"Happy the people whose God is the Lord" -- Religion, politics, and Jerry Falwell

I wanted to pass along this article (reprinted in its entirety at the end of the post), written by a California pastor I have much respect for, Paul Viggiano. I was introduced to this man last fall when he appeared on the Apologetics.com weekly radio show on the Reformation (a fantastic two-hour listen, if you have the time).

For me, the highlight of the article is his statement near the end regarding those who would have Christians leaving their faith and Biblically-based ethics out of their politics, a criticism of the religious right that has never made any sense to me. Pastor Viggiano writes,

Those who take part in the political process, at some level, do what Falwell did - they marshal their efforts to promote what they believe to be in the best interests of the people. There is a veiled hypocrisy lurking in the bosom of those who seek to chastise Falwell simply because they disagree with the source of his value system, which happened to be the texts of the Old and New Testaments. Why should his sources be excluded form the marketplace and other sources accepted? People hated his ethics and thought they should be excluded, but they love their own ethics and promote them with gusto.

Exactly. The USA is a nation of ideas. In many ways, it is more of an idea than a place. There is a free market of ideas and we have always taken pride in that. Of course, I cannot agree with the secularist and his/her basic presuppositions about the nature of reality or ethics, but I will not attempt to unduly silence those who hold those viewpoints. At the same time, I expect to be able to argue and reason from my own presuppositions and arrive at conclusions like a reasonable man. When I hear someone say something like "religion should be kept out of the political process," I am simply incredulous. Even should I not refer to my religious convictions explicitly, they are intrinsic to my person and govern my thoughts and actions each and every day so that I may not extricate myself from them. An example: without referring to Jesus, I simply do my best to treat people as He would have me do, as people created in the very image of God Himself. I am to love others; even my enemies.

Now, of course I very often fail at doing all of this. But I know it, and regret it.

Anyway, here's the article.

Falwell's impact will remain

Minister isn't being judged by the espousers of modern liberalism and apostasy. He's facing a higher judge and will have little reason to apologize.

By Paul Viggiano

I never considered myself a huge Jerry Falwell fan - at least until now. The hue and cry cascading off the walls of the dark caves of Western paganism at the mere sound of Falwell's name leads me to conclude that the man was acutely efficient at leading a vanguard of righteousness.

It appears men would have preferred a duplicitous Falwell. For all the talk of hypocrisy and double-mindedness in the church, Falwell is castigated for being single-minded and a man of conviction. "No," his detractors say, "it was not his convictions. It's was his binding of conservative Christianity with conservative politics." As if his particular world view is not allowed to penetrate the sacred halls of government - where, by the way, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are commonly ground in granite.

Falwell is no longer suffering the cackling hens of modern liberalism and apostasy. He stands before God and will, I suspect, apologize less than most of us for not acknowledging Jesus as king of kings.

It's telling to hear the caviling of those who have no bones speaking ill of the dead. Falwell made a huge difference, and the enemies of biblical ethics would exhume his bones, grind them to powder and have them cast off the Golden Gate.

Leftist angst against Falwell is due in large part to his success. I doubt that Falwell will go down in history as a master theologian. A broader historical examination will reveal that it was the ethical anarchy of the 1960s that made Falwell's career. As we slid into a moral freefall, those who were maintaining their sanity (not me, I saw Woodstock six times in my banana pants and tye-died shirt) wanted to know if God cared about cultural licentiousness or if the Bible had any significance when it came to the reality of a society and its laws and leadership.

Falwell, mirroring historical, biblical Christianity, said yes.

Crimes, by their very nature, are (or at least should be) immoral. The popular slogan that you can't legislate morality is a staggeringly daft proposition. Why in the world would something be a crime if it were not immoral? Falwell's simple argument was that morality makes a difference in terms of the success and happiness of a nation - or as the Bible would put it, "blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord."

Those who take part in the political process, at some level, do what Falwell did - they marshal their efforts to promote what they believe to be in the best interests of the people. There is a veiled hypocrisy lurking in the bosom of those who seek to chastise Falwell simply because they disagree with the source of his value system, which happened to be the texts of the Old and New Testaments. Why should his sources be excluded form the marketplace and other sources accepted? People hated his ethics and thought they should be excluded, but they love their own ethics and promote them with gusto.

There is truly a sad irony that so many would seek to vilify a Christian man simply because he sought to be faithful to the very God the vast majority of our founding fathers appealed to in the process of creating this nation. It would be helpful if his detractors showed us their sacred text so that we might hold it under the same scrutiny.

The Rev. Paul Viggiano is pastor of the Branch of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Torrance. His e-mail address is pastorpaul@integrity.com.