Join Our Megachurch Today! Now, For The Low, Low Price Of Your Morality

During the mid-1960s, Jerry Falwell became a rising religious idol for evangelical theology. During a time of uncertainty, the evangelicals felt drawn to the leadership Falwell provided, as he founded and led the organization called Moral Majority. However, under the fallacy of religious ideals, Falwell’s Moral Majority seemed more goal-oriented on policing family structures and the boundaries of public policy through a lens that was explicitly evangelical and increasingly corporate. So, what happens when you start masking religious values and faith with a business and political strategy? Falwell tied moral concerns (abortion, gay rights, school prayer) to political conservatism, helping shift evangelicals toward the GOP. People followed his rhetoric, not because they were mindless, but because they were made to believe this was salvation and protection. That the government had failed them, and maybe the church wouldn’t. Falwell knew how to speak the language of those left behind by progress. He looked around his hometown of Lynchburg, saw what Cold War defense dollars had done, and decided capitalism wasn’t just good business—it was God’s will. He claimed, “the free-enterprise system is clearly outlined in the Book of Proverbs” (Williams, 137). He even described welfare recipients as people who “wouldn’t work in a pie shop eating the holes out of donuts” (Williams, 137). 

Just like the U.S. transitioned from an industrial-based economy to a service-based economy, Falwell’s goal was to maintain profit and relevance with the times. The messages laced in his evangelical doctrine mixed theology with business and politics, ultimately merging these lines to maintain the relevance of his megachurch empire. Early in his career, Falwell aligned with Southern segregationist politicians and argued that “the true Negro does not want integration,” even calling integration “the work of the Devil” (Williams, 132). However, as the times started to change, so did his audience and the people who wanted to be a part of his church. Suddenly, by the the 1980s, Falwell “took the Lynchburg African American civil rights leader M. W. Thornhill Jr. to lunch to apologize for his past actions, and in 1981 he began working closely with Los Angeles African American pastor E. V. Hill to recruit black pastors for the Moral Majority” (Williams, 134). But it didn’t feel like real change—it felt like rebranding. He didn’t need the old segregationist image anymore because his church was growing, his audience was changing, and national recognition mattered more than regional loyalty. That doesn’t read as a transformation but as a strategy.

Reading this, I just kept asking myself: Who benefited from Falwell’s version of Christianity? Was it the working-class families he claimed to support—or was it the institutions and politicians that shared his priorities? The Moral Majority didn’t just push back against abortion or gay rights; it endorsed tax cuts, defense spending, and the dismantling of government programs. It told people their problems came from the state, not from poverty or inequality. That’s a dangerous message. Because it shifts the blame away from power and toward people who are already struggling. It encourages resentment instead of solidarity. The real winners in Falwell’s theology weren’t the factory workers or single moms or kids in underfunded schools. The winners were the businessmen who wanted fewer regulations, the politicians who wanted reliable votes, and the churches that profited from preaching fear dressed up as faith. His version of Christianity told people to distrust public institutions while putting full faith in private ones—especially the church. But what happens when that church starts to look a lot like the very institutions it claims to oppose? When it functions more like a corporation than a community? Falwell offered people answers, yes—but they came with a cost. You can’t build a truly moral world on policies that exclude, punish, or abandon the most vulnerable. You can’t call it holy if it only benefits the powerful.