In This Episode
Erin and Alyssa dive into the past of the father of white Christian Nationalism, Jerry Falwell. From founding Liberty University, to taking advantage of pregnant teens, to spreading his bigoted and homophobic beliefs like wildfire, this is may be our most shameless guy yet.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jerry-Falwell
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/jerry-falwell
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-biography-of-jerry-falwell/
https://www.npr.org/2006/05/15/5519116/timeline-a-half-century-of-falwells-ministry
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/07/us/falwell-s-gospel-hour-fined-for-political-activity.html
https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1993/rt9304/930403/04030069.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/19/september11.usa9
https://www.au.org/the-latest/church-and-state/articles/a-troubling-legacy-revealing-the-white/
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/agent-intolerance/
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/moral-majority-founded
https://www.pewresearch.org/2007/05/17/rev-falwells-moral-majority-mission-accomplished/
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
https://theconversation.com/revisiting-the-legacy-of-jerry-falwell-sr-in-trumps-america-79551
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/hustler-magazine-v-falwell
https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-0v89g5gw13
TRANSCRIPT
[AD BREAK]
Erin Ryan: Welcome to another edition of This Fucking Guy, the show where we pick one guy who’s made America worse and explain why they suck. I’m Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media’s Hysteria podcast.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And I’m Alyssa Mastromonico, the other host of Crooked Media’s hysteria podcast.
Erin Ryan: Alyssa, have you ever looked around at this hellscape of white Christian nationalism we’re living in and wondered, who did this? [laughter] Have you ever cringed at the smug, yet condescending affect of GOP politicians like Ted Cruz and Mike Johnson and wondered, Why are they talking like that? Have you ever wondered how so-called American Christians have twisted the message of Jesus away from one of love for the poor and afflicted and toward hate for things that aren’t even mentioned in the Bible, like abortion and gay marriage? And have you thought, who would have the balls to take on this rebrand?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: All the time. It’s weird to live in a day and age when the worst kind of self-proclaimed Christians who work inside the American government feel so comfortable with their nutbaggery that they don’t even feel the need to code switch.
Erin Ryan: Well, today we’re going to get into that question, who fucking did this [laughter] by embarking on a bit of a history lesson. Because there’s one fucking guy who arguably built the political power of scared religious nuts brick by brick. He’s the reason the phrase, there’s no hate like Christian love, is so salient. He’s one of the main reasons that white American evangelicals are so fucking annoying to this day, Jerry Falwell.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Of course. He was a slimy televangelist, TV personality, a scheming political organizer, Bob Evans omelet enthusiast, erstwhile amusement park executive, tinky-winky critic, university president, anti-feminist, segregationist, but most importantly, he was full of shit.
Erin Ryan: I can think of few people who were less Christ-like than Jerry Falwell. He targeted vulnerable and lonely people to raise funds that are used to enrich the Falwell family to this day. His “Home for Unwed Mothers” was basically a baby trafficking operation meant to bully desperate women into giving up their babies for adoption through his highly lucrative adoption agency. He backed politicians who enacted policies that did harm to the poor and made education unless accessible, all in the name of hoarding as much wealth and power for himself. Now, Alyssa, you know I’m not really a person who believes in like literal tropes of religion.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Right.
Erin Ryan: Right. But if there is a hell, I’m pretty sure that Jerry Falwell’s down there asking Satan to send him $10 a month. Jerry Falwell was born on August 11th, 1933 in Lynchburg, Virginia. He had a twin brother named Gene. Jerry and Gene are bad twin names.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But Jerry does rhyme with his father’s name, Carey. Do you think that his parents wanted to name him Carey Jr. but instead just made the name rhyme?
Erin Ryan: It’s a good theory. Jerry and Gene’s birth happened at the end of a rough time for their parents. In 1931, their 10-year-old daughter, Rosha, died of an infection. And later that year, Carey drunkenly killed his younger brother, Garland, allegedly in self-defense. The Falwells were rich, but they were also trashy. Carey owned some respectable businesses like the Merry Garden Dance Hall and Dining Room, but Carey also ran moonshine and promoted dog fights on the side.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And ever since Falwell was a privileged little shithead he was into pulling pranks.
Erin Ryan: When we say prank, we’re not talking about something clever like when George Clooney relentlessly lobbied People Magazine to get Matt Damon declared sexiest man alive that was authentically funny.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Had my vote.
Erin Ryan: We’re talking about some thing an obnoxious wannabe YouTube celebrity would pull on 14th Street when you’re just trying to get to the train in peace. Here are some examples of Falwell’s pranks, hot-wiring his co-workers’ cars, blowing up mailboxes with firecrackers. Once he put a live baby alligator in the bathtub as a way to prank his wife.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Terrorism in the bathroom is hilarious.
Erin Ryan: Jerry’s father died of liver cirrhosis in 1948 at age 55. After that, as Jerry tells it, he became a street tough. Joining a teenage posse called The Wall Gang, and frequently getting into fights. Now I want to pause here and remind you, lovely listeners, that religious grifters often exaggerate or full-on make shit up about themselves as a way to strengthen their conversion story. It’s possible that he was in a street gang called The Wall Gang until he found Jesus, or he could just be embellishing his story to make it more interesting.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Jerry Fallwell will never convince me that he was like Matt Dillon in The Outsiders. It wasn’t too long after his dad drank himself to death that Falwell first went to church, Park Avenue Baptist Church to be exact. He says it was then that he fell in love with the church’s piano player whose name was Macel Pate.
