A certain chancellor of a certain Christian university has rung in the new year with his
interview
on the Washington Post's magazine page, and, well, it's a doozy, y'all.
Setting aside for the moment the obvious dings to Jerry Falwell Jr.'s credibility (namely that, much like one Franklin Graham, people pay attention to what he has to say largely because he had a famous father, he preached a message on conceal-carry firearms for Liberty University students hoping that they'd use said firearms to kill Muslims, and that Liberty University's online program has lots of hallmarks of a for-profit education pyramid), he has stated on his Twitter account that he was accurately quoted in the piece. So lets take his words here at face value, one paragraph at a time, and dismantle them before a world that deserves far better from the church than the likes Jerry Falwell Jr.'s prejudice. His words are in italics, my responses in plaintext below them.
Of course, of course. But that’s where people get confused. I almost laugh out loud when I hear Democrats saying things like, “Jesus said suffer the little children to come unto me” and try to use that as the reason we should open up our borders.
It’s such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally — to love our neighbors as ourselves, help the poor — can somehow be imputed on a nation. Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome. He went out of his way to say that’s the earthly kingdom, I’m about the heavenly kingdom and I’m here to teach you how to treat others, how to help others, but when it comes to serving your country, you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. It’s a distortion of the teaching of Christ to say Jesus taught love and forgiveness and therefore the United States as a nation should be loving and forgiving, and just hand over everything we have to every other part of the world. That’s not what Jesus taught. You almost have to believe that this is a theocracy to think that way, to think that public policy should be dictated by the teachings of Jesus.
There's a lot wrong here, but we'll start with just four problems in particular and go from there.
First is Falwell's assertion that "it's such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally...can somehow be imputed on a nation." That is a point of view that is potentially defensible if it is held to consistently, except in Falwell's case (and white evangelicalism's case), it isn't. If Falwell believes this, then why is he even currying so much influence with the president to begin with? More to the point, if this is true, then why does white evangelicalism invest so much energy, time, and money into trying to end rights for same-sex couples and access to contraception for women, all ostensibly in the name of Jesus? Falwell and white evangelicalism cannot have it both ways--either Christian ethics can guide national policy, or they cannot.
Second is the divorce of the earthly and heavenly kingdoms--something Falwell reiterates and expounds upon later, so we'll get to that a bit later as well. But for now, suffice it to say that this approach is exactly how you get a version of Christianity that treats faith in God as revealed through Jesus as some sort of individual cosmic life insurance, and not as a guiding moral compass for entire peoples. C.S. Lewis famously argued in Mere Christianity against reducing Jesus down to a great teacher, but the problem here is reducing Jesus down to just a sacrificial lamb who has nothing to say about anything beyond individual behavior (even though He did, sometimes at great length). White evangelical leaders like Falwell will insist that Jesus is bigger than anything we can possibly imagine, while simultaneously compartmentalizing away Jesus's teachings into the smallest boxes imaginable. They need to pick one.
Third is Falwell's characterization of the progressive Christian argument, which is at best a strawman argument and at worst is explicitly dismissive of the Gospels. Jesus permitting the children to come to Him takes place within the specific context of the disciples trying to send the children away, *and* children (especially female children) did not merit the same respect and regard as adults in the ancient Near East. This is a portrait, then, of a Messiah welcoming the most vulnerable among us even when those around Him would prefer to send them away. The parallels with the current US treatment of immigrants and refugees are stark, to say the least.
Finally, Falwell completely borks up the "render unto Caesar" story. Crucially, Jesus asks for a denarius, a small silver coin bearing the image of the emperor, and asks who the coin belongs to. He does this against the backdrop of the vast temple complex in which God is said to dwell. By holding the coin, Jesus invites a juxtaposition of the two--the tiny coin against the far larger temple (and, indeed, Jerusalem itself). Render unto Caesar, then, this minuscule thing which belongs to Caesar, and render unto God the vastness which belongs to God.
Jesus wasn't teaching about "serving your country" when He said "render unto Caesar," nor was He talking about any of the
many
other inane
ways
Falwell has interpreted this passage in the past to fit his own hacky partisan ends. Rather, Jesus was talking about God's sovereignty over Caesar, which was reinforced at the Cross when the centurion utters, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" By professing Jesus as the Son of God, rather than the emperor who was held by Roman imperial theology to be of divine origin (as Caesars were deified upon their deaths at that time), an anonymous Roman soldier indicts his own empire. To hope for such self reflection from someone like Falwell, though, seems a bridge too far.
Yes. The government should be led by somebody who is going to do what’s in the best interest of the government and its people. And I believe that’s what Jesus thought, too.
Here is a perfect illustration of the first problem I highlight above--Falwell is "imputing on a nation" what He believes Jesus thought--in this case, about who should lead the government. That's not personal, that's public and collective. Falwell should have the intellectual honesty to admit this discrepancy, but of course he does not.
What earns him my support is his business acumen. Our country was so deep in debt and so mismanaged by career politicians that we needed someone who was not a career politician, but someone who’d been successful in business to run the country like a business. That’s the reason I supported him.
