In many of his talks to Liberty University students, the Rev. Jerry Falwell emphasized the importance of “finishing well.”
On Tuesday, he was at the top of his game when he unexpectedly died in the college office where he was planning more expansions of the fast-growing university that he founded in 1971.
The Rev. Falwell did a lot of things well, ticking off liberals right up to the end. How else would he have garnered the kind of tribute from a major newspaper’s religion writer that was headlined, “Sigh of relief over Falwell death.”
To make sure no one mistook her, Chicago Sun-Times Religion Writer Cathleen Falsani’s May 18 column explains her reaction to the news about Dr. Falwell on May 15.
“…My very first thought upon hearing of the Rev. Falwell’s passing was: Good. And I didn’t mean ‘good’ in a oh-good-he’s-gone-to-be-home-with-the-Lord
kind of way. I mean ‘good’ as in ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead.’”
Falsani, who claims to be a Christian, learned of this apparent good news in the airport departure lounge in Key West, a place where Jerry is not held in great esteem.
She went on to compare the good reverend to the foul-mouthed TV mobster Tony Soprano, and accused Falwell of saying “insensitive, mean-spirited, sometimes downright hateful things …in the name of Christ.” She did do a bit of backing up, saying that maybe, in his own way, God used Jerry so that “lives were changed for the better by his ministry, his college, and the flip side of the endeavors he made in Jesus’ name.”
Meanwhile, she informed readers of her own apparent spiritual superiority, noting that “not all of us are that self-righteous, judgmental and holier than thou.”
I guess that openly enjoying the death of a fellow Christian and utterly distorting his Christian message into a caricature of hate is the mark of the nonjudgmental. I think it’s somewhere in the Sermon on the Mount.
Of course, Falsani is not the only journalist to use Rev. Falwell’s death as one more opportunity to cast fiery darts at him.
Virtually every major news outlet made sure that Falwell’s controversial comment following 9/11 and his notorious “outing” of the “gay Teletubby” Tinky Winky got ink and airtime.