Re-reading Southern
Religious Literature
This roundtable begins a new Journal of Southern Religion
feature in which scholars will read and review or respond to older books
that played important parts in the history of southern religious life. The authors do not read each other’s
works. Nor do they have the assignment
of writing a history of the book, its author, or the broader setting or
issues. Instead, they simply have the job
of saying what they think when they read a particular book. The editors welcome suggestions for future
roundtables.
Virtually everyone who studies southern religion has
something to say about Jerry Falwell, but my
impression is that only a few have actually read and analyzed his written
work. Published in 1980, Listen,
America!
was the first book in which Falwell,
already a rising star in broadcasting, church-building, and what had come to be
called the Religious Right, spelled out his ideas. The first reviewer is Samuel S. Hill, Jr.,
Professor Emeritus at the University
of Florida, who has since
the 1960s been the author and editor of some of the most influential works on
southern religion and its history. The
second is Lauren F. Winner of the Duke
Divinity School,
author of three books about religious life and a scholar of, among other
things, religion and the material culture of colonial Virginia.
The third is Richard H. King of the University of Nottingham,
author of important works on southern intellectual history, ideas of race, and
the civil rights movement.
- Ted Ownby, University of Mississippi
Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (New York, Toronto, and
London: Bantam Books, 1980).
Sam Hill
Not so often does one get to reflect in print on a single
book published twenty-six years earlier.
Is the product desirably a retrospective, a “review,” an evaluation of
its cultural or literary impact, or what exactly? Listen,
America!, the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s influential
contribution to the emergence of the Christian Right, is in certain significant
ways a classic. Critics from the
majority of the nation’s literary and religious public notwithstanding, one
could hardly identify a more provocative, social/political work.
Falwell’s leadership, already in
evidence when this book appeared, was boosted by this publication’s delineation
of the movement’s essence. The term,
“Moral Majority” had become reasonably common currency by 1980, but this work,
in league with numerous pamphlets, books, and television presentations, made
its use universal. The man himself, age
47 when it came out, had brought himself, the congregation he started, and the
movement that became virtually synonymous with his name, out of obscurity and
improbable stature to national prominence.
While it is tempting to discuss only the Christian Right
itself, this book deserves some disciplined focus. First, it realigned American Protestant
Fundamentalism, an unorganized, goal-specific crusade that appeared between
1900 and 1925 to do battle with Protestant liberalism. Its spokesmen [sic] defended biblical veracity against the naturalistic claims of
science, the social sciences, and literary criticism. Its roots thrived in the “northern”
environment of intellectualism, immigration, and urban progress. Listen, America! led the way, mobilizing
a new politically active, grass-roots body of conservative Protestants predominantly
(though far from exclusively) in the southern belt. There had been little occasion to challenge
“modernism” from Virginia
to the southwest much earlier. But by
declaring a somewhat new agenda, Falwell’s book did
contribute heavily to realignment. Only
in the crusade’s second generation did it fret itself much with the life of the
mind (although the issue of textual and conceptual authority is ground zero to
all forms of Fundamentalism).
Family ethics and sexual ethics wrested first position from
the insidious modernist thinking that provoked original Fundamentalism. The regional base of that shift is something
of a surprise; southern religious culture had long nourished a tilt toward
existential concerns rather than essentialist ones. That is, while there was little subscription
to or patience for unorthodox doctrine, in the final analysis Christians of
that persuasion did not live and die by conceptual purity, rather, by embodying
the Christian message in direct personal experience of God and living righteous
lives. What Falwell
insisted on was what we may call “pre-religious” laws and regulations, an
instance of essentialist thinking.
The term “pre-religious” points to certain
modes of conduct and several irrevocable truths that are held to be simply in
the nature of things, in the stars, as we say. They do not need to be acclaimed as central
in Holy Scripture or require consensus from religious traditions. In Hans W. Frei’s
words, Christian leaders who think this way see “the ‘real’ world as autonomous
from and prior to biblical description.”
(The Eclipse of the Biblical
Narrative, p. 37) Thus, claiming
that a law or system is eternally true needs no confirmation, and certainly
does not invite discourse.
The organization of human life into families stands as a
transcendent propriety and demanding of highest priority; similarly,
heterosexual relationships. Whether the
biblical text makes much of any such teaching or whether other forms of living
are approval-worthy deserves no hearing.
Moreover, when the Bible is read this way, any passage that just might
be interpreted as condemning an act or a mode of living, notably homosexuality,
is apt to be universally understood that way; for example, regarding the Sodom
and Gomorrah story found in Genesis as a divine stricture against “sodomy”.
