Word: rev
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...Rev. Jerry Falwell stuffs a leather-bound "giant-print" Bible under an arm so he can pop a Rolaids into his mouth. He eats fatty food too often at the Backyard Grill in Lynchburg, Va., and he turned 66 last summer, but friends say he hasn't let up on his schedule. This morning he's speaking to 1,500 cheering students at Liberty University, the college he founded in 1971 that has become the largest evangelical college in the world. "Jesus is awesome!" they shout, many faces contorted with...
...frighten millions of dollars from donors. Last weekend Falwell apologized for such statements. The occasion for Falwell's soul searching was an unprecedented meeting between 200 of Falwell's supporters and 200 gay people of faith. Falwell agreed to break bread with them after several talks with the Rev. Mel White, a 60-year-old gay activist who runs Soulforce, an ecumenical gay group. White and Falwell used to be pals; White, a former filmmaker and writer for conservative causes, ghostwrote Falwell's autobiography. But they lost touch after December 1991, when White, tired of fighting his true nature...
Falwell has gained national prominence as a fundamentalist minister, who has built a career in part by demonizing gays and lesbians as immoral, perverse and destructive. So when he publicly reversed some of his most extreme stances this week, his words made headlines. Before a packed sanctuary, the Rev. Falwell called on evangelical Christians to show love and toleration for gays and lesbians and to speak out against anti-gay hate crimes. The sermon capped what was billed as a weekend of reconciliation between Falwell and gay Christians, including a meeting for evangelicals and gays to get to know...
...cornerstone of the weekend was a face-to-face conversation between 200 Falwell supporters and 200 gays and lesbians who came to Lynchburg from around the country. The Rev. Mel White, a longtime friend of Falwell's who broke with the religious right when he came out of the closet in 1993, pressed for the personal meeting as a chance to break down barriers of misunderstanding and stereotypes. Falwell exulted at the progress: "Four hundred people who disagree met for 90 minutes without any shouting," he told the group, according to several publications. "The building didn't collapse. They discovered...
...increasingly extreme to ordinary people. This too is Matthew Shepard's legacy: in death, he served as vivid proof of the suffering that scars gay life in America. In this new climate, any evangelical might do well to lie low and preach tolerance. One good sign for Falwell: the Rev. Fred Phelps, the viciously homophobic Kansas preacher who picketed Shepard's funeral, stood outside the Lynchburg meeting with a small band carrying signs that read, "Jerry and a Fairy Equal Sin." Phelps' protest of Falwell's meeting only improves his new-found image as a centrist. With such enemies...