Part One: Jerry Falwell: Founder of the Religious Right

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's operating dangerous prehistoric weaponry in a recording studio my me.
I'm Robert Evans, hosted Behind the Bastards UH podcasts Bad
People talk about here with my friends Sophie and Sophia.
How you doing, Sophia. That was the worst opening of

(00:21):
all times. I think that was the worst. I really
do that well. I opened it that way because one
of my wonderful fans UH sent me a sling, like
a shepherd sling, which is like one of the deadliest
weapons of the ancient era, but modified to throw bagels.
It's got a huge David and Goliath vibe it does.

(00:44):
It's exactly that kind of sling, except for it throws bagels,
and I've got a very moldy bagel in there because
we don't change the beg I know you look horrified,
am I. I'm very touched by this gift. And the
one thing he said on the note card that vaguely
explained how to operate it was do not use it inside.
So I'm going to immediately do that. You already did

(01:04):
immediately do that. You tried to use it in a kitchen,
not not in the tiny confines of the recordings to you. So,
I'm just I'm just gonna do it, and so fucking lucky.
The smoldy bagel didn't touch the almond butter I've been
squeezing in my mouth. It did knock the soundproofing off
the wall slightly, so mad So Ifie, you knew as

(01:27):
soon as I got that in the mail, I was
going to have to throw it in the room where
it would do damage. Now you've taken it away. That's
the only way this was going to go. You did it.
It's over. How are you doing today, Sophia, I'm great.
How are you, Robber? I'm doing fantastic. I got to
throw a bagel. Uh, that's the plantation marks about it,
because you didn't. Really, it did not work. It hit

(01:50):
with some force. It did. My goal is always to
do damage to the room, and it did damage to
the room. Sophie's shooting daggers at you with her beautiful
big guys. I'm slowly sipping a coffee, making eye contact
the whole time, Sophie, this is what the fans love.

(02:12):
It's not the well researched essays. That's fine, Anderson wasn't harmed.
We can continue. Anderson's fine Sophia, what do you know
about Jerry Fallwell, I mean nothing great. You're not going
to learn nothing good. I'm just excited to not be
here for another baby murder themed episode. This is not

(02:35):
baby murder themed. If if you've heard me on this
podcast before, you know that Robert delights in torturing me
with only the most innocent deaths. You know, Sophia, it's
it's that most people aren't tough enough to handle the
baby murder episodes. I feel like that's what an abuse
of dad says when he hits you with his belt.
He's like, no, make a character better, it's free character.

(02:59):
What is it abuse if it's accidental and just based
purely on like irresponsibility and recklessness. Yes, okay, well fair,
Like what if your dad just doesn't make you buckle up?
I don't know, just purely hypothetical for you. Yeah, well,

(03:21):
Jerry Fallwell, it's kind of America's dad and his career.
I'll say this, it's the opposite of killing babies. Yes,
that is true, kind of. I mean he would say
it's the opposite of killing babies. I would say it's
stripping people of their reproductive health the interest of clumps

(03:41):
of cells. But there's a disagreement on that at a
fundamental level, which is why America's sliding towards the precipice
of any you want to talk about, Jerry Falwell's do it. Okay,
let's just get into this. According to some bullshit scrap
of paper called the constitutional and politics are supposed to
be separate things in this country. In fact, churches can

(04:04):
technically lose their tax exempt status if they're seemed to
advocate for a specific party or candidate too strongly. Oddly enough,
that never seems to happen, and a few million Christian
fundamentalists have succeeded in holding large chunks of our national
discourse hostage for decades. Now, how did this happen? Do
you tell? Well? It wasn't always this way, Sophia. It was.
It used to not be normal for religion and politics

(04:26):
to be as directly a thing as they are today.
And the answer to how things got where they are
starts with a fella named Jerry Folwell. Today he is
thankfully a dead person, but once upon a time he
was alive, and he funked up a truly shocking amount
of things for the rest of us. So that's what
this story is. This is the tale of how all
of the different chunks of American Christianity, at least the

(04:49):
unreasonable chunks of American Christianity, got together to really limit
the rights of women and gay people. That's that's that's
the story of Jerry Folwell. I feel you hate me
because you're like a less invite a bisexual woman to
talk about I want to invite the person who's going
to be angriest about what we talk about today. Hey,
fair enough, I get I got piste off writing it

(05:11):
like it was not a good time. Jerry Lemon Fallwell
was born on August eleven, n three. That's a dope
middle name. Why are we not focusing on that, Laman,
It is a cool middle name. Yeah, he had a
twin brother named Jean, who was born roughly at the
same time. But Jean was boring and we're not going
to talk about him today. What about his sister Lululemon.

(05:34):
I'm so sorry. Wouldn't it be weird if that was
the reality of the situation, that like there was the
same family gave us the religious right and Lululemon yoga pants.
I mean, it's all evil, So it is all evil. Yeah,
very overpriced yoga pants. Jean and Jerry were born in Lynchburg, Virginia,

(05:59):
a town name aimed for the man who invented lynching. Fortunately,
he invented lynching for the purpose. Well okay, but it's
not actually a sad story. He invented lynching to do
it to British people, so it's not racist. Yeah, I
guess it's. I'm fine with lynching. British people aren't wait, alienate?
Are British? Oh? They know what they did, Sophie. We've

(06:20):
done so many episodes on British people. Hey, British fans,
I don't feel the same, big inglio English anglophile. God,
damn it the name right. See, I know Prince Harry's hot. Continue.
I don't you know what's not hot? The British Empire
and the millions of people it killed. No empire, such

(06:42):
a downer, I know. And that's what lynching was invented.
It was. It was invented to lynch colonial overlords. So
I'm just saying lynching turned into something problematic. But it
started from a good place, a desire to hang colonial
oppressors by their thumbs. That was also the original Lynching.
I can't wait to see the T shirts. This is
going to inspire. I don't know how ways in to

(07:08):
defend lynching. Seriously, you're making headlines right now that no
one needs. Yeah, I I am always trying to be canceled,
which is why I recklessly throw mouldy bagels in a room. Well,
Miles and I have invented Cansylvania and he lives there recently.
You can be used for me, all right. Jerry Fallwell's father,

(07:29):
Carry Fallwell, which is frustrating to me, frustrating to write
and Jerry, Yeah, yeah. Carry Fallwell was an incredibly successful businessman.
He broke away from his family's history of being poor
farmers to start a grocery store in nineteen fifteen at
the age of twenty two. By nine one, he'd done
well enough to start opening a series of service stations
around Lynchburg to provide fuel for the growing automotist community.

(07:51):
Carry's main innovation was to add a small store or
restaurant to each of his stations. This idea proved popular
enough that he eventually opened seventeen stores in the Lynchburg area.
So he invented that. Yeah, I think I think he
was like one of the gas I think a station
seven eleven type thing, one of the guys like I
think a few people hit upon the eight of like
we're selling gas, we might as well sell some fucking spies. Yeah. Yeah,

(08:15):
but he's like one of the one of the pioneers
of the gas station market industry. That's pretty rad, pretty rad.
He's a he's a cool. You're gonna like him more
than than Jerry. I mean, that's not hard, Yeah, that's
not hard. He was an objectively better person um, although
still pretty terrible. Uh yeah, so, carry success in the

(08:38):
fuel business led to him starting a new company distributing
oil and gas to sixteen counties in Virginia. Jerry Fallwell's
best biographer, Michael Shawn Winter's, describes Jerry's upbringing as affluent.
I prefer the term rich as hell. Jerry grew up
with no financial worries of any kind, but that does
not mean his childhood was easy. See. Carry Folwell was
great at business, but the rest to his life was

(09:00):
kind of a train wreck. For one thing, he was
not the kind of dude who could keep on the
straight and narrow. He opened a hotel in a dance hall,
which led him to sponsoring cock fights and dog fights
in a variety of venues. This was illegal at the time.
These were not you know, respectable cock fights. These were Okay,
this is the things you're going down for in this episode,
you're dying on the hill of lynching and cock fights. Well,

(09:23):
I'm not dying. I'm just saying it was an illegal No,
there's a subterranean level to Cansylvania. It's like underneath regular Cansylvania.
And it smells a lot there. Yeah, it's it's so welcome,
probably worse than a cock fight smells. It's just are
we're just going to ignore the dog fight part of
this story? What the fuck? It's fucked up. I'm saying
it's bad. I'm just saying he's dying on the hill.

