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Blame the Majority
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke

By Diogenes

My liberal friends were delighted to hear that I disagreed with the Rev. Jerry Falwell. If they waited long enough to hear me explain why I found his statement so foolish, they weren’t quite so happy.

You probably know the story already. Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, Falwell was a guest on the “700 Club,” a television show hosted by the Rev. Pat Robertson. These two Protestant televangelists have a great deal in common; they both have healthy bank accounts, broad public support, a penchant for conservative politics, and a knack for bringing conventional liberals to the verge of apoplexy. On September 13, they were discussing the ramifications of terrorism, and agreeing that America was punished on September 11 for failing to honor God’s law. Falwell explained that the nation’s vulnerability came from:

. . . 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 the 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.”

“Well, I totally concur,” Robertson replied.

Uproar and apology
Neither of these men is a shrinking violet; both have experience in coping with the fulmination of liberal opinion-leaders. But this time even Falwell and Robertson seemed to be caught off guard by the ferocity with which they were denounced. They had violated an axiomatic principle of contemporary American journalism: they had dared to breathe the dangerous suggestion that our moral decadence could make our nation vulnerable.

Within a week Falwell had apologized for his remarks, and explained that he was trying to make a “theologically nuanced” point. (Memo to self: when making theologically nuanced arguments, avoid phrases such as, “we make God mad.”) Robertson issued a public statement saying that his guest’s remarks had been “totally inappropriate.” (Then why did he “totally concur” when he first heard Falwell’s remarks? Maybe Robertson had been lost among those theological nuances.)

When Jerry Falwell looks at America, he sees a society weakened by its own self-indulgence, and I agree. But when he places the blame on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians,” we part company. All those radical groups, taken together, might account for 5 percent of the American population—if that. How can a tiny minority control national policy, unless the majority allows it? And if the majority allows it, is the minority really to blame?

Cardinal Newman’s worries
About 170 years ago, I am told (I was not alive at the time, despite what my grandchildren think), John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement were making waves in British society. (If Falwell and the Moral Majority are the contemporary American equivalent, I do not count that development as progress.) Unlike Falwell, Cardinal Newman challenged the faithful to recognize that they shared in responsibility for the sins of their era, insofar as they failed to resist and correct the sinners. In a sermon on “Tolerance of Religious Error,” Cardinal Newman wrote:

Liberality is always popular, whatever the subject of it, and excites a glow of pleasure and self-approbation in the giver, even though it involves no sacrifice, nay, is exercised upon the property of others. Thus in the sacred province of religion, men are led on—without any bad principle, without that utter dislike or ignorance of the Truth, or that self-conceit, which are the chief instruments of Satan at this day, nor again from mere cowardice or worldliness, but from thoughtlessness, a sanguine temper, the excitement of the moment, the love of making others happy, susceptibility of flattery, and the habit of looking only one way—led on to give up Gospel Truths, to consent to open the Church to the various denominations of error which abound among us, or to alter our Services so as to please the scoffer, the lukewarm, or the vicious.

Cardinal Newman was speaking of the lax religious practices of the early 19th century, but doesn’t his logic apply with equal force to the American social scene early in the 21st? His conclusion, I think, applies to our case with even greater force. Later in the same sermon, Cardinal Newman remarked:

I wish I saw any prospect of this element of zeal and holy sternness springing up among us, to temper and give character to the languid, unmeaning benevolence which we misname Christian love. I have no hope of my country ‘til I see it.