We’re excited to have author, journalist, and Brown University senior (he’s still a senior!) Kevin Roose blogging with us this week. His new book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University is about the semester he spent at Liberty University. We’ll let Kevin take it from here:
BY KEVIN ROOSE
There’s no doubt that Jerry Falwell was controversial. Many remember him as the arch-conservative Moral Majority leader who took to the airwaves after September 11, 2001 and blamed the terrorists attacks on homosexuals, feminists, and the ACLU (among others). Or they remember him as the guy who outed the purple Teletubby.
But when I spent a semester living at Liberty University, I got to see a different side of Rev. Falwell, who founded the school in 1971 to train “Champions for Christ.” I even got to interview him for Liberty’s campus newspaper a few weeks before his death, in what turned out to be the last print interview he ever gave. Here, are my top 8 pieces of Falwell trivia:
1. He Was Friends with Larry Flynt
Rev. Falwell’s most famous interpersonal feud was with Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler. Flynt’s decision to print a piece that described Falwell having sex with his mother led to a long, high-profile Supreme Court case between the two. (The battle was dramatized in the 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”)
But after settling their case, the two men actually became close friends despite agreeing on absolutely nothing. They traded grandkid photos and diet tips, and late in his life, when Falwell had plane troubles on the way to a speaking engagement, Flynt offered him a ride in the Hustler jet. Falwell accepted.
2. Prankster in the Pulpit
To those who knew him well, Rev. Falwell was known as a consummate prankster. He carried M-80 firecrackers in his pockets, had an extra-loud horn installed on his SUV, and learned to hotwire his associates’ cars, drive them several blocks away, and leave them. When we spoke, Falwell admitted placing a stinkbomb under the chair leg of Bob Jones, Jr., then-president of Bob Jones University, at a conference of pastors. “When he sat down, the bomb broke,” he said, laughing. “And in a crowded auditorium, it got pretty rank pretty quick. Everyone was choking for ten, fifteen minutes.”
3. How He Stole His Wife
When Rev. Falwell first met Macel Pate, who would become his wife of 49 years, she was already engaged – to Falwell’s roommate at Bible college. Undeterred, Falwell wrote her love letters in secret, and when his roommate asked him to mail his own correspondence to Macel, Falwell simply threw the letters away. Within months, Macel had broken off her engagement to the roommate and agreed to marry Falwell instead. Stealing another man’s fiancée isn’t exactly a biblical approach, but all’s fair in love and war.
4. He Almost Played Pro Ball
Before he became the pastor of one of America’s largest churches, Falwell was a star baseball player. After graduating from high school, he received an offer to join the St. Louis Cardinals, but turned it down in order to enroll in Bible college. Until the end of his life, he remained an avid sports fan, and often showed up unannounced to watch various Liberty teams compete.
5. Almost as Loved as Reagan
While many Americans picture Rev. Falwell as a crotchety televangelist who appeared on cable news shows, it’s hard to remember that he was once a civic star, beloved by vast swaths of America. He was the Moral Majority’s golden boy, the man who was almost single-handedly responsible for corralling America’s evangelical population into a motivated political bloc. Time magazine once called him the “force of fundamentalism.” And a 1983 Good Housekeeping poll named him the second most-admired man in the nation, behind Ronald Reagan.
6. His Daily Uniform
In his later years, Rev. Falwell was a famously predictable dresser. Every day was the same: black suit, red tie. When I talked to him in April 2007, he confessed that he had 40 or 50 red ties, enough to avoid repeats for months at a time. When he died, Liberty students came up with a novel twist on the typical black-ribbon mourning symbol: a black ribbon with a red tie dangling from the loop.
7. Armor of the Lord
Rev. Falwell was paranoid about his personal safety, and he had every reason to be. For decades, his outspoken (and often outlandish) views on controversial social issues made him a potential target for violence. During the Moral Majority’s heyday, he had a bulletproof pulpit installed at his Thomas Road Baptist Church, and an FBI file released after his death revealed that one hate letter, sent by a detractor in 1983, contained a live scorpion. Enclosed was a note that read, “Through your self sacrifice and dedication we may one day see this nation ruled by God instead of man. Kind of like Iran. Hoping you will die soon.”
8. A Heart for Alcoholics
Rev. Falwell’s father, Carey Falwell, worked as a bootlegger during the Great Depression and eventually died of liver problems caused by alcoholism. Although Falwell was morally opposed to drinking, he retained a soft spot for people who, like his father, had become trapped in alcoholism, and in 1959, he founded the Elim Home for recovering alcoholics, which exists to this day six miles north of Liberty’s campus.
Kevin Roose’s excellent book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University goes on sale nationally next week, but that shouldn’t stop you from pre-ordering it today! If you missed Kevin’s post from yesterday (on 5 Rules at America’s Holiest University), be sure to check that out here.
Comments (21)
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Fascinating pieces of trivia. Really humanizes the idea that at least I had of him.