Erin Ryan: There was one problem. Mcael was engaged to somebody else, a guy who was studying at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. So the story goes, Falwell enrolled at the same unaccredited Baptist Bible college as Macel’s fiance and became his roommate. Falwell’s roommate would have Jerry mail love letters to Macel, but instead of mailing the letters, Jerry would throw them in the trash. Macel broke up with the other guy and started dating Jerry instead. All of this, by the way, sounds totally like something Jerry made up.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Not only is this not a prank, but isn’t this kind of a cracker-barrel version of atonement? Macel and Falwell married and had three children, righteous gemstone style, Jerry Jr., who we will cover in a future episode of This Fucking Guy, Jeannie, who grew up to be an accomplished surgeon and seems like she wants to stay out of the public eye as much as possible, and Jonathan, the obedient youngest son who grew to be a preacher. But before, those little Falwellings were even a glint in his eye in 1956 when he was just 22 years old. Falwell started Thomas Road Baptist Church in the abandoned Donald Duck Bottling Plant in Lynchburg. At first, he had only 35 parishioners.
Erin Ryan: Okay, I would not go to a church with a 22 year old pastor.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: No.
Erin Ryan: You mean to tell me your frontal lobe is not fully formed and I’m supposed to trust you with my soul? No thank you buddy.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Falwell was heavily influenced by an American preacher named B.R. Lakin who Falwell says adopted him when he was a young preacher. Lakin was a pioneer in broadcasting his church services to the masses and thanks to Lakin’s influence, Falwell began the Old Time Gospel Hour, a radio broadcast of the Thomas Road Baptist Church Service. Many of those Old Time Gospel Hours are archived and available through Liberty University’s website.
Erin Ryan: Old Time Gospel Hour would eventually go from a radio show to a TV program. Usually services would start with Jerry welcoming everybody and asking for money. Then some white guy who looks like an extra from Robert Altman’s Nashville would perform an overwrought hymn. Then Jerry would ask for money again or offered to send viewers things like maps or cheap Jesus for his pins if they would only call his toll-free number. If you think Donald Trump sounds like a whore when he’s constantly hawking Trump branded shit, you haven’t listened to enough old-time gospel hour.
[clip of Jerry Falzwell]: As a pastor and as Chancellor of Liberty University, many have told me, Jerry, I’d love to leave my job, move my family to Lynchburg, Virginia, and attend Liberty University to study the Word of God. Now, you can attend Bible College and earn the diploma you’ve always dreamed of right in the comfort of your own living room. Call the toll-free number and I will send you this free video, which is an introductory IBS course I taught at Liberty University on Bible prophecy. Call now and get this transcript as a special bonus today if you get this VHS videotape all for $35 on your Visa or MasterCard. You can trust it when your child comes to Liberty. That we will look after them as if they were our own children. And at Liberty University, you can still tell the boys from the girls without a medical examination. Pick up your telephone and call.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: He’s really ahead of his time.
Erin Ryan: He’s ahead of time. Alyssa, we also have a special supercut for you that we cut together of him advertising his Bible study course.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: IBS?
Erin Ryan: Yes. [laughter]
[clip of Jerry Falzwell]: The introductory IBS course, IBS, is for you. Earn your IBS diploma. Get free IBS. I just want you to see how great IBS really is. If you’re just someone who finally wants to get to know what IBS is all about, then I urge you to pay attention to every word in this television special.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: I want my money! He stole that from me! [laughter]
Erin Ryan: Alyssa’s crying.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: It’s so funny.
Erin Ryan: Despite it being the lamest shit I’ve ever seen in my life, the Old Time Gospel Hour was popular, albeit not as popular as Jerry Falwell claimed it was. Falwell said that he had 50 million viewers, which at the time would have been like a large percentage of the US population. But the LA Times said it was more like 438,000. But what’s an extra zero or two? Falwell was, however, great at getting people to give him their names and addresses, offering them trinkets that came with a sales pitch and a push for monthly donations. It also helped that he told his church that tithing was mandatory. So over the years, the toll-free number that Jerry kept repeating, like a guy who was about to get his table flipped by Jesus, would be a money-raising behemoth, staffed by warehouses of underpaid and overworked employees.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: At first Falwell was anti-mixing religion and politics. In 1965, he gave a sermon called Ministers and Marches, where he said, quote, “I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and non-violent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations.” Four decades later, Falwell would claim that he supported MLK and the civil rights movement.
Erin Ryan: But as America changed in a way that Falwell and his flock found scary, he changed his tune. Falwell preached Christian fundamentalism, the belief that the Bible is the literal word of God and that every word of it is true, even the parts that directly contradict each other. He eventually came to believe that America needed to be governed by biblical principles, and by biblical principals we mean whatever best serves the needs of Jerry Falwell. The transition from political sidelines heading to political activism happened during the 1970s when it was getting more and more difficult for spiritual panhandlers like Falwell to operate with impunity. You’ve probably picked up by now that one of Jerry Falwell’s superpowers was finessing reality into something that keeps him from looking too bad. Or if you want to be less charitable, real-time gaslighting.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: For example, the way Falwell tells it, he became politically active after the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide.
Erin Ryan: But that’s verifiable bullshit. Evangelical leaders didn’t make a peep about abortion when the ruling was first handed down. The pro-life movement consisted of mostly Catholics. Falwell didn’t give his first anti-abortion sermon until 1978.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: The real origin of the politicization of Falwell and of white American evangelicals as a whole was racism, more specifically the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown versus Board of Education. Brown versus Board Of Education is the case that desegregated schools. Around the time of the ruling, Falwell preached to his small church that he believed that this was because the Supreme Court didn’t understand what God wanted. He wasn’t telling them how to vote yet, but he was building the sort of victim cocoon that all cult leaders make for their followers so that they feel like the rest of the world is against them.
