a giant fell, and I felt the vibrations

Who says a guy can't have fun?

The passing of televangelist and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell has me thinking about faith, politics and where they meet; it has me thinking about faith and how we use it to shape our world; it has me thinking about the expression of faith, in confidence, and how confident it can be before it becomes overbearing.

It has me thinking about the wide array of people called "Christians," followers of Jesus Christ, and how divergent their paths can be. And it has me thinking about memories I haven't conjured in quite a while.

•When I was really young—in the 5-to-10-year-old range—I attended our small community's Baptist church every week with my mom. My dad didn't go, which bothered me quite a bit at the time... I wasn't worried about his spiritual state, really, just wondering why he got his Sunday mornings off and I didn't. I had fun in Sunday school, along with my little friend Monica. Growing up together in church and at school, it was a common joke among both sets of parents—they weren't friends, but still—that Monica and I would grow up and get married. She was a pretty little girl; I was a "cute" young man. (Looking back on my pictures, I think I looked pretty funny. But all the women—and I was around women a LOT, since my sisters were older and my grandmothers showed me off around town—said I had the most gorgeous eyes and eyelashes [not kidding] they'd ever seen.) I guess she got to me for a while... As I got older, she stayed pretty and I became more awkward and unathletic, but I still had a little boy's kind of crush. I think I smoked my first cigarette with her around age 10 or 11 during one of our school's fall festivals; it was awful, and I didn't try it again for another decade.

True love.

The "Wonder Years" memory I have of her—me resembling Fred Savage, in fact, and her with many of the Winnie Cooper features—falls short, though, as we never kissed and pretty much diverged after elementary school; in middle school she hung with cooler kids, and in high school she hung with a more rebellious crowd (preacher's daughter stereotype confirmed). I saw her recently when visiting my parents and their church... she's now got a beautiful daughter and another on the way, with her high-school "sweetheart," of all people.

He's alive... but the 'stache is gone.

•When I was really young, I spent a lot of time with Nanny, my dad's mom, because she lived next door. We'd visit nursing homes—oftentimes the people in them were younger than she—and play bingo, we'd watch "The Price is Right" (I remember they day they changed "Hole In One" to "Hole In One... Or Two!"...defining moment) and "Classic Concentration" (vastly underrated game show... among my all-time favorites) and the WHAS-11 noon news. They even had a story on me, once, selling peaches from my uncle's orchard at the end of our road. Melissa Swan came out and interviewed me, bought some peaches and—voila!—a star was born. I also rooted around in Nanny's bedroom drawers—nothing interesting to report there, except vast amounts of Aqua Net, pre-CFC laws—and flipped around on her bedroom TV, once she got one.

It is on that TV that I have my most vivid memory of the Rev. Falwell. I don't remember what he was saying, but how he was saying it, and I remember that, even as a preteen, it disturbed me. There was something empty about the way he asked for contributions to his program, something fake about the prayers he read and the "miracles" he recited from people's calls and letters. I was baptized around this time, though it didn't take; I spent years as a convinced agnostic anti-Christian, beginning in ninth or tenth grade.

The image stuck with me.

The picture of piety.

•Later on in years, when I was a senior, I got accepted to the Courier-Journal's High School Journalism Workshop. I was the only person outside Jefferson County, I think, to get on. Around this same time, I caught a TV show by a Rev. Bob Rodgers, he of a large, lightly Pentecostal church in Louisville. He had an hour show on a very small channel in Louisville, and he was talking about Marilyn Manson. He said Manson's music was evil (I won't exactly disagree), and added in the "fact" that Manson had some of his ribs removed so he could perform fellatio on himself. I bet you heard that, too, if you were in middle or high school when Manson was popular... it was a rumor so ridiculous as to make for a great sketch comedy routine, though it obv. is a bit risqué even for SNL. But here he was, this "Christian" "leader," spouting this idiocy to whatever few viewers he had, who probably took it just as seriously. At the same time, a Louisville activist named Frank Simon, who had a show on the same channel, was talking nonstop about the ills of homosexuality (of which I had no real opinion at the time), and he said—I'll never forget it—"the majority of homosexuals are child molesters." Now a moralist I wasn't, but logic and sense were becoming important to me at this point. So I wrote a letter to the editor, which was published in the C-J prior to my getting on the workshop, denouncing this Simon for his stupid comments.

