An Interview with the Lone Ranger of American Fundamentalism

Because of Jerry Falwell’s impact on both the religious and political scene, and because he and his supporters are concerned that the mass communications media often distort his views, CHRISTIANITY TODAY met with him at Lynchburg, Virginia, for approximately two hours. Following are excerpts from the interview, which was tape-recorded and edited for publication. In it, Falwell answers questions frequently raised about Moral Majority, and about his own philosophy and goals.

The secular press seems eager to discredit Moral Majority. That’s got to hurt.

The press is very powerful; no one would question that. But I’m not afraid of the press. I cannot stop doing what I believe God wants me to do because of a concerted effort by liberal persons in the national news media to hurt us.

Where do you see Moral Majority going?

Moral Majority is going through its most rapid growth right now. The hostility of the national news media that you mentioned has really been the greatest thing that has happened to Moral Majority. I can’t say I enjoy being attacked—but it has helped the movement. People are far more perceptive than 10 years ago, and because of television, we are able to get through to them. Someone in the print media can make what you say sound the way he wants it to sound. This is not possible on “Face the Nation,” “Meet the Press,” or with Phil Donahue or Tom Snyder where we have been able to eyeball the people.

Are you going to keep hammering away at the same issues for the near future?

We’re going to keep banging. We’re going to recruit members. This was a good year, so we are trying to get organized, trying to get those loose cannons out there under control. We’re trying not to throw people out, but to educate and conserve people who may be doing it wrong.

Who are “those loose cannons”? Are some of your local leaders hurting you?

We are not being hurt by some people who make foolish and unfounded announcements in the name of Moral Majority. I look on our national movement as a union leader would the labor movement. Here in southwest Virginia and in parts of West Virginia we have had striking coal miners shooting at nonunion people and throwing rocks at their automobiles. That does not discredit the labor movement in America. We know these criminals are not representatives of labor in general. Likewise, when some uninformed person in Maryland attacks a bakery for making pornographic cookies, or some gentleman in northern California in no way connected with Moral Majority advocates capital punishment for homosexuals, it simply remains for me to repudiate any connection or any endorsement of what they are doing or saying.

You don’t see any need to change the policy by which you allow your name, Moral Majority, to be used by state groups?

There really is no way I can stop it. We have very little problem with our 50 state chairmen and their executive committees. We meet with these people regularly, and conduct seminars. We are less than two years old as a movement, so there is obviously a great deal of maturing and educating to be done. We have very few problems considering there are four million people actively involved, among whom are some 72,000 ministers, priests, and rabbis.

Most of us didn’t learn in seminary what we are doing now, so we have the job of educating each other and orchestrating our goals, our philosophy, our methodology. If someone who really is connected with us occasionally makes an unfounded statement or does something to discredit the movement, I think it is to our advantage to err on the side of liberty rather than to have a monarchy where Jerry Falwell is the only spokesman and makes all the decisions and controls every part of the movement. It will not be a national movement unless there is pluralism in the leadership.

What are your really deep spiritual goals for the Moral Majority? What would you like to see happen?

I would like to see Moral Majority become a very powerful and positive movement for morality in this country. And I would hope that in this decade we will be able to bring the nation back to an appreciation of the traditional values and moral principles that really have been the American way for 200 years. I’d like to see the family become prominent in our society again. I would like to see television featuring united families rather than broken and distorted families. I would like to see language on the television screen again assume some dignity and gravity, and not be seasoned with profanity. I would like to see the country become more sensitive. I can see Moral Majority creating a sensitivity among the American people for the needs of the unfortunate, the poor, and the disenfranchised that will cause the private sector, particularly the churches, to fill the vacuum that is going to be created by the government’s necessary withdrawal from that sphere. I would like to see us remaining nonpartisan, within the two-party system. I would hope that none of Moral Majority’s principal persons would ever run for election to public office at any level.

Would you include yourself in that?

Oh, of course.

Yet you feel a legitimate way to achieve these goals and bring the answer to your prayers is to be involved in the political process.

Moral Majority for me is definitely a movement in which I am involved as a private citizen—period! I do not involve Thomas Road Baptist Church. The church has never given a dollar to the movement. When our people come here to church they hear the Bible taught and preached, they don’t hear Moral Majority. I doubt if I’ve mentioned the words Moral Majority 10 times in Thomas Road Baptist Church.

