There Are Thousands Of Falwells Out There- Including In Your Area

Jerry Falwell is dead, but that doesn't mean his spiritual progeny aren't absent from our collective environs.

I'm talkiing about your town, and most certainly, your metro area.

Out past the gentrifying neighborhoods, the boutique furniture stores, the latte emporiums, the naturopathic physican clinics, the independent bookstores, the campuses- out past the circumferential highways that ring your city and near the Wal-Marts where you Ikea shoppers never go- that's where you'll find your local Falwells.

Maybe they are pastors in 10,000-member churches, or maybe their churches are small.

In terms of comportment, your local Falwells probably act more like Rick Warren than Rev. Falwell. They preach a modest game of demographic inclusiveness rather than act as scolds. There are immigrants (legal and not), and quite probably a racial mix as well. All of that is not necessarily bad.

But in between the lines of these transparently positive acts, there's a political and social agenda that is likely to advocate Biblical inerrency, healing rather than embrace of gay people, a view of the Earth as 6,500 years old with not much time left until you-know-who comes.

And in the parking lots of the churches pastored by your metro area's "Jerry Falwell," you'll see fishes rather than Darwins, and "Support Our Troops" and National Rifle Association insignia, rather than "Think Globally, Act Locally," or "Practice Random Acts.."

Oh, and Bush/Cheney bumper stickers, still proudly displayed.