Thursday, May 17, 2007
By PETER CARLSON
WASHINGTON POST
Jerry Falwell promised to give me an hour of his time and he kept that promise, pretty much down to the minute. He had no desire to linger longer with a representative of the heathen media.
It was the fall of 2001, not long after he'd uttered the most controversial statement of his controversial career. I drove down to Lynchburg, Va., with a list of tough questions that I figured would poke holes in his holiness. Needless to say, he made a monkey out of me.
He was a big man sitting behind a big desk in a big office at Liberty University, where he died Tuesday at 73. He stood up, flashed his televangelist grin and shook my hand. With his bulky body, fleshy face and sagging jowls, he looked like a Thomas Nast cartoon of a Gilded Age plutocrat.
He plopped down onto his green leather swivel chair. The room was dim except for the screen saver on Falwell's desk -- a churning psychedelic pattern of neon colors that would have seemed less incongruous on Timothy Leary's computer.
He knew why I was there -- to discuss the statement he'd made on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" TV show two days after 9/11.
The terrorist attacks, he had said, were signs that "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." Then he had revealed who among us had angered God enough to bring on the attack: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and 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.' "
In the weeks after he made the statement, he first defended it, then said it had been taken out of context, then apologized. Then his son sent out a fundraising letter saying liberals and gays "have launched a vicious smear campaign to discredit him."
I came armed with a list of questions: How does God "lift the curtain"? Did He also lift that curtain to let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor? Why? How do you know God's reason for lifting the curtain? Did He tell you? Is it possible that He's angry at materialism? Or poverty? Or money-changers in the temple?
You get the idea. But as soon as I mentioned the issue -- I don't think I even got a question out -- he fired back his answer:
"I misspoke."
Misspoke?
Apology
"I apologize for my September 13 comments because they were a complete misstatement of what I believe and what I've preached for nearly 50 years," he said. "Namely, I do not believe that any mortal knows when God is judging or not judging someone or a nation. ... It was a pure misstatement, unintentional, and I apologize for it uncategorically."
Misstatement? I muttered. Wasn't it a rather lengthy thing to dismiss as a misstatement?
"About 35 seconds," he said. "I think somebody said it was 37 seconds."
I was stunned. Reporters dream of asking a question so good that some big shot is forced to admit that he's completely full of baloney, but it never actually happens. They always have an answer. But Falwell was capitulating, confessing. Somehow, though, I didn't feel triumphant. I felt as if he were Muhammad Ali and I were George Foreman and he was doing the verbal equivalent of the rope-a-dope on me.
I looked at my list of questions and asked: What does it mean to lift the curtain of protection?
"That was part of the misstatement," he said. "I have no way of knowing when or if God would lift the curtain of protection."
Did God lift the curtain around Pearl Harbor? I asked.
"My misstatement included assuming that I or any mortal would know when God is judging or not judging a nation," he said. "Therefore I don't know if God was judging America in 1941 or 1812 or on September 11, 2001."
I asked another of my questions and Falwell got peeved.
"I said I've misstated," he replied, "and all reasonable people have already accepted the apology and you're the first one that's challenged it."
Abject surrender
By now, I was squirming. His abject surrender had made all my questions obsolete. I was on the verge of asking him, What's your favorite color? Instead, I managed to stammer out: Have you taken more heat on this than anything else in your career?
"Oh, no," he said. "As a matter of fact, most of the heat I've taken has not been because of the statement. It's from people who are upset that I apologized. Thousands of people of faith in America unfortunately agreed with the first statement. ... They were incensed that I apologized."
He took a sip of diet cola and leaned back in his chair. He looked relaxed, maybe even a tad smug.
"By the way," he said, smiling, "if you were watching A & amp;E's 'Biography' last Wednesday night, they did my biography."
On Tuesday, Jerry Falwell left this sinful world. If his beliefs were correct, he should be meeting God right about now. Presumably, God will prove to be a more formidable interrogator than I was. Too bad we won't get to see THAT interview.