Six miles high, flying through the midnight sky in his white, Israeli-made jet, the inexhaustible Reverend Jerry Falwell was on his way to Boston, scheduled to appear the following morning on a television show. During the trip, however, an urgent telephone message arrived: there was a suicide emergency at Falwell’s center for alcoholics in Lynchburg, Va. A distraught veteran was threatening to blow his head off with a loaded pistol unless Falwell came back and talked to him. The would-be suicide was put on the phone, and, slick as butter, the Reverend began to calm him. Falwell explained, as one reasonable person to another, that he had to be on a national television program. But, Falwell promised, he would certainly be back in Virginia by 6 o’clock that evening. The veteran agreed to wait. Falwell did his show, flew home, met the upset man and converted him to Christ. Obviously, it takes a lot to deflect Jerry Falwell from broadcasting his message, for television is the pump of his vast Fundamentalist empire. And yet there is something shockingly worldly about his endless selling. What are we to make of this fatherly Bible banger, this artful entrepreneur in rube’s clothing who sups with Presidents and world leaders, and reaches out directly to the simplest of men and women? His earnest warnings about America’s moral decay, the breakdown of family values, are instinctively appealing. Is he, as his followers proclaim, the truest and bravest voice in the whole Fundamentalist movement, crying out against the rising tide of sin and sleaze? Or is he, with his swift mind and glib tongue, a modern Elmer Gantry, a power preacher with a corrupt soul? Falwell is the most effective–and maybe because of his tremendous impact, the most unnerving–of the nation’s video preachers. His is a spectacularly risky mission. He must on the one hand reassure his zealous followers that he is faithful to the fierce absolutes of the Bible. At the same time, he must appear reasonable and unmenacing to the watching outside world. Explains Falwell: “We want to be part of society without endorsing all the philosophies and life-styles of that society.” Just to keep going, Falwell must raise $100 million a year, promoting religion with all his corporate daring and guile. His Thomas Road Church in Lynchburg is the cockpit of the whole enterprise. Jammed with TV directors and monitoring screens, it is where Falwell tapes his Sunday-morning service, which is broadcast that evening as the Old Time Gospel Hour to 392 stations across the country. A bank of 62 telephone operators takes incoming pledges after the show. Beyond Lynchburg, reaching into all 50 states, is Falwell’s most controversial venture, Moral Majority, a lobbying and political-action group that claims 6.5 million members. Falwell started Moral Majority in 1979, thrusting the religious right into front-line politics. The way Falwell saw it, if liberal clergymen could march for civil rights, conservative Fundamentalists could wage political war on immorality. Moral Majority espoused an odd ecumenism that aligned Falwell on various issues with Catholics, Jews and Mormons, all scorned in the past by strict Fundamentalists.
