|
BECAUSE YOU ASKED
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
March 1980: MAJOR LIE # 1 Falwell tells an Anchorage rally about a conversation with President Carter at the White House. Commenting on a January breakfast meeting, Falwell claimed to have asked Carter why he had "practicing homosexuals" on the senior staff at the White House. According to Falwell, Carter replied, "Well, I am president of all the American people, and I believe I should represent everyone." When others who attended the White House event insisted that the exchange never happened, Falwell responded that his account "was not intended to be a verbatim report," but rather an "honest portrayal" of Carter’s position.
August 1980: After Southern Baptist Convention President Bailey Smith tells a Dallas Religious Right gathering that "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew," Falwell gives a similar view. "I do not believe," he told reporters, "that God answers the prayer of any unredeemed Gentile or Jew." After a meeting with an American Jewish Committee rabbi, he changed course, telling an interviewer on NBC’s "Meet the Press" that "God hears the prayers of all persons….God hears everything."
July 1984: MAJOR LIE # 2 Falwell is forced to pay gay activist Jerry Sloan $5,000 after losing a court battle. During a TV debate in Sacramento, Falwell denied calling the gay-oriented Metropolitan Community Churches "brute beasts" and "a vile and Satanic system" that will "one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven." When Sloan insisted he had a tape, Falwell promised $5,000 if he could produce it. Sloan did so, Falwell refused to pay and Sloan successfully sued. Falwell appealed, with his attorney charging that the Jewish judge in the case was prejudiced. He lost again and was forced to pay an additional $2,875 in sanctions and court fees.
March 1987: Falwell accepts control of the collapsing PTL from his friend and fellow televangelist Jim Bakker. The floundering PTL (Praise The Lord Network) and it’s Heritage U.S.A. evangelical theme park continued to fall into bankruptcy. Falwell was accused of forcing his Fundamentalist ideas on Bakker’s Presbyterian flock. Tammy Faye, the former wife of Jim Bakker said in her 1996 book, Telling It My Way, "Jerry Falwell conned Jim into giving the PTL to him. He got us at a time when I had just gotten out of the hospital. He knew we were at a down time in our lives. He came to California and he lied to Jim. He told Jim he wanted to help him and Jim believed him."
October 1987: CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR # 1 The Federal Election Commission fines Falwell $6,000 for transferring $6.7 million in funds intended for his ministry to political committees.
January 1991: Siding with Americans United, the Virginia Supreme Court unanimously
rejects Falwell’s quest for $60 million in state bonds for his Liberty University. During the litigation, Falwell tried to camouflage the school’s rigidly fundamentalist character, telling the court that the school would no longer discriminate in hiring or force students to attend mandatory chapel (renamed convocation). All the while, Falwell assured his congregation that Liberty had not changed, insisting chapel will be mandatory "until Jesus comes."
1991: Stephens Inc., a Savings and Loan institution from Arkansas forecloses the North Campus of Liberty University, which Falwell had put up as collateral on $72.3 million. Falwell was also involved in the eventual failure of the Lincoln Savings and Loan of California, after borrowing $32 million. The deed to Thomas Road Baptist Church was recovered from their vault and returned.
January 1993: In the wake of Bill Clinton’s election to the presidency, Falwell mails fund-raising letters nationwide asking people to vote on whether he should reactivate the Moral Majority. He later refuses to say how much money the effort raised and tells reporters he has no intention of reactivating the organization.
February 1993: CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR # 2 The Internal Revenue Service determines that funds from Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour program were illegally funneled to a political action committee. The IRS forced Falwell to pay $50,000 and retroactively revoked the Old Time Gospel Hour’s tax-exempt status for 1986-87.
May 1985: MAJOR LIE # 3 Falwell apologizes to a Jewish group for seeking a "Christian" America. From now on, he says, he will use the term "Judeo-Christian."
March 1993: Despite his promise to Jewish groups to stop referring to America as a "Christian nation," Falwell gives a sermon saying, "We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours."
