Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Jerry Falwell, RIP


The great tragedy of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died today at 73, is that he lived to see his "Moral Majority" rode hard and put away wet by the Republican politicians with whom he cast his lot -- and evangelicals' lot.

Apart from a hard lesson in politics and the Law of Unintended Consequences that all of us religious and social conservatives have been learning in this new millennium, I can only fault Falwell over matters of style and focus, not real meat-and-potatoes substance. Come to think of it . . . make that one big thing about which I can hit the late reverend.

He was so totally wrong about rock 'n' roll. It ain't the music that's the problem, it's what you do with it that can be the problem.

You probably can figure out the matters of style and focus where I differed with Preacher Falwell, and I've talked about the perils of trying to sanctify politics here. I'm not going to dwell on it now, and I have no desire to add to the postmortem trashing this basically good man now is going to get from basically classless ones.

I have no doubt that Jerry Falwell loved the Lord and did his best. That's pretty much all any one of us can do in a lifetime in this vale of tears, and I commend his soul to a merciful God.

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