Jerry Falwell Dead

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Think of the kittens, diamond.
:(
 
martha said:
DB, why are you defending this guy?

I'm not.
I've never been a proponent of his ministry, or placed much value of what he said.

Some things that I agreed with him on, I would say "that's interesting that we have a few commonalities", but I would also say that about-

Lutherans,
Catholics,
Unitarians
Believers of Judism,
Neo Pagans,
Muslims
Scientologists
Belivers of Hinduism
Buddists
and even
Satatnists

You see I always wonder from what paradigm somebody is dealing from and know a just and merciful God will have the final say.


Futhermore if ppl he labeled and dispised the most, have learn to move on, why can't we?

Reverend Mel White remembers Jerry Falwell
As told to Michelle Garcia, The Advocate
During his years of concealing his own same-sex urges, the Reverend Mel White was a ghostwriter for iconic antigay evangelical figures such as Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. When the Reverend Jerry Falwell got wind of White's prowess, White was recruited to pen "Falwell: An Autobiography," published in 1987.
Eventually White came out and became a voice, as the cofounder of Soulforce, for open and closeted LGBT people against the religious right's condemnation. Here, White remembers his relationship with Falwell, who died May 15, and looks to the future of the antigay movement.

I was in the dentist's chair when I heard that Jerry Falwell passed away. I couldn't believe that I started crying. I had to find an office and I just cried. I was trying to think, "Why the heck am I crying?" I think I was crying for his family. He was a great father and husband, and he was a really good pastor - I've been going to his church for years, so I know -- and he was a really good president of a university. There are 20,000 students at Liberty University, which Falwell founded, and they all like him.

I knew there would be just a huge hole in Virginia and in Lynchburg, and I felt for those people. But at the same time I was feeling more strongly that now we'll never have a chance for Jerry Falwell to say, "I was wrong. I did wrong, and I said wrong, and I'm sorry. God creates gay people and loves them just like she created them. I'm not going to say anything more against gay people because I was wrong."

Imagine the consequence that would have had for so many people. Falwell was the face of homophobia.

Back when I was still afraid that I was sick and sinful for being gay, I got a job as a ghostwriter to get my kids through college. First I ghostwrote for Billy Graham, and the next thing you know, Jerry Falwell heard, and I ended up ghostwriting his autobiography. When you have to write 450 pages about a guy, you get really intimate with him, and I learned about this guy inside and out. I kind of liked him. I didn't like what he said, but he had a private persona that was really quite amiable.

After I put myself through exorcism, electric-shock therapy, then slitting my wrists, and going to the hospital, my wife finally said, "You know, you really have a life of your own. I like gay people, but I just didn't want you to be one."

Eventually I met and fell in love with Gary Nixon, and as soon as I realized that my sexuality was a gift from God and got over my fear and guilt, I wrote "Stranger at the Gate," in which I told the leaders of the religions right that they are doing terrible damage and they must stop.

Reverend Mel White remembers Jerry Falwell
(Page: 2 of 2)

Then in 1999, I told him that I had 5,000 people trained to march on his church and to close him down.

"OK, what else do you suggest?" he asked me.

I said, "I'll take 200 of those gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and straight allies, and we'll come visit with you for a weekend."

So he said we would have an antiviolence summit, which 183 accredited news crews attended. It was an amazing thing. And then the minute he invited us, he started getting dumped on by all his fundamentalist friends and donors -- big donors. Like Tim LaHaye and Gary Bauer and Jim Dobson at Focus on the Family. So he started pulling back, and after that event he refused to see me again. My partner and I moved here, to Lynchburg, Va., hoping that he would be tortured a bit by our presence and he would see a healthy gay couple and realize that he was wrong, because he's changed on other things. He died first, which was a chicken way out.

He was a racist in the 1950s and 1960s. He called the movement for black equality the "civil wrongs movement," and he bad-mouthed Martin Luther King Jr. But in 1964, he began to realize something was wrong, and he reached out to black people -- he told me stories about a shoeshine man who really won his heart. Two years ago, he got Lynchburg's NAACP award, which shows not only did he change, but he acted it out.

I had a paradigm for change that I thought Jerry would succumb to, but he didn't. I told him that I would be here until he died or I died, so he decided to win the race.

There's a whole crowd of folks who are fundamentalists like Falwell, who are using the gay thing to raise money and mobilize volunteers just like he did. And I think they are all as sincere as he was. These people really believe that America is doomed because God has created a chain of command: from God to Jesus, from Jesus to men, from men to women, and from women to children and so forth. When a man gets out of the chain of command and acts like a woman, he destroys God's plan for humankind. When Jerry said 9/11 was caused in part because we're accepting gays, he means that God withdrew his hand of protection because of this crazy acceptance of gays.

