evangelicalism - Falwell, harding

Question 1

the account involves

Answer 1

• Evangelicals’ use of language
• Evangelicals’ use of history
• How Jerry Falwell built up the movement using language and history

Question 2

how the evangelical world of language and meaning

Answer 2

• Evangelical talk = comprised of narratives
• Personal testimony draws in hearer. Learn language of faith
• Bible read generatively = presume God’s design
• Christian world is created and shared
• Conversion = taken on dispositions e.g. taking on Bible
• Christianity is about speaking. ‘speaking is believing’
• Language is non-reductive
• Narrative instability of teachings of preachers. Anomalies.
• Opens up space for supernatural action
• Poetics of faith vs. hermeneutics of suspicion

Question 3

how US fundamentalism in 20th century is constructed as a moral vision

Answer 3

• History = constructed as a moral vision. Draws on scientific thinking
• Scope’s Trial – legitimacy of teaching Darwin
  o Symbolic movement
  o Weight of interpretation = significant.
  o US = secular. Xians expelled from modern life
  o Conservative Xians turn inwards
  o Frame of interpretation
  ♣ Separation of evangelicals vs. mutable Xians
  ♣ This is a myth for Harding. Conservatives changed as much as everybody else
  ♣ Myth was effective. Provided presuppositions for growth
• Work of Falwell to reverse exile of conservativism
  o History of fundamentalism
  o Cultural refashionment of Bible believers
  o No longer separate from the world
  Falwell = powerful leader. Modern prophet

Question 4

Harding’s account of Falwell’s ministry within the Church and Falwell’s external engagements

Answer 4

• Falwell draws out possibility of miracles
• Choice of believers in their interpretation of leaders.
  o Falwell self-presentation
  ♣ Sinner chosen by God
  ♣ Opportunity for others
  ♣ Portrays himself as a fallen Biblical figure like King David
  ♣ Must choose whether he is a sinner. Ambiguity binds believers. Decisions become active
  o Sacrificial giving of Church members exemplifies people’s decision to believe (i.e. £££)

Question 5

Narrative instability = internal and external impact on relations

Answer 5

• Internal
  o Falwell uses the same practices to draw in wide field of evangelicals.
  o Field is not stable, allows for new alliances.
  o Objectives = change rhetoric of separation from society
  o New form of Xianity emerges = born-again Xian
  o Struggles between leaders’ views
• External
  o New engagement needs new rhetoric pointed outwards
  o Movement has power to exclude. Response to secularism is to expel outsiders
  o Imagination moves boundaries
  o Falwell builds external instability to interact with outside world
  ♣ Debates about gender and family
  ♣ Debates about science and religion (Scope’s Trial)
  ♣ Rapture as a new form of political time

Question 6

intro

Answer 6

• Harding visited Thomas Road Baptist Church in 1982
  o The people were not traditional
  o They enjoyed ‘magazines, television… which they appropriated selectively and Christianised with great skill and zeal’ (ix)
• Harding was invited to interview by Falwell so that he could ‘vet’ her
• ‘His language has the creative quality of the Bible itself’ (x-xi)
• ‘I came to know… that everything… has a purpose. I did not convert, but I was learning their language of faith’ (xi)
• Focus = language of preachers
  o ‘As they teach their language through sermons, speeches… they mold their church into a Church, a living sequel to the Bible’ (xiii)

Question 7

fundamentalism means:

Answer 7

• ‘Bible believing’ Protestants
• ‘A particular subset of white Bible-believing Protestants who represent themselves as ‘militantly antimodernist’’
• Fundamentalism = evangelicals. Modern concoction
• fundamentalism = term inside Bible-believing discourses

Question 8

haunted house

Answer 8

• Youth group of Thomas Road Baptist Church host Xian haunted house
  o Filled with pictures of death and JC saving grace
  o Finishes with 3 min Gospel and they ask you to repent. Few do
  o ‘Scaremare is a piece of our church’s philosophy in acion. We don’t practice a stay-at-home Christianity. We’re militant and aggressive in getting out Christ’s message’ (4)
• Theme in TRBC to mix elements from the world and Xianity e.g. haunted house
  o Surprising. Still subscribed to fundamentalist church in US which promoted separation from the world