Erin Ryan: Here’s the full Falwell quote on that ruling via a Max Blumenthal piece from the nation. Quote, “If Chief Justice Warren [bleep] and his associates had known God’s word and desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made. The facilities should be separate. When God draws a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line. The true Negro does not want integration.”.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Bravo.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, yeah.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Falwell also argued in that sermon that school integration would soon destroy the white race, leading to such abominations as interracial marriage.
Erin Ryan: No. Falwell was frequently up to some shady racist shit behind the scenes, too. For example, he helped FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover disseminate anti-Martin Luther King Jr. Propaganda, accusing many in the civil rights movement of being secret communists. In a sermon, he referred to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as Civil Wrongs. Good one. Even later in life when he’s deliberately trying to make him sound like he’s not racist, he sounds like the parents from Get Out.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: In the last interview he’d ever give, he tells a story about his, quote, “African-American neighbors and their young son who hit a baseball over his fence one day.” When the boy came to retrieve the baseball, Falwell wrote a note on it that said that the ball entitled the boy to a full ride four-year scholarship to Liberty University.
Erin Ryan: Always be wary of old white people who unnecessarily include the race of people in their stories.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Anyway, back to Christofascism’s villain origin story. In 1966, Falwell founded the Lynchburg Christian Academy, one of a number of segregation academies. That were meant to circumvent forced public school integration. One local newspaper described it as a private school for whites only. This was part of Falwell’s larger goal to eliminate public education in the U.S. entirely. Later he would write, I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be. In 1971, the Supreme Court threw a wrench in those plans when it ruled in Green v. Connally that segregated private religious schools could not qualify as charitable organizations and thus could not retain tax-exempt status.
Erin Ryan: Bob Jones University, which literally did not allow Black students until 1971 and only admitted Black students if they were married from 1971 to 1975, lost its tax- exempt status in 1976 over its policy that barred interracial dating.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: In the 1970s? That is wild.
Erin Ryan: Don’t worry, Alyssa. Bob Jones University has gotten with the times. They dropped their ban on interracially dating in the year 2000.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Bob Jones getting progressive. And if private segregation academies had status as nonprofits threatened, that would have put a significant damper on a potential future money faucet for the Falwell family. Not only Lynchburg Academy, but also Lynchburg Baptist College, which was founded in 1971 and would eventually change its name to Liberty University. We’ll talk more about Liberty University in our forthcoming episode on Jerry Falwell Junior.
Erin Ryan: Lynchburg Baptist College, like all things Falwellian, started out as empty promises and fakery. Early brochures depicted a green lawn with students lounging. Turns out the lawn was not part of the university, it was a public park in town, and the students lived in dingy apartments, not dorms. But nobody wants to admit that they’re a sucker while they’re in the midst of being suckered, and enrollment continued to grow at the school.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: In 1976, Falwell changed the name of the school to Liberty Baptist College because he was all geeked out about the American Bicentennial. That year he threw a bunch of I Love America rallies around the country, including a massive planned 100,000 person bicentennial celebration on the grounds of the School. It was a real party, like the original Lollapalooza, if all the music sucked and it was hosted by an incorrigible slimeball.
Erin Ryan: It turned out that mixing patriotism and religion could get a lot of dorks excited and or scared. And people who are scared or excited are more likely to spend money. It’s the same reason they play so much Taylor Swift at Target.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: The ascendancy of a near-religious enthusiasm for a feel-good concept of America, alongside the social progress of the 1960s and 70s, gave some scheming right-wingers an idea. Let’s harness the racism, sexism, and homophobia of all the blindly accepting religious masses and channel it in such a way that leads to rich people paying as little as possible in taxes.
Erin Ryan: It was a great plan, but it needed a charismatic leader. Three men who had worked on Barry Goldwater’s failed presidential campaign, including one anti-abortion Catholic named Paul Weyrich, who reminds me of a combination of Dwight Schrute and Jeffrey Dahmer, saw an opportunity to unite American zealots on the wrong side of history. They pitched Jerry Falwell, who brought figures aboard like Ed McAteer, founder of Religious Roundtable, and Tim LaHaye, one of our nation’s most insane homophobes, who would go on to author the Left Behind series of books. An alliance formed between swarthy Catholics terrified of sex, white evangelicals terrified of Blacks, and the Venn diagram overlap of those groups who were terrified of homosexuals. That alliance was solidified with a dash of aspirational Christian nationalist goals for the government and zip-zap-zoom, the moral majority was born.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Up first. They finessed the racist origins of this political movement by rebranding it as a place for people who are concerned about the dissolution of the tradition American family.
Erin Ryan: And so the American evangelical movement channeled its rage over racial integration into rage over legalized abortion and other social progress that made scared people open their wallets to Jesus. And soon that rage would translate to real king-making power. Moral majority used the massive database built by Falwell’s constant pestering of his viewers for their names and addresses to activate voters. All those free pins and bibles and maps they were giving away during the old-time gospel hour would actually put people on call and mailing lists forever. Falwell was one of this country’s first data brokers.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Jerry Falwell crawled so Mark Zuckerberg could run. The group lobbied politicians and of course raised money. Falwell claims that the organization registered 8 million evangelicals to vote in the 1980 presidential election but it was actually more like 2 million.
