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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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062689
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06268900.041
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1990-09-22
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NATION, Page 26Scrapping the Moral MajorityAfter ten years of bashing liberals, Falwell folds his tent
It was not prophesied in Scripture, but the end has come. Ten
years after the Rev. Jerry Falwell zoomed into the right lane of
national politics, the Moral Majority is being shut down. Come
August, the organization, whose gospel blended Fundamentalist
theology and ultra-conservative politics, will close its Washington
office. Falwell will devote himself to two Lynchburg, Va.,
enterprises, the Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University.
Ironically, Falwell made the announcement in a city that symbolizes
the sins the Moral Majority inveighed against: Las Vegas.
"The purpose of the Moral Majority was to activate the
religious right," said Falwell. "Our mission is accomplished." His
claim has some surface plausibility. As Moral Majority chairman,
Falwell contributed loudly, if not decisively, to three consecutive
conservative victories in presidential elections and nurtured the
antiliberal atmosphere in which courts are tilting to the right.
The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, he once declared, was "my
finest hour."
Skeptics were obliged to note that the conspicuously misnamed
organization had long since begun to run out of gas. Moreover,
thanks to the gaudy peccadilloes of televangelists like Jimmy
Swaggart, TV preachers today provoke almost as much disfavor as
liberals do.
Falwell admits that when he temporarily took over the Praise
the Lord organization after Jim Bakker was forced out by a rancid
sexual scandal in 1987, donations to his Old Time Gospel Hour fell
$5.3 million. By 1987, the Moral Majority had so dwindled that
Falwell resigned as president. Atlanta businessman Jerry Nims says
he took over the assignment with a mandate to phase out the
organization. This year contributions were expected to be no more
than $3.5 million.
One student of the religious right, sociology professor Jeffrey
Hadden of the University of Virginia, characterized the impending
shutdown as "totally anticlimactic." Though it raised a lot of
fuss, the Moral Majority never developed into much of a grass-roots
organization. More important, the nation's broader conservative
tide, which lifted Ronald Reagan and then George Bush into the
White House, left Falwell with nobody much to oppose. Says Hadden:
"It's hard to sustain political activity when you don't have an
enemy."