Religion: Jerry Falwell's Crusade

(12 of 12)

Conservative Protestant spokesmen, captive to their isolationist and even | extremist past, still exhibit far more skill at seizing attention and infuriating outsiders than at winning support from concerned Americans through cogent, reasonable discussion. The Rev. Jerry Falwell shares some of those limitations, and he displayed them last week. But at other times his reliable instincts tell him that a broad appeal is necessary, since Fundamentalists by themselves can never reshape a variegated nation. Only the American people, collectively, can produce a moral majority.

FOOTNOTE: *Including most Churches of Christ and independent Christian churches, the Baptist Bible Fellowship (Falwell's group), other right-wing bodies and numerous unaffiliated congregations.