The outgoing chief of the declining National Council of Churches
bid fellow Christian clergyman Jerry Falwell a very un-Christian
goodbye. According to the Rev. Bob Edgar, a United
Methodist minister and former Democratic congressman, Falwell
lamentably believed that “apartheid and war were consistent with
Christ’s teachings.” Edgar also was “puzzled” by Falwell’s supposed
denunciation of the children’s program, the Teletubbies,” and its
purportedly gay character Tinky Winky.
Most people, especially the clergy, do not speak so unkindly of
the immediately just departed, heeding St. Paul’s admonition not to
speak ill of the dead. Of course, adherents of liberal theology, of
the sort that dominates Edgar’s church council, often prefer to
dismiss St. Paul as the church’s first hetero-sexist.
Unlike Edgar and most of the NCC’s declining denominations,
Falwell led a burgeoning evangelical movement in America. Fifty
years ago, he founded Thomas Road Baptist Church with 35 members
meeting in an elementary school in Lynchburg. Under Falwell’s
pastorate, the church grew to over 20,000. Fifty years ago, the NCC
was America’s premier religious organization, representing the
mainstream of American Protestantism. Today, it is a shell of its
former shelf, its member churches having lost millions of members,
many of them now attending mega-churches similar to Falwell’s.
While entrepreneurial evangelical preachers across American
continue to found surging congregations, para-church ministries,
and schools like Falwell’s Liberty University, the NCC under Edgar
was rescued from bankruptcy by donations from left-wing
foundations. These secular philanthropies now provide more dollars
to the NCC than do the organizations’ member churches. It’s an
appropriate irony, as the NCC represents a dying liberal theology,
it now relies on the unintended bequests of long-deceased robber
barons.
The religious left, always jealous of the numbers and influence
of the religious right, consistently reacted with anger to Falwell
during his life. But on his death, even Jim Wallis, Al Sharpton,
and Barry Lynn were relatively kind towards their famous
ideological opponent. Of course, Lynn should be kind. His Americans
United for the Separation of Church and State notoriously earned
millions of dollars from direct mail pieces that vilified Falwell.
But for Edgar, Falwell’s entrance into eternity was one more
opportunity to condemn and slander.
“We may never understand why Jerry Falwell felt apartheid and
war were consistent with Christ’s teachings, but we are grateful he
was there to force us to examine our own consciences and strengthen
our commitment to justice and peace,” was about as close to nice
that Edgar came in his remarks about Falwell’s death. Edgar was
particularly offended by Falwell’s support for the Iraq war, which
he seemed to equate with support for South Africa’s system of
racial apartheid. In contrast, Edgar has been unable since 9/11 to
articulate the historic Christian just war position of nearly every
denomination in his church council.
Edgar’s claim that Falwell supported apartheid is more
calumnious. In the 1980s, Falwell publicly disapproved of then
white-controlled South Africa’s racial policies, while also
opposing sanctions and being skeptical about the African National
Congress (ANC). His views were not very dissimilar to the Reagan
administration’s. The ANC was then supported by the Soviet Union,
allied with the South African Communist Party, and armed by the
then-Marxist regimes of Mozambique and Angola.
The National Council of Churches at that time enthusiastically
supported sanctions against South Africa, endorsed the ANC, and
refused to criticize the horrendous human rights records of South
Africa’s Marxist neighbors, many of which came to power with
financial assistance from the World Council of Churches (WCC). The
African National Congress likewise got help from the WCC.
Fortunately, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the ANC’s Communist
allies became irrelevant.
Apparently a stranger both to subtlety and historical accuracy,
Edgar preferred to slander Falwell as pro-apartheid. More benignly
but just as inaccurately, Edgar repeated the now eight-year-old
canard that Falwell “outed” Tinky Winky of the children’s program,
Teletubbies, which Edgar found “puzzling” and disturbing.
In fact, Falwell never outed the children’s character, whom
homosexual groups were already claiming as an icon, because the
purple but seemingly male character carried a purse-like “magic
bag” and had an upside down gay-pride-like triangle perched atop
his head.
The National Liberty Journal, published by Falwell’s
ministry, printed an article in February 1999, noting that Tinky
Winky had recently had recently been featured in a Washington
Post “in/out” column along with the recently “out” Ellen
DeGeneres. The Associated Press then reported that Falwell’s
newspaper was outing a Teletubbie. The story was probably first
generated, or at least fanned, by Barry Lynn’s Americans United for
the Separation of Church and State, whose news release smarmily barbed: “Who’s Falwell
going to out next, Winnie the Pooh? Or maybe, Barney; he’s purple,
you know.” Ha-ha-ha.
Falwell publicly denied having ever heard of the Teletubbies
prior to phone calls from reporters. Later, he publicly posed with
a Tinky Winky doll on his desk, insisting that his grandchildren
were fans. But the mythology was firmly established that Falwell
had outed a fictional children’s character, a purpoted fact
repeated in countless Falwell obituaries last week, and which Rev.
Edgar eagerly embraced to illustrate Falwell’s supposedly narrow
absurdity.
Bob Edgar somewhat sanctimoniously concluded his news release
about Falwell’s death: “It is clear that my Brother Jerry now knows
the Truth we are all seeking, as he rests in the arms of a kind,
loving and forgiving God.” Edgar can hope that his own obituary
will be more accurate and fair than what he was willing to allow
Brother Falwell.
