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PDF versionFalwell: Alive and kicking in today's GOP
by Dennis Coday on Feb. 02, 2012
A simple man with a bulging dose of self-confidence, Falwell was disgusted with what he saw as America’s libertine habits, including what he regarded as a renunciation of religion. He envisioned a return to an idyllic earlier time that may never have been. Winters speculates that conservative Southerners such as Falwell transferred the racial superiority they had lost in the wake of integration into a national superiority that conflated religious faith with patriotism.
NCR blogger and coloumnist Michael Sean Winters has just had a book published by HarperOne, a biography of Jerry Falwell titled God’s Right Hand: How Jerry Falwell Made God a Republican and Baptized the American Right.
NCR will review the book in it's Winter Books in a few weeks. That whole special section is devoted to the nexus of religion and polotics. Until then, if you want a peack at Winters' book, here's a review from The Charlotte Obssever, which I just saw: Falwell’s Moral Majority echoes in today’s GOP
Here's a taste from the review:
... For his help in bringing evangelicals to the polls, the Republican Party adopted Falwell’s social positions on abortion, Planned Parenthood and homosexuality, to name a few.
Unfortunately, as Winters insightfully points out, in linking Christianity so intimately with politics, Falwell may have succeeded in alienating a younger generation of Americans that may be rejecting his politics as well as his religion.
Like the bumper sticker
Like the bumper sticker says:
The MORAL MAJORITY is neither!
http://www.cafepress.com/+moral-majority-is-neither+bumper-stickers
Memo to Mr. Winters:
Wise choice of subject, if only for marketing purposes. It should sell well in the RED states where it will be burned rather than read once the sheep have been to do so by their pastors and bishops.
Unfortunately, in linking
Unfortunately, in linking Catholicism so intimately with his far right wing politics, Winters alienates NCR readers, who therefore reject subscription renewals as well as his fallaciously expressed right wing politics.
Falwell's Moral Majority
Falwell's Moral Majority "echoes" not only today's GOP but also in the message of today's Catholic bishops. If it is so clear to Mr. Winters, why is he so adament in his defense of the Church's stance on "religious freedom", which is that same alignment of the Church and politics? Our young people are leaving for the same reason.
At least Falwell was totally
At least Falwell was totally and completely convinced his preaching to be rooted in the gospel truth, while he GOP adopted Falwell's policies as political bait for the Christian fundamentalists.
A simple demand: please, NCR,
A simple demand: please, NCR, don't put Dear Bishop Gumbleton column, the very essence of Catholism, together, and behind, the one by the self-called Distinctly Catholic Mr. MSW. It spoils my meditation.
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