Erin Ryan: Wow. He just cannot cannot tell the truth about anything can he. [laughter] Despite the fact that one of the main things the moral majority cried about was an increasing divorce rate during the 1980 presidential campaign the moral majority placed their hope in a California actor turned politician named Ronald Reagan who was not only divorced himself but had ushered in the nation’s first no fault divorce law when he was governor.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: This was partly because they hated Jimmy Carter. Carter was this country’s first avowed evangelical Christian president, but in Falwell’s view, he wasn’t doing enough to further policies that made it easier for Falwell to get even richer. Sorry, I mean, Carter wasn’t doing enough, um, to promote the traditional family. That sounds better.
Erin Ryan: Falwell’s group didn’t get involved in the presidential campaign until the last few months before Election Day 1980, but it really went for it. Jimmy Carter claimed that during that campaign, Falwell bought millions of dollars worth of TV and radio ads that he played across the South, accusing Carter of being a traitor and not a real Christian. Ronald Reagan ended up winning 44 states. The newly activated evangelical vote had swung the election.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Meanwhile Ronald Reagan could not give a flying fuck about the sort of things Falwell’s minions were rending their clothing over. He was religiously apathetic. He was like, okay, cool, I’ll take your support, I guess.
Erin Ryan: He also looked the part. American evangelicals are phony in that way.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And even though Reagan paid some half-ass lip service to the culture war issues like abortion, he didn’t really do much, even with both the House and the Senate under Republican control. During the Reagan era, there were more legal abortions performed in the U.S. Than during any other time before or since.
Erin Ryan: But Falwell was able to take those abortion lemons and turn them into abortion lemonade.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Gross.
Erin Ryan: Or more specifically into cash. In 1982, Falwell established the Liberty Godparent Home, which aimed to provide food, shelter and medical care to unmarried expectant mothers in crisis. The aim was to provide pregnant women with an alternative to abortion. Cute, right?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Not at all. Like most everything that the Falwell empire did, the Liberty Godparent home was draped in warm and fuzzy promises that obscured something truly fucked up like a teddy bear full of spiders.
Erin Ryan: The Liberty Godparent Home was associated with an organization called Family Life Services, an adoption agency also owned and operated by the Falwells. And mothers who lived at the home during their pregnancies claimed that the main focus of life there was to bully and coerce them into giving up their babies for adoption. Families hoping to adopt would pay tens of thousands of dollars to Family Life Services, money that could have been used to lift the expectant mothers out of poverty and allowed them to keep their babies. Because another thing about Liberty Godparent Home was that the women who wound up there were not contemplating abortion in the first place. Many of them were teenage daughters of other religious fundamentalists, whose parents forced them to live there in order to hide their pregnancies from their own communities.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: The home’s main function was to line the pockets of the adoption agency. And by extension, Jerry Falwell, if the pregnant residents of Liberty Godparent home kept their babies, family life services got nothing. But if they gave them up for adoption? Adoption is a $30 billion industry in the U.S. with few guardrails preventing the sort of coercive and harmful exploitation perpetuated by the Liberty Godparent home. Which by the way still exists and recently got a license to take in pregnant teenagers who are in the foster system. For more on the way that the Falwell empire dabbles in a little bit of baby stealing, check out the podcast Liberty Lost where journalist TJ Raphael uncovers what really goes on at the home and has for decades.
Erin Ryan: Reagan was a disappointment to Falwell and the Holy Rollers in ways beyond his abortion foot dragging. While he did lower taxes for rich guys and dismantle much of the functional social safety net that had afforded Baby Boomers more economic opportunities than any generation before or since, Reagan didn’t successfully outlaw pornography, legalize school-mandated prayer, or undo the civil rights legislation that had gotten Falwell’s panties in such a twist in the 1960s. He was also uncomfortable parroting moral majority talking points and even more uncomfortable taking action on them. Even worse, Ronald Reagan appointed a woman to the Supreme Court.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Uh oh. Not a woman.
Erin Ryan: Falwell and his minions found the 1981 appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor, a political moderate who was pro-choice to be a huge betrayal.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Reagan’s failure to deliver the State of the Union while speaking in tongues poured cold water on the red-hot fundraising machine that was the moral majority. Donations slowed throughout his administration, but Falwell had another trick up his sleeve. One that would prove to be a reliable drumbeat for the religious right throughout the 1980s and 90s. Gay panic.
Erin Ryan: Falwell was a veteran of homophobia. He’d supported Anita Bryant’s 1977 Save the Children campaign. Anita Bryant was a batshit insane Floridian beauty queen who claimed without evidence that gays and lesbians were grooming children and then used those claims as basis to oppose laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: At a rally in Miami in support of Bryant that year, Falwell said, so-called gay folks would just as soon kill you as look at you.
Erin Ryan: Man, even with the accent, that would not sound folksy at all.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: No. [laughs]
Erin Ryan: Well, Ronald Reagan was busy not doing anything to stem the growing number of abortions in the U.S., which made Jerry Falwell mad. He was also busy not do anything in the face of the AIDS crisis, the biggest public health emergency in American history since the 1918 influenza pandemic, which made Jerry Falwill happy.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Don’t forget, it’s all about money with these guys, and moral-majority brass found that the more they dialed up the gay panic, the more money they’d raise.
Erin Ryan: The moral majority’s line was always that the AIDS epidemic was punishment from God against the sin of homosexuality. Here’s Falwell laying that out on CBS in 1983.
[clip of Jerry Falzwell]: There are hundreds and thousands of former homosexuals who have been saved by the grace of God, but we are not really showing a loving concern for people when we tell them that their misbehavior, their moral misbehavior is good, when in fact we know it isn’t.
