 | Why Jerry Fallwell Killed the Moral Majority |  |
The emergence of the New Christian Right was one of the important stories of the 1980 presidential campaign, and for most of this decade, one man (Jerry Falwell) and his organization (the Moral Majority) monopolized media coverage of the growing political consciousness among conservative Christians.
After an initial period of awe over his apparent power, the mass media challenged his credibility and forecast his early demise from the national political scene. Despite repeated pronouncements of his demise, Falwell has refused to fade like a morning glory in the noon-day sun. Wherever he has gone, whatever he has done, he has commanded media attention with perhaps as much skill as anyone in America with the exception of the incumbent of the White House.
In January of 1986, without any advance warnings, Falwell boldly announced the creation of a new political arm which would go by the name of Liberty Federation. This new organization would continue the activities and interests of the Moral Majority, while also pursuing a broader agenda. "We want to continue to be the standard bearer for traditional American values. But it's time to broaden our horizons as well" Falwell said in a press announcement.
This dramatic move to kill the Moral Majority bore some resemblance to killing the goose that laid the golden egg. For over six years the name Moral Majority, as much as the brilliantly combative persona of Jerry Falwell, had served as a cannon and a lightning rod -- both dishing it out and taking the heat. The name Moral Majority served also as a battle cry arousing conservative Christians and encouraging them to become involved in the political process. And it also sent tremors of fear and indignation into the hearts of millions of liberals.
How could Jerry Falwell decide to kill such an important symbol and communications instrument? From the beginning of high public visibility both Falwell and the Moral Majority have been controversial. Neither the man nor the organization has ever ranked very high in polls of public approval. In deciding to kill the name Moral Majority, Falwell apparently reasoned that he had reached a point where there was more to be gained by jettisoning the negative aspects of the name than in carrying the liabilities that had accrued to the name. That rationale seemed paramount in his press statement:
Hence, like a giant corporation deciding a new name would be good for business, Falwell said his political arm would henceforth be known as the Liberty Federation, not the Moral Majority.
Most commentators responded to Falwell's change of name with seeming indifference. Considering the tens of thousands of column inches of print on the Moral Majority over the previous six years, there was only brief notice and little analysis of the reasoning behind the change to Liberty Federation. "...[E]xtremism never does very well for very long in this country" wrote Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory. America had become fed-up with Falwell's "holier-than-thou" behavior. "[I]f Falwell wishes to realize his goal of making this a 'Christian nation,'" she stated with confidence, "it will not be enough to change the name of the Moral Majority to Liberty Federation. He must change his own."
Most of the media had long believed that Falwell and his band of "religious zealots" were neither moral nor a majority. So, without much pause for reflection or analysis, they seemed to accept the name change as an admission of failure and moved on to another story. Pat Robertson's interest in running for president quickly became the focal point of news about conservative religion and politics.
Before the Moral Majority is forgotten completely, or we witness its resurrection without remembering that it died, it is useful to examine more carefully Falwell's rationale for the name change.
The thesis we shall advance is that Falwell had very good reason to kill the Moral Majority, but that reason was not the one he advanced, i.e., unloading the negative baggage that had accrued as a result of so much tarring and feathering from the media. Contrary to the general media impression that the name chance represented admission of failure,
Our conclusions are reached through a circuitous route and are not without ambiguity and irony. The circuitous route takes us through the yellowing pages of back issues of the Moral Majority Report, the official news publication of the Moral Majority. They reveal secrets of suspected organizational impotence -- unobtrusive measures as real as the dental records of a deceased mortal.
The ambiguity of the story is that we will never be able to assess empirically the degree to which the Moral Majority was responsible for stimulating political action by conservative Christians in America. One of the oldest propositions in sociological lore is that when people believe something to be real, it becomes real in its consequences. Notwithstanding considerable evidence of a gigantic hoax, the media and people from every walk of political life from the far right to the far left believed the Moral Majority to be a well organized and significant social movement organization. As a result of this widely held belief, the Moral Majority was significant. But there was scarcely any social movement organization there at all.
The irony of the story, hence, is that Jerry Falwell's requiem for the giant he slew was probably not very far from an accurate assessment:
| Why Jerry Fallwell Killed the Moral Majority | |