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SOUTHERN VOICE OCTOBER7/1993
Falwell
Continued from page 6
the Falwells fared well during the depression.
“Even in the worst...he still owned several
cars and regularly ate venison,” wrote Falwell
biographer Dinesh D’Souza.
But Carey’s brother, Garland, did not
handle the prosperity as well. He drank heavily,
gambled, used drugs and drove fast cars. The
Falwells stuck by their wayward kin, however,
with Carey Falwell providing the attorney when
Garland was arrested for chasing some college
students with a gun when he thought they had
stolen his wallet.
Given a light sentence thanks to Carey’s
help, Garland returned to his old ways, and
eventually, in an alcohol-and-drug-induced
rage, came after Carey with his gun. Carey
defended himself and killed Garland with one
shot from a shotgun to the chest.
The killing was ruled self-defense, and
Carey Falwell was not prosecuted. But the
death of his brother, and the earlier death of his
daughter, Rosha, from a ruptured appendix,
sent him into a dizzying spiral of alcohol abuse.
Jerry Falwell attributes it all to the Enemy.
Jerry Laymon Falwell was bom on Aug.
11,1933, two years after the deaths of Rosha
and Garland. He and his fraternal twin, Gene,
were the second and third sons of Carey and
Helen Beasley Falwell. They had an older
brother and sister. Like fellow Christian su
premacist Pat Robertson, Falwell comes by
his religion from his mother’s side of the fam
ily.
The Beasleys, “Baptists from the begin
ning of time,” according to Falwell, were also
owners of plantations farmed by slaves, and
the Civil War ruined the family. But the
Beasleys remained properly religious, bring
ing up their children to fear the Lord and go to
church every Sunday. Carey and Helen were
married in 1915 and remained together until
Carey’s death in 1948, although the last few
years were frequently punctuated by Carey’s
drunken, violent outbursts.
“Occasionally, angry words were not
enough, and Dad would strike out with his
fists before thinking,” Falwell wrote, adding
that his father struck him only once that he
could remember.
Jerry Falwell’s consolation in the story of
his father is that on his death bed, Carey was
baptized. It had taken 37 years, but Carey
Falwell confessed his sins and was forgiven
by God. Jerry Falwell’s vision is for this to
happen to every American.
However, the act of conversion took nearly
20 years for Jerry himself.
Young Jerry Falwell was a practical joker
and a little bit wild. He belonged to a gang
called the “Wall Gang,” so named because of
.the spot in Lynchburg where the teenaged boys
hung out. They picked fights, started fires and
generally caused mischief. Falwell was even
banned from delivering the valedictory address
at his high school because he had masterminded
a scheme for school athletes to eat without
meal tickets.
Falwell was one of those athletes. He
played football, basketball and baseball. At
one time, he was given a chance to try out for
the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.
He grew up listening to the fundamentalist
Rev. Charles Fuller’s “Old Fashioned Revival
Hour” on the radio each Sunday morning.
Falwell liked the preacher’s steady promotion
of the Gospel, and, in his college years, he
went in search of a minister like Fuller.
Falwell found Rev. Paul Donnelson at the
Park Avenue Baptist Church in Lynchburg. In
1952, taken with the preaching of Donnelson,
he dropped out of Lynchburg College and en
rolled at Baptist Bible College in Springfield,
Mo.
“I went to Lynchburg College to get a
liberal education,” he told biographer D’Souza.
“I went to Baptist Bible College with the spe
cific purpose of preparing for Christian minis
try.”
After graduation, Falwell prepared to come
to Macon, Ga. to start a church. But back in
Lynchburg, his old church was having prob
lems with its new minister, and 35 members
persuaded Falwell to help them found a new
church. Falwell set up shop in 1956 in an
abandoned building, the Donald Duck Bot
tling Company, and intended to stay only a
month.
He has been at the Thomas Road Baptist
Church ever since.
Falwell married Macel Pate, whom he had
met when he first came to Park Avenue, and
began his radio and television ministry. He
would broadcast sermons first, then deliver
them an hour later at church.
Thomas Road expanded rapidly—from 35
members to nearly 900 in a year. The church
now boasts nearly 20,000 members and seats
4,000 for each of Falwell’s services. His radio
and television broadcasts grew quickly as well.
By the mid-1960s, ‘The Old Time Gospel
Hour,” as he called it, was being broadcast
across the country.
He held conservative political views, in
cluding opposition to integration and Supreme
Court rulings such as Brown vs. Board of Edu
cation (“I grew up from infancy believing that
segregation was right and Christian,” he has
said. “If Chief Justice Warren and his associ
ates had known God’s word, I am quite confi
dent that the 1954 decision would never have
been made.”) But in his early years as a
televangelist, Falwell avoided political involve
ment.
He held to the traditional fundamentalist
view that political questions were irrelevant to
saving souls.
“We have a message of redeeming grace
through a crucified and risen Lord,” Falwell
preached in 1965. “Nowhere are we told to
reform the externals. We are not told to wage
wars against bootleggers, liquor stores, gam
blers, murderers, prostitutes, racketeers, preju
diced persons or institutions, or any other ex
isting evil as such. The Gospel does not clean
up the outside but rather regenerates the
inside...Preachers are not called to be politi
cians but soul winners.”
Citing those beliefs, he was particularly
critical of “liberal” clergymen taking an active
role in the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
Today, Jerry Falwell’s positions have
CONTINUES ON PAGE 8
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