LYNCHBURG, Va. -- Jerry Falwell has an amazing psychedelic screen saver.
A room swirling with neon colors pulses on the preacher's computer screen and then the room shifts and a door appears, leading to another room that churns with swirling neon, which leads to another room and . . . . Stare at Falwell's screen long enough and you feel like you're lost in a maze located somewhere inside Timothy Leary's cerebellum.
But Falwell's not staring at the screen. His computer is behind him, perched on a table between two windows whose blinds are shut tight, sealing out the sunlight of a lovely fall day. The televangelist is sitting behind his big power desk in his big power office at Liberty University, the Baptist college he founded 30 years ago, before he became famous as a leader of the Religious Right.
He rises, flashes a big grin, reaches out to shake hands. He's a large man and, at 68, his round fleshy face has sagged into a set of impressive jowls. He sits back down. He looks toward the office door, where a couple of secretaries and his media adviser are bustling about.
"Close the door or come on in," he barks. "One or the other."
The door closes.
The last few weeks have not been pleasant for Falwell. On Sept. 13 -- two days after the terrorist attacks that killed more than 4,400 -- he appeared on "The 700 Club," the Rev. Pat Robertson's TV show, and made a statement that has inspired widespread anger and mockery.
"What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is," he said on the show, "could be minuscule if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."
"Jerry, that's my feeling," Robertson replied.
"The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this," Falwell said.
"Well, yes," Robertson agreed.
"And I know that I'll hear from them on this," Falwell continued. "But throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
Over the next several weeks, Falwell's comments about those controversial comments kept changing.
A few hours after the TV show, he reiterated his remarks, telling the New York Times that "the collective efforts of many secularists . . . has left us vulnerable."
The next day he issued a statement saying that his comments were made during "a long theological discussion" and were "taken out of context."
A few days later, he appeared on Geraldo Rivera's cable TV show and repudiated everything he'd said on "The 700 Club": "This is not what I believe and I therefore repudiate it and ask God's forgiveness and yours."
His words had come out in a moment of fatigue, he explained: "I'd been up all night the night before, coming in from Houston."
Then, two weeks after Falwell apologized to God and Geraldo, the Jerry Falwell Ministries sent out a fundraising letter written by Falwell's son, the Rev. Jonathan Falwell. The letter charged that "Satan has launched a hail of fiery darts at dad" and that "liberals, and especially gay activists, have launched a vicious smear campaign to discredit him."
The younger Falwell suggested that supporters could assuage the elder Falwell's "personal hurt" by sending "a special Vote of Confidence gift for Jerry Falwell of at least $50 or even $100."
It was all a tad confusing. Was Falwell blaming the terrorist attacks on liberals and gays or wasn't he? Was he apologizing or wasn't he? And what, exactly, were those fiery darts that Satan had launched against him?
Fortunately, Falwell has agreed to spend an hour answering these questions. And as his psychedelic screen saver vibrates in the background, he explains everything.
"I misspoke," he says.
Misspoke?
"I apologize for my September 13 comments because they were a complete misstatement of what I believe and what I've preached for nearly 50 years," he says. "Namely, I do not believe that any mortal knows when God is judging or not judging someone or a nation. In my listing of groups and persons who might have assisted in the secularization of America, I unforgivably left off the list a sleeping church, Jerry Falwell, etc. . . . It was a pure misstatement, unintentional, and I apologize for it uncategorically."
But wasn't it a rather lengthy misstatement?
"About 35 seconds," he says. "I think somebody said it was 37 seconds."
It happened because he was tired, he says, and because he didn't know that Robertson would bring up the issue of God's curtain of protection around America.
"Pat Robertson had that agenda going when I came in by satellite" from Liberty University, Falwell explains. "He said, 'Jerry, we're talking about God lifting the curtain,' and I started in on that subject and I said what I said there. A lot of it was weariness and really anger over what happened to the country. And I didn't complete what I was going to say. If I added the church as one of the offenders -- a sleeping church that is not praying enough -- it would have been acceptable."
Which brings up the question: What does it mean to lift the curtain of protection?
"That was part of the misstatement," he says. "I have no way of knowing when or if God would lift the curtain of protection."
Did God lift the curtain of protection around Pearl Harbor in 1941?