(09:43):
Apologize to Anderson. I am sorry, Anderson. I just wanted
to make it clear, like Virginia in nineteen teens, anything
could be legal. I just wanted to make it clear
that even even among in that like these were not
These were not legitimate dog fights. Again, the fact that
you keep separating it, it's like people who say what

(10:04):
is it, They're like, oh, yeah, there's consensual sex and
non consensual sex. No, non concexual sex is rape. I
feel like you're doing a real similar job over there. Well,
I just I assume there were legal dog fights in
Virginia as well, the good kind. Right, All dog fighting
is bad. Oh, I'm glad it took you, But I

(10:26):
I suspect I'm just saying these were particularly bad dog
fights fights. I can't get out of here, you dog linger.
If you split hairs enough, eventually you split an atom.
That blows up your career. That's a beautiful thing. Thank you.
So Carrie Fallwell got into the bootlegging business after getting

(10:49):
into the dog fighting business. His partner in bootlegging was
his brother Garland. They would use the trucks for their
oil and garglesness to deliver liquor to all of his
sundry stores. So that's how they would hide the liquors
and the gas trucks, which I'm sure made it taste great. Uh.
These illegal venues were incredibly profitable. In the nineteen seven
carry Fallwell started another legitimate business, the first bus company

(11:11):
with roots between Lynchburg and Washington, d C. So that's
good bringing lynching to other places. Pretty cool as long
as it's the kind of thumb lynching that's not racist.
Carry was too rich and too smart to get caught
breaking the law constantly, but everyone in town knew that
he was the shadiest motherfucker in the city. Uh. This

(11:32):
meant that the Fallwells were ostracized from high society. So
they were rich, but they weren't allowed to hang out
with the other rich folks. That does sound like the
best kind of rich to be right. You don't want
to hang out with other losers. You're just sing throwing
your money, and you're just like not because they're around
the dorky, fucking other rich people. It's like Cotillion's right,
that's all they're doing, just Contillians left and right, constant

(11:55):
debutante balls. Sounds like nothing. I want to be a
part of No No, but I think this this was
This was a bummer for Jerry Folwell as a little kid,
but that's he loved to debut. He was a big
debut er, debutist. So exacerbating their sort of pariah status
was the fact that Carry Folwell had an unfortunate habit
of playing profoundly abusive pranks on everyone around him. I'm

(12:19):
going to quote now from a very fantastic book, God's
Right Hand by Michael Winters. Jerry Folwell would later recall
that his father was a prankster. Jerry once brought a
friend home who admitted he was scared of carry. Jerry
told his father of his friend's fear, half cautioning half
goat and carry as he brought the young man into
the house. When the young friend walked in, Carrie shouted, stopped,
aimed a pistol at the boy's feet, and shot a

(12:39):
hole in the floor a few instus in front of
his shoes. I've been trying to get that fly all day,
Jerry's father announced, returning to his newspaper while the boy
fled the house. Jerry admitted that he and his father
held with laughter. Some of the pranks were cruel, however,
some of them were as opposed to that other good
prank that happened that was majoredly shooting at somebody. It
was a playful gun shots, Sophia, not one of those

(13:02):
mean gun shots. Some of the pranks were cruel, however,
as when Carrie decided he had enough complaints from one
of his workers. When the man called in sick, Carrie
offered to have lunch brought to his house, then killed
and skinned the man's cat, putting it into a squirrel stew,
and sent it to the man's home for lunch. The
next day, the man complained that the squirrel meating the
stew had been tough, and Carrie told him he had
eaten his own cat. That is not a joke. That's

(13:23):
not a prank. That's a Greek is not a Greek
myth thing, the myth they fed dude to his own
his own kids. Oh yeah, that's right up fucking ancient evil.
That's not even like modern. Yeah, that's like what a
Greek god would do to fun because like they have
no sense of human morality. Yeah, it's like an Olympic prank.

(13:45):
It's it's serial killer ship Mount Olympus. That is fucking insane. Yeah,
that's something a serial killer does as a joke. I'm
gonna kill made you eat a cat? Like so crazy?
What does he think the payoff is when he tells
the guy just watches him cry. I think it's just
he's the guy's boss, so there's nothing the dude can
do against him. I mean, but like, what's the reaction

(14:05):
He's hoping for for him to cry. Yeah, I think so.
Probably that's so crazy. He's just a piece of ship.
He's a really bad person, way better person than his
kid turns out to be. Yeah, So hearing all that,
it probably won't surprise you to learn that Carry Folwell
was an outrageous drunk. His brother Garland was too, And
while Carry was a relatively peaceful drunk, preferring to get

(14:25):
wasted at home alone most of the time, Garland was
pretty much the worst case scenario for an alcoholic. He
had a tendency to fall into violent rages. In nineteen
thirty one, he was arrested for shooting at some teenagers
who'd annoyed him. This was not an isolated incident. Garland
Folwell had numerous arrests for violent drunken behavior. All of
this came to a head in nineteen thirty one, which
is probably the worst year of young Jerry Folwell's life.

(14:48):
It was certainly the worst year of his father's life.
Carrie's daughter, Rasha and Jerry's sister, was struck ill with appendicitis.
Kerry didn't believe in hospital, so he tried to treat
her at home. Her appendix burst and she died of
periton itis at age ten. There's a dead kid, and
that also like he's son of a bitch. You got
me in there, isn't It? Also an incredibly painful way

(15:08):
to die, one of the worst. From what I understand,
if you when you're appendix explodes is like the most painful.
It sounds like a terrible way to die. Yeah. Also
pretty cool that you have so much like Hubris that
you're like, no, I'll treat this, I'll treat this. Yeah. Yeah,
ninety one too. There's actual medicine by that point. Yeah. Now,
just a few months after Rasha died, while Carrie was

(15:31):
still deep in grief, Garland got incredibly drunk and started
shooting off firecrackers. Someone in town called the cops on
him for some unclear reason, probably boiling down to the
fact that he was really wasted. Garland became convinced that
his brother Carry is the one that called the cops
on him. He tracked Carry down and started shooting at him.
Carrie grabbed his shotgun, returned fire, and killed his brother instantly. Okay,

(15:56):
that delights me. Yeah, that's great. You're gonna like this
to the low. A newspaper wrote of the event, Garland
Folwell is dead. Thus his turbulent career of terrorizing the
police and populace was brought to an abrupt close. Even
the paper on him, they're like, this is the worst
guy in our city who wants to dance on his
grave tonight. That's literally the tone of it. It's just like,

(16:18):
what a piece of ship. Thank god he's dead, ding dong,
And it's one of those things like Carrie Fallwall is
obviously a bad guy. Sounds like this was a totally
justified homicide. I mean, if it's just fucking horrible people
killing each other, it's just it's all a win win.
They're both people who use guns as ways to punctuate,
like gunfire to punctuate their arguments. Yeah. I mean I

(16:40):
feel like the only people then they should argue with
is each other. And that's what happened. That's so great. Yeah, yeah,
I I prefer to use a nice throwing bagel on
a sling as a way to punctuate my rages. I mean, again,
would be more impressive. You could actually master the throat,
you know, it's it's it's new. You gotta look, yeah,

(17:01):
you stopped. Well, I can throw them with my hand.
I'm trying to learn how to use the sling. All right,
it's outside like they said in the now. No, I'm
only ever going to use it in recording studios. You're
fired at some point. Yes, eventually I will cross a
final line and damage equipment in this studio and that

(17:23):
will be the end of this podcast. Yeah. Anyway, back
to the Fallwells. So things are going great for the
Fallwell family. In n one daughter dies of appendicitis. Gunfight
between the two brothers leads to one of them dying. Yeah,
this all broke Carry Fallwell. His alcoholism got worse after

(17:43):
this point, and Jerry would later recall the many nights
that his father spent drinking heavily and sobbing over his
brother and daughter. All these scandals further isolated the Fallwell
clan from mainstream society and Lynchburg. And this was all
exacerbated by the fact that Carry was a second generation atheist,
so he was not in line with the values of
the town either. Now, Jerry's mother, Helen, was a very

