RIDGELAND — Early in the 20th century, William Alexander Percy of Greenville characterized J.K. Vardaman’s followers as “the kind of people who ... attend revivals and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards.” Every few years I am reminded of those words, usually coincidental with the revelations of sexual misconduct on the part of the clergy. Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and more than a few former priests come to mind.
Jerry Falwell Jr., who has led Liberty University since 2007, is the latest religious leader to fall from grace due to sexual issues. All of this began when Falwell posted a photo of himself, pants unzipped, with his secretary at a picnic. Anyone who has seen the photo can reasonably conclude that it reveals nothing more than a lapse in judgement. There is also the question of what was in his glass. Was it alcoholic? Perhaps, and Liberty University prohibits its employees from consuming alcoholic drinks. Christians everywhere should be thankful that Liberty University did not host the wedding feast at Cana.
What becomes of Falwell remains to be seen. Whether allegations of his having relations with a young man who also had an affair with his wife are true will dominate Liberty University’s discourse for some time. I say, let’s give the man the benefit of due process and convict him only for what he is truly guilty of, stupidity or sexual indiscretions.
But there does remain a larger issue that recurs in American religious life. It is the habit of celebrity clergy seducing while saving, and it often dominates the national discourse. In Percy’s example, the distance between religious fervor and aggression, both physical and sexual, is a very short one.
Henry Ward Beecher, a 19th century Congregationalist minister and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother, once preached that God so loved saving souls that good Christians had the duty to go out and sin. This would give God the joy of redeeming them. Beecher employed this belief by seducing female members of his flock. One such woman was unconvinced that God found pleasure in saving them. She confessed the matter to her husband. The husband brought charges and was promptly excommunicated from the church. According to period sources, the story was so sensational it replaced Reconstruction as a newspaper headline.
America, since its infancy, has been subject to periodic “great awakenings” that seek to imbue the citizenry with evangelical values. Such awakenings tend to invite more such indiscretions in the clergy. Most often the woman is blamed for her seductive ways. I recall a televangelist who claimed to have been so overcome by shame after having “consensual sex” with a church secretary that he went into the shower to cleanse himself, bitterly crying that he “had been with a whore.” Her side of the story is that she had been with a rapist.
Beecher survived the scandal and in 1876 was exonerated by the Congregational Church. Falwell may not be so lucky. He may find that Christians will quickly forgive conventional sexual indiscretions. Less conventional ones, however, are among the most persistent Christian taboos.
• Vincent J. Venturini is the retired associate provost at Mississippi Valley State University. He lives in Ridgeland.
