University of Virginia Library

Chapter 9
The Mobilization of the Moral Majority

Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority was the most visible component of the religious right in the early 1980s. This chapter examines Falwell's rationale for creating a political organization, identifies those influential in encouraging him to do so, and analyzes the development of his political impact.

Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell, like many other evangelical and fundamentalist preachers, once took serious exception to the mixing of religion and politics. That point of view was particularly widespread in

the South during the mid-1960s when northern students and clergy crossed the Mason-Dixon Line in droves to buoy up the civil rights movement.

On March 21, 1965, Jerry Falwell preached a sermon entitled "Ministers and Marchers" in which he boldly chastised clergy for their involvement in civil rights. That same day, hundreds of clergy assembled along with thousands of other civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama, for the resumption of a march on Montgomery that had earlier been interrupted by violence. Falwell told his audience that not only were the marchers engendering hate and unrest, but their methods ran contrary to a minister's calling. "Believing the Bible as I do," he said, "I would find it impossible to stop preaching the pure saving gospel of Jesus Christ, and begin doing anything else—including fighting communism, or participating in civil rights reforms. As a God-called preacher, I find that there is no time left after I give the proper time and attention to winning people to Christ. Preachers are not called to be politicians but to be soul winners." Elsewhere in that sermon Falwell argued, "Nowhere are we commissioned to reform the externals . . . . The gospel does not clean up the outside but rather regenerates the inside."

Jerry Falwell now believes he was wrong about clerical involvement in politics, and he jokes about trying to buy back copies of that sermon, which was printed as a booklet. Apparently there are plenty of other ministers whose minds have changed, too. A 1980 survey of clergy in metropolitan Charlotte, North Carolina, revealed that 90 percent of those responding felt it was their duty to speak out on social and political issues—and most felt the pulpit was a proper forum. Indeed, sociologists Norman B. Koller and Joseph D. Retzer discovered that the clergy talk a great deal about social and political issues. The majority of those polled indicated that during the previous year they had at least mentioned in sermons nineteen of twenty topics on the sociologists' checklist!

For a conservative southern community, it's hard to believe that this doesn't represent a radical departure from the 1960s when conservatives were so critical of liberal clergy for their involvement in civil rights. Of course, it's hard to say with certainty that the clerical community of Charlotte is representative

of clergy all over the country—or even all over the South. So overwhelming is their engagement in political commentary, however, that we would be surprised to find that clergy in other communities are not following the same course. Liberal clergy have long believed it is proper to speak out on social and political issues, so if the Charlotte survey is at all typical of what is happening in the rest of the United States, the shift can be attributed to significantly greater proportions of conservative clergy speaking their minds.

In 1977 Albert Menendez published a book about voting behavior in which he concluded that evangelical Christians in this country constitute a "sleeping giant." Even before the 1980 campaign began to gear up, evangelical leaders began making bold assertions about the potential of an evangelical vote. Prophesying that the giant was about to awaken, Robert Grant, co-founder of Christian Voice, told his followers, "If Christians unite, we can do anything. We can pass any law or amendment. And that is exactly what we intend to do." Pat Robertson often expressed the same confidence to viewers of "The 700 Club": "We have enough votes to run the country . . . . And when the people say ‘we've had enough,’ we are going to take over the country. "

The outcome of the 1980 elections persuaded many Americans that the sleeping giant had awakened and was signaling at the ballot box, "We've had enough." The surprise of the elections was not Reagan's victory, but rather the crushing defeat of many liberal leaders of Congress. The Reverend Jerry Falwell didn't waste a moment in claiming responsibility. During the campaign he had repeatedly stated that Moral Majority would register 4 million voters. Immediately after the election he claimed that in addition to having achieved that goal, Moral Majority had activated an additional 10 million church members. The Reagan landslide, he argued, could be significantly attributed to the Christian political movement led by Moral Majority. "Church people," he told a reporter, "are the secret ingredient that none of the pollsters counted on." He told another reporter on election night that "in every campaign where the station champions of Moral Majority were involved, we have not lost. We batted a thousand tonight."