If that is why you support this sexist, neolithic, homo/transphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, racist bigot of a president, fine (I mean, it isn't fine, but let's give it to you for the moment). But business acumen was never, ever central to the teachings of any New Testament teacher. Not Jesus. Not Paul. And most certainly not James, the brother of Jesus, who had extremely harsh words throughout his letter in the New Testament for the wealthy elite to whom Trump belongs (or acts like he belongs, since we don't actually know his net worth). So if you want to support someone because of their business wealth, please don't pretend that is remotely congruous with Christian teaching. Quite the contrary.
Yeah, Congress, the spending bill that they forced on him in order to get the military spending up to where it needed to be — he said that would be the last time he signed one of those. But he had no choice because Obama had decimated the military, and it had to be rebuilt.
This would be Falwell being caught in the lie that Trump decreased the national debt or deficit when both have increased during his presidency. (Well, to be fair, Falwell did not say it explicitly, but he implied it with his mention of the country being deep in debt earlier.) This happens earlier in the interview as well, when Falwell says, "This midterm, the president did better than the average president does in his first midterms...It’s a better result than you normally see in the first midterms," which is a pretty astounding way to spin losing the popular House vote by an even greater percentage than the Democrats lost in the wave elections of 1994 and 2010, or than the Republicans lost in the 2006 wave election. Falwell is speaking not as a Christian leader, but as a political operative in moments like these.
Which, everything else about why Trump may have signed spending bills or lost the midterms aside for a moment, not bearing false witness is one of the Ten Commandments, and going on record saying that Trump is fixing the national deficit when he is not and has not is utterly irresponsible for Falwell to do. But it also fits with the pattern of almost this entire interview--obfuscate, proof-text, shade the truth, anything to avoid confronting his own duplicity in his public faith, and complicity in this presidency's manifold sins.
More to the point, conservative white evangelicalism tries to define itself publicly as having a monopoly on capital-T Truth. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, they are quick to remind us that Jesus said. What room for big-T Truth can there possibly be in lies told in the service of another liar? No, far from having a monopoly on the Truth, Truth has been driven out of this brand of Christianity like the lepers and demoniacs whom Jesus healed--desperate and howling, demanding for its presence among us to be acknowledged. It has not disappeared. Like the lepers and the demoniacs, white Christianity has simply chosen not to engage it.
No. Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.
This is the response that has perhaps gotten the most exposure on social media, and understandably so, as Falwell is asked if there is anything that will lose Trump the support of white evangelicals, and he simply responds, "No." That one-word response, and his follow-up here, are pretty profound in what they admit.
First is the assertion that "anything" Trump does is what is best for us, which isn't something a thoughtful Christian leader says, it's what a leader in a cult of personality says. Daddy Knows Best, except in this case, Dad is an openly sadistic, neo-fascist, anti-democratic president who can do no wrong in the eyes of an openly prejudiced man like Falwell. Trump may value loyalty, but this goes beyond loyalty and into the realm of obsequiousness.
More specifically, Falwell's response highlights the calculated--but no less stark--about-face white evangelicalism has made in defense of its white Christian nationalism. This about-face became evident under Obama, when a spiritually and maritally faithful man was regularly demonized as the Antichrist in no small part because he was a black man whose middle name is Hussein, but it entered its latest stage under Trump, who is neither spiritually or maritally faithful, never has been, and likely never will be. While Falwell dissembles in this regard in his next answer that we look at, it must be remembered that he began this interview by emphasizing that, in his opinion, the ethical teachings of Jesus were meant to be taken on an individual level only. Even if you disagreed with Obama's policies (which I sometimes did, too), his personal, familial life has always been beyond reproach, while Trump's has been anything but. The juxtaposition of treatment of a white racist and a black man reveals what has been at the heart of white American evangelicalism for centuries: white racism and nationalism.
When Jesus said we’re all sinners, he really meant all of us, everybody. I don’t think you can choose a president based on their personal behavior because even if you choose the one that you think is the most decent — let’s say you decide Mitt Romney. Nobody could be a more decent human being, better family man. But there might be things that he’s done that we just don’t know about. So you don’t choose a president based on how good they are; you choose a president based on what their policies are. That’s why I don’t think it’s hypocritical.
It's easy to read this initially as part of the larger tendency to grade Trump on a curve, because it is a part of that tendency. This is not a defense of Bill Clinton and should not be read as one, but just as the difference in treatment by white evangelicals of Obama and Trump is revealing, so too is the difference in treatment by white evangelicals of Clinton and Trump. I was an adolescent during the Clinton impeachment, but I still vividly remember the righteous indignation of Republican leaders huffing and puffing about the contents of the Starr Report. And frankly, I did and still do share some of that moral indignation. Democrats should have stopped defending Bill Clinton years ago.