Erin Ryan: Falwell laid that out in several media appearances throughout the early 80s. And he always found a way to conveniently drop a mention of another future possible cash cow for the religious right, gay conversion therapy, which the American Psychological Association says is not supported by scientific evidence and is, in fact, harmful. It’s currently illegal in many states, but it was offered at Liberty University as recently as 2020, albeit under a different name, and the Supreme Court of the US is currently considering whether it should be illegal to offer it to children.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: In 1984, Falwell got into a tiff with the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church when he called its members, “brute beasts,” who will one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven. When an MCC minister named Jerry Sloan confronted him about the statements, Falwill said he’d never made them and said he would donate $5,000 to the church if he could prove he’d said those things.
Erin Ryan: Sloan found the remarks on video, but Falwell wouldn’t pay what he promised until Sloan sued him.
[AD BREAK]
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Falwell’s political activism included being on the wrong side of history when it comes to foreign policy. In 1985, Falwell went on a trip to South Africa in support of the white ruling class that was upholding apartheid in that country.
Erin Ryan: Oh boy.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: When he returned, he encouraged his followers to invest in the country in an attempt to prop up the government.
Erin Ryan: He also referred to 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu as a phony for advocating for sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Weird, I seem to remember another time he directly attacked a religious official, Martin Luther King Jr. Hmm, what do Martin Luther King, Jr. And Desmond Tutu have in common? Completely unrelated, here’s a clip of Jerry Falwell whining about Martin Luther King Day in 1983.
[clip of Jerry Falzwell]: Why not a Martin Luther King Day? I just feel that there are other Black Americans and the corporate body of Black Americans who are due honor more than one recent individual about whom there’s a great question mark even to this moment. What is the question mark? The question mark is that so far all the records on him are sealed. And neither you, Tom, nor I— Are you talking about his personal character and his personal morality and his own personal—He may be as clean as Billy Graham, but we don’t know that because the records are sealed.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Even Buchanan was a little bit like, I don’t know.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, I didn’t know about this guy. During this time, Falwell was also cozying up to the Prime Minister of Israel, not because he supported the existence of Jewish people or their equality or anything like that, but because he and other Christian Zionists believed that all Jews moving back to Israel is a necessary prerequisite for the second coming of Christ to happen.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But before the second coming of Christ, all of the Christians – your Falwells, your Bakkers, Swaggarts and Robertsons and LaHayes, and the hateful morons who fill their churches – will be whisked off to heaven and those left back on earth will deal with the rise of the Antichrist and seven years of tribulation concluding with the second coming of the Christ and His judgment unleashed on everybody left on earth, which ostensibly would include the Jews that were back in Israel.
Erin Ryan: It’s a fucked up and dumb plan. And honestly, Alyssa, the Book of Revelation kind of feels like it could have been written by Nathan Fielder while on PCP. [laughter] Falwell was throwing his rapidly increasing political weight around against the backdrop of shameless opulence and frivolity of peak televangelism. By the mid-1980s, Pat Robertson’s CBN, or Christian Broadcasting Network, was the fourth most watched cable channel in the US. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker had their own Christian TV channel, PTL, which stands for Praise the Lord. [laughter] And their own amusement park called Heritage USA.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Not everyone was cool with all this. It’s important to remember that some people didn’t lose their god damn minds during the Reagan era. One person who couldn’t stand the religious phonies was Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who as a slinger of porn and hater of moral sanctimony often found himself in Jerry Falwell’s crosshairs. In its November 1983 issue, Hustle ran an ad meant to parody a contemporary Campari campaign. The conceit of the actual print campaign was celebrity spokespeople discussing their first time. With a reveal at the end of the ad that they weren’t talking about sex, but instead about enjoying some Campari.
Erin Ryan: Hustler’s parody campaign featured a photo of Jerry Falwell, along with a fake interview that made it seem like Falwell was discussing his first time having sexual intercourse, not drinking Campari. The ad also alleged that he’d lost his virginity in an outhouse to his mother. We’re going into a dramatic reading of the ad right now. Alyssa, would you do me the honor of reading the part of the interviewer? My first time was in anouthouse outside Lynchburg, Virginia.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Wasn’t that a little cramped?
Erin Ryan: Not after I kicked the goat out.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Tell me all about it.
Erin Ryan: I never really expected to make it with Mom, but then after she showed all the other guys in town such a good time, I figured, what the hell?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But your Mom? Isn’t that a bit odd?
Erin Ryan: I don’t think so. Looks don’t mean that much to me in a woman.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Go on.
Erin Ryan: Well, we were drunk off our asses on Campari, ginger ale and soda, that’s called a fire and brimstone at the time, and Mom looked better than a Baptist whore with a hundred dollar donation.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Campari in the crapper with Mom? How interesting. Well, how was it?
Erin Ryan: The Campari was great, but Mom passed out before I could come.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Gross!
Erin Ryan: I’m sorry. It’s Hustler Magazine, Alyssa. It’s supposed to be gross. By the way, the person who wrote that was a freelance contractor who got paid $250. And it was clearly labeled a parody ad at the bottom.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Jerry Falwell, prank lover apparently did not love this prank. He sued Flynt and Hustler magazine for intentional infliction of emotional distress, libel, and invasion of privacy. Flynt’s lawyer claimed that his client’s parody was protected by the first amendment.
Erin Ryan: Originally, a jury awarded Falwell $100,000 in punitive damages for the way that the joke about him fucking his mom in an outhouse hurt his feelings. But Hustler appealed, and in 1988, in an 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed with Larry Flynt.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote the opinion, which established that satire and parody were important components of a freedom of speech, and that being mean to famous people is not illegal. This case transformed Larry Flynt into one of the most significant vanguards of the First Amendment in American history. Most people who were turned off by the greed and hyper-consumption of the 80s televangelists weren’t as well-resourced as Larry Flynt. But they were out there.
