Resembles and Rejects

While Falwell trumpeted an increasingly cracked political message (in 2004 he wrote a column for WorldNetDaily headlined "God is pro-war"), other Christians were reconsidering the virtues of the old approach, of shunning politics and withdrawing as much as possible from the sinful American mainstream. The same alternative media that allowed Christians to make their mark on politics (or, perhaps more accurately, to let politics leave its mark on them) also made it easier to build a parallel pop culture that somehow both resembles and rejects the mainstream.

Falwell fulminated til the end against homosexuality, feminism, and the other alleged evils of modernity. But it's hard to escape the impression that his cohort not only lost the culture war, but perhaps did more than anyone else to usher Hollywood's America into Christian homes. In the early days, Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network refused to air reruns of Bewitched on the grounds that it promoted witchcraft. Today the outlet is owned by ABC, which calls it the ABC Family Channel and happily broadcasts not just The 700 Club but Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, not to mention the frequently ribald humor of Whose Line Is It Anyway? As intensely intolerant as Falwell could be, it's harder than ever to imagine America reembracing his views about gender relations or the sinfulness of homosexuality. The one cultural war he may have won, perhaps without even meaning to wage it, was the battle against Protestant hatred of the Roman Catholic Church. Despite his illiberal platform and rhetoric, Falwell's long-term legacy might be one of tolerance.

That could depend, of course, on whether the centralized, politicized fundamentalist community he helped create survives the next media revolution. Television tends to smooth over our differences; the Internet allows diversity to bloom.

[via Reason Magazine, HT: GetReligion in this post]