As far as the future of the religious right, he just graduated 3,750 little Falwells last week. Liberty University will have a school with more students than UC Berkeley or UCLA within 20 years. That's the kind of foothold he has on education. He's got an accredited law school, like Pat Robertson's Regent University. They're both turning out lawyers who are wiggling their way into politics and government.

An entire generation is coming up that really loves Falwell, and I'm afraid they're all going to be antigay. We gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are really missing it when we think the older generation will pass and the newer generation will save us. A whole new generation of people is being prepared to condemn us.
----------------

Angela,

I'm no longer a registered Republican.
I made a change to my voter registration about 1 year ago.

dbs
 
This is from Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners (www.sojo.net) and author of "God's Politics," which is well done. (Even Bono endorses the book and is a friend of Wallis.)


"I watched much of the cable television coverage of Jerry Falwell’s death and legacy. And I did a lot of grimacing, both from the uncritical adulations of his allies (who just passed over the divisive character of much of Falwell’s rhetoric), and also from the ugly vitriol from some of Falwell’s enemies (who attacked both his character and his faith). And there were even some who attacked all people of faith. I ended up being glad that I passed up all the invitations to be on those shows. On the day of Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death, I was content to offer a brief statement, which read:
I was saddened to learn that Rev. Jerry Falwell passed away this morning at age 73. Rev. Falwell and I met many times over the years, as the media often paired us as debate partners on issues of faith and politics. I respected his passionate commitment to his beliefs, and our shared commitment to bringing moral debate to the public square, although we didn’t agree on many things. At this time, however, what matters most is our prayers for comfort and peace for his family and friends.
Two days later, I might add that Falwell, in his own way, did help to teach Christians that their faith should express itself in the public square and I am grateful for that, even if the positions Falwell took were often at great variance with my own. I spent much of my early Christian life fighting the privatizing of faith, characterized by the withdrawal of any concern for the world (so as to not be “worldly”) and an exclusive focus on private matters. If God so loved the world, God must care a great deal about what happens to it and in it. Falwell agreed with that, and blew the trumpet that awakened fundamentalist Christians to engage the world with their faith and moral values. And that commitment is a good thing. Jerry and I debated often about how faith should impact public life and what all the great moral issues of our time really are.

"But many conservative Christians are now also embracing poverty, HIV/AIDS, Darfur, sexual trafficking, and even the war in Iraq as matters of faith and moral imperatives. It would have been nice to hear on those TV shows that Jerry Falwell, too, had moved to embrace a broader agenda than just abortion and homosexuality. Rev. Falwell, who was admittedly racist during the civil rights movement, was in later years honored by the Lynchburg NAACP for his turn-about on the issue of race, showing the famous founder of the Religious Right’s capacity to grow and change. But two nights ago on television, I saw the pain on the face of gay Christian Mel White, who lamented that despite his and other’s efforts, Falwell never did even moderate his strong and often inflammatory language (even if maintaining his religious convictions) against gay and lesbian people. They still feel the most wounded by the fundamentalist minister’s statements; that healing has yet to be done.

"Ralph Reed said that Jerry Falwell presided over the “marriage ceremony” between religious fundamentalists and the Republican Party. That’s still a concern about the Religious Right for many of us, and should be a warning for the relationship of any so-called religious left with the Democrats. But perhaps in the overly partisan mistakes that Jerry Falwell made - and actually pioneered - we can all be instructed in how to forge a faith that is principled but not ideological, political but not partisan, engaged but not used. That’s how the Catholic Bishops put it, and it is a better guide than the direction we got from the Moral Majority. But Falwell proclaimed a public faith, not a private one. And I am with him on that. As I like to say, God is personal, but never private. So let’s pray for Jerry Falwell’s family, the members of his Thomas Road Baptist Church, and all the students at his Liberty University. And let’s learn from his legacy - about how and how not to best apply our faith to politics."
 
coemgen said:
But two nights ago on television, I saw the pain on the face of gay Christian Mel White, who lamented that despite his and other’s efforts, Falwell never did even moderate his strong and often inflammatory language (even if maintaining his religious convictions) against gay and lesbian people. They still feel the most wounded by the fundamentalist minister’s statements; that healing has yet to be done.



this is lovely.

and exactly right. people need to understand that condemning language towards gays and lesbians -- no matter how much it is now couched in language about "change is possible" or whatever -- is every bit as hurtful as blatantly racist or sexist language.
 
martha said:
diamond, I think the man you quoted gives us all plenty of reasons to despise Falwell.

you folks are free to choose, however when you despise the person, instead of his ideologies, you lose- there is a better way.

if you take Mr White's example, it's apparent he didn't hate Jerry personally, only some of Jerry's religious interpretations -and that's my position.

