POLITICS-US:
Father of Christian Zionism Leaves the Building
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37751
Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, United States, May 16 (IPS) - The right-wing
U.S. Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell, who died
Tuesday at the age of 73, is perhaps best known for
his fundamentalist social positions and tirades
against lesbians, gays and feminists, not to mention
"pagans", "abortionists" and assorted other
miscreants.
But Falwell also had a significant impact on U.S.
foreign policy over the last 30 years, and was one of
the founding fathers here of so-called Christian
Zionism -- the belief that the modern state of Israel
is the fulfillment of Biblical "End Times" prophecy
and thus deserving of political, financial and
religious support.
From his pre-Moral Majority days when he preached
against religious folk involved in the civil rights
movement, to his support for the President Ronald
Reagan-backed contra movements in Central America
and Africa that were responsible for the deaths of
tens of thousands of people, to his invective against
Nelson Mandela and South Africa's African National
Congress and his support for the apartheid regime,
Falwell was a Republican Party stalwart and a
dependable voice of reaction.
Today, conservative evangelicals are a formidable
lobby group in the United States and a key component
of the Republican voting base. However, they had
largely stayed out of politics until the mid-1970s,
when Jimmy Carter's declaration during the 1976
presidential campaign that he had been "born again"
rejuvenated the political activism of the evangelical
community.
But Carter's more liberal positions on some social
issues, and his support for a Palestinian homeland
shortly after his election in 1977, alienated
right-wing Christian Zionist leaders in the movement,
like Falwell and New Right figures Paul Weyrich and
Richard Viguerie, who steered evangelicals toward the
Republican Party -- where they remain today.
In the 1980s, Israel's Likud Party drew closer to
the right wing in the U.S., and Falwell was a key
figure in mobilising conservative Christian voters.
In her book "Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the
Christian Right", Sara Diamond notes that Falwell,
"often through his television broadcasts and his
frequent trips to Israel, played a key role in
"dr[awing] evangelicals to pay closer attention to
Middle East politics."
In 1979, Israel rewarded Falwell with a private jet.
Two years later, he received Israel's Jabotinsky
Award for his support.
According to one press account, "Jewish-evangelical
relations had become so close by the early '80s that,
immediately after Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear
reactor in 1981, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin telephoned Moral Majority leader Rev. Jerry
Falwell before calling President Ronald Reagan to
ask Falwell to 'explain to the Christian public the
reasons for the bombing'."
Falwell also served on the board of advisors of the
American Alliance of Jews and Christians, an
organisation founded by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the
president of the conservative Jewish organisation
Toward Tradition, and Christian conservative
evangelical Gary Bauer, founder of American Values.
This past September, Falwell's church hosted
Christians United for Israel's (CUFI) Pastor John
Hagee, who accused Iran of being behind the summer
war between Hezbollah and Israel. "They gave Syria
14,000 missiles and 100 million dollars," he claimed.
"Those missiles were given to Hezbollah." Falwell
served on the Board of CUFI.
In the hours since his death, a number of Falwell's
supporters have unstintingly praised him as a
seminal and courageous figure of the New Religious
Right.
Sen. John McCain, who during the 2000 Republican
presidential primary called Falwell and the Rev. Pat
Robertson "agents of intolerance" but had recently
sought his support, issued a statement praising
Falwell for his contributions.
While Falwell helped place conservative evangelicals
at the forefront of the political landscape, he was
also in part responsible for coarsening the political
dialogue in this country. In a career that was marked
by a continuous stream of controversial -- and
sometimes wacky -- statements, perhaps none was as
mean-spirited as his reaction to the Sep. 11, 2001
attacks.
Soon after 9/11, Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson's
Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club," and told
Robertson's viewers:
"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for
this because God will not be mocked," he said. "And
when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies,
we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans
and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays
and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that
an alternative lifestyle...all of them who have tried
to secularise America. I point the finger in their
face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"
He later apologised for those remarks.
Falwell dated his political activism to the Supreme
Court's Roe v. Wade ruling that established a woman's
right to an abortion. "Believing life begins at
conception, I became very exercised over this," he
said.
In the late 1970s, Paul Weyrich, widely considered
as the guru of the modern conservative movement,
Terry Dolan, Richard Viguerie, the godfather of
conservative direct mail, and Howard Phillips tapped
televangelist Falwell to head up the Moral Majority.
Over the years, as Falwell became more controversial
and influential politically, he became a favoured
guest on cable television's news programmes.
With Falwell at the helm, the Moral Majority, founded
in 1979, prospered. And, unlike some of his
televangelist brethren who were severely wounded by
sexual and financial scandals, Falwell's enterprises
prospered throughout the 1980s.
After the Moral Majority officially shut down in
1989, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Dr. James
Dobson's Focus on the Family, the Family Research
Council and a host of other conservative Christian
groups stepped into the breech. In 2004, Falwell,
seeing a political opening and hoping to re-connect
with his funding base, announced the formation of an
organisation called the Moral Majority Coalition,
which he characterised as a "21st century
resurrection of the Moral Majority."
In his early seventies, after recovering from a
serious illness, Falwell focused on making the
Christian liberal arts college, Liberty University,
which he founded in 1971, his everlasting legacy.
The 4,400-acre campus is home to 9,600 students, and
another 15,000 are enrolled in its distance learning
programme.
The mending-fences visit of Sen. John McCain to the
Liberty University campus last year was an example
of Falwell's continued involvement in top-level
Republican politics. His connection to the founding
of the Pastor John Hagee's lobbying group, Christian
Zionist Christians United for Israel, also showed
that Falwell wasn't only about setting up
multi-million dollar endowments and fashioning
impressive real estate deals.
Nearly 30 years after entering the political fray,
Falwell had formidable political clout up until his
death.
*Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the
conservative movement. His column "Conservative
Watch" documents the strategies, players,
institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S.
Right. (END/2007)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37751
--
Jeffrey Blankfort on Washington DC's
subservience to the Israel Lobby:
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2006/11/blankfort-interview.html
illuminating full interview with Jeffrey Blankfort:
http://bleiersblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/jeffrey-blankfort-my-years-of-middle.html
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