The shock of the election results, plus the high visibility of Falwell and Moral Majority in the weeks preceding the election, made his claims credible. And there were quite a few defeated senators and congressmen who agreed with him. Pollster Louis Harris sanctified this interpretation of the election outcome when his post-election survey credited the "moral majority" with the margin of victory. But Harris made a blunder in his operational definition of "moral majority" that deserves to go down in the annals of polls alongside the famous 1948 Chicago Tribune poll that gave John Dewey a victory over Harry Truman. Yet hardly anyone noticed. The question Harris used to determine whether people belonged to the "moral majority" was: "Do you belong to, or attend in person, watch on television, listen on radio, or receive literature from any evangelical church or preacher?" If a person answered any one of these affirmatively, they were classified among the "moral majority." And in his syndicated report, Harris made reference to those people as "followers of the TV evangelical preachers."

What Harris did was to assume that all persons who are in any way associated with evangelical religion were supporters of Moral Majority and its causes. That this was not the ease, however, was apparent in Harris's own data. In a poll conducted a month earlier, he used the same question but did not call evangelicals the "moral majority" in his findings. What he found then was quite different from the findings of his post-election report—and from what could be inferred from examination of Moral Majority documents.

For example, in that earlier survey only one in three white evangelicals agreed with the statement "It is impossible to be a liberal politically and also be a good Christian." And only 37 percent of them agreed with the statement "Most sex-education courses in the schools are really little more than pornography." Even on the question of abortion, which the New Christian Right is solid in identifying as murder, 45 percent of the white evangelicals in the Harris poll did not favor a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion. In short, a sizable proportion of those Lou Harris has identified as the "moral majority" don't agree at all with the "official" positions of the Moral Majority organization.

Still, there is a solid core of support for the conservative ideologies of Moral Majority and other New Christian Right groups. To rush to the judgment that all evangelical Americans have already jumped, or are about to jump, on the Moral Majority bandwagon, however, is to misjudge seriously the heterogeneous nature of the evangelical community and to misinterpret the available evidence.

Evangelicals did vote decisively for Ronald Reagan. A voter exit poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS showed that white "born-again" Protestants voted 61 percent for Reagan, 34 percent for Carter. The results of an ABC exit poll were very close, giving Reagan 59 percent and Carter 33 percent. That margin, however, is not dramatically out of line with support Reagan received from other sectors of society. Polls conducted throughout the presidential campaign which ascertained "born-again" status of voters showed a pretty even split between Carter and Reagan. During the last weeks of the 1980 campaign Reagan and Carter were running nip and tuck. Given the normal range of sampling error, the election was "too close to call." A pre-election poll conducted in Virginia by political scientist Larry Sabato produced results almost identical to the national pattern—an even split of evangelicals for Carter and Reagan. Then, just before election day, the undecided broke decidedly for Reagan. White evangelicals merely followed this marked shift.

Analysis of voting behavior and post-election polls all seem to point to the conclusion that an awful lot of Americans voted for a change. A New York Times/CBS pre-and post-election poll of the same people revealed that 20 percent of registered voters changed their minds in the last four days of the campaign, and about three-fifths of those who changed did so in a way that hurt Carter. Last-minute activities relating to the American hostages in Iran served to remind the electorate of lots of other things that had upset them about the Carter administration. But in the final analysis, it was probably the grim specter of inflation that led the majority of "undecideds" to vote their pocketbooks. A post-election Gallup survey showed no discernible ideological shift to the right. Voters were just plain mad, and anyone with any real vulnerabilities felt their wrath.

In this context, the organizational efforts of New Christian

Right groups were no doubt felt. There is real evidence of Moral Majority organization in some states. Indiana is such an example. In early October, state chairman Greg Dixon, pastor of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, reported that Moral Majority had local chapters in all ninety-two counties in the state. On election day Senator Birch Bayh and Representative John Brademas, a twenty-two-year House veteran and majority whip, went down in defeat. There was evidence of active Moral Majority organization in other states as well. But there are important instances where liberal and moderate incumbents held onto their seats in the face of apparent organized opposition from the New Christian Right. Democratic House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Texas won despite opposition from several conservative groups and individuals, including evangelist James Robison, who lives in Wright's congressional district. Democratic Senator Alan Cranston of California easily retained his seat despite his having been targeted by Christian Voice for his zero score on its "Report Card"—and California is presumably the stronghold of Christian Voice organizational strength.