Accordingly, method precedes textual accuracy and contextual
scrutiny. Such thinking proclaims these
certain truths to be self-evident. In Listen,
America!
we are clearly dealing with a form of natural law, an organon that has not been characteristic of biblical
literalist thinking or conservative theological work in the past. Let us notice that this is not
straightforward classic natural law theory, rather a particular—perhaps
innovative—form of it. As many have
pointed out, Christian reasoning of any such sort reflects the demystification
or disenchantment of spiritual truth (think Max Weber), and amounts to the
modernizing of classic religious thought toward modes that have defined
mathematics and the natural sciences.
Ironic this is; but to think this way, as do Falwell
and his philosophical brethren, is to preclude any
awareness of the category of irony.
This discussion so far has seemed to ignore the exact
wording of the book’s title. It stands
as a modern-day national jeremiad. Falwell calls America to its senses, to its
heritage, and to its divine vocation.
What prompted the appearance and widespread acceptance of this
message? Without question, the rebellion
against traditional mores and morals that were a feature of the 1960s played a
large part. But this cry is to America,
not just its people but also, most profoundly, to its social-political
reification. Falwell
refers to Communism repeatedly in this passionate statement. The Cold War was still raging in 1980. Nuclear capability belonged to the Soviet
Union as well as to the U.S. Ronald Reagan had not yet come to office—nor Mikhail Gorbachev. But a national messianic leader was surely to
be lifted by the God of the universe. Briefly,
Falwell hoped that his fellow Baptist, President
Carter, might be that figure, but Carter let him down. Rarely has a national candidate for political
office been as exalted, virtually deified, as Ronald Reagan was. The troops of the Moral Majority were fully
enlisted. The stature granted to Reagan
had greatly to do with his palpable certainty of American destiny. A divorcee, and in no evident way a
worshiping Christian, he was given a clean bill of moral health by the
organized forces of the Christian Right.
Falwell’s version of natural law
totally certified Reagan and the emergent form of Republicanism. Free-enterprise capitalism, one of that
president’s signature issues, is in the stars, is a law of the universe, is the economic end of history. Biblical texts are adduced to prove that
point—through what has to be assessed as overreach, really, distortion. Much of what was wrong with the world in the
era of this book had to do with economic theory. The case does not need making for the
veracity of that insistence; free market economics is of God and for his chosen
nation, through his new Israel
to all societies. (This is hardly the
only appearance of Israel
in the agenda.)
Thus, Listen, America! develops an
agenda beyond family, sexuality, right to life, pornography, and feminism. This nation is enjoined to practice liberty, a resurgent Falwell
value, liberty from degraded human
behavior, social as well as personal, for
the realization of America’s
high (divine) calling in the world.
America
listened, and millions heard. And, in
different forms, the message is still resonating. Not a bad day’s work for a preacher from a
small city in central Virginia.
Lauren F. Winner, Duke University
Divinity School
“Can America
survive the 1980s?” That is the
apocalyptically-inflected question that booms forth from the back cover of the
1981 Bantam paperback edition of Jerry Falwell’s Listen, America!
In this anxious tract, Falwell warns that the U.S. might, in fact, not survive, that God will
unleash His judgment upon the United
States unless we shape up. By now, this sort of rhetoric is just what we
expect from Falwell, who described 9/11 as a
punishment for our embrace of paganism and the People for the American Way, and
who, after Hurricane Katrina, welcomed Franklin Graham to his church, where
Graham insisted that Katrina was a fitting tribulation for a nation given over
to “satanic worship” and “sexual perversion.” CITATION??? On this and 9-11??
Well, we did survive the
1980s. Still, when historians
centuries hence right a moral history of the United States, they may, with Falwell, look upon the 1980s as a turning point—though for
different reasons. Falwell
was unable to prophesy (or, much more likely, was untroubled by) the way that
Reaganomics, with its pernicious iteration of social Darwinism, would affect
the American soul. Nor did he seem
worried about the ways that corporations would extend their dominance of
American society during the 1980s. Falwell was much more worried about the welfare state
(which he believed was bankrupting, financially and morally, the country),
divorce, abortion, homosexuality, government interference in family life, and,
in general, America’s wholesale abandonment of its religious roots.
Let’s face it: subjecting this book to a caustic litany of
errors is easy work. To take one obvious
example: Russia
did not lead an end-times charge against Israel.
Still, Listen, America! is worth
consideration, if only because Falwell prefigures so
many of the themes that the Religious Right would continue to sound, to the
present day. His concern about
education, for instance: “Parents have
the primary right and responsibility to educate their children according to the
philosophy of their choice without government interference or financial
penalty” (117). That sentence not only
reflects a debate over integration that was not exactly in the distant past at
the time Falwell wrote; it also anticipated
subsequent policy debates about school vouchers.
