In Daniel K. Williams article titled “Jerry Falwell’s Sunbelt Politics: The Regional Origins of the Moral Majority,” the gradual transformation of Jerry Falwell from a “small-town, undereducated, southern pastor” (142) to a leader of the Christian Right is studied within the context of Sunbelt politics. Born and raised in Lynchberg, Virginia, a town “which a federal report characterized as a region of ‘sickness, misery, and unnecessary death’” (128), Falwell came of age while the town grew in population and economic strength due to the Cold War and defense spending. Defense-inudstry plants—Babcock & Wilcox and General Electric—opened only a short time before Falwell opened his own church, Thomas Road Baptist Church. The growth of Lynchberg occured alongside the growth of TRBC’s congregation, and Falwell was smart enough to market his church through door-to-door campaigns as well as tevelvision shows to grow it into more than just a megachurch. As the congregation grew, Falwell expanded TRBC into more than just a church. Falwell wasn’t just a pastor, he was an entrepreneur, too. He opened a home for addicts, a summer camp, schools, and a university while also reaching people in the prison system or rural areas through TRBC-led ministries. The church, which had opened in 1956 with just a few dozen members, had an annual revenue of $50 million and seventeen thousand church memberships by the late 1970s (133). Falwell also didn’t just want to further his spiritual agenda, but his views on social and economic issues, as well. To do this, Falwell fused Christianity and his political beliefs into one view and thus created the basis for the Moral Majority. Falwell was especially important to the formation of the Christian Right because he addressed the issues near to people within the Sunbelt region and answered their problems with a solution that appealed to the average white Christian conservative. Williams notes Falwell’s venture into politics, writing, “Falwell’s vision of church-run social services as an alternative to the federal government’s welfare programs would attract him to the conservative wing of the Republican Party” (131). Fallwell’s political beliefs didn’t necessarily change over time—he never really came around to the idea of desegregation—but he quit aligning himself with the Democratic Party and politicians such as Harry Byrd and his “conservative Democratic Party machine” (131) and began to fully support Republicans, professing deep-rooted love for Ronald Reagan in 1982 by saying, “We have a president who agrees with every position Moral Majority represents,” as well as “[declaring] that Reagan was the nation’s ‘finest President since Lincoln,’” (142). Overall, Falwell supported minimal government interference economically, but he would have gladly welcomed government-regulations surrounding abortion, gay rights, and segregation. Tax cuts and defense spending especially aligned with Falwell’s personal agenda because he profited from tax cuts, which is why he was upset when the IRS “threatened to rescind tax exemptions for private schools that were racially discriminatory or that failed to meet a minimum quota of minority enrollment” (137). As far as defense spending, Falwell felt strongly about that topic because he had seen firsthand how his hometown was thrust out of poverty and into economic prosperity because of defense spending.
I’ll add this—Falwell’s official line changed throughout his lifetime. For example, he apologized for promoting segregation. However, he always preached a vision for America that catered to the white, Christian conservative and we still see people fighting to bring that vision back today.
Will Wright 