The next day at school, my old sweetheart Monica walked up to me, said "my dad wants to know if you're gay ... then why did you write a letter supporting those people?"

Later that year, I got in a wreck. My mom was with me; it was her car. I said the baddest of the bad words, and was immediately ashamed of myself... as we surveyed the wreckage and waited for the police, a man got out of his chauffeured car, walked over to ask if we were okay, then asked to pray with us. I was almost in tears because my nerves were shot, so I said "OK"... that man with the nice suit and the gold watch? The Rev. Bob Rodgers.

Big Red, strolling the streets of Venice.

•When I got to Western, I found my way into the school newspaper. One of my colleagues was Rex Hall, a strange but cool guy who had attended the C-J workshop with me. He ended up focusing on sports, I think, but I digress. At the state of our sophomore year, Rex and I were eating Subway meatball subs in the Herald office when we heard a voice from the next room over. It was the kind of voice that, once you've heard it, you never forget it, and we'd heard it before. We looked at each other, shocked—it was Mai Hoang, a girl a year younger than us who'd also attended the workshop... a girl who, at the time, I thought was the most annoying person I had ever met. Needless to say, we lost our appetite. (It's worth noting that, over the years, Mai became less annoying and eventually a friend... she's one of the most passionate reporters I know, who really LOVES her job and takes reporting as a calling, not just a career. She's in Seattle now, but she doesn't drink Starbucks.)

Rex's best bud at the paper was Brian Moore. He went on to work as a community reporter for the C-J, and often interviewed my dad in his capacity as an adviser at the Bullitt County Jail.

First off the starting line!

•My lovely wife, Shelley, has been a Republican for most of her life. Me, I'm registered Democrat, mostly because that's what my dad was when I got to voting age, and because I thought Republicans were racist bigots who liked to hoard their money. The stereotype abounds, though things are changing... meanwhile, I've become a rather independent voter; I don't care much about parties and will vote for whomever seems the least stupid (sad, but that's the way I look at it these days). Gubernatorially, I'm voting for Jody Richards in the primary... he's from Bowling Green and by all accounts is a very straight shooter, committed to better education (Lord knows we need it) and to his public service. He probably won't win, though, and I'm not sure I want to vote for Steve Henry (by most accounts a philanderer and a cheat), so I'll likely end up voting for the Republican Anne Northup, if she wins her primary (Shelley knows her and vouches for her, even though her TV ads are awful), or the Democrat if either Fletcher (incompetent incumbent) or Harper ("I love racing, and I love Kentucky!) gets the GOP nod.

I'm torn all around... I think abortion is terrible, but I don't want Supreme Court justices chosen on the basis of their faiths; I think big government burdens taxpayers and wastes their money, but the GOP call of fiscal responsibility usually rings hollow; I think a smart president who's got a few personal demons is going to be better for the country than a virtuous but ignorant one.

Running for president... punny!

Which leads to the dream scenario, at least in terms of sociological experimentation: What if Mitt Romney (moderately conservative Mormon Republican) gets the GOP nod, and Barack Obama (moderately liberal Protestant Democrat) is the Democrats' torch-bearer? Who will fundamentalist Christians vote for? Serious Catholics? Atheists? I truly think a person's religious faith shouldn't play into their possible election to public service—exception: Jonathan the Impaler, who's an avowed Satanist and who promises, if elected, the public impalement of murderers, rapists, terrorists and Chicago Bears QB Rex Grossman. But plenty of other people don't share my high-minded ground, and I've love to see how it would play out.

But back to Falwell: He essentially sparked this whole thing... turned Christianity (particularly fundamentalist Protestantism) from a simple faith into a voting bloc. His rhetoric lead to a changed definition of conservative, which now implies, at least, an endorsement of prayer in schools and faith-based initiatives and the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn, even if we've got to put a statue of Muhammed right beside them.

The day America stood still.

•Days after 9/11, Falwell pronounced it a judgment upon America, due to our secular ways. I wonder now, in a Heaven a dimension away (if, in fact, he's there), whether Falwell looks on his death as some kind of judgment, or whether he looks down onto the unfolding human drama and finally sees what God's word and Christ's death say is real: A hurting, humbled humanity, stumbling around trying to figure things out... billions of frail shells, filled by spirits that are at their core depraved, yet infinitely valuable and entirely redeemable.