Similarly, his critique of television has prescience—though
perhaps none of us, in 1980, could have really foreseen how entertainment
technologies like cellphones, TV, iPods,
and personal computers would reshape American society. Still, the limits of Falwell’s
critique continue to play out in the Religious Right’s approach to technology
today. His appraisal focuses on the content of television—game-shows stoke
desires in housewives for things they can’t have, and Anita Bryant is the butt
of jokes on too many sit-coms. He does
not extend his critique to the medium itself—there’s no hint of Marshall McLuhan (who happened to die the year Listen, America! hit the shelves). Far from suggesting that the medium is the
message, Falwell concludes his anti-television
diatribe with a defense of the technology itself: media like television will be
the principal ways that Christians communicate the Gospel to unbelievers,
writes Falwell.
“Television is a form of media that can be used very
positively” (170). Here, Falwell is representative of American evangelical
approaches to technology throughout the twentieth century—from Aimee Semple McPherson’s preaching sermons over the radio to
Billy Graham’s and Oral Roberts’s embrace of TV, evangelicals have been, and
continue to be, quite happy to exploit the newest technology to tell that old,
old story.
Finally, it is worth reviewing Falwell’s
framework for thinking about gender. In
his chapter about the demise of “the American family,” he quotes at length from
an article by Judy Mann. Mann, lamenting
the circumstances of latch-key kids, envisages a bold solution: not to roll
back the clock and remove all women from the paid workplace, but to consider
“more part-time work for fathers and mothers, through more flextime, through
parental leave of absence, though the thirty-hour work week, parental
co-operatives, and other forms of sharing child-raising responsibilities”—a
myriad of possible structures that would “free more of our time to raise our
children” (110).
Surprised that Falwell quotes that
passage? I was, too. Then I kept reading. Though he endorses Mann’s concerns about the
impact of working mothers, Falwell states very
clearly that the solution to America’s ills will not come from socialistic
parental co-ops or well-paying part-time work for “fathers and mothers.” No, it will only come from a widespread
return to the biblical plan in which the husband is “the decisionmaker.”
[sic] (Here, by the way, Falwell
anticipates the Promise Keepers movement:
“Until men are in right relationship with God, there is no hope for
righting our families of our nation” (111).
He goes on to explain that “mothering”—“the most important
function on earth” —is “a full-time . . . task.” (111)
So Judy Mann went off-course when she called for part-time work options
for mothers, and when she suggested that fathers might be centrally involved in
the day-to-day tasks of parenting.
Falwell’s focus on gender is
hardly surprising—surely angst about feminism has come to be one of the
hallmarks of evangelicalism. What is
noteworthy here is the way that Falwell’s particular
vision for gender is as historically distorted as his claims about the
religious foundations of America. For implicit in his critique of feminism is
the notion that feminism undid a timeless order of things: Prior
to the founding of NOW, American women stayed at home with their children, and
if we could just eviscerate this newfangled women’s lib movement, we could go
back to the way things have always been, with women giving their full attention
to their children.
Fair enough, of course, to note that second-wave feminism
ushered many women who had not before worked outside the home into the paid
workforce, especially into the ranks of the professions. Beyond that, however, Falwell
is fantasizing, imagining a past that never was, or never was beyond the
Eisenhower years. Falwell
needs to read a few historical works like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale and then try to describe
women’s lives “before feminism.” In
eighteenth-century, predominately agrarian America, were women principally “at
home”? Sure. So were men.
And, while household productivity was more or less gendered, women were
not “at home” playing Baby Mozart with their tots. They were making soap and weaving fabric and
putting up preserves. If Falwell wants to critique the ways the contemporary
workplace is wrecking families, I would say amen—but that critique should begin
not with an ahistorical romanticized view of gender
in days gone by, but with the questioning of a capitalist system that demands
ever more hours in the office from professional workers, and that has replaced
the skilled productive work that once occupied most homes with unsatisfying
domestic consumption.
Are you talkin’ to me? A Review of Jerry Falwell’s
Listen, America!
Richard H.
King, University of Nottingham,
UK
To start
academically: Jerry Falwell’s Listen, America! stands
clearly in the tradition of the jeremiad, which was alive and well in America, even below the Mason-Dixon
line circa 1980. But the contradictions masked (sort of) by the
jeremiad are always fascinating. What sort of people are Americans, according
to the forty-seven year old reverend? The gist of the book is that America
is going to hell in a hand basket. The usual suspects are enumerated. The
Soviet threat is evoked, though surprisingly not many Reds under the bed at
home are discovered. The problem is really with us Americans: the faint hearts
who believe in a “no-fight and no-win policy”(90),
liberal dupes; pornographers, abortionists, feminists and homosexualists;
materialists and secular humanists—the whole wild crew. Listen to the minister:
“sin has permeated our land”(103) and “There have
always been filthy books because there have always been filthy minds”(172). But if all this is the work of a corrupt majority, who then is the
moral majority? Later in the
book, Falwell writes “America has been great because her
people have been good”(213). Well, which are we—sinners
or saints? Interestingly, since Falwell wants to
start a movement, he doesn’t appeal to the chosen few or a talented (Christian)
tenth at home. The finger of suspicion points wildly in all directions but
nowhere exactly. The point remains that the nation must return to “first
principles” and to a “biblical basis (16).” I can imagine Jon Stewart with this
material.
