PUCKETT’S PERSPECTIVES
Of preachers, politics and power
By Gene Puckett,
Biblical Recorder

Editor’s Note: This article is an editorial from the North Carolina Baptist state paper.

The name Jerry Falwell is synonymous with preaching, politics and power. The most recent expression of that triad has moved from the national to the international scene.

More than 40 years ago when Falwell started Thomas Road Church in Lynchburg, VA., his driving force was to plant a church that would reach people with the gospel. By any measure, he was successful in that effort.

Along the way, Falwell’s success in one area prompted him to move into several others. Using television and radio, he launched a school and other ministries. Much of his time on television was spent in boosting these ventures, urging people to support them with their money and influence.

Apparently many Southern Baptist heard his plea. Falwell careful cultivated highly visible Southern Baptists such as W. A. Criswell, Paige Patterson, Jerry Vines and even Billy Graham. Bailey Smith’s evangelistic conferences have become almost synonymous with Falwell.

In 1989, Falwell was in Las Vegas, NV, while the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was meeting. Asked if he were planning to join the Convention, Falwell responded that he would not. With his ego out of control, he openly observed that he would become just another one of about 35,000 Baptist preachers if he joined.

Falwell did not have to join the SBC (although technically he did last year when his congregation contributed to the new state convention of conservative Southern Baptists in Virginia) to gain control of it. Falwell’s influence in the SBC is now undeniable, so much so that the name ought to be changed — The Falwellian Convention of Neo-Southern Baptists!

Falwell has always needed money, and he takes it from whatever source is available. Last November, Robert Parry of Los Angeles, CA, wrote in a column carried by several daily newspapers: “Desperate for an infusion of cash, Falwell and two associates make an unannounced trip to South Korea in January 1994, where they solicited help from the Unification Church representatives, according to documents on file in a court case in Bedford County, VA. Months later (Sun Myung) Moon’s organization funneled $3.5 million to Liberty University through a clandestine channel.”

When the prime minister of Israel recently visited the United States to talk with our nation’s leaders about peace in the Middle East, Falwell set up a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu before the Israeli leader ever got to the White House. The private meeting with Netanuyahu was followed by a rally attended by about 1,000 Christian and Jewish conservatives, according to a story in The New York Times January 21.

Morris H. Chapman, president and chief executive office of The SBC Executive Committee, attended The meeting. He should have stayed in Nashville. This whole scenario is international secular politics, and Chapman has no right to bring The SBC into the picture.

Did Chapman not consider what this involvement might mean for our missionaries trying to win Muslims to Christ? Apparently not!

March 1998