(18:05):
different person. Her family were hardcore Baptists. Some sources will
say that she wasn't religious until her son started his church,
but this seems to be untrue. She even made sure
that Jerry and Jean went to church every Sunday. Religion
was a part of Jerry's life from the beginning, but
it wasn't a huge part, and for a long time.
It seems like he kind of took after his dad
in that regard. So he grows up a little bit

(18:26):
of a wild child. Now. The third person who helped
to raise Jerry and Jean Folwell was there, black nanny
David Brown. Jerry would later write. In the mornings, he
bathed and dressed us, He held and rocked us. At naptime,
he fed and changed us. He helped us with our
first faltering steps, and he picked us up off the
ground when we stumbled or fought or fell. He was
practically a member of our family, but he ate alone

(18:46):
on the back porch and sat in the shadows when
he wasn't needed. Wow, it sounds like they really valued
him as a human being. Yeah. Yeah, this is something
that he writes regretfully about as an adult. Um as
a kid. You know, he's a kid. From the beginning.
He took after his father, both in the fact that
he was filled with ambition and reckless energy. His father
taught he and his brother to drive when they were

(19:07):
both ten years old, which is, you know, the right
age to start doing that. At uh, they were allowed
to drive around the family property as much as they
wanted when they were thirteen, carry light about their ages
to get them driver's licenses. He was so cherry. Fallwell
was the first kid at his school with a car,
which obviously helped his social life. Kind of kind of
washes away a little bit of the shame of your

(19:27):
your dad killing your uncle. People are like, cool, look, car,
he's got a car. I don't even care that his
dad shoots at us. Jerry was a good student. He
took after his father. He was intelligent, ambitious, and energetic.
But he also took after his dad with a dedication
to mean spirited pranks. When he was in fifth grade,
he let a snake loose in his classroom. This will

(19:47):
be the least disturbing of the pranks that Jerry Fallwell commits.
You look so excited to tell me. I'm so excited
to talk about I love it. It's like I love it.
Whenever these people have pranks in their history, it's I
it's like talking about Saddam Hussein threatening his principle with
a gun like that. It's also the things that they
call branks. It's like, yeah for rich people, it spranks

(20:08):
poor people. It's like attempted murder. Uh yeah uh. In night,
when Jerry was fifteen, his father died of liver failure.
This hit Jerry hard and quite possibly had an effect
on his behavior in high school. But also is the
least surprising way that not alcoholic was gonna go. Yeah,

(20:29):
that was the only way carry Fallwall was going to go.
Or shooting himself accidentally. Yeah. Uh. Jerry formed a gang
called the Wall Gang with his friends based on the
fact that they would meet at a wall to hang out.
That's a that's very creative, very creative. I don't know
if you're aware of this, but Virginia in the nineteen
forties was the world center of creativity. Uh. Jerry was

(20:55):
the leader of the gang because he was the only
one with a car, and he liked to lead his
group into a series of fist five with other gangs
around town. Winter's Rights that Fallwell insisted things never went
beyond quote a few split lips, the occasional broken bone,
and small scale property damage. Geez. The odd broken bone, Like,
who of us hasn't formed a gang to break other

(21:16):
people's bones a little bit? Why do you think I
was late today, youthfully just cracking somebody over the head
with a two by four. You know how I like
to be a rascal. If you do it with a
smile on your face, it's rascally, Yeah, exactly, as long
as you're not frowning now. Jerry's pranks grew more brutal

(21:36):
in his late teens. I'm going to quote again from
God's right hand. Once to punish and neighbor the gang
thought had called the police on them, they grabbed some
old tar soaked railroad ties and let them on fire
in front of the offender's home. They did not anticipate
that the asphalt on the street would catch fire, but
it did, and soon the entire street was in flames.
Faultwell skill as a prankster also took a darker turn.

(21:56):
Like his dad, he could be cruel. Many years later,
he would recall taking on a teacher whom he described
as a mean little man who pranced about in our
physical ed classes and who exhibited prissy falsetto ways. Fallwell
tackled him took off his pants, locked him in a
storage closet, and then pin the man's pants to a
bulletin board in another part of the school. Another time,
he placed a live this is a teacher he did

(22:17):
his jim teacher. Holy fuck. Teachers are usually the abusers. Yeah,
I think this guy, I think, And he clearly did
it because he was like, you're gay, Yeah, exactly exactly.
Fwell things rips his pants off a school for that, No,
he's rich. Wow. Another time teacher pantsing a fucking tea,

(22:39):
panting and locking in a closet and mailing the pants
to a wall. That's so fu up. Yeah, it's amazing.
Another time, he placed a live rat in a teacher's drawer.
When she opened the drawer, the rat jumped out and
the teacher fell unconscious to the floor. Now that's a
classic prank. Yeah, I mean that's the only one you
could actually consider a prank. Yeah, that, I guess. The
snake those are like good natured country prints. If the

(23:02):
snake bite is like like a gardener snake or something, Yeah,
then it's fine. Yeah, then it's fine. Yeah. Abusing physically
and panting or lighting someone's house on a fire. I
don't know pranks. Uh. Later in life, Jerry would say
that these pranks and straight up assaults are how he

(23:23):
began to understand the principle of cause and effect. Actions
responsible or irresponsible lead to consequences. But of course there's
no evidence that Jerry fall will ever suffered any consequences
as a result of his incredibly bad behavior. As an
older man, he smoked with regret about these actions, and
the idea he seems to want to push by telling
these stories is that he had a growing realization of

(23:43):
how bad he'd been and that helped drive him to God.
And this is where I have to point out something important.
If you spend any time at all around evangelical Christian communities,
at least the mainstream ones, you'll notice something peculiar. A
shocking number of high profile figures in that community will
claim to have some sort of tremendously dark past selling drugs,
are being involved in prostitution, or being you know, some

(24:03):
sort of criminal, being violent, or whatever. For many popular
evangelical speakers, this dark past is an integral part of
their backstory. These stories are usually lies and always exaggerated,
and they serve primarily to highlight the power of Christ grace.
Most of our details on Jerry's early life come from
Jerry himself. And while Winters, who researched the man thoroughly
does believe the stuff that I've related to you is true,

(24:24):
I have my doubts that fall will ever regretted any
of his actions. Um, but in any case, it's important
to Jerry fallwell or it was because now he's dead, uh,
that you know that he was a bad guy before
he found the light of the Lord. It always really
creeps me out whenever, like really horrible people will say like, oh,
you know, I was horrible and then I had a

(24:46):
daughter and I was like, oh man, I've been horrible,
or like oh and then I It's always very confusing
to me that they don't understand empathy yet all, and
that they literally need to torture people to learn empathy.
How is it not something that you just feel towards people?
Towards people because I think in a lot of cases,
because you grow up rich and you don't have to
That's what's so crazy, right. It seems like money just

(25:08):
takes away people's like value systems or replaces it, and
then they're like, oh no, I need to rape a
girl like brock turn or something to to understand, you know, like,
oh yeah, thinks actions of consequences. Why do we need
to be your like like experiment like other people. That's
not right for you to learn your morals on other people.

(25:29):
And it only it really only seems to be with
girls in particular, because you only usually hear the story
with Like when I had a daughter, I understood, and
it's like nobody's ever like, you know, I thought it
was cool to kill cats until I had a kitten,
and then I was like, oh, all this cat murdering
I've been doing is a bad thing. Nobody nobody says that.
They just say, like I thought sexual harassment was fun
until I had a daughter. Now I realized it's not. Yeah,

(25:52):
and it's safe. Same with these like rich ass guys
like Jerry, it's like, oh, well, I didn't know that
you couldn't actually do these fucked up abusive things until
I did them and nothing happened to me. That makes
no sense. What a guy's house on fire, Jerry Fallwell,
Sophie is telling me that it's well passed time for

(26:14):
an ad break. Sophia, Uh, you have any ads you
want to tell. I mean, as you know, I love
any kind of goods and services. Um, But personally, I
have a podcast named Private Parts Unknown that I co
host with Courtney's Kossak, and it's about love and sexuality
around the world. And we're about to go to Mexico City.