All this
makes up the psycho-religious stew of guilt and greatness, innocence and
corruption that the American jeremiad plays on/with. Since we are chosen, God
chastises us and calls us back to the fold. The rest of that lot abroad aren’t
worth bothering with, except the Israelis—one chapter is called “That Miracle Called
Israel”—and they’ve shown what faith in God can do. “I firmly believe,” Falwell writes, “God has blessed America
because America
has blessed the Jew”(98). (Note the singular “the
Jew.” Tricky thing these singulars and plurals, definite and
indefinite articles when talking about the Jewish people.)
If Falwell speaks for the Moral Majority, it is no wonder US policy on Israel has ended up in the present
dead-end. Twenty-six years later, Falwell remains a
steadfast supporter of Israel—it’s
just that Jews, like Muslims (who are “heathens” and Muhammad a “terrorist”)
and all the other infidels, must come to salvation through Jesus Christ. But,
again, we are a bad/good/great nation. Is this Christian dialectics? Is this
what they teach at Liberty
University? The fact of
our badness is somehow balanced by an assertion of our goodness and both point
to our greatness as a nation. This isn’t hypocrisy or illogic exactly, but it
isn’t exactly coming clean either. It’s called wanting it both (all) ways. It’s
also called demagoguery and pandering.
Then there
are the prophecies—after all it’s a jeremiad. Falwell’s
whole premise is that the system is failing and the Soviets are winning. He
cites Milton Friedman, who knows his free markets (or “free enterprise” as it
was quaintly called then) and tells us what is wrong with strong government. He
also leans heavily on Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who
knows his Soviets, and tells us what is wrong with our souls and how devious they are. But what is interesting is how
wrong hard-line, right-wing, Bible-quoting American conservatives, such as Falwell, were about the strength of the Soviet
Union. According to him, America
is “no longer the military might of the world”(8) and
any day now the Soviet Union “could demand our
capitulation”(10). No one could have accused Reverend Falwell
of misplaced faith in the American people or their Armed Forces.
I confess I
was hoping for some touches of “southernness” in Listen America! But I didn’t find any. No downhome
stories or folksy wisdom; not a hint of humor, even
in the service of this great nation or the Lord. In fact, this Protestant
militant sounds familiar to me, but it is a
familiarity arising from my two decades plus of living in Britain—he sounds more like the
Reverend Ian Paisley than Jimmy Swaggart, Marjoe Gortner, Elmer Gantry, or
even Billy Graham. Or maybe he’s “our” Louis Farrakhan. Actually, Listen, America! is an object
lesson in how corrupted (an “abomination,” the Reverend Paisley would rumble)
religion becomes when it is pressed into the service of national cheerleading. Falwell is really peddling right-wing nationalism rather
than anything that merits the name conservatism. No “southernness”
also means that there are no black people in Listen, America! that I can
remember. (I admit to skipping a few pages, but not many, honest.) There are a
few mentions of the ghetto and welfare chiselers but nothing beyond that. Yet
the following must surely be a slip of his (or the ghostwriter’s)
pen. America “must continue
to stand with Israel,”
writes Falwell, if she “wants her fields to remain white
[my underlining] with grain”(98). But isn’t it “amber
waves of grain” not “white waves of grain”? Has anyone ever seen any white
grain? And would we want to see vast fields of it?
Finally one
of the great strengths of traditional white southern Protestantism has been its
music. It goes a ways toward making up for a multitude of sins and
shortcomings. It runs the gamut from sin to salvation, death to life and
everywhere in between. Music does something to fundamentalist theology, the
biblical faith—it makes it “sing.” It even makes it humanly plausible. When Falwell’s fellow Virginian Ralph Stanley sings “O Death,”
it reminds me of those crosses along southern highways with “The wages of sin
is death” carved on them. But at the core of the song is an authentic fear of
death as a fact, not something to be pressed into the service of Cold War
politics. It doesn’t traffic in Falwell’s cheap and
lazy religious-political points. My final question would be: how do we get from
Ralph Stanley to Jerry Falwell?