It all adds up to the conclusion that the New Christian Right flexed its youthful muscles in the 1980 election. When all the post-election analyses are completed, however, and when all the other factors that affected the election are taken into account, it may be very difficult to locate unequivocal evidence of its decisiveness.

What do we make, then, of Jerry Falwell's claims about the influence of the Moral Majority? For all the indicators of success, including the phenomenal amount of media attention, Falwell's claims about Moral Majority are like his claims about the listening audience of "The Old-Time Gospel Hour"—exaggerated.

During the campaign Falwell variously claimed 2 to 3 million members for Moral Majority, including 72,000 pastors. The numbers just don't square with the evidence. For one thing, Moral Majority doesn't really have a national membership. In October of 1980 Michael Farris, executive director of Moral Majority of Washington State, claimed that his membership of 12,000 was the largest of the fifty state chapters. By simple

arithmetic, if every state had that many members, Moral Majority would be 600,000 strong—not 2 to 3 million.

By Falwell's own admission, the circulation of the Moral Majority Report at election time was 482,000. If Moral Majority itself had 2 to 3 million members, are we to believe that only one-fourth to one-sixth received the organization's newspaper? Neither Jerry Falwell nor his computer is that lax.

We could go on about how 72,000 pastors would represent nearly half of the Protestant evangelical pastors in the country, about how registering 4 million new voters would have required every person on the mailing list of Moral Majority Report in the early fall to register ten people each, about how absolutely impossible it is to determine the real numerical strength of such a fledgling yet widespread movement. But it seems obvious to us that Falwell is simply once again exercising the ministerial license for exaggeration—and once again taking the media and the public for a little ride. Only this time the stakes are a lot higher.

Jerry Falwell understands well the importance of a media image. As with the ostentatious big-spending entrepreneur, or the vivacious high-living entertainment star, the image of success is as important to developing a social movement as it is to promoting personal careers or business success. The appearance of success draws the media just as certainly as the hard evidence of achievement. When the media found Falwell and his Moral Majority, there was already a lot of motion. But the motion was mostly the cranking up of a social movement organization, not the motion of a well-greased, smoothly functioning machine.

The real importance of the Moral Majority and other New Christian Right organizations is not in what they accomplished during the 1980 elections, but rather in the potential they represent as a burgeoning social movement. There are three reasons for this. First, there is much restlessness and discontent in America today, and much of it is mobilizable in the name of Christian virtue. The number of evangelicals in America is large—very large. Second, every important social movement since the advent of television has been developed through mass communications. Marches and demonstrations are means to gain

the attention of the news media and thereby bring the cause of a social movement's leaders into America's living rooms on the evening news. The New Christian Right doesn't have to draw a crowd to attract the attention of the media; they have merely to turn on their television cameras. At present the television preachers aren't reaching the audiences they claim they are, but the audiences are sufficiently large to develop powerful social movement organizations. And when they want the rest of the country to pay attention, they can use the airwaves to organize media events like Washington for Jesus and the National Affairs Briefing. The organizers of Washington for Jesus are planning approximately twenty rallies to take place in various states, commencing in spring 1981 and culminating with a return to Washington in April 1982. They continue to maintain that their effort is nonpolitical, but the strong political overtones are no less apparent now than they were during the Washington for Jesus rally.

The third factor that makes the potential of the New Christian Right so awesome is that its leaders have mastered the use of the ancillary technology of television that pivots around the computer, the foundation of which is direct mail targeted to audiences likely to be sympathetic to a cause. It is a proven way to raise big money and galvanize people in support of a cause. Toll-free telephone numbers facilitate that galvanization.

The next four years will be critical in determining whether the New Christian Right can develop a real base of political power and, if it does, shaping the manner in which that power will be exercised and deciding what goals will be pursued.

As the head of Moral Majority, no one will have a more important role in shaping the direction of the New Christian Right than Jerry Falwell. Many people see him as the personification of ultraconservative right-wing politics in America and, as such, a grave threat to our cherished liberties.