What is your relationship with fundamentalist pastors who probably don’t see eye to eye with you on many of your involvements?

The most aggressive leaders in Moral Majority are fundamentalist pastors. That isn’t necessary, because Moral Majority is not a religious organization; it’s political. There is no theological agreement in Moral Majority. At the same time, fundamentalists like me were taught to fight before we were taught to read and write. There is no lack of courage among fundamentalists. Fortunately, fundamentalists like me have been growing up over the past 20 years. We have been finding we can fellowship only in truth, but that we can have friendship in many other affinities.

How would you define a fundamentalist?

Well, there are differences. Definitions change every decade. My definition of a fundamentalist is one who, first, believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, and second, is committed to biblical separation in the world and to the lordship of Christ. For me, the definition of separation from the world may be different from some others’. I don’t use alcoholic beverages and I preach teetotalism. That would be the practice of 18,000 members of this church. I don’t think it has anything to do with salvation. But when I talk about separation, I mean separation from the rock music culture, separation from immorality, separation from the Hollywood culture.

Would you ever say anything on the “Old Time Gospel Hour,” for example, about the deceptive advertising in the Readers Digest by the Mormons?

No, I wouldn’t. On the “Old Time Gospel Hour” I’m preaching the gospel to everybody. I’m not pastoring a church; I’m not developing a spiritual movement. I’m preaching the gospel and attempting to do something for Jesus Christ. If I attack Catholics or Jews or Mormons, or allow anyone to do it on my platform, I have immediately excluded them as a reachable group.

I know you have spoken to Catholics. Have you ever spoken in a synagogue or to a group of Mormons?

I can’t think of anyplace I haven’t preached. As a matter of fact, if I were to take engagements in all the synagogues I’ve been invited to preach in, I’d be preaching every week in a synagogue.

Preaching or talking on the Moral Majority?

Moral Majority. The largest synagogue in this country has invited me to come and speak on Moral Majority. As a gentleman, that is all I would speak on. I would not go there as pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, but as president of Moral Majority, sharing what I think would be our points of coalescing. The same thing is true with the Mormons.

Can’t you slip in a little bit of the gospel in a Moral Majority speech, just in case there is someone out there who hasn’t been converted?

If I want to be deceptive, I can. But I don’t want to be deceptive. What we’ve said from the beginning is that the Moral Majority is a political organization. You’re not going to hear doctrine there. We are not going to try to witness to you there. You come as an American who shares the moral views of the membership, and to fight together on a prolife, profamily, promoral, pro-American position.

Could I pose a hypothetical question? If you would, please, compare Salt Lake City with New York City. Say that in Salt Lake City they took the Moral Majority position right down the line, but because of false doctrine, they would not ultimately go to heaven. New York City has a reputation for the very things Moral Majority is against. Yet there is a possibility that some of those people in the corrupt society in New York City, in spite of their immorality, might be converted and wind up in heaven. Which would you rather see? I’m concerned that we could get the country morally straight and people would still go to hell.

I don’t think there is any problem at all as long as we all know who we are. I’m a Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, soul-winning preacher. I know that the “Old Time Gospel Hour” and Thomas Road church are committed to winning people to Jesus, planting local churches, building Christian schools, and witnessing to everybody, everywhere. At the same time, I think America is great, but not because it is a Christian nation: it is not a Christian nation, it has never been a Christian nation, it is never going to be a Christian nation. It is not a Jewish nation. It is a nation under God, and a nation in which for 200 years there has been absolute freedom to preach whatever religious conviction one might have, without ever impinging on the liberties and freedom of others. Madalyn Murray O’Hair has every right to preach her venomous message.

America has become the greatest nation on earth because of what Solomon said in Proverbs 14 (in paraphrase): “Living by God’s principles promotes a nation to greatness; violating God’s principles brings a nation to shame.”

If a nation or a society lives by divine principles, even though the people personally don’t know the One who taught and lived those principles, that society will be blessed. An unsaved person in business will be blessed by tithing to the work of God. He’ll still go to hell a tither, but God blesses the principle.

I feel that the dignity of life is a principle we protected in this country until 1973. I think the traditional family, the monogamous husband-wife relationship, is a principle that America has honored until lately. Now we have a 40 percent divorce rate and we accept homosexual marriage, so we are beginning to violate that principle. The principle of moral decency has been honored in this country until lately; pornography is a recent phenomenon. All these principles and many others have been honored in this country, and for that reason God has honored the United States. That has nothing to do with whether people go to heaven or hell. It is a personal relationship with Christ that determines that.

