The Devil and Jerry Falwell

This article by Jeffrey Goldberg is on Slate.com. It represents one reason why the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) needs to remain a unique Christian voice in society to balance Falwell like thinking. From his anti-intellectual religious world view it is curious that Falwell opened an institution of higher education to educate (or should I say indoctrinate) people to work, vote, and take over political parties, and thus the government. That probably wasn't a fair representation of Falwell. A more accurate phrase to represent his thinking might be Christian-centric nationalism. It was, is ingenious. Grief is an equalizing human experience, and for the sadness of the Falwell family I send my sympathy. I wonder if Jerry is disappointed, amused, angry, confused, or right at home? My guess . . . God welcomed Jerry as he is; maybe that is the last lesson Jerry had to learn.

Early one shiny autumn morning, I got in my car and drove to Lynchburg, Va., in order to find out whether or not I am the Antichrist. You know: the Beast, the Worthless Shepherd, the Little Horn, the Abomination, the linchpin of the Diabolical Trinity. That Antichrist.

I had my suspicions. Nowhere on my body could I find the mark of the Beast—666—but I do have a freckle that's shaped like Bermuda. And though I have never been seized by a desire to lead the armies of Satan in a final, bloody confrontation with the forces of God on the plain of Armageddon, I do suffer from aggravated dyspepsia, as well as chronic malaise, conditions that I'm sure afflict the Antichrist.

The surest suspicion I had about my pivotal role in Christian eschatology grew from the fact that I am Jewish, male, and alive. These are the qualifications for the job of Antichrist as specified by Lynchburg's most famous preacher, Jerry Falwell, in a speech he made earlier this year.

I was actually going to see the Rev. Falwell on a different matter, the future of Jerusalem, but I thought I might just slip this question—the one about me maybe being the Antichrist—into the stream of the interview. Falwell, I guessed, wouldn't be happy to discuss his views on the identity of the Antichrist—he had apologized for the remark but took quite a load of grief for it anyway.

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Filed Tue - May 15, 2007, 10:38 PM in

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