Falwell To Jesus Get A Hummer

Not being a religious person, I don't spend much time thinking about excommunication. But I do believe now is the moment to initiate excommunication proceedings against Jerry Falwell, not to drive him out of the Baptist church (any church that will have him for a leader deserves him), but to expel him from public discourse.

Since 9/11, Falwell, the former head of the so-called Moral Majority, has been on a hellfire of a tear. After those awful attacks, he appeared on Pat Robertson's television show and blamed abortion-rights advocates, feminists, pagans, gay and lesbians, and the ACLU for pissing off God to such an extent that She/He/It permitted the strikes to occur. Falwell took plenty of flak. He issued a non-apologetic apology but appeared to have finally walked off the plank of hate-rhetoric into the dark sea of self-marginalization. Fox News Channel celeb Bill O'Reilly, for one, said he would have nothing to do with him.

But Falwell managed to slither back. By the end of the year, he was a guest once again on O'Reilly's show. More recently, in June, he made news on CNN defending a Baptist leader who had decried Mohammed as "a demon-possessed pedophile" and who had commented, "Allah is not Jehovah; Jehovah is not going to turn you into a terrorist that will bomb people." And in recent weeks, he has continued his anti-Islam rant and been invited to do so by the media. In October, he was interviewed by 60 Minutes and maintained "Mohammed was a terrorist."

I am not advocating censoring wrongheaded or dangerous opinion-mongering. But a recent Falwell appearance on CNN provided the grounds for certifying him a nut-case not worthy of a microphone. What had brought Falwell in front of the camera was a creative and edgy television ad campaign mounted by the Evangelical Environmental Network. The spot's text reads:

"God saw that [the Earth] was good, and Jesus says, love thy neighbor as thyself. Yet too many of the cars, trucks and SUVs that are made, that we choose to drive, are polluting our air, increasing global warming, changing the weather, and endangering our health. Especially the health of our children. So if we love our neighbor, and we cherish God's creation, maybe we should ask, what would Jesus drive?"

The group set up a website: www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org where visitors are asked to take the WWJDrive Pledge: "Confessing Jesus Christ to be my Savior and Lord, including Lord of my transportation choices, I pledge the following: I will...walk, bike, car pool and use public transportation; if I need to purchase a vehicle, I will choose the most fuel efficient and least polluting vehicle that truly fits my needs...." In other words, no SUVs on the road to Calvary. EEN also encourages Christians to pressure government leaders and the automobile industry to increase fuel efficiency of vehicles and to reduce pollution.

On CNN, Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, explained the project by citing the latest science on global warming, which predicts a 2 to 10 degrees Fareneheit hike in temperature this century, and noted the likely effects of global warming "will produce catastrophic changes that will especially hurt the poor." Booked as countervailing voice, Falwell scoffed at such hokum and declared he and the missus each drive GM Suburbans.

Fine, Falwell is free to be foolish, and CNN is free to exploit his foolishness to achieve that much-sought-after image of fair-and-balanced. But Falwell went further. He claimed, "global warming is a myth." Sider tried to rebut him, saying, "Our best scientists tell us that, in fact, global warming..." But Falwell interrupted to counter, "No our best scientists don't tell us." He explained: "It was global cooling 30 years ago...and it's global warming now. And neither of us will be here 100 years from now to know what it is. But I can tell you, our grandchildren will laugh at those who predicted global warming. We'll be cooler by then, if the lord hasn't returned....The fact is that there is no global warming."