November 1987: MAJOR LIE # 4 Falwell tells reporters he is stepping down as head of the Moral Majority and retiring from politics. "From now on, my real platform is the pulpit, not politics," he says at a news conference.
September 1993: Falwell announces he will not reactivate the Moral Majority but will instead do political work through a group called the Liberty Alliance.
September 1994: Falwell endorses former Iran-Contra figure Oliver North for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia. Falwell glosses over North’s legal problems, saying they happened "in the past."
1994-1995: CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR # 3 Falwell is criticized for using his "Old Time Gospel Hour" to hawk a scurrilous video called "The Clinton Chronicles" that makes a number of unsubstantiated charges against President Bill Clinton—among them that he is a drug addict and that he arranged the murders of political enemies in Arkansas. Despite claims he had no ties to the project, evidence surfaced that Falwell helped bankroll the venture with $200,000 paid to a group called Citizens for Honest Government (CHG). CHG’s Pat Matrisciana later admitted that Falwell and he staged an infomercial interview promoting the video in which a silhouetted reporter said his life was in danger for investigating Clinton. (Matrisciana himself posed as the reporter.) "That was Jerry’s idea to do that," Matrisciana recalled. "He thought that would be dramatic."
June 1997: Falwell announces a plan to urge fundamentalist churches to intervene in partisan politics. He vows to send sample candidate endorsement sermons that pastors can read in their churches and says he has already done this in the Virginia attorney general’s race. Falwell drops the plan after being reported to the IRS by Americans United.
August 1997: Falwell pleads for funds for a new group, the National Committee for the Restoration of the Judeo-Christian Ethic. In a fund-raising letter, he promises to "get back in the ring" and be a "spiritual George Foreman." He pledges to register 4 million new voters and mobilize 50,000 pastors. After publishing a couple of fund-raising letters, the group is never heard from again.
November 1997: Falwell accepts $3.5 million from a front group representing controversial Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon to ease Liberty University’s financial woes. The donation, and several Falwell appearances at Moon conferences, raised eyebrows because Moon claims to be the messiah sent to complete the failed mission of Jesus Christ, a doctrine sharply at odds with Falwell’s fundamentalist Christian theology. (In 1978, before the Moon money started flowing, Falwell told Esquire magazine, "Reverend Sun Myung Moon is like the plague: he exploits boys and girls, and he should be exported.")
February 1998: Falwell accepts a $70-million donation from insurance magnate Art Williams, for his debt-ridden Liberty University. Falwell says the contribution will free him to focus on politics again
April 1998: MAJOR LIE # 5 Confronted on national television with a controversial quote from America Can Be Saved!, a published collection of his sermons, Falwell denies having written the book or had anything to do with it. In the 1979 work, Falwell wrote, "I hope to 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!" Despite Falwell’s denial, Sword of the Lord Publishing, which produced the book, confirms that Falwell wrote it.
October 1998: In a fund-raising letter, Falwell announces plans to expand his ministry and to "immediately rededicate myself to use my God-given skills as a national spokesman for morality and return to the moral/political arena....[W]ith God’s anointing and your prayerful support, you will soon think I am omnipresent."
January 1999: Falwell tells a pastors’ conference in Kingsport, Tenn., that the Antichrist prophesied in the Bible is alive today and "of course he’ll be Jewish."
February 1999: MAJOR LIE # 6 uh-oh! Falwell becomes the object of nationwide ridicule after his National Liberty Journal newspaper issues a "parents alert" warning that Tinky Winky, a character on the popular PBS children’s show "Teletubbies," might be gay. (Americans United was responsible for releasing the information to the national press.)
April 2000: CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR # 4 Falwell forms the People of Faith 2000, a campaign designed to mobilize Christians in the 2000 election. Federal tax laws clearly state that it is illegal for a tax-exempt organization to conduct partisan voter registration. Although Falwell claims his campaign is nonpartisan he admits, "It is my experience that most people of faith in the country vote pro-family, pro-life, and that will mean George W. Bush." He may also be accused of funneling tax-deductible donations made to his religious ministries into partisan political projects…. So what’s new?
|
Linear Mode