(26:36):
It's gonna be really fun. That's one of my favorite cities.
We're going to talk after the podcast for your depths. Okay,
it's great, Mexico City. Well, thank you for bringing that up.
I forgot because I got so excited by the bagel
thing at Um. Should we go to ads now, Sophie,
Sophie siating, we should go to ads products. It's the

(27:00):
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(27:46):
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(28:07):
text behind to five hundred five hundred. We're back, and
Sophie is refusing to give me back my sling um,
which is probably a responsible move, Um, but I'm still furious,
living angry. Imagine how furious I would be if you

(28:28):
slung something and it hit Anderson. It's a bagel dogs
love them, but if it hits and with a force.
It's not so she doesn't like everything bagels? What kind
of bagels? Does she like? Blueberry? All right, I'll throw
blueberry next time Anderson's in the room. See this, This
is how empathy works. This is this is a man

(28:51):
who understands empathy. Still not getting back your sling, though, dude, Sorry,
fair enough. We're talking Jerry Fallwell j falls uh weird.
I don't like that, j Faul. I always give my
subjects a terrible nickname. I don't like it. You don't
like that, Jeff Jeff Jeff Jeff sounds like it's a

(29:17):
Missy Elliott exclusive cheer. I don't know. He doesn't get
that reference, but I did, and I liked. Sophie says
it's good. Do you seriously not know who Missy Elliott is?
I feel like you're doing this on purpose. I'm really not.
I thought it was Ariana Grande for a very long time.
That is what it is. Wait, no, I called her

(29:38):
Grand's called her Ariana grand There we go. I forgot
which embarrassing thing I got wrong. Only one of Jaff's
pranks had any sort of long term impact on him.
In his senior year, Jerry and his friends got the
combination of the school safe. They stole huge numbers of
lunch tickets and handed them out to their friends in
the locker room. They considered this a harmless prank. The
school considered this thousands of dollars and theft. Uh. Jerry

(30:02):
certainly could have faced criminal charges for this because it
was thousands of dollars of theft. Instead, he was simply
denied the privilege of addressing the school as class valedictorian.
So God, the consequences really ruined his life. Yeah, yeah,
that really fucked things up for him. Jerry went to
Lynchburg College after high school. Jerry Fallwell majored in mechanical
engineering and excelb at math and physics. He didn't spend

(30:24):
any school time studying religion. He later recalled, though, that
his mother's habit of listening to Charles Fuller's Old Fashioned
Revival Hour on the radio every Sunday had an impact
on him. Early in nineteen fifty two, while hanging out
at the cafe with his Wall Gang friends, Faulwell asked
if anyone in town knew a church that had preaching
like Charles Fuller's show. One of his friends advised the
Park Avenue Baptist Church. He said the church had good

(30:47):
music and most importantly, pretty girls. In search of these girls,
Jerry Folwell made the fateful decision to attend church on
January nineteen fifty two Dun doun Dun duntan. During that service,
he met a young woman, Mazel Pate, who played piano
for the church. Soon after, Mazel and Jerry would wind
up dating and then marrying. They would be together for
the rest of Jerry's life, and Young Fallwell found more Mazel.

(31:11):
I think she was pretty shitty too, Oh yeah, yeah.
Young Fallwell found more than just a soul mate at
the Park Avenue Church. He found Jesus. He would later
recall that his journey to becoming a born again Christian
started when he learned that the world of man was
run by Satan while the world of God was ruled
by Jesus. Jerry had seen more of the dark side
of the world of man than most kids. By this point.

(31:33):
He turned away from the from him, from himself and darkness.
The darkness call came from inside the house, Jerry Fallwell,
that you've been and witness to you did strips a
man's pants off, beats him up and locks him in
a closet. Boy, people are awful. Yeah, He's like, this
is really a lot of arson and us all going

(31:54):
on in I don't know, at least around me. Seems
like people are really violent right around me. Yeah, it's crazy.
I'm like at the epicenter, idiot. Uh yeah, so uh yeah.
Jerry decided after this point that he was going to
turn away from the darkness of the world of man
and align himself with the light of the world of God.

(32:15):
In nineteen fifty six, at age twenty two, Jerry Falwell
founded a church of his own, the Thomas Road Baptist Church.
It made himself the pastor, and he started preaching. According
to the Western Illinois Historical Review, quote from the time
he founded his church, all of his activities flowed from
his efforts to build it to RBC, built a home
for alcoholics, a haven for unwed mothers, and established a

(32:35):
television ministry at the urging of Folwell. Jerry's television and
radio show, The Old Time Gospel Hour, was a direct
imitation of the radio preacher his mother had loved. By
making the jump to television, Folwell became one of the
pioneers of televangelism. A guy named Percy Crawford was the
actual first televangelist, and both men owed a debt to
fascist slash Catholic priest Charles Coughlin in their attempts to
create a media empire based around his preaching. But Jerry

(32:58):
was one of the first ones to really make a
televangelist thing like as the as like the foundation of
his career. Quick question, how does pastoring work? You can
just make yourself a pastor. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, okay,
I'm a pastor. Now, this is America. There's I don't
think there's really any more to it than that. That's
fucking awesome. Yeah, it's pretty great. I've I've been considering coming.

(33:20):
I've I'm considering becoming a freelance cult leader. Um so
I've been looking into how easy it is to just
declare yourself or whatever of whatever religion. It turns out
there's no rules around that sort of thing. Well, if
you need a sidekick, I'm here and I love just
I don't know, brainwashing people, I guess that's how other
people put it. The key is we can't spend more

(33:41):
than twenty hours a week on the cult related business good.
I don't have time for that. I wanted for this
to be more than a part time thing, exactly. It's
a side hustle, yes like that. I wanted to be
a cult for millennials. And as a result of that,
we've got to be like contract employees. Yeah. I mean
it's like five hours driving for left, a couple hours

(34:02):
than I do, stand up at night, and no health care.
What a beautiful way to live. Our generations really got
it made in the shade. So like his father, Jerry
Fallwell proved to have a brilliant head for business. Unlike
his father, all of Jerry's businesses were above board and legal.
Uh yeah, I actually see. I told you you're gonna

(34:23):
like carry Fallwell way better already miss him? Yeah, I
miss him? What you do and carry then from alcoholism.
He's shooting at people's feet in heaven. Now Hell must
be missing an angel. In nineteen sixty seven, Jerry founded
his first school, the Lynchburg Christian Academy. He became convinced

(34:46):
of the necessity of creating a separate Christian education system,
one that could protect students from the evils of the
world of Satan. Some of the evils he preached against
were imminently sensible given his difficult upbringing. He railed against
alcohol and drunkenness do in part to the horrifying example
set down by his dad and uncle. But Jerry also
preached against integration. So I was waiting for when that
was going to read, Yeah, yeah, we getta get a

(35:10):
nice dose or racism. Here, I'm gonna quote again from
God's right hand. One early sermon from nineteen fifty eight
has come down to us, printed in the newsletter that
the Fall Will distributed to those who watched his television show.
It is curious that he chose his sermon for the
first installment of the newsletter because it did not treat
one of his usual subject topics. The sermon is entitled
Segregation or Integration, which, unsurprisingly given the sermon was preached

(35:32):
in nineteen fifty eight in south central Virginia, Folwell argued
in favor of segregation. Follow sermon begins by blaming the
Supreme Court for the chaos and racial tension that was
then on the rise. He also noted that the communist
countries were using the racial tension as a propaganda tool
throughout the world. Indeed, Folwell did not blame blacks for
causing the trouble. The true negro does not want integration.