In short don't hate people, love all people unconditionally like Mr White did, altough having your differences.

dbs
 
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Irvine511 said:


this is lovely.

I think you'd really dig Wallis' perspective, and that of Sojourners in general. I know I become a bigger fan every time I read his stuff. He's exciting and refreshing at the same time. There's a good substance to his perspective — and it's Biblical, too.
 
diamond said:
In short don't hate people, love all people unconditionally like Mr White did, altough having your differences.



i think this is good advice. but i don't think it was practiced by Mr. Falwell.

but then, i think it's fair to ask people to rise above who and what Falwell was.

it's good that people can be more generous to him than he was to them.
 
Irvine511 said:




i think this is good advice. but i don't think it was practiced by Mr. Falwell.

but then, i think it's fair to ask people to rise above who and what Falwell was.

it's good that people can be more generous to him than he was to them.

perfect
:hug:
 
coemgen said:
This is from Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners (www.sojo.net) and author of "God's Politics," which is well done. (Even Bono endorses the book and is a friend of Wallis.)


"I watched much of the cable television coverage of Jerry Falwell’s death and legacy. And I did a lot of grimacing, both from the uncritical adulations of his allies (who just passed over the divisive character of much of Falwell’s rhetoric), and also from the ugly vitriol from some of Falwell’s enemies (who attacked both his character and his faith). And there were even some who attacked all people of faith. I ended up being glad that I passed up all the invitations to be on those shows. On the day of Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death, I was content to offer a brief statement, which read:
I was saddened to learn that Rev. Jerry Falwell passed away this morning at age 73. Rev. Falwell and I met many times over the years, as the media often paired us as debate partners on issues of faith and politics. I respected his passionate commitment to his beliefs, and our shared commitment to bringing moral debate to the public square, although we didn’t agree on many things. At this time, however, what matters most is our prayers for comfort and peace for his family and friends.
Two days later, I might add that Falwell, in his own way, did help to teach Christians that their faith should express itself in the public square and I am grateful for that, even if the positions Falwell took were often at great variance with my own. I spent much of my early Christian life fighting the privatizing of faith, characterized by the withdrawal of any concern for the world (so as to not be “worldly”) and an exclusive focus on private matters. If God so loved the world, God must care a great deal about what happens to it and in it. Falwell agreed with that, and blew the trumpet that awakened fundamentalist Christians to engage the world with their faith and moral values. And that commitment is a good thing. Jerry and I debated often about how faith should impact public life and what all the great moral issues of our time really are.

"But many conservative Christians are now also embracing poverty, HIV/AIDS, Darfur, sexual trafficking, and even the war in Iraq as matters of faith and moral imperatives. It would have been nice to hear on those TV shows that Jerry Falwell, too, had moved to embrace a broader agenda than just abortion and homosexuality. Rev. Falwell, who was admittedly racist during the civil rights movement, was in later years honored by the Lynchburg NAACP for his turn-about on the issue of race, showing the famous founder of the Religious Right’s capacity to grow and change. But two nights ago on television, I saw the pain on the face of gay Christian Mel White, who lamented that despite his and other’s efforts, Falwell never did even moderate his strong and often inflammatory language (even if maintaining his religious convictions) against gay and lesbian people. They still feel the most wounded by the fundamentalist minister’s statements; that healing has yet to be done.

"Ralph Reed said that Jerry Falwell presided over the “marriage ceremony” between religious fundamentalists and the Republican Party. That’s still a concern about the Religious Right for many of us, and should be a warning for the relationship of any so-called religious left with the Democrats. But perhaps in the overly partisan mistakes that Jerry Falwell made - and actually pioneered - we can all be instructed in how to forge a faith that is principled but not ideological, political but not partisan, engaged but not used. That’s how the Catholic Bishops put it, and it is a better guide than the direction we got from the Moral Majority. But Falwell proclaimed a public faith, not a private one. And I am with him on that. As I like to say, God is personal, but never private. So let’s pray for Jerry Falwell’s family, the members of his Thomas Road Baptist Church, and all the students at his Liberty University. And let’s learn from his legacy - about how and how not to best apply our faith to politics."

:hi5: I subscribe to sojo too.

I felt weird about Falwell's death too. Part of me wanted to say some comments. Part of me wanted to keep my mouth shut. We kinda stopped making fun of him and Liberty U for a bit (I work in Student Affairs, so they are pretty much the butt of a lot of our jokes because it is really not that great of an institution.)

But...I've ultimately kept my mouth shut. I feared if I said/thought nasty things about him now that he is dead, than I would become those things about him that I disliked the most. It is unfortunate for the school though, that this happened right before graduation. I'm sure that will be a somber ceremony for them.

Right on, diamond. For once, I think I agree with you :)
 
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