Falwell's Fundamentals

Spirituality Column #30
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper
June 5, 2007

Falwell’s Fundamentals
By Bob Walters

After reading numerous obituaries following Jerry Falwell’s death May 15, this news surprised me:

How well liked and admired Falwell was by people who actually knew him.

I guess that explains how Falwell built Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty University and the Moral Majority when so much of the world saw him only as a big pain in the neck.

You wouldn’t necessarily pick up this virtue from watching him preach on TV, because he seemed harsh and unyielding, if truthful and faithful. On that score, TV didn’t do him justice. Yet I am glad some writers took the time to point out that he was a warm, personable and eminently likable guy. Up close he was so obviously and profoundly a good man on a mission for Christ.

I’m sure he was warmly welcomed Home.

Falwell won the respect of his enemies, most notably the profane and recalcitrant Larry Flynt. Falwell seemed like the type who held a grudge. He wasn’t. What a great witness for Christ.

Of all the obits I read – suffering the many “we’re glad he’s gone” sentiments – I thought the best (and most fun) apologetic came from Ann Coulter in her May 16 column (anncoulter.com, archives), “Jerry Falwell, Meet Ronald Reagan.”

Sadly, “Fundamentalist Preacher” has become an invective used to describe Falwell, as if there were something wrong with believing in and preaching the truth of the Bible; The Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), the Deity of Christ; the virgin birth, the fact of Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and ascension; the reality and presence of the Holy Spirit; and that Christ died for our sins, defeated death and gives us everlasting life with God the Father in Heaven.

Falwell preached that you have to have faith in Christ, and follow Christ, in order to enter into the joys of Christ.

Too many of us want the joys, without faith and following.

Yet, those are the fundamentals.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, wonders where the country would be spiritually if Falwell hadn’t created The Moral Majority.

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