Falwell's defense of Trump, on the other hand, clearly knows no bounds, as he is willing--eager, even--to go so far as to rewrite the precepts of sinful action, even holding the specter of "things that (someone has) done that we just don't know about," like he's Max von Sydow in Minority Report trying to get us all to support his PreCrime to Protect White Christians program. Not only are the sins a person has actually committed a Real Thing to Falwell, so are the sins they may or may not have committed, which completely obfuscates another integral precept in Christianity: personal accountability. If the person who has committed a specific sin is as more or less accountable to the public as a person who may or may not have committed that sin (which basically means everyone), then there is no point in trying to bring to repentance the person who has committed the sin.
Falwell engages in this sort of moral obfuscation for the obvious reason: there is no other orthodox (small-o) Christian defense for Trump's personal and presidential behavior, only unorthodox defenses such as this one that makes a hash of, once again, everything else Falwell would purport to hold dear as a part of church life. In Falwell's world that apparently never included the hue and cry over politicians' personal behavior that defined the mid-to-late 1990s, presidents are no longer supposed to be held to any sort of standard, because any person may have committed all the exact same sins, we just don't know (except they probably didn't).
There’s two kingdoms. There’s the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you’d like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what’s best for your country. Think about it. Why have Americans been able to do more to help people in need around the world than any other country in history? It’s because of free enterprise, freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurism and wealth. A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It’s just common sense to me.
Hoo boy.
Did you see the part in which Jer-bear justified pretty much any and all human rights abuses, including slavery and genocide, in this answer? You may have missed it, but it was definitely there.
Complete separation of the kingdoms has a lot of dangerous implications, on top of it--like so much of what Falwell says in this interview--flying in the face of *very prominent teachings of Jesus Christ.* Heck, the Lord's Prayer includes the line, "You will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." I know pointing out all of these ways in which Falwell has completely butchered or simply skipped by Scripture may feel repetitious or even uncharitable after a while, but I think it important to do so in order to debunk this myth that white evangelicals take what the Bible teaches more seriously than the rest of us Christians (or non-Christians, for that matter).
But back to the justification of human rights abuses. By completely divorcing the kingdom of heaven from the kingdom of heaven *on earth,* Falwell undercuts one of Jesus's own ethical postulations, namely that the kingdom is meant to be sought and striven toward on earth, even if it might not be fully attainable here. If the goodness of God's kingdom is not ever meant to be felt on earth, well, that is one way white slaveholders historically justified slavery--that this was the best possible lot for their slaves on this earth. And if attaining the heavenly kingdom means separating more people from the earthly kingdom, well, that is how genocides have been justified across the centuries, from the extermination of indigenous Americans to my own Armenians. After all, if the heavenly kingdom does not reflect the earthly kingdom, what should it matter how much we sully the earthly kingdom with our bloodthirst and violence?
Rather, Jesus challenges us to find and re-create heaven on earth. By calling for the liberation of the oppressed and the marginalized, by championing the people who would otherwise be enslaved or killed off, by rebuking the notion that the kingdom of heaven had nothing to do with the kingdom on earth, Jesus advanced an ethic that the church should be fostering and facilitating, not warping and dismissing. Except that Falwell believes he explicitly benefits from dismissing this Gospel ethic, for as much as he and white Christianity might pretend to be otherwise with persecution mentalities and God's Not Dead franchises and homo/transphobic florists and cakeshop proprietors, Falwell does not represent the righteous oppressed. He never has. It has always been in his narrow parochial interests to ensure that he never really hears from the marginalized.
The problem is that in doing so, he is also ensuring that he also never really hears from Jesus of Nazareth, who
taught
that the charity given by impoverished people is of far greater value than Falwell wishes to acknowledge.
It may be immoral for them not to support him, because he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor. A lot of the people who criticized me, because they had a hard time stomaching supporting someone who owned casinos and strip clubs or whatever, a lot them have come around and said, “Yeah, you were right.” Some of the most prominent evangelicals in the country have said, “Jerry, we thought you were crazy, but now we understand.”
First of all, I'm pretty sure these "most prominent evangelicals in the country" come from the same land of make believe as Trump's "reliable source" who told him that Obama's birth certificate was a fake. But more to the point, the casual patronizing racism oozes out of this response. Not only is no credit given to Obama for reversing the Great Recession (and which Trump got to enjoy the inertia of), but the shallow conflation of Black and Hispanic peoples as poor people only in need of employment is horribly prejudiced. It's a "you've got a job in this great white country of ours, what more could you possibly have to complain about?" line of logic, as though the overt racism from Trump and his supporters towards Black and Latinx people simply never existed. It also frames that employment as being magnanimously bestowed by this white president upon the poor, unfortunate communities of color, as though Black and POC job applicants don't get out and hustle and earn their jobs every damn day of the week. But to Falwell, they aren't people, they're these cardboard cutouts to fit into a soundbite, pawns to serve his own hidebound, blindly pro-Trump agenda.
Which, given the sensibilities of all that Falwell represents--a brand of white Christianity specifically formed as a political force to uphold segregated Christian schools and white Christian racism writ large--this is all entirely on-brand for him. But because he is still treated as a Christian leader when he has revealed his religion to be a Christian version of white nationalism instead, he must be rebutted and refuted in public, by other Christians, who see his words and work for the grotesque abomination that they are.