"Not only was he misrepresenting Christianity for political and financial reasons but his extreme views were never a problem for the Bush WH where he obviously had a great deal of influence."
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sea...
Let me preface my post by acknowledging that my knowledge of Falwell is pretty limited, but from your post, I suspect that the same is true for you.
As a Bible believing Christian, I tended to listen anytime I saw him on TV, which during the 80's and perhaps very early 90's was fairly often, since the media tended to view him as a "voice" of conservative Christianity. It was for that same reason that I tended to listen to what he was saying, curious as to how "biblical" he was -- how faithful he was to the gospel and to the teachings of Scripture. Of course these were 2-5 minute snippets of what he had to say, so it was hard to say exactly how doctrinally sound he was. While I did not agree with all he said, overall he appeared to be basically sound doctrinally and true to the gospel, which is more than I can say of some "leaders" the media has on both then and now.
Falwell sometimes had a tendency to speak before his brain got into gear, which much to the glee of the media got him into trouble from time to time, but that was also was partially due to trying to express complex theological concepts using vastly oversimplified and condensed language, while talking to folks with very little biblical knowledge.
On thing I think your post misses, along with a lot of others here, is that Falwell's political strength among conservative Christians waned steadily beginning in the late 80's, although that fact was not recognized at all by the media, probably because the political strength of conservative Christians as a whole remained strong. The reason for this decline in his influence is the same reason that there are no real "spokesmen" for Biblical Christianity -- Biblical Christianity is very amorphous and Biblical Christians look to the Bible to be their spokesman and to Jesus as the head of the Church. Since the days of the Apostles, Biblical Christianity has had no real earthly leader. All of which is to say that your portrayal of Falwell as a strong influence and power broker in the Bush White House is greatly exaggerated. He was influential during the Reagan years, but wielded much less influence after that -- you might note that Falwell closed down the Moral Majority in the late 80's.
You characterize Falwell as "misrepresenting Christianity for political and financial reasons" but as a Bible believing Christian I disagree (see above) and believe that overall, he did not misrepresent Christianity at all -- he was often not as clear as he could have been and sometimes spoke without thinking the matter through, but would you do any better if you were interviewed for national TV on a consistent basis??? As for his motives, what, other than your own pure speculations, are you judging his motives by??? I saw nothing in Falwell to indicate that your judgement is other than petty mean spiritedness.
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