Question 9

liberty Baptist college

Answer 9

• They owned Liberty Baptist College
  o Put on pageants for girls who showed the ‘spirit of liberty’ (5)
  ♣ Women are judged on to what extent they show virtue as shown in Proverbs 31
  ♣ Diverse group inc. ethnic minorities and disability

Question 10

Falwell and business

Answer 10

• ‘Falwell’s fundamentalist empire was thus a formidable one as measured by standards of personnel, money, and organisational wherewithal. It was also an immense empire of words’ (15)
• ‘It was a factory of words, a veritable Bible-based language industry’
• Grew up in business environment. Combined this with preaching
  o ‘Falwell was specifically predisposed to adapt modern business techniques and concepts to his evangelistic projects’ (16)
  o In a speech in defense of church-building, he cites shopping centres as a prime example of uniting several services in one location. Wants to apply this to Church
  o Congregation = increasingly middle class

Question 11

1980s fundamentalist reform movement

Answer 11

• ‘Together, the 1980s movements rearranged the boundary between fundamentalism and post-war evangelicalism, fashioning a new constituency composed of newly engaged fundamentalists under leaders such as Falwell and conservative evangelicals who were discontented with their more irenic leaders’ (18)
• New Christian Right emerges
  o Xians become defined as sinners who willingly repent and accept JC’s saving

Question 12

Shift in Falwell

Answer 12

• Falwell’s view on religion and politics shifted. In 1976, he said they should be kept completely separate
  o Started campaigning against homosexuality/women’s liberation
  o Reflected Fundamentalist opposition to people’s views of Fundamentalism as extremism. This goes back to the Scope’s Trial of 1925
  o Compares separation of fundamentalists and modern Americans to racial segregation
  o New Xian Right = shocking
  ♣ Falwell often compared it to the Civil Rights Movement
  • H… CRM = high risk and cost action
  • NCR = low cost, no risk, did not have strong leader like CRM.
  ♣ Nonetheless, both movements heavily linked to use of language and rhetoric
  • H… King ‘spanned traditions… historically and socially separated’ (25)
  • Falwell ‘stitched together rhetorics and styles across the divide between (moderate) fundamentalist and (conservative) evangelical traditions, but the divide was recent in origin, partial at best, and always sustained a good deal of low-profile traffic back and forth’ (25)
  • Both did act as ‘pivotal figures in the dramatic transformation of their peoples’

Question 13

aim of book

Answer 13

• Aim of book: to ‘trace the emergence of the composite cultural formation known as ‘born again Xianity’ in the 1980s from the point of view of one pivotal network of discourses. They show how an old-fashioned culturally and politically disenfranchised fundamentalism morphed into a nationally franchised ‘fundamentalist evangelicalism’’ (28)
  o Part 1 = language of witnessing/language of Scopes trial which produced Fundamentalism
  o Part 2 = language and context of Falwell’s community in 1970s/80s
  o Harding argues that the sermons etc. are ‘culturally productive rituals’ which allowed Falwell and his community to ‘recast and resituate themselves as a people in history’ (29)

Question 14

Harding near-death experience

Answer 14

• Harding had near car accident. Led her to ask religious questions about God’s intention with her. Fleeting nature of life
• Harding argues that she was in the first stage of ‘conversion as a process of acquiring a specific religious language or dialect’ (34)
  o Need an unbeliever to begin to recognise voice of God
  o Once Holy Spirit is in their heart, the new believer will begin to speak about their experience and faith. Build a relationship with God
  o ‘Conversion… enables (believers) to approach the Bible as living authority’ (34)
• There has been a suggestion that people who are successfully converted possess an element of vulnerability e.g. previous conditioning, stress
  o Links do not seem legitimate

