Days after Bloody Sunday Falwell denounced King as communist and refused civil rights involvement
Evidence
Falwell’s most famous sermon, “Of Ministers and Marches,” was delivered on a Sunday evening, March 21, 1965, from the pulpit of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Two weeks earlier, on what became known as Bloody Sunday, civil rights protesters were met by Alabama state troopers after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their march from Selma to Montgomery to protest racism and the police brutality that led to the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson in nearby Marion. With the protection of a court order, the march to Montgomery resumed two Sundays later, prompting Falwell that evening to denounce Martin Luther King Jr. as a communist subversive and to insist that, “Believing the Bible as I do, I would find it impossible to stop preaching the pure saving gospel of Jesus Christ, and begin doing anything else—including fighting communism, or participating in civil rights reforms.” — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 154
Categorization
- XREF: Falwell’s refusal to mix gospel with political reform foreshadows the book’s core irony: evangelical leaders later plunged wholesale into partisan politics. — connects to: Falwell preached Christian non-involvement in politics only while defending segregation before it became costly — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 246