Falwell has on any number of occasions expressed views that are downright scary. And sometimes his behavior gives cause to question the sincerity of his more palatable rhetoric and whether he really understands the meaning of free speech. His concept of a debate, for example, is closer to a verbal free-for-all than a

setting, governed by rules, in which both sides have the opportunity to express their views.

Falwell speaks boldly of defending the free speech of others, but in almost the same breath he makes comments that leave one with the uneasy feeling that he is prepared to withhold that right if what one speaks is morally offensive to him. On the subject of pornography, for example—and much of what Falwell would define as pornography others would consider art on the one hand and just bad taste on the other—he told a Moral Majority rally in Richmond, Virginia, "I'm for censorship of anything that is not fit for our children to see. " But who is to make the decision about what is fit? And about those who produce the literature he considers pornographic, Falwell told that same meeting, "People like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt ought to be in the penitentiary."

Such words don't sound like the words of a man prepared to live in a pluralistic society. They also don't sound like the words of a man who says he believes in the separation of church and state, doesn't want to control government or establish a Christian republic—all viewpoints Falwell has expressed on numerous occasions.

To watch Jerry Falwell a little is to understand why a lot of people believe him to be a man for whom the ends justify any means. To watch him rather more carefully, however, and to understand his Baptist background, is to understand that Jerry Falwell may not really be "the most dangerous man in America," as he has been described by some of his adversaries.

Jerry Falwell was born and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, not very far from the Thomas Road Baptist Church, which he founded and where he has spent his entire ministry. He attended school at Lynchburg College, only a few blocks away, until he had a conversion experience during his sophomore year. The only time he was ever away from Lynchburg was while he attended Baptist Bible College, a fundamentalist school in a small town in the Midwest Bible Belt.

His television program is broadcast all across the land, and he jets around the country in his own plane, but Jerry Falwell has never strayed very far psychologically, intellectually, or theologically

from his Baptist roots in Lynchburg. Until recently he was a spiritual E. F. Hutton for fundamentalists: whenever he spoke, people listened; his word was gospel. But mostly he spoke only to fundamental Bible believers and other kindred spirits. As long as that was his world, no one outside it much cared what he said. Not until the late 1970s, when he began to talk politics, did the rest of the world begin to cup its ears and listen.

Much of Falwell's strident language and shoot-from-the-hip behavior may just be the result of his being a big fish in a little pond for so many years. Travel the back roads of the Bible Belt and look for big Baptist churches. Chances are that when you find one, you'll find a preacher who behaves a whole lot like Jerry Falwell. One needs to be cautious about stereotyping, but Falwell is a caricature of a successful Baptist preacher. He is intelligent, outgoing. charismatic, caring, and a little boastful. And even though success tends to go to their heads just a little, preacher boys like him love and give of themselves to their congregations, and they are in turn revered by their followers. When these Baptist ministers preach about social issues which for them are mostly private sins, they sound a whole lot like Jerry Falwell.

It wasn't until 1980 that the national press discovered Falwell. For many who were assigned to cover an event where he appeared, it was the first exposure to fundamentalist religion. Many were quick to see him in unfavorable stereotypical terms, and at least some of what Falwell said reinforced those stereotypes. The truth of the matter is that many who have written about Jerry Falwell share a disposition to which Falwell himself is not immune—namely, a profound distaste for anyone with a different world view. Few reporters, however, have been as candid in admitting their bias against Falwell and fundamentalism as was Teresa Carpenter, who did a cover feature for the Village Voice. Somewhat taken aback by Falwell's charm and sincerity, Carpenter wrote: "You can either give Jerry Falwell the benefit of the doubt, that is keep an open mind. Or you can assume he is a sophisticated snake oil salesman. I tend toward the latter, and that, I will be the first to admit, is a purely emotional reaction. Whenever I step within a 10-foot radius of a fundamental minister my reason clouds over."

