rtris (04/22/83)
Hail,
Geo Swan, a while ago, encouraged me to enunciate in what ways I felt my
positions differed from Fallwell's, despite our both (presumably) being
Christian, in order to perhaps clarify the fact that Fallwell doesn't speak
for all Christians by a long shot.
Well, when I started thinking about it, I discovered that I really didn't
know a heck of a lot about exactly what he stood for. So, grasping back to
a previous article, I found the following concrete statements:
------------------------
Finally, Falwell has expressed the following positions in his "95 theses":
That all able-bodied U.S. male citizens are obligated to fight to
the death, if necessary, to defend the flag.
That the free-enterprise system of profit be encouraged to grow,
being unhampered by any socialistic laws or red tape.
That all ... unproductive governmental financial programs [welfare
and social services] be terminated, harmful [sic] programs which in
themselves perpetuate poverty and laziness.
That new laws be introduced providing for the immediate deportation
of troublemaking noncitizens in this country.
That no law be introduced to force private schools to hire indivi-
duals solely to achieve minority-group balance.
That any and all efforts to bring about a central world government
be unceasingly opposed.
That in the spirit of true education, both prevalent theories of
origin be impartially taught in the public school system. These
two models are special creation and evolution.
-------------------------
Well, this almost speaks for itself. I know of no direct support from
scripture for any of these positions. In fact to me, the statement about
welfare, and the three following ones, seem downright harsh, and hardly
demonstrative of Christian love and concern for our fellow man. There
may be a significant number out of his 95 theses which are not reproduced
here that I would agree with. But it is statements such as these that
make me want to throw up just as much as the next guy.
For the moderate majority,
Ralph.tim (04/27/83)
One interesting note about Falwell and Co. is that, while they claim to want "equal time" for creationism in education, they do not provide evolution with the same privilege in their private schools. The New Right is well-known for such hypocrisy -- for instance, the "moment of silence" they're pushing instead of school prayer these days. Is anyone other than devotees fooled for an instant by this? Tim Maroney