Erin Ryan: On April 7th, 1985, an Atlanta man named Edward Johnson happened to hear a sermon from a televangelist claiming that gay people were, quote, spreading AIDS like flies around bathhouses. The televangelists wasn’t Falwell, who tended to be a little bit more smarmy and less crass when he discussed gay people.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Okay, I’m listening.
Erin Ryan: Now, Johnson was also a card-carrying member of the ACLU and these comments didn’t quite sit right with him. And so he decided to use the skills he had and some of his free time to fuck with the holly rolling hate peddlers the way that only he could, by creating a program on his $200 Atari computer that turned his modem into an auto-dial machine that called Jerry Falwell’s fundraising hotline every 30 seconds, 24 hours per day, nonstop for eight months.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Around this time, about 25% of the calls received by Falwell’s fundraising hotline were prank calls. Did Jerry Falwell, fan of pranks, enjoy being pranked this time either?
Erin Ryan: Nope. That’s because Johnson was fucking with the one thing Falwell loved more than anything else.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: The gospel? Kidding, we all know it’s money.
Erin Ryan: Bingo. Thomas Road Baptist officials complained that Johnson’s stunt to tie up the phone line for eight months straight cost him a million dollars in lost pledges and tolls. Remember, it was a toll-free number, so the person who has the number pays it. It’s a genius, genius plan. In a statement, Falwell whined, he robbed the poor needy of many thousands of dollars and characterized the stunt as causing injury to Christ. Eventually the phone company figured out that he was the one doing it, and politely asked him to stop or face felony charges.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Johnson’s stunt earned him a short profile in the Washington Post and a salute from both of us. This is the kind of resistance that we need in the face of marching fascism.
Erin Ryan: Pranks, pranks that are actually good. By the latter half of the 1980s, the party bus that was televangelism was about to blow a tire. In 1987, Jim Bakker was accused of drugging and raping a woman named Jessica Hahn, and then using money tied to his church to keep her quiet. Another televangelist named Jimmy Swaggart pushed for an investigation into Bakker’s misconduct, which led Bakker to accuse Swaggart of trying to take over his ministry.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Very real housewives of Christ. During Bakker’s paranoid crash out, he handed over the reins of his empire, including his TV show and enormous Christian amusement park, to Jerry Falwell for safekeeping until the heat died down. But Falwell kicked the Bakkers out entirely, calling them probably the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history.
Erin Ryan: Falwell tried to keep the PTL empire alive, but couldn’t scrape up enough donations. And so by the end of 1987, after only being in charge for a few months, the Bakker’s empire went belly up. On the plus side, that chapter in Falwell’s life gave us this incredible photo of him going down a Heritage USA waterslide in a full suit.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Stop. [laughs]
Erin Ryan: As Ronald Reagan’s brain slowly fizzled into mush like a saltine in a mud puddle, Falwell’s moral majority was running into trouble as well. By the late 1980s, Falwell had raked up a lot of debt, and despite a 3.5 million dollar bailout by cult leader, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, he couldn’t right the ship. There’s so many things in that sentence, Alyssa.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: It’s crazy. Additionally, Christian right organizations weren’t minting money like they were during the end of the Carter years and beginning of the Reagan administration.
Erin Ryan: Falwell tried to finesse this as his own decision, claiming when he shuttered the moral majority in 1989, quote, “our goal has been achieved. The religious right is solidly in place and religious conservatives in America are now in for the duration.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: That is an interesting way of saying we. He ran out of money. And speaking of finessing, like many busy celebrities, Jerry Falwell did not write his own books. He didn’t even write his own autobiographies. For that task, he hired the Reverend Mel White. White was the gold standard for the New Rights ghostwriting needs. In addition to writing Jerry Falwill’s strength for the journey and If I Should Die Before I Wake, he also wrote Billy Graham’s Approaching Hoofbeats and Pat Robertson’s America’s Date with Destiny.
Erin Ryan: But here’s the thing about the Reverend Mel White. In 1982 he divorced his wife and the reason for his divorce was that he was finally coming to terms with his sexuality. That’s right, the guy who wrote Jerry Falwell’s autobiography is gay. After he came out he joined an LGBTQ friendly church, the very church that Falwell had to pay $5,000 to after slandering its members. He wrote his own autobiography in 1994 about his struggles with his sexuality amid fundamentalist culture. And eventually won an ACLU award and founded his own grassroots pro-LGBTQ organization.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Whoa, talk about personal growth.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, Mel White and his partner got together in 1984, but he didn’t come out of the closet until the 90s. He met several times with Jerry Falwell and other religious leaders he’d given voice in their books to since, in an attempt to advocate for a softer and more loving approach to LGBTQ people. But he was brushed off. Being a bigot was too profitable for Falwell to abandon, I guess. So it’s the end of the Reagan era. Falwell’s fundies have raised insane amounts of money and gotten all their guys elected. And at this point, people are feeling a little bit deflated. What was all that money even for? And donations were starting to dry up. But lucky for Falwill and what tatters remained of the moral majority, a Bill Clinton-shaped torpedo was about to hit.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Yes, with the election of Bill Clinton, Falwell and his fellow Christian grifters had a renewed reason to freak out. As someone who was there when this cultural anti-Clinton psychosis was at its peak, I have to say this shit was very weird. People hated him like he just kicked their puppy and made out with their mom. But you can see how Falwell’s conspiracy-mongering laid the groundwork for some of the more unhinged things we’re seeing from the right in the modern era.
