sophisticated."
In his latest book, "Active Faith," Reed contends that the grass-roots approach is the key to what he considers the religious right's increasing influence in its second decade.
Though Reed compliments Falwell's drive and acknowledges his key role in the mobilization of the religious right to elect Ronald Reagan, he also criticizes the Moral Majority's "costly ... tactical error" of pursuing "a direct-mail and media strategy rather than doing the dirty work of grass-roots organization and training workshops.''
Reed writes that the movement "failed to take the political capital of the 1980 landslide and translate it into a tangible legislative agenda. ... Falwell and his allies were not eager to start a fight with Reagan," even though, Reed says, Reagan allowed the social issues important to the religious conservatives who elected him to simmer on a back burner through his presidency.
And, Reed writes, "Few, if any, evangelicals were appointed to positions of influence."
"The difference between Ralph Reed and me," Falwell said, "is that I never asked for appointments. I think the best person for the job is who ought to get it. If that person is an evangelical, or Mormon, or Roman Catholic, or Jew, to me it's irrelevant. I don't think that the proof of the conservatism of an administration has a great deal to do with appointments. It has everything to do with policy and performance."
Falwell defends the movement's strategy, saying "Ronald Reagan's policies brought the family values to the front burner.
Reagan, Falwell contends, "is the greatest president of the 20th century." Falwell equates Reagan's bringing "an end to Soviet communism" with Abraham Lincoln's writing of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves.
Likewise, Falwell now compares his role in the formation of the religious right to another American famous for advancing the cause of civil rights for blacks.
"I often look at my role in forming Moral Majority as comparable to what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was doing when he formed the modern civil rights movement. He was pretty well out there by himself. And we were sort of the five-star generals of the two movements. Neither needs a five-star general now, and neither has one."
What has happened with the religious right, he said, is that a few national leaders with specialized talents, such as Reed, have emerged.
Though Reed and the Christian Coalition have eschewed turning to preachers for its leadership, Falwell said that today, "thousands of local church pastors provide the religious right leadership.
"It has been exciting for me to see."
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON Staff. The Moral Majority, Jerry Falwellby CNBclaims, registered 8.5 million Christian conservatives to vote and
was influential in sending Ronald Reagan to the White House. KEYWORDS: POLITICS