(35:53):
He realizes his potential is far better among his own.
Folwell blamed the push for integration first on Moscow, second
on politicians using the issue for their own ends, and
finally on the devil himself, who boxed God out of
the Supreme Courts jurisprudence when it rendered its nineteen fifty
four decision, and Brown versus the Board of Education ending
legal segregation. If Chief Justice Earl Warren and his associates

(36:15):
had known God's word and desired to do the Lord's will,
I am quite confident that the nineteen fifty four decision
would never have been made. Folwell said, what could possibly
have been worked out in a scriptural and orderly way
has now become a touchy problem. Touchy just a deep
sigh of ye. It's obviously terrible, um, although it's also

(36:38):
obviously like you throw a rock in Virginia and you'll
find somebody who believes basically the same thing. Of course,
yeah yeah uh. And in a little bit of fairness,
Jerry would completely change his mind on segregation later in
life and would devote years to preaching against it. Uh.
Not that long after this, but while the civil rights
movements saw its most crucial difficult hours, Jerry Folwell preached

(36:59):
against it. He leaved God had decreed the segregation of races,
and he cited, for one things, God's decision that the
Jews should be his chosen people as evidence of the
fundamental validity of segregation. Wow, I've never heard that spin.
That is quite quite the racist logic there. That's pretty insane. Yeah,
it's neat to run the new racist logic that I
hadn't run into before. Yeah, whoa, that's I've never connected

(37:20):
those before. Thanks for bringing us into the fold. Thanks
for that's Jerry. Now, Jerry started to change his mind
about segregation in the mid nineteen sixties. There were a
number of events that led to this, but the single
searing experience he would later cite as key to his
conversion on the issue, was the day that his shoe shiner,
a black man named Lewis, asked him a question. He

(37:41):
told Jerry he was a fan of the pastor's sermons
and listened to them on the radio regularly. Then he
asked if he would be able to join Fallwell's church
Jerry later wrote that this question left him utterly speechless
because like he wasn't allowing black people in his church,
suddenly was confronted directly with the fact that he was
racist as ship. In the mid nineteen sixties, Jerry Fallwell
hired his first non white employee, the Indonesian musician Paul Tan.

(38:05):
In nineteen sixty eight, he opened the Thomas Road Baptist
Church to black members in nineteen sixty Wait, hold on
a second. He opened the church to black members in
sixty eight. When did he talk to Shoeshiner? That was
like in the somewhere like sixty four or sixty five.
It took him a while, so so he had he
had an epiphany, and then it took him three to
four years to still change his mind. Again we're talking

(38:26):
these are his reclations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's also
like exactly what we were saying, like, oh, I needed
to first think that black people weren't human too, then
be like, oh, I've learned a powerful lesson. What the funk?
I don't buy any of this? Yeah, And it's also
it's worth noting that when he does open his church
up is like when the Civil rights movement hit that
point of critical mass. Like it's not like he got

(38:47):
on board segregation when it was still like it's one
thing to be like in favor of segregation, then realize
you're wrong at a time when like it matters. Takes
some courage to be like, no, I was wrong. Like
once the civil rights its movements past its critical point,
he's like, oh shit, I guess this is the way
things are going. I'm gonna open my church up. Yeah, Like, oh,
progress seems to be happening everywhere. Okay, I'll join. Yeah.

(39:09):
It's like it's like being cool with gay marriage in
two thousand fifteen. Yeah, yeah, and that being your first
step there. And the thing is, it's it's weird because
right now everybody talks about like cancel culture and like
oh what you can't be better like change or anything.
And I absolutely think that that is what we want
from people. But I don't know how much of the

(39:32):
story that Jerry fall Will made up about himself is
actually real or true. And that's really what I object to,
not the fact that he changed from being a racist
to not being a racist. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's good
that he got better on segregation, But the question is
do I think that it was a matter of moral

(39:53):
courage and realizing he was wrong, or do I think
it was a matter of he realized where the wind
was a blow in exactly. And I do think in
his head he does believe the version of the story
where he has a change of heart. I do think
he believes that in his head because I think he
needs to think he's a good person, and people like
that makeup stories to justify himself as like a better person.

(40:14):
Just like he justified burning that house down by they
were cold inside, they were held inside. Central heating wasn't
around yet, I was being helpful. Yeah, just like his
dad justified shooting at that kid's feet because he had
to deal with a fly. I'm going to use that

(40:35):
that was a joke. Okay, you know, just don't get it. Snowflake, snowflake.
Snowflakes hate being shot at idiots. So um yeah. Jerry
was always adamant that the civil rights movement had no
impact on his decision to integrate his church in school.
He framed his change as entirely an internal revelation. I

(40:56):
realized that I was completely wrong. What I had been
taught was completely wrong. For me. It was a scriptural
and personal realization that segregation was evil. I realized it
was not taught in the Bible. So kind of weird
that he's like, specifically doesn't give credit to the civil
rights movement. He's like, specifically, none of you made a difference.
Martin Luther King had nothing to do with me letting
black people into my church. It was all me, baby,

(41:19):
that's so much more. That's still so racist. Jerry Falwell
had my own civil rights movement in my head, and
it was way better than the weird Like in my version,
I was the leader. Actually wasn't. M okay, there was
no Malcolm X. There was no one. Really, it was
a black panther changed everything. I did a great job.

(41:41):
I did a great job. You're welcome. You're welcome, Jerry Follwell.
Oh boy, yeah so uh. In nineteen seventy one, Jerry
Falwell started the Lynchburg Baptist College. It was later renamed
Liberty University. The college was something of a loss leader
for Fallwell's burgeoning empire, relied heavily on donations and endowments

(42:02):
from major donors, and was a heavy debt for much
of Jerry's tenure. As the head of the school. But
still it succeeded in providing religious higher education to whole
generations of Evangelical Christians. All these things would probably have
been enough to keep a normal man occupied his entire life,
and perhaps they would have done so for Jerry Folwell.
But in nineteen seventy three, something happened that would change
his life in the very essence of American Christianity forever,

(42:25):
the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade. This landmark
case established a woman's right to get an abortion without
excessive governmental interference. Folwell later wrote, when he read about
the ruling in the newspaper quote, I sat there staring
at the Roe v. Wade story, growing more and more
fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Courts Act, and
wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.

(42:47):
And when we come back, we're gonna talk a little
bit about the surprising history of how American Evangelical Christians
thought about abortion prior to nineteen seventy three. Don't ly
me hanging like that. I mean, it's an ad plug time.
You know what is also protected from excessive government interference

(43:11):
The products and services that advertise on our show. Was
that a good I liked it? Thank you, Sophie. Sophie approves, Sophia, Yeah,
no co sign. I feel like you need to have
both the self support all right, yeah, it's a rubber stamp.
This it's like when you need to shoot launch a
nuclear missile from a submarine. Exactly exactly. We can't go,

(43:32):
but now we can. We are carolel sitting a customers.
We've surrounded him. You're your solf surrounded, so frounded and
and now I'm capable of empathetically viewing women as people.
All the took was it is. You don't even need
to have a daughter or nothing. I have a sister.

(43:54):
She's a dog. Oh my god, you called Anderson a girl.
I'm so proud of you. I know I usually call
all dogs boys, but Anderson is a girl. You're right,
we've we've beat that into my head. We should really
go to ads. This has been taking. Yeah, yeah, all
for all the fans. Anderson is a girl. So stop
calling her boy on Twitter. Also, stop stop asking me
to post pick. I think a lot of them think
Anderson's my dog. I mean, she she's in your family,

(44:17):
she is in my family. Yeah, oh boy, but I
birth thrown from my forehead. We are zeus okay, ad
break terrible transitions here ads products, We're back now. As
his preaching on segregation probably keyed you went on. Jerry

(44:38):
Fallwell was not a big fan of the Supreme Court.
He'd been pissed at in nineteen sixty two when they
ruled on Ingle versus Fatality, which was the ruling that
decided it was unconstitutional for schools to force students to pray.
He wrote of this, when a group of nine idiots
can pass a ruling down so that it is illegal
to read the Bible in our public schools, they need
to be called idiots. But Ingle VI of Italy did

(44:59):
not convinced Refallwell to get into politics. See for a
very long time in America, it was seen as somewhat foul,
even obscene for pastors to wade directly into national politics.
Sharon Overcast and the evangelical Christian who later worked with
Falwell recalled that prior to the seventies, politics was always
labeled as dirty, as something to stay out of. For
Fallwell and many other Christian extremists, Roe Vie Wade was

(45:20):
a wake up call I'm going to quote now from
an essay on Jerry Fallwell by Doug Bannwort of the
Western Illinois Historical Review. Many religious conservatives, like Falwell would
later identify the Road Decision as the critical issue that
awakened them from a long political slumber after largely being
inactive in the nineteen sixties. As Fallwell put it, the
decision by the Supreme Court legalizing abortion on demand did
more to destroy our nation than any other decision it

(45:42):
has made. Muehler later called the nineteen seventy three Road
Decision the stick of dynamite that exploded the issue. For evangelicals,
Roevie Wade was truly explosive, and that it legitimized abortion
into national law, a practice deemed defensive, barbaric, savage, and
a violation of God's precious handiwork here on earth. Not
only did Rovie Wade provide a wake up called a
Fallwell and religious conservatives, and also resulted in later mobilization

(46:04):
and activism on two closely related areas, gay rights and
women's liberation. Rights for gays and women were often closely
tied to the abortion issue. As family issues, if women
could get an abortion, no longer did they need a
man to take care of them, No longer would they
be confined to the kitchen, household or local pta meeting.
The newfounded dependence could result in a full frontal assault
on the traditional nuclear family, which many conservatives believed to

(46:25):
be the way God desired the family structure to look like. Yeah. Also,
Saturday was International Safe Abortion Day, so Apple Happy that
Day to everybody, have a happy that Day. We did
a series two on it on the podcast Private Parts
on Now and you should check it out. Check it
out International Safe Abortion Day. It's a good holiday, better

(46:49):
holiday than International Podcast Day, which it is today. Embery Days,
nationals Something Day. Yeah, it's been like National Siblings daylight
four times. And I text my brother, who is a
doctor who is not abused. I'm trying to do I'm
tired of doing the same joke where I just take
a picture of an empty chair and I'm like, I
love my sister. I'm an only child. I'm tired now. Uh.