Erin Ryan: In 1994, Falwell helped produce and promote The Clinton Chronicles, a documentary that accused then-President Bill Clinton of crimes, including drug addiction, numerous affairs and harassment, misuse of state funds, money laundering through the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, profiting from drug smuggling at Mena Airport, and protecting drug smuggler Barry Seal. It also alleges witness murders, cover-ups of suspicious deaths, such as those of Vince Foster and two boys found dead near the airport, and destruction of incriminating documents via the Rose Law Firm. I feel like Marjorie Taylor Greene has seen this film. [laughter]
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Almost immediately the rave reviews started rolling in. The Washington Post called it a bizarre and unsubstantiated documentary. The New York Times called it a hodgepodge of sometimes crazed charges.
Erin Ryan: The film sold 150,000 copies and was huge in the Bible study group of your weird Christian friend’s mom. You can still find it on YouTube. For all the drugs and murders, it is surprisingly boring. Falwell kept taking swipes at modernity from his perch in Lynchburg. In 1999, Falwell’s National Liberty Journal alleged that Tinky Winky, a character in the surreal British children’s TV program Teletubbies, was teaching kids to be gay. This was based on the fact that the creature was purple, which is gay. Had a triangle-shaped protrusion that came out of his head, also gay, and carried a purse, gay.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Jerry Falwell also had a problem with my beloved Lilith Fair.
Erin Ryan: What did Sarah McLaughlin ever do to him? All she was ever doing was building a mystery.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Falwell’s newspaper warned people about the demonic legend at the root of the fair’s namesake. Lilith was, according to Jewish legend, Adam’s first wife, who was kicked out of the Garden of Eden for refusing to submit to her husband. The newspaper claimed that Lilith dwelled with demons and went on a killing spree, seducing and murdering her own demonic male offspring and then slaying their children.
Erin Ryan: Wait, they’re mad about a folktale that inspired the name of a concert by and for peaceful women who drive Subarus? Like, Jesus Christ.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Well, they were more mad that Lilith Fair encouraged local Planned Parenthood chapters to have booths at their festivals. They were mad that demonic organizations like the Breast Cancer Fund, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence were also allowed to attend and raise money for their non-profits. During its three-year run, Lilith Fair donated one dollar from each ticket sold and raised over ten million dollars for women’s charities.
Erin Ryan: Speaking of lesbians, Falwell also referred to Ellen DeGeneres as Ellen Degenerate when her character came out as gay on her eponymous sitcom Ellen.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: One of the biggest problems with the patriarchy upheld by the American far-right is that it has convinced generations of unfunny men that they should be telling jokes. There is a direct line from Jerry Falwell’s delivery and the pain in JD Vance’s eyes every time he realizes that nobody is laughing at his laugh line.
Erin Ryan: In response, Ellen said, really? He called me that, Ellen Degenerate? I’ve been getting that since the fourth grade. I guess I’m happy I could give him work.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: I rarely say this about Ellen, but slay. Also in 1999, Falwell claimed that the Antichrist was currently alive and he was, quote, “a male Jew.”
Erin Ryan: [laughs] Okay, maybe you just need to hear the quoted context, Alyssa. This is from a report of the event from the New York Times. Quote, “who will the Antichrist be? Asked Mr. Falwell. Of course he’ll be Jewish. Of course, he’ll pretend to be Christ. And if, in fact, the Lord is coming soon and he’ll an adult at the presentation of himself, he must be alive somewhere today.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Falwell later clarified, if he’s going to be the counterfeit of Christ, he has to be Jewish.
Erin Ryan: The millennium came and went, and the world didn’t end by the hand of a TBD male Jew. But the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 would give Jerry Falwell another chance to run his mouth. Just days after the terror attack that killed 3,000 people, Falwell appeared opposite Pat Robertson on Robertson’s show The 700 Club, which is primarily watched by people who have fallen asleep in front of the TV, aka the Gutfeld audience. Falwell said this.
[clip of Jerry Falzwell]: The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this and I know I’ll hear from them for this, but throwing God off successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe. That the pagans and the abortionist and the feminist and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, all of them who tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, you helped this happen.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: What the fuck.
Erin Ryan: Also, why do so many pro-life old men look like giant babies? So right after 9/11, emotions were running pretty high in this country, but I’ll tell you one thing that didn’t help, and that’s accusing anybody but the terrorists of doing the terror attack.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Nobody thought what he said was a good idea. Even President George W. Bush was like, hey dude, shut up. Falwell clarified his remarks in a written statement, quote, “I apologize that during a week when everyone appropriately dropped all labels and no one was seen as liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, religious or secular, I singled out for blame certain groups of Americans. The only label any of us needs in such a terrible time of crisis is that of American.
Erin Ryan: Oh, That’s a pretty good apology, did he stop there?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Nope. He added, I do not know if the horrific events of September 11th are the judgment of God, but if they are, that judgment is on all of America, including me and all fellow sinners and not on any particular group.
Erin Ryan: God damn it, Jerry. [laughter] You almost had it. And then to further undermine the sincerity of his apology, he then tried to raise money off it in a letter signed by his son, Jonathan, claiming that he was being victimized by a, quote, “vicious smear campaign” and asking them to send a special vote of confidence gift, at least 50 or even $100. And here he is again, basically doubling down on what he had said originally during the last interview he’d ever given his life.
[clip of Jerry Falzwell]: You know you caused a huge amount of controversy after 9/11 when you basically said that the Lord was removing his protection from America. I believe that country that—And that America probably deserved it. Here’s what I said what no I said that the people are responsible must take the blame for it. You did you went—We’re killing a million babies a year in this country by abortion. And I was saying then, I’m saying now, that if we, in fact, change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation was built, we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us as he has in the past. So you still stand by that? I stand right by it.