Question 15

Witnessing and language

Answer 15

• Attempts to rewrite the unsaved’s perception of reality
• ‘The reality, or truth, constituted in witnessing is, in part, a linguistic one: the supernatural manifests itself as God’s voice and his spirit is communicated and experienced through words’ (37)
• Their rhetoric is ‘formalised’, allowing them to ‘appropriate the listener’s dialogic imagination’ (37)
  o Involves gospel story and conversation between witness and listener
  o Holy Spirit makes you realise your sins
  o ‘Conviction effects a deep sensation of one’s own impurity and separation from God, or one’s sinfulness, one’s sin nature’ (38)
  o Individuals enter liminal state before they convert. They hear the voice of the HS
  o Rite for sinners, cause the ‘very terms of physical existence… to alter’
• Hard for ethnographers and fundamentalist. Dichotomy of saved and unsaved.
  Harding realised she could not be an ethnographer without participating in their culture. They did not believe she was purely investigating. Her interest indicated something further

Question 16

Harding witnessing with Campbell

Answer 16

• Following her near-accident, Harding had a witnessing with Reverend Campbell
  o Harding was then asked to place herself in the position of narrator
  o ‘Numerous poetic and performance features teem on the surface of Campbell’s speech. There are verse markers, special codes figurative language…’ (42)
  o use of collective pronouns includes both speaker and listener
  o Campbell likens his conversation with God to the setting of Harding’s conversation with Campbell.
  o Harding describes it as a non-consensual ‘metamorphosis’ (45)
  o The Holy Spirit transforms the unconscious mind to a conscious mind

Question 17

Salvation via witnessing

Answer 17

• Emphasis on written dialogue transmuted onto emphasis in spoken dialogue through witnessing
• Campbell goes onto ask Harding questions, using stories also
• Finishes with speech about hope and the unifying power of the Word of God, brings communities together. Talks about how he accidentally killed his son but trusts God who told him it was good
• Salvation comes when people realise JC’s sacrifice and more figuratively, that Campbell sacrificed his son for the listener. Feel responsible as a listener, feel like you owe something

Question 18

Scopes trial – debate

Answer 18

• Fundamentalists acquired negative reputation
• Each side had definition of the other
• 1925: evolution banned as unbiblical. (Tennessee’s Butler Act)
• Biology teacher T Scopes challenges this
• Scope Trial was epitome of conflict between church and state
• The history of Conservative Protestants were ‘thereafter marked by an essentially modernist trajectory, with a sense of the inevitability of their defeat’ (65)
• ‘The Scopes trial was thus a moment of narrative encapsulation, a moment in which the cultural story of one people was subordinated to and reframed by the terms of another’
• Scopes trial was ‘representational’
• Debate between Bryan (religion) and Darrow (agnostic)
  o Viewed as a fair fight, evolution vs. bible as fact
  o However… not fair in terms of numbers.
  o Scopes found guilty of violating Tennessee butler act
• Last day of trial: Darrow questions Bryan about famous Bible stories. Bryan did not know e.g. that the big fish that swallowed Jonah in the OT is described as a whale in the NT

Question 19

Scopes trial – Bryan loss

Answer 19

• ‘Bryan lost in terms of fundamentalist expectations because he failed to defend the Bible according to code, which required active, aggressive Bible quoting, an ability to parry all ‘infidel objections’ and ‘standard village atheist questions’, and finally, a willingness to assert that every claim, every word… in the Bible was literally true’ (73)
• ‘Bryan’s testimony was devastating because Darrow… used the rules of fundamentalist rhetorical combat to impugn Bryan’s status as a strict Bible believer. The fundamentalist audience was trapped; they could not contest the outcome of the duel because it conformed to their own rules’
• Bryan’s words were deadly (74), Darrow died shortly after the debate
  o End of fundamentalist movement

Question 20

Impact of the Scope’s trial on fundamentalism

Answer 20

• Illusion of the insignificance of Fundamentalism emerged. The reality was the opposite
  o Church is fast growing
  o Church is integrating itself into other aspects of life
  o More books etc. being published about fundamentalism/by fundamentalists
  o Baptist Bible Fellowship has 1 mill members by early 1980s