(47:13):
Jerry got together with several other aggrieved religious people in
order to fight back against the Supreme Court's overreach. One
of these people was Paul way Rich, a Catholic, and
another was Howard Phillips, a Jew. Together they formed a
political action group called the Moral Majority in nineteen seventy nine,
and Howard, yeah, Philip seemed to mostly be there. No,

(47:33):
we're not just Christians, I know. We got ashamed of him. Yeah,
he's pretty lame. So the Moral Majority was formed specifically
to lobby to end abortion, reinstate school prayer, and force
men and women back into traditional gender roles. Their goal
was nothing less than to legislate fundamentalist Christian morality is
the law of the land, and most sources you'll read

(47:54):
on this, including Michael Winters, will note that Rob Wade
was the catalyst for all this, but not everyone agrees
on that point. Other researchers will point out that segregation
may itself have been a more direct inspiration for the
formation of the Moral Majority than abortion. Randall Balmer, a
professor at Dartmouth University and a historian, calls the idea
that abortion was the inciting incident for the Moral Majority
one of the most durable myths in modern history. It

(48:17):
is certainly true and documented beyond debate, that abortion was
the primary issue the Moral Majority put at the center
of their activism. They even called themselves new abolitionists and
their quest to end abortion. The act of comparing themselves
to anti slavery crusaders take some enormous balls. Given what
I'm about to read next quote, the abortion myth quickly
collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn't until nineteen

(48:40):
sixty nine, a full six years after Row, that evangelical
leaders at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich seized
on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying
cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why
because the anti abortion crusade was more palatable than the
religious rights real motive protecting segregated schools. Say, yeah, well,

(49:02):
it's a tough competition. Who do we hate more women
or black people? Oh? My god, black women. Yeah, that
that is the number one hated group. Yeah. So, Bomber
points out with exhaustive documentation that throughout the nineteen sixties
and early seventies, abortion was not a big deal for
most Christians, even fundamentalist ones. In nineteen sixty eight, the

(49:25):
Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today wrote that abortion was
not sinful and that quote, individual health, family welfare, and
social responsibility could all justify the termination of a pregnancy.
In nineteen seventy one, the Southern Baptist Convention had passed
a resolution stating, quote Southern Baptists to work for legislation

(49:46):
that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions
as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and
carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage the emotional, mental,
and physical health of the mother relatively woke for Christians today.
At least, the Convention reaffirmed this decision twice after Roe v.
Wade in nineteen seventy four and in nineteen seventy six,

(50:07):
and the immediate wake of the ruling. W A. Criswell,
the Convention's former president and one of the most prominent
evangelical Christians in America, said, I have always felt that
it was only after a child was born and had
a life separate from its mother that it became an
individual person. And it has always therefore seemed to me
that what is best for the mother and for the
future should be allowed. Hallelujah, Yep, things really took a turn.

(50:30):
Abortion had been a significant issue for Catholics for quite
some time. However, so it's like Evangelical Protestants didn't really
care about abortion prior to nineteen seventy nine. Catholics, you know,
they didn't. They weren't down with condoms. I mean, they
certainly weren't down with abortion. The church has been pretty
consistently anti choice for quite a while. But American Protestants
and Evangelicals didn't really care about the matter one way

(50:52):
or the other. What many of them did care about, however,
was integration because they were Southerners in the nineteen sixties
and seventies and just really, really racist. I'm gonna quote
from Balmer again. In May nineteen sixty nine, a group
of African American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the
Treasury Department to prevent three new whites only K through
twelve private academies from securing full tax exempt status, arguing

(51:14):
that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered charitable institutions.
The schools have been founded in the mid nineteen sixties
in response to the desegregation of public schools set in
motion by Brown versus the Board of Education decision in
nineteen fifty four. In nineteen sixty nine, the first year
of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public
schools in Holmes County dropped from seven hundred and seventy
one to eight. The following year, that number fell to zero.

(51:37):
So one of the responses of the Christian community throughout
the South was to open private schools so that they
did not have to If they were private religiou schools,
you can keep black people out and then we can
still have our whites just like just like Jesus intended,
and then allow of everyone in stages. Yeah, it's kind
of the birth of the private religious school system in America.

(51:58):
Excluding black people. Fuck pretty cool in Green versus Kennedy.
David Kennedy was Secretary of Treasury at the time decided
in nineteen seventy, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction which
denied the segregation academies tax exempt status until further review.
In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on
such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the

(52:18):
Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying taxes
exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Wow,
and she did a good thing. Yeah, Nixon was actually
pretty good on that issue. Was not really like the religions. Again,
this is before the religious rite exists. Like fundamentalist Christians
are not a voting block at this point in any
meaningful But Nixon also like dropped a lot of slurs

(52:40):
and stuff. That's why I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, but
he didn't give a shit about God. I mean, I
meant in terms of black people. I just didn't know. Yeah,
he would follow that, you know, he was good about
this one. Yeah. Nixon's one of those weird ones where
it's like you can listen to hours of him using

(53:01):
racial slurs and then he'll ban racist schools from being
tax exempt and you can listen to him like threatened
to have journalists murdered, and he'll start the e p
A too. He's a confusing one. He's a confusing one.
Uh now, Um. Reading all of this added some additional
context to something I'd read in God's Right Hand, which

(53:21):
definitely takes the the angle that like the moral majority
was all about abortion. Like this, Balmer is kind of
an opposed to other scholars when he puts segregation at
the center of why the Christian right becomes a political thing.
But it did add some extra context to this quote.
Follwell had been profoundly disturbed by the actions of the
federal government legalizing abortion, removing prayer from the public school

(53:41):
sending the I R s after Christian academies. To him,
this amounted to a political assault on his turf, the
moral fiber of the nation, and he could begin to
envisit in politics as the means to beating back the assault.
So this is one of the weird that God's Right
Hand is like a really good biography by Winters. It
has a lot of really good info in it, but
Winters is also kind of comes across is Well. He's
critical of a lot that Fallwell did fundamentally sympathetic to

(54:04):
the man as a human being, and I think he
misses like the fact that he phrases it as sending
the I R s after Christian academies, And I'm sure
that's how Fallwell would like to report it, Like what
fall what was piste about? Was them stopping Christians from
segregating schools. Yeah, and it is something that Winters doesn't
really touch on enough. But I I really think Balmer's
probably on the right side of this one. But I'm

(54:26):
not a scholar, so um yeah. Balmer makes a strong
case that the birth of the Christian Right as a
political movement was very much inspired by evangelical religious leaders
to keep black people out of their churches and schools.
Quote the Green v. Connolly ruling provided a necessary first step.
It captured the attention of evangelical leaders, especially as the
i r S began sending questionnaires to church related segregation academies,

(54:47):
including Fallwell's own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies.
Fallwell was furious in some states. He famously complained, it's
easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.
Is that massage parlor open to people of all races? Jerry?
Because if it is, I don't have any problem with it. Yeah.
Not if you could help it, Yeah, not if he
could help it. One such school, Bob Jones University, a

(55:10):
fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina, was especially obdurate. The
i R S had sent its first letter to Bob
Jones University in November nineteen seventy to ascertain whether or
not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school
responded defiantly. It did not admit African Americans. It wasn't
isn't even they You couldn't be taking someone of a

(55:31):
different race. Two, I think what like their school stuff
even recently right that they were in the news for that. Yeah,
that's continued up until the modern era. Yeah, they Bob
Jones really sticks by segregation. Kind of wild because this
is so recent. Yeah, the the birth of the religious
right is very much tight into Bob Jones University wanting

(55:52):
to be as racist to school as they can possibly be.
Cool mission cool mission Now. Bob Jones University did try
to throw the I R. S a bone to maintain
their tax exempt status. They took in a single black student.
He dropped out a month later for reasons that I'm
sure are completely unfathomable to everybody listening. Yeah, why would
that have happened? Yeah, well, he didn't like love the

(56:13):
new school. That's so crazy. It seems like he would
have been totally comfortable things like it would have been
a great time for him. Yeah. In nineteen seventy five,
the school was finally forced to admit black students on
a whiter basis, but they qualified that they were only
admitting married black people. The fear was that unmarried black
students might wind up fucking white students. Couldn't have that.

