In my much, much younger days, I was a close observer of the rise of the televangelist. Jimmy Swaggart. Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker (rhymes with faker). Oral Roberts. Pat Robertson. Robert Schuller. As cradle Catholic atheists, my husband and I were completely fascinated by these pious frauds, with their phony smiles, their crocodile tears, their outstretched hands. Always the outstretched hands.
Sometimes we'd turn on the spooky George Vandeman, a Seventh Day Adventists who preached the gospel of vegetarianism. (His descriptions of the slaughter of animals, especially - as I recall from a distance of over 40 years - calves for veal were quite something. Old George almost but not quite turned us off of meat. All these years later I still pause at veal on the menu, and generally skip to chicken.)
Anyway, on Sunday mornings, we'd often catch a couple of acts.
Our favorites soon emerged: Leroy Jenkins and Jerry Falwell.
Leroy Jenkins was a faith healer who was something of an Elvis lookalike, and his shows always featured him singing a few gospel tunes, Elvis-style. And, of course, selling his "miracle water" drawn from his well in Delaware, Ohio, and at one point found to contain coliform bacteria. (What doesn't cure you will kill you?) He was such an obvious conman, but a fascinating one.
Jim and I once scheduled a weekend in New York to coincide with a Jenkins' revival meeting at Madison Square Garden that featured an appearance of none other than Dale Evans, cowgirl wife of Roy Rogers. The main draw was Jenkins' "healing" powers. Oh, boy. What we thought would be amusing to watch turned out to be astoundingly depressing. The shills and those looking for a cure who were mobile and had no obvious sign of affliction were seated in a roped off area - the only area Jenkins got anywhere near to. He'd pull folks out of this section, lay hands on, shout "be thou made whole" and, voila, a miracle!
Those in real need of a miracle were ignored, even though they were threaded throughout the audience, the people with then waving their arms and hollering, trying to get Jenkins attention, trying to get closer to the man, only to be pushed back by security thugs. A woman near us was standing in the aisles, her blind husband hanging on to her, while she desperately called Jenkins' name.
We didn't last long after that.
(By no means alone among the Elmer Gantry crowd, Jenkins did some time in prison for fraud. He had several marriages, and the last one was a lulu. In 2001 he married an elderly woman - widowed just three weeks prior to the blessed nuptials - who had recently won $6M in the Ohio lottery. The marriage (not surprisingly) was annulled.)
And then there was Jerry Falwell, smug and overstuffed. Moral Majoritarian. Soul winner. (His term.) Founder of Liberty Baptist College.
When I first knew of Jerry Falwell, the school was just being founded as Liberty Baptist College, and was pretty rinky-dink. Now it's all grown up and now it's Liberty University, a school that's highly regarded in conservative circles. Falwell the elder was definitely on to something. Today, LU has 100,000 students (albeit the vast majority of them are online - pre-COVID online).
It almost goes without saying that, when Falwell came to Boston, Jim and I went to hear him speak. Very right wing - twice, I began typing "white wing" - and suffocating. But interesting. One of the giveaways was something called the Bicentennial Bible. (Actually, you had to make a small pledge to get one, so we put down a pledge in the name of a friend, which was the kind of thing I thought was funny back then. It remained funny for a couple of years - at least to us - as they kept sending notices to him asking for the money.)
I can't remember all the details of the Bicentennial Bible, but it was a pretty extreme combo of religion and American history. Not quite as bad as having the Founding Fathers, in knee britches and powdered wigs, at the Last Supper. But almost.
Whatever else Falwell believed, he was a solid believer in nepotism. He bequeathed the pulpit at his mega-church to one son, and to his namesake - Jerry Falwell, Jr. - he left the presidency of Liberty University.
Unlike his father - however repugnant I found Jerry Sr. personally, he did appear to be a pillar of rectitude - Jerry Jr. is a bit of a libertine, leading a life that doesn't quite jibe with the Liberty University rep. Among the scandals he's been involved with are noise about him engaging in inappropriate sexual banter, sharing shall we say unwholesome pics of his wife, nightclubbing in Florida, and something to do with him, his wife, and a pool boy.
There's also a rumor that he was blackmailed into lending his name to the Trump campaign in 2016. With Falwell's backing, permission was more or less given to evangelists to vote for man with such a disreputable past and with zero to do with (and zero understanding of) Christianity. This was supposedly in exchange for Trump's then-fixer, Michael Cohen, making some bad news about Junior disappear.
To me, Jerry Falwell Jr. is a creepy, hypocritical sleaze, inauthentic. A conman.
But with his latest hi-jinks, the con is up at least for now, as he's has been forced out of his post as Liberty University's president.
The wrongful act straw that broke the Liberty U back was a picture he posted on social media. The picture, taken on a yacht, showed him with a drink - he claims it was "black water" meant to look like a rum coke - in hand, and his arm around a younger woman who is not his wife. Bad enough. But in the picture, both he and his gal-pal have their pants unzipped and partially pulled down (below the belly button). It's not a dick pic, but it does show the top of his underwear. (Looks to be a brief not boxer kind of guy. He may even wear hip huggers.)
Not the sort of picture you want going out on social media when you head up an ultra-conservative institution that has strict dress codes and forbids things like drinking, dancing, and kissing. There was a quasi-apology, excuse-a-rama from Falwell. The picture was taken out of context. (The context: costume party making fun of some Canadian TV show about trailer trash.) The woman was his wife's assistant. It was all in fun. He's sorry he embarrassed the young woman. Yadayadayada.
Not good enough for the University's board of trustees, and Jerry Junior was forced to go on indefinite leave. (Interesting that Oral Roberts had anointed his son Richard to succeed him as president of the eponymous Oral Roberts University. Richard was forced out due to allegations of financial improprieties.)
Oh, I'm sure Jerry Falwell Jr. will take a bit of time off - maybe hang out with the pool boy on that yacht - and then come back a new man. Contrite, right with the Lord. Etc. Maybe he'll wind up somewhere doing time in what we can only hope and pray are the waning days of the Trump administration.
Jerry Falwell Senior must be rolling over in his grave...
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