In order for the churches in America to evangelize the world, we need the environment of freedom in America that will permit us to do it. If we, through Moral Majority and other such organizations, can protect and preserve those principles, America will stay free, so that the ultimate goal of the gospel—world evangelization—can be pursued by the churches.

So then you can justify Moral Majority by this rather distinct, clear delineation between the political and the spiritual and say that in the long run Moral Majority contributes to the preaching of the gospel and the saving of souls.

Yes. Because it creates and preserves freedom.

You grew up during a time when patriotism went down rather sharply. How did you come by your rather intense patriotism?

There are lots of paradoxes in my development. I grew up in a home where my father did not believe in religious values. He was never inside a church in his life. My mother was a very religious woman. Dad would not allow her to force us to go to church, so we were home on Sunday mornings. My mother would leave the radio on when she left for church, and that is how I heard Charles E. Fuller and became a Christian. I was an 18-year-old college sophomore studying mechanical engineering at the time I was converted. Two months later, in 1952, I felt the call of God to full-time Christian service.

When I was a boy in Virginia, in a redneck society, patriotism was just a part of life. Whatever was for America was right, whether it was right or not. I had an overdose of patriotism as a boy. I also grew up in a segregated society. I was a segregationist, and Thomas Road church was five years old before God flushed that out of my system. I thought segregation and spirituality were the same. I would have fought you over saying that I was prejudiced; I would say it was scriptural. When I first baptized a black man in this church, it caused quite a ripple.

A number of years after that, Thomas Road Baptist Church, which had always been patriotic in a redneck way, really became patriotic in the Christian way. It was through an osmosis by which the Spirit of God, through the Word of God, taught me that I was wrong and made me willing to say it publicly. It cost me a lot of friends for a while. That’s not an issue any more, but it was a big issue in this town 20 years ago. We still have that to overcome with the older black people in this community who remember Jerry Falwell in that context.

But patriotism was just a way of life as a boy. I realized later that one could be committed to his country and still be an internationalist in world missions without compromising either.

God has raised up America in these last days for the cause of world evangelization and for the protection of his people, the Jews. I don’t think America has any other right or reason for existence other than those two purposes.

Speaking of your outspoken support for the Jews, and particularly the Zionists, do you not see a parallel between your former redneck segregationist views and your rather uncritical, enthusiastic support now of the Zionists?

I don’t think so. I have personally examined that possibility in my own heart. I support the Jews, first, for biblical reasons; I take the Abrahamic covenant literally. God has blessed America because we have blessed the Jews. God has also blessed America because we have done more for the cause of world evangelization than any other nation. I also support the Jews because I think, historically, the evidence is on their side that Palestine belongs to them. Legally, they have had the right to be in the land since 1948. I also support the Jews because from the humanitarian perspective, they have the right to exist, and there are a hundred million neighbors who are committed to their extinction. I also support the Jews because they are the only true friends America has in the Middle East.

Could you, through your open support of the Zionists in the Jewish state, help that state to be more democratic in terms of allowing freedom of witness and preaching in Israel?

I talked with the leaders there about that subject. I talked with respect. They have many concerns. Some are valid, some are not valid. They are fighting for survival right now. The Jews look on conservative Christianity as the right wing that has been their enemy in years past. It is only a modern phenomenon that conservative Christianity is pro-Jewish. So-called Christians wiped them out during World War II, and all of them were right-wingers. It has just been in this generation that mature, Bible-believing Christians have stood up and said, “Hey, we are for the Jews because God is for the Jews.” The leadership in conservative Christianity today is solidly behind the state of Israel; there is no question about that. However, the Israelis need more time to be assured of the fact that we don’t have any ulterior motives.

I have no problem preaching in Israel. We have missionaries there. There is no question there are cases and instances where the Arabs are not treated fairly, and I am against that. But I have to look at the overall picture and say that, at this moment, the issue is Israel’s survival. Israel has got to come through this period and have survived, with everybody accepting that. Then, there has to be time for freedom to mature there, as it did in our country. That didn’t happen in revolutionary days. We Baptists had a terrible time in this country 200 years ago. The country has to be safe first before it can talk about internal freedoms.

