Jerry Falwell, Jr, President of Liberty University, preceded in that position by his prominent father, gave an interview with WaPo a few days ago that has caused a bit of a stir. Elizabeth Bruenig, also in WaPo, uses her interpretation of theology to make this point:
Of course, that doesn’t mean Falwell never cares for Christian principle in American leaders, or that he would actually endorse a misreading of Augustine if it were laid out for him next to a stronger reading. He seems instead to have been reasoning backward, trying to explain in Christian terms why he holds the conclusions he does, rather than beginning from the religion and following it to its own conclusions. Critics of Christianity have struggled for centuries with precisely what Falwell does: That the religion isn’t very good at making you rich or powerful and that it offers very little advice for crushing your enemies or securing your own benefit at the expense of others. “A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume,” Falwell claims, in direct contradiction to a lesson shared by Jesus in Mark 12.
Tim Thomas on the right-wing The Resurgent remarks on a disturbing remark by Falwell:
But note what he says in defense of supporting a man who is lacking in the moral realm.
“What earns him my support is his business acumen.”
“A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume.”
“ … he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor.”
Notice anything in common among these statements? In each case, Falwell relies upon financial arguments to defend the notion of supporting someone lacking morality. The unavoidable impression is that Falwell actually believes improved economic conditions are sufficient to identify policy – and more importantly, that policy’s promoter – as moral.
That part of the actual interview:
You’ve been criticized by some other evangelical leaders about your support for the president. They say you need to demand higher moral and ethical standards. You disagree with them on that?
It may be immoral for them not to support him, because he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor. A lot of the people who criticized me, because they had a hard time stomaching supporting someone who owned casinos and strip clubs or whatever, a lot them have come around and said, “Yeah, you were right.” Some of the most prominent evangelicals in the country have said, “Jerry, we thought you were crazy, but now we understand.”
So let’s talk about morality, or ethics. How do we identify morality and immorality? Most folks would point at a code of ethics or a religious canon and, you know, gesticulate a bit before finally saying “Rule #3 forbids incest!” But, as an agnostic, I’m inclined to throw out what appear to be arbitrary lists of rules and begin anew by asking, In the absence of some divine authority inscribing lists, how do moral / ethical systems form? Are they random?
Biologists may object, but I have no problem applying the principles of evolution to human institutions. To illustrate my point, imagine a collection of fair-sized islands in the ocean. Each has a population of humans. As the Creators, we endow each separate population with a distinct ethical system. From time to time, we check in on them, and what will we find?
That some of these societies are in better shape than others. Some will have gone extinct – or, even more likely, their original ethical system will have gone extinct, replaced by something more geared to societal survival.
Now, of course I’ve glossed over numerous points, such as the effects of resources, general health, and other purposes, but I’m simply making the point that your ethical system will substantially affect your outcomes. So when Falwell attempts to use some perceived positive outcomes as justification for supporting Trump, in his remarks there is a serious echo as to how we determine good ethical systems.
Is this to say I agree with Falwell? No.
Backwards reasoning often suffers from mistaking coincidence for causation: This happened and then that happened, they must be related. Well, no. In any environment of even slight complexity, teasing out which factor is causative and which is caused or even coincidental can be quite the feat. Ethical systems evolve over long periods of time, during which, like biological evolution, avenues are explored and those rules which lead to bad outcomes are explored and discarded, while those rules leading to good outcomes are selected. It’s a bloody business, and sometimes the value of a rule, which is to say whether a rule is good or bad, takes a long time to play out. For example, the American / libertarian rule that greed, in the private sector, is a good thing, is a societal rule that is still rather up in the air, in my view, and its occasional leakage from the private sector into other societal sectors proves to be quite problematic. So when Falwell tries to work backwards from alleged good outcomes to Trump’s actions, activities, and policies, he’s committing an intellectual error of mistaking two possibly unconnected results to Trump’s actions. It would not be unfair to suggest that it’s deeply reminiscent of wishful thinking.
