Waubonsee Community College

The book of Jerry Falwell, fundamentalist language and politics, Susan Friend Harding

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-328) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The book of Jerry Falwell

bibliography

42296177

Susan Friend Harding

"Susan Harding, a cultural anthropologist, set out in the 1980s to understand the significance of Christian fundamentalism to date. Falwell and his co-pastors were the pivotal figures in the movement. It is on them that Harding focuses, and, in particular, their use of the Bible's language. She argues that this language is the medium through which born-again Christians, individual and collective, come to understand themselves as Christians. And it is inside this language that much of the born-again movement took place. Preachers like Falwell command a Bible-based poetics of great complexity, variety, creativity, and force, and, with it, attempt to mold their churches into living testaments of the Bible

fundamentalist language and politics

Harding focuses on the words - sermons, speeches, books, audiotapes, and television broadcasts - of individual preachers, particularly Falwell, as they rewrote their Bible-based tradition to include, rather than exclude, intense worldly engagement. As a result of these efforts, born-again Christians recast themselves as a people not separated from but engaged in making history."--Jacket

Introduction: Standing in the gaps -- pt. 1. Rites of origin -- Speaking is believing -- Fundamentalist exile -- pt. 2. Sites of revision -- Art of Jerry Falwell -- Sacrificial economics -- Cultural exodus -- Moral majority jeremiad -- Pro-life gospel -- Creation museum -- Last days -- Born-again telescandals -- Appendix A: Thomas Road Baptist Church statement of doctrine -- Appendix B: Sources of Jerry Falwell's sermons