Question 21

Emergence of new movements

Answer 21

• Charismatic movement emerges, emphasis on Pentecostal gifts of the spirit
• 1940s/50s, evangelicalism emerges as a separate movement to fundamentalism
  o more emphasis on debate within evangelicalism
  o publically active in organisations
  o H… did not mix religion and politics that much. Conform with expectations of secular society
• Conservative Prots are v active in public sphere. Campaign against ERA etc.
  o ‘much of the power of fundamentalists in the public arena came from the extent to which they were a modern nightmare come true, but public appearances also triggered fierce remarginalising practices that discredited them and limited their efficacy.’ (79)
• 1980s, Fundamentalists emerge in society
  o New Xian right activism
• 1976: Born again Xianity emerges. Hybrid of fundamentalism/evangelicalism etc.
  o focused on the same sort of issues e.g. abortion
  o ‘this hybrid creature was unstable in the sense that it was composed of theologically discrete parts and that its parts were internally riven’ (81)
  o ‘but it was stable in the sense that it generated an enduring organisational and oratorical public presence’
  o reunited ‘political activism and aggressive, Bible-based supernaturalism’

Question 22

Falwell storytelling and Jacob

Answer 22

• Falwell’s troubled upbringing places him in same context as biblical Jacob. Both framing. Jacob convinces Esau to sell birthright for soup. Falwell uses rhetoric to frame his early life.
  o Falwell rewrites stories to make them reflect his deceitful power
  o E.g. The Macel cycle
  ♣ Manipulates friend into thinking the woman Jerry likes does not like his friend back
  ♣ Jerry wins the girl
  ♣ Not marriage by conquest but by deceit tale (95)
• Jerry’s idea to set up church in Lynchburg was opposed.
  o Jerry turned to the Psalms and began to emphasise his independence more strongly for it was willed by God

Question 23

J morally compromising and A Look Inside the Cup

Answer 23

• J = morally compromising
  o Hired ex-criminals
  o Did not manage money effectively. Spent money on his television ministry etc.
  o Favouritism towards sporty people at Liberty. Not much investment in academics
  o 1989 ‘tithe or quit’. All employees at TRBC had to give 10% of earnings to church or they would be fired
  o ‘A Look inside the Cup’
  ♣ Tv sermon, 1982
  ♣ Falwell asked followers to send in cheques to help save America e.g. stop abortion
  ♣ Used intimate language. Compared himself to JC drinking a cup of suffering
• Corruption leads to power

Question 24

Money and how it is acquired

Answer 24

• 1970, F’s ministry earned 1 mill a year. In 1980, 51 mill
• how?
  o Prayed for financial prosperity
  o Depicted people’s donations as a miracle from God
  o Delivered emphatic sermons
  ♣ However… these sermons were part of a ‘much larger campaign that included other sermons, television and radio spots, and direct mail’ (108)
  o Much of money came on behalf of Liberty Baptist College
  o ‘If we attend closely to the language of Falwell’s campaigns and listen to it as his faithful followers might, what sounds like ‘fund-raising’ to an unbelieving ear becomes ‘sacrificial giving’ (109)
  ‘Falwell’s plan mimicked the plan that God gave Joshua when he confronted the walls of Jericho’ (110)

Question 25

SEC crisis and effect

Answer 25

• 1973, Securities at Exchange Commission sued TRBC for fraud and deceit in the sale of church bonds
  o The SEC were unable to audit the TRBC
  o Case dropped but finances supervised by businessmen until ‘all its unsecured indebtedness (totalling $16 mill) was eliminated’ (117)
  o TRBC forced to become more corporate e.g. cut costs
• Falwell adopts the ‘political mantle and voice of the Old Testament prophets’ (120)
• SEC crisis led Falwell to engage more intensely in rhetoric. Changed names of campaigns. The Old-Time Gospel Hour tour became the ‘I love America’ rallies (120)

Question 26

Language and wealth

Answer 26

• ‘Falwell had by then mastered the biblical language to convert defeat into victory, death into life, and debt into wealth’ (121)
• used Bible quotes which specifically focused on donating e.g. Luke 6:38
• money people donate is donated to God
• ‘Men and women sacrificially give money to God, and God gives money to men and women, above all to great men of God such as the Reverend Falwell: that is the gospel economy’ (122)

Question 27

Moral Majority launch

Answer 27

• 1979, Falwell launches Moral Majority
  o mobilised evangelical voters
  o ‘This alliance, which formed the core of the New Christian Right in the 1980s, was as much a cultural merger as it was a political pact among leaders’ (129