(56:35):
Interracial dating was strictly prohibited, so in nineteen seventy six,
the I R s who are the heroes of the
story today, rescinded Bob Jones University's tax exempt status. Good, yes, yeah,
the hey man, they're on the right side of this one.
Paul way Rich and Jerry Fallwell were deeply unhappy at
all this government overreach. They chose to focus on the

(56:57):
Carter administration, which actually doesn't a lot of sense. The
Nixon administration had started going after evangelical schools, Bob Jones
University had lost its taxignum status more than a year
before Carter took office, but way Rich and Fallwell ignored
all this. They made it their overwriting goal to ensure
a conservative kicked Carter out of office. Interesting that fact

(57:19):
they do an attack the Republican Party for their role
in this. They just go after Jimmy Carter. Interesting kind
of makes you wonder if maybe it had more to
do with the fact that these were Richmond than Christians.
But that's just a conspiracy theory. On my part, I
mean being rich, like crazy rich in this country is
a conspiracy theory. Now, the leaders of the Moral Majority

(57:44):
knew that segregation was not exactly a major vote winning
issue in nineteen seventy nine. They were not going to
ignite an evangelical political movement by focusing on racism or
any of the other issues they were most obsessed with
at the time. Way Rich and Folwell were also both
opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment. They sup ordered the
banning of pornography. But as way Rich later recalled, I
was trying to get these people interested in those issues

(58:05):
and I utterly failed. So they're trying to like get
the religious right on board with like banning the e
r A, banning pornography, allowing schools to segregate, and like
they really they can't get anybody on board. Nobody wants to,
like anybody hype about these issues. People are like yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was a different time. But abortion provided the Moral

(58:27):
Majority with an easy cause to crusade against a banner
other propagandized Christians could rally behind. Stop killing babies is
an easier battle cry than keep black people out of
our schools. So that is why they pick abortion as
at least the public face of the movement, and this
brings up the question, how did the Moral majority organize

(58:47):
evangelicals against abortion if abortion hadn't been a big part
of evangelical politics prayer to that point. The answer to this,
as with so many great questions in American history, boils
down to they hated women being free. Dum. Yeah. Of
course that isn't a great vote getter either, So they
framed their opposition to abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment
as being pro family. There we go. That's how you

(59:10):
get a fucking I'm gonna quote Doug Banmart again. Over
the course of the nineteen seventies, ministers connected defense of
the traditional family with opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights.
Such rights, to those in the moral majority, attacked the
tried and true social order that had persevered for generations.
According to the Moral majority, who could possibly be anti family.
In addition, it was this return to moral sanity that

(59:32):
was trying to restore America from the upheaval of the
recent past. Rather than speak out directly against gay's, feminists
and abortionists, they often delivered the same message shrouded and
pro family terms. For example, Moral Majority leaders defined traditional
families as those with two heterosexual parents. This carried significant
appeal among conservatives in the wake of the nineteen sixties.
By framing the issue was defense of the family, the

(59:53):
leaders of the Christian right effectively turned liberals into enemies
of the family, at least in the eyes of millions
of voters, and this is what led them to their
violent opposition of the Equal Rights Amendment. This was the
first test of the moral majority. Jerry Folwell Warren, the
passage of the amendment could quote sanction homosexual marriage, send
mothers and girls into combat, and generally injure the dignity
of the traditional family. Gasp, yeah, you say, as you

(01:00:18):
hug your traditional family member Anderson the dog. Now for reference,
I think I should read out the main portions of
the suggested amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment. That's very scary,
family destroying amendment. Section one, A quality of rights under
the law shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section two, the Congress shall have the power to enforce,

(01:00:39):
by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section three.
This Amendment shall take effect two years after the date
of ratification, So that I mean that that likes the
family right out. Yeah yeah, yeah, that that families should
be destroyed. Amendment to the amendment was really extreme. Yeah,

(01:01:02):
so obviously we couldn't have that happen. Fallwall and his
fellow conservatives were terrified that the r A would lead
to nightmares like government funded daycare and paternity leave. These
are two things that they cited directly is why the
r A was bad. It just seems like, how can
you not feel like the biggest nerd when you're like,
I'm anti porn, I'm anti like all the things you're

(01:01:25):
anti makes you such a fucking nerd? Does that party
not ever being like, dudes, we're doing the nerdiest shit
out here. What are we doing? They're keeping women under
lock and key, so crazy to me, Like it's like,
if you're a reasonable person, being a post government funded
daycare and paternity leave sounds like lunacy. But the fear

(01:01:47):
among conservatives was that like, if there's government funded daycare,
women can have jobs and then they weren't. Yeah, then
they won't be like reliant on a man for everything.
And if there's paternity leave, then dads could take care
of kids too, and then moms could have careers and
be independent people. Just defending gender roles is so nerdy too.

(01:02:09):
It's another to be like, this is what I care about.
I want to make sure that the man does man
things and the woman does woman things, and we've decided
what those things are. Like, how do you even get
how do you even get enough energy to care about that?
It's the only thing you care about. If you're the
kind of person who cares about that, It's just so
crazy to me. I'm like, oh, live your life. Yeah,

(01:02:30):
that's the like, the core of this is a bunch
of people who like can't fucking deal with other people
wanting a different thing out of life than they do,
which is really usually the core of like six of
Bastardy speaking of a gigantic bastard Philish lifely a Christian
activist and a gigantic piece of ship, wrote that the
Equal Rights Amendment would be quote the first anti family

(01:02:52):
amendment in the Constitution. It would protect biggmists, legalized prostitution,
and defaying rape laws. The social and political goals of E. R.
Rayer's a radical, irrational and unacceptable to Americans. In the
essay where she wrote this, she leftly created the acronym
stop e R A stop stood for stop taking our privileges.
She made an acronym with the word that the acronym

(01:03:14):
is in the agram. That's like saying the title of
the movie in the movie, Yeah, we're wearing a band
shirt to the concert. Like no, I just don't that.
And so Jerry Fallwell and his comrades leapt into the
nineteen eighty election with the intent to restore their version
of God to a position of primacy in American politics.

(01:03:34):
In nineteen eighty, Folwell told his congregation, we're fighting a
holy war. What's happened to America is that the wicked
or bearing rule. We have to lead the nation back
to the moral stance that made America great. We have
to influence on those who govern us. Just trying to
make America great. Everyone's having fun, fuck them. Yeah, yeah,
this does happen, And like, well, no, I guess nineteen

(01:03:57):
eighty was. It was about to be a fun year.
I mean, and people everywhere disco, Yeah, coming off of
the fun ass rock and roll seventies. Yeah, people are
just having a good time. Thery nerds are out here
trying to ruin it for everything. It's that pendulum you have,
like sexual liberation and like the civil rights movement and stuff,

(01:04:18):
and then all of the assholes organized to like push
the pendulum back. It's kind of like what's happening now,
except it happened earlier. I know. It's just upsetting. It's like,
let women work, they'll just buy stuff for you. Yeah.
That women are so nice, you know what I mean,
Like like we're so nice. Yeah. You just you just
want to participate in the flawless system of capitalism like

(01:04:40):
everybody else. We just want to buy ship. We just
want to buy ship. Weren't even allowed to have our
own credit cards to like the seventies. Well that's a
fair rule, because bitches be shopping. Am I right? Shopping?
I That's going to be the core of my stand
up act. I don't think anybody's joked about that before.
It's gonna bring new grounds, So you should really talk

(01:05:01):
about the differences between black people and white people. I'm
gonna do that when I get my new Netflix show canceled,
really bold title, really gonna break new ground with that.
I can't wait. Or something to do with safe Spaces.
One of those two is going to be the title
for sure. It will really be groundbreaking. Can't wait to
open for you. I'm gonna get eight million dollars to

(01:05:23):
complain about how I've been canceled by social justice warriors.
Miles performs in Pennsylvania. He opens for Lucy k and
as He's opens from Miles. Oh great, yeah, yeah, that's
how you want opening for you with the season. Sorry, okay,
I'm just saying that's how Cansylvania works. I mean it is,
that's literally how it works. Yeah. So Osby still performs

(01:05:46):
on Cansylvania because it's Cansylvania. I mean he's huge there, Yeah,
just stumbling onto the stage, can't see anything because he
I mean, he's crushing it or he's attempting to, but
he's blind, so he can't make his way up on
to the stage. Pennsylvania will cloud for that. So uh.