It goes without saying, from a religious perspective, he’s a man, and men are not perfect, most are sinners. It’s up to us to decide whether or not his message was true, and which parts remain applicable to modern day society.
Again, I’m looking forwards to your book.
posted by Joel on 3-18-2009 at 12:06 pm
Stealing another man’s fiance (or wife) is most certainly Biblical. King David sent Bathsheba’s husband off to certain death in battle so that he could marry her.
The Bible is all about how flawed humans are, even the most religious of us.
posted by airship on 3-18-2009 at 12:34 pm
I bet it was such a shock to him when he ended up in Hell for his intolerance … to see the look on his face!
posted by Name on 3-18-2009 at 12:59 pm
Wow “Name”, how tolerant of you to wish him in Hell ‘where the fire is not quenched’ for all eternity.
If you listened to anything the man said you’d find that he ascribed to the biblical teaching that no one goes to hell just because they are a sinful person, but because of rejecting God’s forgiveness through the suffering of Jesus Christ.
That means anyone, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, believed, or where they were born or who they were born to can escape Hell. God is “not willing that ANY should perish”. And that is why he offered an escape to ANYONE who will take it.
I’d say that is a pretty “TOLERANT” belief system.
posted by Jeremy on 3-18-2009 at 1:22 pm
When he died, he became one of the very few people I’ve said the worst is better off without. Not sad to see him go, as disgusting as that is to say.
posted by Bug on 3-18-2009 at 1:25 pm
Blerg, that should be “world” is better off without. Heh, I see his name, I think “worst” apparently.
posted by Bug on 3-18-2009 at 1:26 pm
Interesting pieces of trivia. I looked into attending Liberty University when I was looking at colleges. I settled on a school closer to home, but I respect what Falwell did, though I didn’t always agree with what he said.
posted by Shelly on 3-18-2009 at 1:36 pm
Go Jeremy! Rev. Falwell is probably smiling down on you right now!
posted by Karen on 3-18-2009 at 1:46 pm
While I definitely do not agree with much of what he preached, I agree with Joel in that it it humanized Falwell. It helped me remember that he was just as entitled to his beliefs and his personal freedoms as I am, no matter how strange they seem to me.
Thank you for an article that managed to do just what journalism should do — help someone understand something that is completely foreign to them.
posted by Meghan on 3-18-2009 at 3:23 pm
Great article. As a few have noted above, it certainly humanized Falwell.
posted by Steve on 3-18-2009 at 4:17 pm
So let me guess, all of these “Falwell should burn in hell” people are upset because he did not agree with their points of view and exercised his right to speak freely. I wonder how many of you would say the same thing about Larry Flynt who, as pointed out in the article, was a friend of Falwell’s. If Flynt can like him then why can’t you? Oh yeah, you are too important to lower yourself to such a level. Twits.
posted by Scott-O on 3-18-2009 at 4:33 pm
Here’s something: A LOT of his relatives found him embarrassing. He may have worshipped like it, but he wasn’t descended from trash.
posted by mike on 3-18-2009 at 6:48 pm
I went to school at what was then Randolph-Macon Womans College in Lynchburg. Falwell called us “the dykes on the hill.” he had his followers put flyers on students cars with messages about gays going to hell. When I learned of his death I got so excited, I nearly crapped myself.
posted by TeresaisAmazibg on 3-18-2009 at 11:05 pm
heh. I went to Bob Jones University (but please, don’t judge) and never heard that story about Jr. I’d love to know what his reaction had been.
posted by Joanna on 3-19-2009 at 1:26 am
One of the most beautiful blogs I’ve read from the band Die Warzau on the death of Rev. Falwell:
I think it’s important to understand the difference between ideas and people. It shouldn’t be hard, right? Ideas are colorless, formless, floaty, mental things and people have pulses and bodies. People sh*t and eat and think and love and breathe and smell bad when you leave them in the sun too long. People feel good when you pull up next to them and cuddle with them and, on occasion, put your tongues in their mouths. Ideas do not. In fact, ideas have no mouths for you to put your tongue in. If you like things you can put your tongue in, essentially, odds are you are a big fan of people.
Ideas can be so much scarier than that. They can be huge and monstrous and unforgettable, like the idea that people in group x are somehow less of a person than people in group y. They can be silly but scary below the surface, like the idea that proof doesn’t matter, and they can be seductively destructive, like the idea that what happens here is less important than what happens after we die.
Ideas and people are clearly different. In fact, this is so clear that it should be obvious that we need to treat them differently. What makes a person survive and thrive- what makes a person better is different than what makes an idea survive and thrive- better. What’s interesting is that there are two branches of science that discuss the health of these two things- people and ideas. The two branches are medicine and scientific logic. Medicine is the science of creating a healthy person and scientific logic is the science of creating a healthy idea.
Medicine is clear about how to create a healthy person. You feed a person, treat a person with respect, make sure he has a place to live, food to eat, medicine when sick, access to amenities, human rights, civil liberties that would enable him to remain healthy, safe, strong, and well-fed. It’s clear we need to respect people. In fact, if all of the above means anything at all, it means love. It’s clear we have to love people. We don’t get to do otherwise and still call ourselves scientists. We don’t get to ignore the path medical science provides us and still say we believe in science.