Question 28

separation between worldly evangelicals and hyperfundamentalists

Answer 28

• New separation emerged between worldly evangelicals (‘drifting toward theological and social liberalism’ 148) and hyperfundamentalists (‘drifting towards total isolation’)
  o Falwell urged Fundamentalists to engage with modern society and collaborate with evangelicals
  o 1982 meeting between evangelical and fundamentalists in the home of Carl. F. H. Henry
  o All expressed fear of Xian assimilation and that they may get lost in society. Introduced ways in which they could protect Xianity
  ♣ ‘Numerous conservative Christian organisations provided an alternative subculture for Bible-believing students in major secular colleges and universities around the world’ (151)
  ♣ Guides as to how to watch movies from Xian perspective
  o ‘Born-again Xians were being aggressively trained in techniques of interpreting and remaking the modern religious and secular worlds from a Xian point of view’ (152)

Question 29

Falwell rhetoric

Answer 29

• Talked about his involvement in politics and the importance of changing the US and working on specific issues e.g. abortion/kidnapping/suicide/starvation/homosexuality
• Argued that secularism is leading to complete relativism, no objective right/wrong anymore
• Emphasised hope he has for US and the consequent effects this will have on the world
  o ‘I’m convinced that what is happening in America today is a part of a spiritual awakening… that’s going to impact the world’ (161)
• ‘Falwell fashioned himself in the image of an Old Testament prophet, amplified it with a New Testament moral voice, and embodied it in a half dozen sketches of his political prominence and activism’ (161-2)
• Viewed suffering as God’s punishment e.g. AIDS

Question 30

Falwell and exclusion

Answer 30

• Falwell tailored his rhetoric in a way that included evangelicals. United in their opposition of secular humanism. Illusion of a secular society is the work of Satan
• Harding speaks of the fact that in rejecting Falwell’s message, she felt an intense sense of exclusion. Either accept and are included or reject and are excluded
  o Speech excludes all forms of liberals
  o Made obvious that the movement is male-centred

Question 31

moral majority and family

Answer 31

• Talked about female submission etc.
• But also talked about the threat of Satan in terms of child pornography etc.
• Very strong anti-divorce message. It is even better for husband to submit to his wife rather than to divorce. Makes clear that every message requires interpretation, but this is ultimately difficult. F is acknowledging that gender roles have changed. Wives and husbands are equal but different.
• Evangelicals encountered feminism before fundamentalists. However, evangelical feminists were ultimately left marginalised
• Not all women stayed at home anymore and greater emphasis on men being good husbands and fathers. For women, it was still important to be good wife, but also to be a good doctor, teacher etc.
• Falwell did not explicitly acknowledge this but implicitly did in anecdotes etc.
  His son/daughter went to Liberty and then became professionals in their own respective fields of law/surgery. ‘Falwell’s portrait may be read as a narrative of upward mobility of as the blessing by God of a Christian family’ (174)

Question 32

moral majority and patriarchy

Answer 32

• ‘Gender-stratified address… produces and instills male authority in both men and women’ (176)
• Falwell’s physiognomy and voice etc. are all rooted in masculinity
• Women are sinful but men are responsible for maintaining order
• Power struggle between masculine and powerful preachers and feminist campaigners in 19th century
• Women were banned from positions of authority in church
  Falwell’s sexism was inherited and ultimately more muted than it was emphasised

Question 33

If I die before I wake, 1986 – opening scene

Answer 33

• Details story of Jennifer Simpson, one of the first women to join the Liberty Godparent Homes program
• For a feminist, the book ‘reaffirms gender differences, vilifies abortion and feminism…’ (185)
• Opening scene is debate between Falwell and woman concerning abortion
  o ‘The encounter appears mundane but it is charged with born-again Christian allusions and biblical pre-texts. Echoing of Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus, Falwell’s appropriation of women’s reproductive issues is an oblique replay of Christian conversion in which a spiritual birth mediated by the Father subverts, overcomes, natural female birth’ (187)
• Transforms idea that men are oppressing women in not allowing them abortions into one of a male hero protecting women and saving their babies