As Jerry Falwell's visibility soared, the press watched and

listened ever more attentively. And on several occasions he said things that he would like to be able to take back. The first embarrassing episode occurred early in the summer of 1980 when he was nailed by the press, on a leak from the White House, for loose and careless talk about a conversation with President Carter that never really happened. At first he defended his remarks as "merely allegory," but gradually he backed away. Although he never fully recanted, he did eventually apologize—on national television.

And then there was the occasion when he defended the comment of Southern Baptist President Bailey Smith on the matter of whether God hears the prayers of Jews. He gave a theological response not unlike one a learned rabbi might have given in response to a question about the Jews' view of Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Nevertheless, Falwell agreed with Bailey Smith: "God does not hear the prayers of Jews." Shortly afterward, Falwell was honored by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, along with Senators Frank Church, Henry Jackson, and Jacob Javits, for support of Israel's right to exist. But this event passed almost unnoticed while Falwell continued to receive negative press for his defense of Bailey Smith. Falwell must surely have been confused about the press's priorities.

If 1980 was the year the national press discovered the television preacher from Lynchburg, Virginia, it may also have been the year that Jerry Falwell discovered the world to be bigger and more complex than he had previously imagined. His response to a reporter about having doubts was one of the most revealing moments in his budding role in U.S. politics during the 1980 campaign. The questioner was Marvin Kalb on "Meet the Press. "

These could easily be the words of a smooth-talking politician who knows the value of the middle of the road—if the road will take him to Washington. Or they could be the sincere reflections of a man from the Bible Belt ghetto who has discovered that Baptist preachers may not be the authority on or even understand all that is happening in the modern world. Might this possibly be a man discovering a world beyond the Thomas Road Baptist Church and people whose lives are guided by principles not frequently elucidated on "The Old-Time Gospel Hour"?

In that same interview, Kalb asked Falwell this question: " . . . when you speak of having a divine mandate to carry your message to Congress . . . I don't mean for this to be a frivolous question but you've read the Old Testament and you know that Abraham had conversations with God . . . I wonder, do you feel that you have conversations with God?"

Without hesitating for even a moment, Falwell responded: "No, I really don't." A dangerous ayatollah who takes orders directly from God and no one else? Would Falwell hide his mystic leanings to find greater acceptance? It doesn't seem likely.

Holy men who are convinced that God speaks to them have little choice but to obey His voice. No price is too great, no means illegitimate, in the pursuit of God's will. But men of God who are confined to something less than face-to-face dialog with the Almighty as their source of knowledge of His will may also be capable of discerning the limits of their own ability to know His wishes. They may even be able to accept the possibility that someone of a different persuasion has insights into God's hopes and purposes for mankind. Maybe.

A glimpse of this latter possibility was evident when Falwell met William Sloane Coffin on the Phil Donahue show. Coffin is the senior minister of perhaps the most prestigious liberal Protestant pulpit in the United States and is best known for his civil rights and antiwar activities. It is hard to imagine any clergyman being more diametrically opposed to Falwell on so many issues.

Something rather unexpected happened on "Donahue." Falwell

and Coffin found themselves agreeing with each other on several issues each had presumed to be a bone of contention. Furthermore, Falwell appeared to be genuinely intrigued by and respectful of Coffin. Only occasionally did he launch into his canned lines, and on any number of occasions he listened when, on previous occasions, he had interrupted his "debating" partner. Might it just be possible that Falwell is beginning to develop respect for those with whom he disagrees?

But what about those statements regarding censorship of anything that is harmful to our children and putting Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt in prison? We asked Falwell about that statement. What he had to say reveals the depths of his concern about pornography while it is a confession of the carelessness of his language: "I feel the pornography industry is the poison of the American spirit. And I personally feel that people who are profiting off the destruction of the moral values of young people are criminal in heart, if not in act. It probably is an extreme position when I say they belong in the penitentiary, and if I possessed the ability to exercise it, wouldn't. I would say that while I suppose that's an overstatement or an overreaction to the damage they're doing, I do feel that legislatively we need to look at the porn industry and look at what it's doing to our young people—not just young people, but old people as well—and establish legal guidelines that would make it criminal. It think that when we cause young people to lose all respect for the family, for morality, for ethics; when we poison their minds and hearts with this kind of garbage, we're doing them damage, we're really doing society damage."