You seem to be very much together, upbeat and positive. You’re always looking for new worlds to conquer. What are you afraid of? Are you confused?

I have the constant fear of any minister about getting his priorities confused. I must always remember that my first priority is to my wife and children, under God, of course. When I fail there, I fail everywhere. I have a son in college, and a daughter and a son in high school who need me very much. I have to be there to deal with their needs and problems so they can grow up well adjusted and normal. And I do that. I don’t let anybody confuse my priorities.

Second to that, I decided years ago that I am pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Although I have 62 associates who help me minister to the people, I’m their pastor, and I stay committed to meeting their needs. Beyond that, there are the schools, the television, the radio, Moral Majority, and a multiplicity of other things. But I never let the bottom become the top.

Some political leaders are fearful of right-wing “hit lists.” They say these are unfair to our traditional political process. Does Moral Majority have a hit list of congressmen or senators you are trying to defeat?

We have no hit lists. We are not attacking candidates; we are not endorsing or supporting candidates. We did not put Ronald Reagan in office; the perception of that is much greater than the reality. We are committed to issues and principles that the liberal leaders of our nation don’t have on their agenda. We look on abortion as murder. That’s a strong statement and I realize it runs counter to the grain of liberal sociologists and educators. In our reaction against the social gospel, we have ignored the social implications of the gospel in conservative Christianity. In the past five years we became aware of that, and we acknowledged our wrong attitude. We must now make it a priority in the 1980s.

Apparently there is a distinction in your mind, which doesn’t come across in your advertising and in your lectures, that you don’t endorse candidates but you support them. What is the difference?

Someone asked me during the last campaign if I was endorsing candidate Reagan. I said, “No, I’m not. I am voting for him because the platform on which he is campaigning is very near the platform that I believe in.” I did not endorse or publicly promote his candidacy because I want to be able, while he is in office, to criticize him when I think he is wrong. I don’t want any position in the White House. I don’t ever want to be a chaplain or spiritual counselor. I always want to be an outsider. I want to be able to support the president when I think he’s right and oppose him when I think he’s wrong. If he does exactly the opposite of what he campaigned for, I want to be able to say that I voted for him but I was wrong, and that I am now going to work to get him out of office.

However, I do think that Mr. Reagan is the greatest thing that has happened to our country in my lifetime. We have Congressional elections coming up in 1982. Many of the state chapters have political action committees that want to support and endorse candidates, and we allow that.

So your state committees would decide, in fact, who they are going to try to get into office.

Yes, they would. Many of them don’t have political action committees, but they are allowed to. I don’t come in and campaign with them.

Does it bother you at all that they do that?

My preference would be that they didn’t, but many of them have very strong convictions about it. They feel it’s their obligation to do precinct work. I can’t find Scripture to oppose that, and so I don’t get involved.

Who really controls Moral Majority and who decides what the platform is going to be, the four points around which you can build a pluralistic consensus?

We spent about five years chipping out that platform after meeting with Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, fundamentalists. I and three or four others here and there worked on it. We realized we had to create a nonreligious organization where we could address the issues as private citizens and without violating the separation of church and state or the tax-exempt status of our ministries. All the real volatile moral issues had become volatile political issues by the late seventies. We finally arrived at a consensus where everybody said, “Leave it there. If you leave it there we can come in. If you bring in gun control, domestic policy, the Panama Canal, if you bring in this or that segment, it will never proliferate.”

Moral Majority’s position was clearly established in June of 1979 and it has not changed one iota since. And it cannot. We are prolife, protraditional family, promoral, under which we have opposed the illegal drug traffic and pornography, and we are pro-American, which means strong national defense and the State of Israel. If we wanted to add anything, we would have to get all four million people and all 72,000 ministers to agree, because we made a moral commitment to them that this is where we are.

Television comes under pornography. That’s a little fuzzy.

We need to take a position on the violence—on sex and violence. We are very careful about the violence thing. We do fudge there, because I happen to think that violence is detrimental, but there are some in our group who do not. Some Moral Majority people see the problem of the sex influence in television, but they do not see the influence of the violence. We have to be very careful that what we say is Moral Majority position is Moral Majority position.

I was asked on “Face the Nation” about gun control. I had to make it very clear that this was Jerry Falwell speaking, that I am against gun control, and why. I said that very clearly. But I could not say this was a Moral Majority position, because it wasn’t. We would lose a large segment of Moral Majority if we took a gun control position.