(01:06:12):
When Jerry Fallwell spoke, millions of people listened. At the
start of the nineteen eighties, his TV show was hosted
on three and seventy three stations, more than Johnny Carson's
Tonight Show. His church, the Thomas Road Baptist Church, had
grown to become one of the very first megachurches with
regular attendants of more than seventeen thousand. But the true
genius of Jerry Fallwell and guiding the Moral Majority was
his ability to unify different types of Christians together. Catholics

(01:06:34):
and Protestants did not traditionally see one another as groups
with much in common. They regularly found themselves in opposition. Likewise,
mainstream Protestants, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and Fundamentalists were all distinct groups
of Christians, and they had no real history of organizing
together towards a common purpose. Fallwell succeeded in welding them
together for the first time. He was criticized by the
president of Bob Jones University for creating an unholy alliance

(01:06:57):
with the evil Catholics. It's weird to relieve, like that's
where a religion used to be in America, where somebody
was like, I wanna get all the Christians together to
stop people from letting women work, and someone's like, but
we're gonna work with the Catholics to do that. It's hilarious,
good nuts. So uh, fall will reply to that. I'm
indeed considered to be dangerous to liberals, feminists, abortionists, and homosexuals,

(01:07:20):
but not to Bible believe in Christians, this time preaching
would not be enough. It is my duty as a
Christian to apply the truths of Scripture to every act
of government. Yeah, no, I asked you. Yeah, damn, why
are you volunteering for a job that, Liz literally does
not exist. You just appointed yourself when we started pastoring
on a huge as level. Yeah, he's like, well, this

(01:07:42):
is what I do now. No one fucking asked you. Yeah,
this this has worked in Virginia, so clearly the entire
country should have to have me as their pastor. Yeah.
I love that. Like this is the like we have
to apply. It's my duty to apply the truths of
Scripture to every act of government. It's like, no, dude,
Like when we started this whole country thing, like the
whole idea was that, like that's not how we're gonna

(01:08:03):
do it. We're not going to have religion be involved
in politics. No, bitch, your duty is to like groom yourself,
go it out into the world and be someone that
improves it. And that's literally it. Yeah, just that's it.
Stay away from everybody, pay taxes, and don't assault people. Yeah,

(01:08:24):
that's really the only goals. We want you to work,
we ask of anyone, That's all we wanted. Don't fucking
feed people their cats and ship like that. That's I mean?
Is that a too too big an ask? Was too
big of an ask for his dad? Big cat feeder,
two people guy? Yeah. So. Jerry Fallwell's chief innovation, the

(01:08:45):
one which is shaped American politics ever since, was to
convince all Christian conservatives that they're really on the same side.
Fighting for the sanctity of the family, abortion, opposition to
gay rights, advocating for the return of prayer in school.
All these things can be bundled together as saving the family.
Fall All wrote, the family is the fundamental building block
and basic unit of our society, and its continued health
is a prerequisite for a healthy and prosperous nation. No

(01:09:07):
nation has ever been stronger than the families within her.
And so the moral majority set to work. They start, honestly,
just reconnect with your own dad. You know that sounds
like a personal situation. No, I mean, like whatever you
need to do say once, like write him a letter,
then burn it whatever. It sounds like you have a
lot of personal Yeah, in his memory, shoot at someone's feet.

(01:09:28):
But Honestly, it just sounds like you need to work
out your fucking daddy issues instead of trying to daddy
the whole fucking country. I think that really is the
core of a lot of this. His dad was a
piece of ship, Yeah, and he's trying to make up
for it. Solved next case, the Moral Majority set to
work preparing morality ratings for every member of Congress. See

(01:09:49):
that's not terrifying. I love to be rated. Everybody does.
It's like Airbnb, but for Congress. Uh. They founded documentaries
attacking homosexuals as degenerates, int haring abortion as murder, and
they launched a national voter registration drive aimed at Americans
concerned with family values issues. From ban words article, Moral
Majorities spring into action, mobilizing politicians and religious leaders to

(01:10:11):
help support their platform. The movement boasted a wide variety
of accomplishments and energy to influence the election. We're going
to change the country Utah Senator or in hatch declare
and or in a hatch. The Moral Majority boasted a
political war chest worth millions of dollars. By the summer
of nineteen eighty, It opened offices in Washington, D C.
And in just one year gave eighty three thousand new
addresses for its mailing list. It's like the Black Set

(01:10:34):
in the nineteen sixties, Fallwell said, and this time we're
going to win. Oh my god. Roughly three months before
the nineteen eighty election, the Moral Majority officially announced its
support of Ronald Wilson. Yeah, surprise, surprise. And that is
where we're gonna leave off for the episode. In part two,
we're going to learn about Jerry Folwell's reaction to the

(01:10:55):
AIDS crisis, the Moral Majority under Reagan, and just a
little that about how a certain conservative fire brand reacted
to nine eleven. And we're gonna talk about Larry Flint,
who's going to be the hero of the next episode.
Hell yeah, hell yeah. But first, Sophia, you have a podcast.
It's right. I have a podcast called Private Parts and

(01:11:16):
Round Parts Unknown. I co host it with Courtney Kossak
and uh it's a podcast about love and sexuality around
the world and it's really fun. And soon my podcast
with Miles Gray called is coming out, so watch out
for that. I'm going to issue a challenge to the
listeners of both of our podcasts. If you're a fan

(01:11:38):
of Bastard's pod and Private Parts Unknown because your podcast
is essentially the oral opposite of Jerry Fallwell, like condensed
into sound waves. Yes, so if you, if you live
near Virginia where he's buried, fans of the show, get
some speakers. Oh my god, which episode would you want
blasted into Jerry Fallwell's corpse um and talking about their

(01:12:00):
experiences with abortion? Nailing it? Oh? Yeah, yeah, play that
one directly into Jerry Fallwell's grave. You're gonna have to
go to the Liberty University campus to do it, and
they will kick you out. But but please get that
video ship. That would really make my life. Actually, yeah, yeah,
that there will that You will be beloved by all
of us if you if you succeed in beaming an

(01:12:23):
episode of Private Parts Unknown into Jerry Fallwell's yeah into
his ghost yeah body, which is now in the most
subterranean levels of Cansylvania. Yeah, I think that will destroy
his ghost. Wow, that's not That's the only way you
can get rid of gusts. The only way you can
get rid of a ghosts You find their their their opposite,

(01:12:45):
condense it into sound waves and then blasted into their
corpse it's like a silver bullet for vampires. It's like
a silver bullet for vampires, but for ghosts truth and
you can just download it on your phone using Spotify.
Now you want to plug your social meds. So when
fans beam their music into Jerry Fallwells Court or your
podcast into Jerry Fallwell's corpse, uh, they can let you know.

(01:13:06):
Yeah please? I am the Sophie on Twitter and instagram s,
so f I y a ulcer spoilers, he's dead. I
just realized we hadn't gotten there. I think people know
he's dead, but I really appreciate the spoiler alert. It's
the episode I website Behind the Bastards dot com t shirts,

(01:13:31):
t public other podcast Worst Year Ever, Binding the Bastards,
Bastard pot at on Twitter, Instagram, episode done

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Jerry Falwell: Founder of the Religious Right