Scientific logic is also clear about how to create a healthy idea. We have to make it accountable at all times, attack it, force it to be better, argue it, respond to it, never ignore it, never let it get away with anything, beat on it when it’s stupid, support it when it’s not, spread it when it makes sense, publicly insult it when it doesn’t, research it, question it, never deify it and always be willing to let it go if it’s proven wrong. The life of an idea is hard, cold and brutal and that’s exactly the way it should be.
I certainly don’t want to oversimplify this. Lots of overlap happens between people and ideas. Some people are so attached to their ideas and so determined not to let them change or evolve that they essentially bond themselves to the idea. This makes it hard to discuss things with them, since attacking the idea looks like attacking them.
Today is not a day when I want any misunderstanding about the distinction, so I want to mourn the death of a person who tried to do the best he could and cared about people without reminding you constantly that I disagreed with nearly every idea he ever publicly had. If some people make themselves bigger than life by wanting to do better, he did. Even if we have no significant overlap in our own personal philosophies and even if we had no shared vision, he was still a person who reached out every way possible to do something he believed in. He was a man who, in his heart, I think, believed passionately in love and strongly in the idea that things could be better than they are. We don’t always have to have the same horizon line to recognize eyes that seek out horizons, that look out into hillsides and see the world better than it is revealed to them. We don’t have to have the same eyes to appreciate what a sun looks like.
On the occasion of his death, I want to wish the family and friends of Jerry Falwell peace and hope today. He was a man who believed in love, who believed in working to make things better tomorrow. Those things have their own rewards and draw people together from every side of the political and cultural divide. A hero in the name of love and hope, a community organizer and a man of conviction, I want to celebrate him as a person, real in every sense of the word, flawed but trying. I hope that the footprint he leaves behind is that of a man who wanted the best for the people he loved, and when he didn’t see goodness, tried to make it. I hope that the lesson he leaves behind for everyone is that we all make the world in our own image every day and that our ideas cross time and space. I hope that the people who loved him can remember the person who loved them back in joy. I hope that he, as a person, got fulfillment out of a life that he worked so very hard to imbue with purpose.
And I hope that we can talk tomorrow about his ideas.
posted by 303mike on 3-19-2009 at 3:05 am
“gay folks will just as soon kill you as look at you”
“AIDS is not just god’s punishment for homosexuals, it’s god’s punishment for a society that tolerates homosexuals”
“I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left wing associations.”
~Jerry Falwell
posted by scott on 3-19-2009 at 6:01 pm
Just look at the quotes and beliefs attrbuted to Falwell in scott’s post above. It’s great and all that he liked a practical joke, but you simply can’t humanize that kind of hatemonger. Why should anyone be tolerant of him when he clearly had no tolerance for anyone else?
posted by ck on 3-19-2009 at 10:01 pm
Jeremy, and Karen- a little question for you:
so, God was so concerned with offering people a way into heaven, he only sent Jesus to us 2,000 years ago?- which, even by the standards of the bible is no where near how old the Earth is.
so this “tolerant” religion was totally fine with sending good people to hell simply for not knowing a thing *due to no fault of their own* about god?
yeah. totally sounds like something everyone should subscribe to. psht.
it doesn’t matter whether you agree with Falwell or not. the fact of the matter is is that he preached hate, and intolerance- and i don’t think that Jesus would have ever been okay with any of that. you’re supposed to love your neighbor, not tell them what to do, or judge them for not being the same as you.
“let he who is without sin cast the first stone”- and if that guy was stealing other people’s intended brides, than he sure as hell shouldn’t have been “throwing stones”.
posted by em on 3-20-2009 at 4:18 am
@Joel (first post)
Pretty sure all men are sinners.
posted by Bryan on 3-21-2009 at 2:13 pm
I went to the same bible college that Falwell did only 20 years later. Often was told the tale when he drove his motorcycle up the stairs to the boys’ dorm and down the hall.
Although not as strict as Pensecola Christian College we weren’t as “liberal” as Liberty.
The boys hair had to be very short. We weren’t allowed to date people of other races. We could only date on Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays. We could not hold hands on campus and had to meet our boyfriend in the Social room on non date days which was monitored by a chaperone. We were expected to keep “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John”, between us on a date and to look out for Roman hands and Russian fingers.
I cannot believe that was over 35 years ago when I was there. Seems like only yesterday.
posted by suse on 3-21-2009 at 6:24 pm
Jesus stood up and spoke for the persecuted and the disadvantaged and the downtrodden. I believe in his message.
What I still can’t believe is all the people who profess to believe in him as their own personal savior and yet ignore his teachings about how to treat others.
BELIEVE whatever you want. All I ask is that you 1) ACT according to those beliefs as best you can without hurting others and 2) let me believe what I want.
Happy Earth Day, flossers!
posted by frodopal on 4-22-2009 at 6:44 pm