there are Gays at the pearly gates waiting for him.

_{repressive governments mix administrative clumsiness & inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.}

... In the Christian home the woman is to be submissive

http://www.accesshollywood.com/news/ah5356.shtml

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

Some religious figures were quick yesterday to pay tribute to Mr Falwell.

Pat Robertson, another leading televangelist, said: "Jerry's courage and strength of convictions will be sadly missed in this time of increasing moral relativism." But few mentioned Mr Falwell's history as a segregationist who opposed Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. During the 1980s he was an outspoken supporter of apartheid in South Africa, although more recently he denounced segregation.

Mr Falwell received international notoriety in the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington when he said: " I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularise America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'you helped this happen'."

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said: "Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America's anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation's appalling response to the onslaught of the Aids epidemic..."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2548753.ece

There is no successor for this big, booming, bigoted man
May 16, 2007

In recent years, his health had been failing, and his influence fading. He wanted, he said, to focus less on politics and more on his ministry. He may have had no choice. Although only 73, he was increasingly an anachronism, a voice from a receding political past.

And with his passing, the question: Who will replace Jerry Falwell? invites the answer: no one.

The power that the founder of the Moral Majority wielded, even at the end, should not be underestimated. In March, when Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, needed absolution for a politically inconvenient affair - he was philandering, even as he condemned Bill Clinton's involvement with Monica Lewinsky - he went to Rev. Falwell, who forgave him and predicted God had, too.

Mr. Gingrich is scheduled to give the commencement speech this Saturday at Mr. Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., a step on the road to his expected run for the Republican Party's presidential nomination.

But the religious right is divided and distracted, its leadership dismayed by the absence of a major presidential candidate acceptable to faith-based conservatives. That leadership is old. Focus on the Family's James Dobson and televangelist Pat Robertson are also in their 70s.

And it is out of touch. The new generation of Christian conservatives wants to expand the evangelical agenda to include fighting poverty and improving the environment.

That was not Mr. Falwell's way. He preferred fire-and-brimstone condemnation of abortion, gay marriage and general hedonism.

But he went too far. The public reacted with revulsion in 2001 when, two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, he declared: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.' "

He later sort-of-apologized, but CNN broadcast an interview with Mr. Falwell yesterday, originally scheduled to air in August, in which he maintained that "if we decide to change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation is built, we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us, as he has in the past."

That kind of stuff doesn't play as well in the American public square as it used to, which may be why the next generation of Christian conservatives is distancing itself from such intolerance.

Mr. Falwell made provisions for his two sons to take over his university and his ministry. But in a larger sense, there is no successor for this big, booming, bigoted man.

Rick Warren, pastor of a California megachurch called Saddleback, whose book The Purpose-Driven Life has sold 30 million copies, is on the outs with the evangelical old guard. He flirts with Democrats, and preaches "creation care" (environmentalism) and fighting poverty.

Joel Osteen is pastor of what is said to be both the largest and fastest-growing church in North America: Lakewood, in Houston, Tex. Housed in an arena that used to be home to the Houston Rockets, Lakewood ministers to 42,000, in four services, each Sunday. In sold-out appearances, Rev. Osteen seems as much a motivational speaker - Christ is the secret to wealth and happiness - as a preacher.

And Mr. Dobson, of Focus on the Family, is leading a so-far unsuccessful campaign to have Richard Cizik fired from his powerful job of government lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals. Mr. Cizik's sin is that he maintains global warming is a moral issue that Christians must confront.

"We have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children," Mr. Dobson and about two dozen others protested in a letter to the association.

But that's the point that Mr. Dobson, Mr. Robertson and the rest of the septuagenarian leadership of the religious right will never get, and that Mr. Falwell never got.

The next generation of evangelical leaders are pro-life and pro-family. But they are also pro-human rights, pro-immigration, and anti-poverty. Their rhetoric is gentler, their message less divisive, their politics more moderate. They are more interested in fighting the spread of HIV than in condemning homosexuality. And they believe God wants us to protect the planet, rather than just wait for the "rapture."

Jerry Falwell insisted that Christians had to shout to be heard in the public square. He may have been right in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Moral Majority was born and flourished.

But while Mr. Falwell aged, he never matured. He was as strident, as intolerant - and often as ridiculous - at the end as he was at the beginning.

He offered the people a Promised Land, but the people chose to move on.

Globe and Mail

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

- EOM