Erin Ryan: [laughter] He has this thing that he does where he’ll say something just completely out of pocket.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: People will get mad, he’ll apologize, and then later he’ll be like, and I meant it. In the wake of September 11th, Falwell also had a lot to say about Islam.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Oh, smart stuff.
Erin Ryan: No, not smart stuff, here’s a clip of him on Crossfire not long after he caught for saying that the Prophet Muhammad was a terrorist.
[clip of Jerry Falzwell]: I don’t think either Bush or Jerry Vines believes that 1.3 billion Muslims are terrorists. Nobody has said that. He is saying, Dr. Vines is saying and it’s a fact, that Muhammad, in fact, did have among his many wives a nine-year-old wife. I just heard that we have had over 4,000 people who have now, since this program began read Islamic History on fallwell.com to find out the facts.
Erin Ryan: His superpower was also just like, knowing that people saw what he was and just pressing forward regardless because he knew that there’d always be suckers out there. Later in defending the Iraq war to a skeptical Jesse Jackson on Wolf Blitzer’s show, Falwell said, you’ve got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops, and I’m for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Did we do it? Did we blow them all away in the name of the Lord? Did the Iraq war end terrorism forever? Hm. Toward the end of his life, Falwell made some empty gestures at reconciliation, meeting with LGBTQ Christians, being less aggressively racist, at least while talking into a microphone. Maybe he was trying to get his house in order before Judgment Day.
Erin Ryan: But I don’t think that Jerry Falwell thought he was gonna die when he did. In a May 2007 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Falwell told the journalist that he needed 20 more years to accomplish his vision for Liberty University. He told Amanpour that he’d specifically prayed for 20 more years of life with the option to renew, ever the deal-maker. On May 15, 2007, God answered Jerry Falwill’s prayer, and the answer was no. That morning, Falwell woke up like normal and said goodbye to his wife, met his friend for the same breakfast he got every day from Bob Evans, a three egg cheese omelet with a side of sausage. Then he went to his office at Liberty University and keeled over dead from a massive heart attack. He was 73 years old.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: After he died the media did that thing the media does and fawned over a sanitized version of his legacy as though Falwell’s legacy was not primarily hate and division, as though he had made a positive difference in American life rather than spend decades enriching himself at the expense of the best of us.
Erin Ryan: The only person who seemed to have the courage, or balls, let’s just say balls, to speak up about what Falwell’s real legacy was, was Chris Hitchens, who was 100% a dick, but he was often correct, and he was correct about this.
[clip of Christopher Hitchens]: Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God’s punishment if they hadn’t got some kind of clerical qualification. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. The whole consideration of this horrible little person is offensive to very, very many of us who have some regard for truth. And for morality and who think that ethics do not require that lies be told to children by evil old men. That we’re not told that people who believe like fool will be snatched up into heaven uh… Where I’m glad to see uh… He skipped the rapture just found on the floor of his office [laughter] and while the rest of us go to hell. How dare they talk to children like this? How dare How do they raise money from credulous people on their hucks to like elmer Gantry radio stations and fly around in private jets as he did, giggling and sniggering all the time at what he was getting away with. Do you get an idea now of what I mean to say / You know, I think you’re making yourself very clear.
Erin Ryan: Anderson Cooper knew what he was doing when he invited Chris Hitchens on to talk about Jerry Falwell.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: 100 percent.
Erin Ryan: Falwell didn’t have the chance to finish up his vision for Liberty University. But despite his unfinished business, the stench of Jerry Falwell’s senior’s legacy will linger in the fabric of America for decades to come. He’s entangled religion and politics in a way that cultivated right-wing politics even before the MAGA movement kicked it up about 10 notches. The Founding Fathers specifically wanted to avoid what Falwell has done. Falwell fattened himself with a trough of hatred and intolerance. He cloaked his bigotry and sanctimony and ducked behind the Constitution when called out. He demonized the vulnerable and needy while excusing his greed and excess. Despite his constant, aggrieved whining, he died a millionaire. Jesus would have hated his guts. Alyssa, I’m glad he’s not alive to see what this country has come to. He would have loved it. [laughter] Alright, Alyssa. How do you rate Jerry Falwell Sr. On The Matrix of Fucking Guys?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Oh, this is a complicated one. I’m going to say that he was a scheming sociopath and an opportunist.
Erin Ryan: Hm.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: What do you think?
Erin Ryan: I think that he, I think he was a true believing zealot because like if you’re a sales person.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Right.
Erin Ryan: And you want to be good at it, you have to either a hundred percent convince you that what you’re selling is good.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Right.
Erin Ryan: And you have, you have really believe it.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Fair, okay.
Erin Ryan: You have to have enough intellectual heft to overcome the fact that you don’t believe it and put on a performance. And I don’t think he’s smart enough to do the scheming. So I think—
Alyssa Mastromonaco: What he truly believed in was money. Right?
Erin Ryan: What he truly and he was able to finesse his greed into something—
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Right.
Erin Ryan: Into something that was very profitable for him. He’s just a real real piece of shit. Omelet poison—Omelet poisoning claims another victim.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And that about wraps up the time we have for this episode of this fucking guy if you like what you’ve seen hit subscribe Share with your friends and leave us a comment if you’ve got an idea for a future Fucking Guy we should spotlight.
Erin Ryan: This episode was written by me with an assist from Alyssa Mastromonaco, Claire Fogarty is Hysteria’s associate producer, and all the rest of our credits as well as links to our sources can be found in our show notes.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Take care, be well, leave Lilith Fair alone.
Erin Ryan: And fuck that guy.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Fuck that guy!