Ethical systems evolve to help produce good outcomes for society, and in that they circumscribe behavior, straying outside those circumscribed boundaries signals danger to society. For example, it’s commonly acknowledged that truth-telling is an important part of leading an ethical existence. Thus the importance of fact-checkers in current society, under the common understanding that the more the President, whether the name is Trump, Smith, or Warren, misleads their base, the more they put society as a whole in more danger, because analyzing both past & proposed policies based on fallacious knowledge of current conditions will, in all probability, lead to fallacious, even dangerous conclusions.
All that said, could Falwell be right? After all, I did not demonstrate that he is wrong without doubt, only that there’s a very good probability that he’s wrong. How about supporting, circumstantial evidence?
Unfortunately for Falwell, he misstates facts and mistakes personal certainty for certitude about reality. Let’s look at some of his statements in the interview. In the following, personal pronouns not referring to himself usually refer to Trump.
What earns him my support is his business acumen.
No, just no. By all reports, he’s at best mediocre.
Yeah, Congress, the spending bill that they forced on him in order to get the military spending up to where it needed to be — he said that would be the last time he signed one of those. But he had no choice because Obama had decimated the military, and it had to be rebuilt.
Falwell fails to note Trump’s whole-hearted embrace of the 2017 tax bill, which contributes far more to the sudden ballooning national debt than the false meme that Obama somehow decimated the military. This is misleading and is easily interpreted as self-serving. The cutting of taxes is doing far more to bankrupt the country than anything else – except perhaps the monstrous military budget.
In general, failing to consider all the evidence, particularly that evidence which hurts your cause, is an ethical failure.
… he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor.
A statement shorn of context. Add the context that the previous Administration did far more for the blacks than Trump, and Falwell looks really bad. Noting the disparity between blacks and the general populace simply reinforces the perception that this misleading statement is, again, self-serving.
And this last statement…
Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.
This should leave commonsense folks aghast. Even the best of us makes mistakes, yet Falwell thinks that any policy Trump decides on will be what’s best for the country? What, is Trump God?
This is one of those idiotic remarks which forces the reader to make a judgment: is the author of the remark really as dumb as a cinder block, or is this as self-serving as the others? Considering that Falwell managed to “inherit” the post of President of Liberty University upon his father’s death (a creepy circumstance deserving its own rant), has kept it for years, and manages to head up a large segment of the Evangelical movement, I think we can assume he has at least average intelligence.
So one is forced to analyze the statement to understand its hidden message, and that message is that, basically, President Trump is another coming of God on Earth, and so you Evangelical faithful had better get in line behind Falwell and engage in the usual unquestioning obedience. And note the remark about some policies
… may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to what’s best for this country …
This isn’t a throwaway line, it serves as an insulator for Trump against any sort of judgment that might come out negative from the conservatives. Falwell doesn’t care about the liberals or even the moderates, but when it comes to conservatives, he doesn’t want them to even think they can judge Trump. Just accept and, ah, worship.
So, why? Forgive my cynicism, but the Evangelicals have finally gotten their grip on the levers of power, and by God, if you’ll forgive the phrase, certain of them plan to keep their paws on them. It’s clear from his misstatements and his position of intimacy with Trump that his influence over Trump is far more important to Falwell than much anything else, such as the health of the country. Of course, I may be influenced by my observations that the pulpits do tend to attract those who wish to assume powers beyond their abilities, but then I don’t see much reason to doubt that observation.
It was really quite the interesting interview, a portal into the dark soul of the Evangelical movement. For all that Goldwater was a nut, he sure was right on this one, wasn’t he?
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.
It’s easy to see this interview for what it is: the religious impulse to impute omniscience to itself. They endorsed Trump, and thus he can do no wrong. It’s really an embarrassment to the religious folks to see this mania sweep over this guy.