Question 34

If I die before I wake, 1986 – depiction of abortion

Answer 34

• used shocking imagery to scare people about abortion. Described the process in detail
• Is more secular than biblical in his description of abortion. Does not figure in terms of murder/abuse of God’s gift but rather in brutalist, secular and scientific terms. More shocking
• Links first death of female birth and second death of male birth to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. ‘What if Abraham had disobeyed God in the end and actually killed his son? No Isaac, no Christ. That, Falwell’s rhetoric implies, is what abortion does. It destroys the first story/birth (‘female’, flesh) which prefigures the second story/birth (‘male’, spirit)’ (197)

Question 35

If I die before I wake, 1986 - Falwell as heroic

Answer 35

• Book details how Falwell helped Jennifer safeguard her reputation and health by providing support during her pregnancy.
• Jennifer compares her first abortion to the last supper
  o ‘The ‘last supper’ spins an explicit threat between the abortion and Christ’s sacrifice that clinches the web of allusions implicit in the situating details. It also evokes the last meal of a convicted murderers and intimates’ (199-200)
• Success of Falwell’s book lies in the fact that he does not mention specific feminist movement/uses only unmarried teenage girls as subjects of abortion – all of them need help
• Through Falwell’s sacrifice, Jennifer is given a voice. Becomes a communications major at Liberty

Question 36

Museum of Earth and Life history

Answer 36

• World’s largest creation museum
• ‘The museum aimed not simply at evolution but toward releasing fundamentalists, and conservative Protestants generally, from the terms of modernity, from the images and clichés and parodies, clinched in the Scopes trial’ (222)
• fundamentalists gain power in ‘undermining the cultural opposite between Fundamentalist and Modern by fashioning a third, studiously ambiguous, figure which joins the incongruous terms’ (227)

Question 37

prophecy

Answer 37

• ‘Bible prophecy as it is practiced in everyday life is not so much a system or set of religious beliefs as it is a narrative mode of knowing current history’ (233)
• ‘Bible prophecy presents itself as a set of fixed doctrines or specific beliefs, but it is spoken as a complex, shifting, flexible, pervasive interpretive field… It is a living cultural narrative that maps out history, geopolitics… all from a biblical point of view’ (234)

Question 38

doctrine of rapture

Answer 38

• It will ‘end history as we know it and start the clock of biblical prophecy ticking again’ (234)
• Unfulfilled prophecies will be fulfilled after the rapture
• Variation in beliefs concerning the rapture (dispensationalists – emphasis on typology, history as linked to human sin, use of biblical imagery)
  o ‘What is consistent is the instruction to read history backwards, to interpret the significance of present events as signs that tribulation prophecies are incipiently coming true, that future events are unfolding now’ (240)

Question 39

rapture as inciting action

Answer 39

• before the 1980s, there was an emphasis on sermons etc. addressing global events, as they looked for ‘any sign of gathering storms that would culminate in the war to end all wars in Israel: earthquakes….etc’ (240)
• fostered the idea that if Americans responded to God’s call now they would survive the rapture. Can overcome the regressive nature of history by acting now.
  o Falwell used this idea to encourage people to act politically
  o Based all ideas on the concept of Biblical prophecy

Question 40

teleevangelicals

Answer 40

• ‘The televangelists were a late capitalist crossbreed of symbolic production, consumption, and social reproduction’ (258)
• Falwell unique in his ‘entrepreneurial zeal’
  o 1956, founded church and TV ministry
  o 1967, broadcasted Sunday service
  o Used it to spread word. ‘Falwell seemed to be all story and no spectacle’
  o ‘Falwell and his fundamentalist allies were fashioning a distinct Xian conservative middle-class counterculture and use higher education, the national news and national politics to chip away at the cultural hegemony of its opposite number, the alleged secular, liberal middle class’ (259)

Question 41

conc

Answer 41

• Fundamentalists are not opposed to modernity, but are rather inside modernity
• Falwell ‘selectively absorbed and Christianised secular rhetorics, thus occupying the terrain of his opponents and particularising their positions.’ (272)
• Success of Falwell was significantly due to ghostwriters.
• The church ‘operated as a multifaceted, enormously agile apparatus capable of generating rapid local, regional and national responses to changing political, social and cultural conditions’ (274)
• Decentralised structure = more easily adaptable
• Fundamentalists marked by ‘flexible absolutism’ (275)