"My misstatement included assuming that I or any mortal would know when God is judging or not judging a nation," he says. "Therefore I don't know if God was judging America in 1941 or in 1812 or on September 11, 2001. I've said that was a misstatement and now you want me to support my misstatement. I think I've clarified it the best way I know how."
Falwell's getting a little peeved. He has repudiated his remarks, he says, and he doesn't want to discuss each of them, one by one.
"I said I've misstated," he says, "and all reasonable people have already accepted the apology and you're the first one that's challenged it."
Actually, that's not quite true. Even after his various apologies, Falwell has been lambasted by commentators ranging from Rush Limbaugh to Walter Cronkite.
"Falwell apologizes the way politicians apologize," wrote Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman.
"Everybody I know is appalled. And I know some very conservative, very religious people," said conservative TV yakker Bill O'Reilly. "There's nobody I know that can justify, condone, defend those remarks."
And editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette drew Falwell, Robertson and Osama bin Laden standing arm in arm, singing "Gimme That Old Time Religion."
For weeks, Falwell was attacked, vilified and ridiculed unmercifully. Has he taken more heat on this than anything in his long, controversial career?
"Oh, no," he says, smiling. "As a matter of fact, most of the heat I've taken has not been because of the statement. It's from people who are upset that I apologized. Thousands of people of faith in America unfortunately agreed with the first statement. . . . They were incensed that I apologized."
Falwell's son didn't mention those "incensed" Christians in his fundraising letter. He said his father had been "brutalized" by "the media" and "liberals of all stripes" and "gay activists" and, of course, Satan.
Does Falwell agree that Satan has "launched a hail of fiery darts" at him?
"Yeah," he says. "Over a two-week period, it was a hailstorm."
How can he tell when the darts are coming from Satan and not mere mortals?
"If it's intended to hurt beyond the boundaries of love and sensibility and reality, I think a Christian person has the right to define something as wrong or good," he says. "And I think my son, who's pretty sensitive when someone attacks me, felt that it was not good and he didn't like it and so he commented. And that's his right."
Falwell takes a sip from a glass of diet cola. He leans back in his green leather swivel chair. He's relaxed.
Over his left shoulder, his psychedelic screen saver wiggles and twitches. Next to the computer is a sign that reads "Donald Duck Cola." It's there because Falwell started his Thomas Road Baptist Church in the building where Donald Duck Cola was once bottled. The cola company went out of business but the church is thriving. It has 22,000 members now. And Liberty University has 10,000 students. Falwell's various enterprises take in more than $100 million a year.
"By the way," he says, smiling, "if you were watching A&E's 'Biography' last Wednesday night, they did my biography."
In that show, he says, a gay minister named Mel White told the story of how Falwell hosted 200 gay activists for a weekend at Liberty University. "Mel White says Jerry Falwell is the only religious leader to invite us in," Falwell says, proudly. "Then he qualified that by saying, 'He didn't listen to us.' Well, I didn't invite them in to listen to them. I invited them in to talk to them."
He does not mention another interesting scene in the A&E biography. It comes when Falwell's wife, Macel, tells how Jerry won her heart while attending Baptist Bible College in the early '50s: "He was roommates with the young man I was engaged to," she said. "And when he would write letters to me, Jerry would take the letters and throw them away and write to me himself."
"All's fair in love and war," Falwell explained on the show.
That doesn't sound like Christian doctrine but it does describe Falwell's modus operandi.
"I'm a spiritual street fighter," he told the Winston-Salem Journal last month. "I'm a junkyard dog conservative."
An aide enters Falwell's office to say that it's almost time for him to go.
"I'm speaking in Richmond tonight," Falwell says.
The night before, he spoke to a conference of Baptist pastors in Lakeland, Fla. On this night he'll speak to Virginia's Baptist pastors.
"We do these because we're a church school and pastors send us our students," he explains. "We've got about 10,000 students that without these pastors we wouldn't have."
He climbs out of his leather chair, emerges from behind his power desk and gets ready to leave.
Outside, in the world beyond his shuttered blinds, the Associated Press is moving a story about Falwell's theological revelations to the Florida pastors last night:
Lakeland, Fla. -- The Rev. Jerry Falwell says even Osama Bin Laden's soul could be saved if he converted to Christianity -- but he would still deserve to be killed.
God only knows what Falwell will say next.
2001 The Washington Post Company