We're not very comfortable with the cause-and-effect link that Falwell makes between pornography and the moral values and behavior of our society (a Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography produced nine volumes of data that failed to establish such a relationship). But there is certainly nothing wrong or threatening to civil liberties to propose that we look at the effects of pornography on our society.

As for censorship, Falwell says he agrees with the Supreme Court that we should establish community standards, but insofar as the airwaves are concerned, he thinks we need national

standards. He objects to the moral content of much of what comes over the national airwaves, and he does not see a violation of the rights of others in organizing pressure to alter those standards. The fear of contamination is strong. Pay television is a different matter, however. If adults want to pay to receive dirty movies in their homes, that's their business, he says. But the majority of Americans, who Falwell feels agree with him, shouldn't have to be subjected to such materials over network television. As for printed matter, he says he would like to see it on shelves where it is out of the reach of children.

A few weeks after the 1980 election Jerry Falwell wrote a short paper on "The Real Intent of Moral Majority," which stated in part: "It has never been and never will be the intent of Moral Majority to imply that those who disagree with us are the ‘immoral minority.’ The name of the organization was chosen because we felt it expressed an attitude held by a majority of Americans of many different religious and, in some cases, no religious backgrounds. We are not intent on forcing Christianity or any other religious faith on anyone else. We simply feel that in a pluralistic society our views have as much right to be heard and considered as anyone else's views, and it is to that end we are committed. "

Is all of this just so much snake oil? Perhaps. But then perhaps Jerry Falwell is learning that when you play under the spotlight in the big tent, you'd better say what you mean because someone is going to print it and take it seriously. Jerry Falwell's views are conservative—no question about that. Many of them are, in principle as offensive to liberals as liberals' views are offensive to Falwell and his followers. The critical question is what means he is willing to employ in the pursuit of his goals for America. Is he willing to play by the rules, as he says, or will the end justify the means?

The liberal establishment has more than likely overreacted to any immediate threat posed by Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority to the civil liberties of the people of this nation. But in the final analysis, that overreaction may be for the good. It has certainly given the New Christian Right cause to reflect about what it really wants and about what means it is willing to use to

achieve its goals. The reaction has also alerted a significant segment of society to the fact that its values are being challenged. And whenever something we cherish is challenged, we are forced to consider anew why it is important to us. We can hardly be a poorer people for having reexamined our values and, if they are really being threatened, protecting them.

Even if the great fears many Americans have about Moral Majority are not realized, there is still one unsettling aspect of the political involvement of the New Christian Right. At the edge of the left and the right stand spokesmen for a lunatic fringe who do hear voices or are otherwise confident that they have both special insights about what is wrong with society and a mandate to pursue their goals. The United States is currently experiencing a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan and anti-Semitic activities the likes of which we have not experienced for many years. So also are we experiencing a new boldness by religious bigots. The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, for example, reported a fivefold increase in attempted censorship in the month after the election. Two brothers who believe rock-n-roll music is the handmaiden of Satan travel the country as itinerant preachers and organize record-burning rallies. Throughout the country there are reports of renewed intolerance by religious zealots.

The leaders of the New Christian Right would like to believe that such happenings are unrelated to their social movement. But it's not that simple. The lunatic fringe may not be the constituency of the New Christian Right, but the latter's success certainly gives those who commit excesses reason to believe that their acts are acceptable and legitimate. No greater damage was done to the civil rights movement than when its leadership failed to denounce unequivocally violence committed in its name. It would be similarly dangerous for the New Christian Right to ignore the threat of the lunatics.

Jerry Falwell, James Robison, and all the other television preachers cannot stop the lunatic fringe, but they can define the boundaries of lunacy by firmly denouncing those who have no regard for or understanding of human rights in a pluralistic society. And to the extent that the televangelists do command the

respect of conservative preachers in America, they can certainly help prevent the spread of madness among their ranks. The credibility of the New Christian Right may well be defined in terms of how it reacts to those who stand on the same end of the political spectrum but beyond the consensual rules of U. S. politics. Given the semiautonomous nature of Moral Majority chapters, this may well be Jerry Falwell's greatest challenge.