If you say you are profamily, or promoral, where do you stop?

We just define it. We define it as illegal drug traffic and pornography.

Do you put alcohol and tobacco under drugs?

Yes, we do with alcohol, but not tobacco. We have lots of Moral Majority members who smoke. People say, Why don’t you guys get more involved in this? Or someone will say, What about the poor? We could never bring the issue of the poor into Moral Majority because the argument would be, Who is going to decide what we teach those people? Mormons, Catholics? No, we won’t get into that. As private persons and ministers, we make a commitment if we feel convicted. But for Moral Majority, no! If we go in there, create jobs, raise funds, and get involved with the local pastors, the problem is, which pastors? If we say the Mormon pastors, the fundamentalists are gone. If we say the Catholic pastors, the Jews are gone, and so forth. We just have to stay away from helping the poor.

Could Moral Majority ever have a convention and add other moral issues?

We could, if something occurs. We really try to zero in on the vital things.

Are you ever going to have a national convention?

Someday we may.

Do you see yourself dropping out of the leadership at some time.

I see myself spending less time, hoping to develop new leadership if some of the outstanding men in this movement rise to the top, but probably not dropping out. It is happening already.

Is it more important for you to speak to the people, or to the leaders?

I can do both. I have the opportunity of speaking weekly to the leaders in private meetings and to the people on television. I spoke to the Chicago Civic Club last spring and I am speaking this fall to the Executive Club. While I was in Chicago I spoke to a small group of Jewish leaders. The night before and the next morning I spoke to 35 leaders of the largest industries in America. Their board chairmen and presidents were there privately, with no publicity and no fanfare, for obvious reasons for both of us.

Do you speak for Moral Majority, or as a preacher?

Whatever they want. Because I am there as a private citizen I discuss anything. And I can share the gospel there.

Carl Henry and some other evangelical leaders and theologians feel you are extreme and they would like to meet with you, have dialogue with you, to get you to moderate your views. What do they want you to moderate?

I have no idea. Dr. Henry is a great man and I would never, under any circumstances, criticize him. My only unhappiness was that his comments were made without any discussion with me to see where I am coming from. It is not his nature to do that, and it is unusual that he did it.

You haven’t had any private conversations with evangelical leaders, theologians, or scholars saying, Do this or that to make yourself more acceptable to us and to our people?

There is no way I can be effective in trying to develop a real spiritual revolution against the trend of the times and be popular with everybody at the same time. I’ve got to be willing to wait a few years before a lot of good people understand what we are trying to do.

From where we sit, we get this constant pounding from Christians who are not “followers of Falwell.” We are trying to figure out what it is.

Frankly, I am raising a lot of money and some of their people give to our ministry. That is a valid concern they would have. If I were sitting where they are, in all fairness I would be feeling a little edgy about that. The ones who don’t know me don’t know where I’m going; they don’t know if I am honest.

Suppose I was sitting where that pastor is; would I not be feeling a little uneasy about this guy, too? Is he trying to put together a political party? Is he trying to be president? Is he planning on taking over this country some day? Is he personally getting rich off all this?

Those are questions they don’t have the answers to. I have to be willing to keep saying the same things everyplace, everywhere, long enough. It is going to take a number of years before I can expect to be accepted by many of the people.

Are you too much of a showman? Do you spend too much time on TV raising money?

I am fully expecting between now and the coming of the Lord that this world is going to experience a spiritual awakening unlike anything in the past. There is going to be an invasion of God on this planet, and changing of lives: real biblical evangelism. There is going to be a terrific harvest of souls somewhere between here and the Rapture. I believe that God’s role for America is as catalyst, that he wants to set the spiritual time bomb off right here. If that is the case, America must stay free. And for America to stay free we must come back to the only principles that God can honor: the dignity of life, the traditional family, decency, morality, and so on. I just see myself as one to stand in the gap and, under God, with the help of millions of others, to bring the nation back to a moral standard so we can stay free in order that we can evangelize the world. And protect the Jews.

If you have to go on TV and be a showman, a money raiser, a promoter, it is because everything feeds into that overriding purpose.

It does indeed.

Taking the slam-bangs from the liberals, the evangelicals, and the fundamentalists?

I’ve never had those things in mind. I don’t read all of it. I’ve learned that nobody can hurt you but you.

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