His God146;s warrior

Jerry Falwell was a Christian who couldn8217;t be counted on to turn the other cheek

In the main building of the Liberty University campus in Lynchburg, Virginia, there is a Jerry Falwell museum. The first exhibit you see is devoted to Falwell8217;s father. Carey Falwell was a nonbeliever, a successful entrepreneur, a hoodlum, bootlegger and gunman who shot his own brother dead 8212; not the kind of family skeleton usually put on public display.

But the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who started Liberty University in 1971 and grew it into the largest evangelical institution of higher learning in the land, was not an ordinary college president. His Carey Falwell exhibit was meant to convey that even the son of a sinner can become a man of God.

It was also a not very subtle reminder that Falwell came from tough stock. He was a Christian who couldn8217;t be counted on to turn the other cheek.

Falwell was a theological fatalist but a political activist. If this seems like a common combination today, that is largely due to Falwell himself. Before he came along, evangelical Christianity was inward looking. The Baptists, especially, had been badly burned by the failure of Prohibition and the mockery of the Scopes trial and turned away from politics during the first half of the 20th century. As a young preacher, Falwell asserted that the church had no business getting involved in such issues.

8220;I meant well, but I was wrong,8221; he wrote in his autobiography. This change of heart was one of the many unintended consequences of the Supreme Court8217;s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which galvanised Falwell. He got into politics not out of love but out of hatred for 8220;abortion, the drug traffic, pornography, child abuse and immorality in all its ugly, life-destroying forms.8221;

Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 with a four-point programme: 8220;Pro-life, pro-traditional family, pro-moral and pro-American.8221; The movement8217;s domestic conservatism transformed the Republican Party for a generation, but Falwell had no illusions about his victories. 8220;Look at the culture overall, and secular progressives are winning,8221; he told me. 8220;They have been for 50 years, and they probably will until Jesus gets here and sorts things out.8221;

Falwell had a similar view of international relations. He believed that God had a plan for the United States and that its enemies were evil. He referred to Muslim radicals as 8220;barbarians8221; and advocated taking out Iran8217;s nuclear capacity by force. 8220;Bush is probably too weak politically to do it,8221; he told me over barbecue one afternoon. 8220;It will be up to Israel. And we8217;ll be at the White House, cheering.8221;

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Falwell8217;s Zionism was by no means inevitable. Before him, evangelicals reluctantly acknowledged that the Jews were God8217;s chosen people, but many didn8217;t quite agree with the choice. Falwell embraced the Jews of Israel who appreciated his friendship just as he embraced American Jews who, by and large, spurned it.

He sometimes said stupid things, like his famous crack that 9/11 was the product of American immorality. He knew he was wrong, and he said so just as he apologised for the segregationist views of his youth. Not every man of God has 8220;I8217;m sorry8221; in his vocabulary. He never apologised for his beliefs, though, or his tough partisanship. He was a born-again Christian, an American and a Republican, in that order, and if you didn8217;t like it, well, there were plenty of other places you could spend Sunday morning.

Chafets is author of 8216;A Match Made in Heaven8217; about the relationship between the Christian evangelical movement and American Jews