Book Review

The Other Preacher in Lynchburg: My Life Across Town from Jerry Falwell. John Killinger
I could not resist reading this book with a keen interest, since I was in Lynchburg as a student at Liberty University during part of the timeline the book covers. I was expecting a candid and yet objective reflection. Upon reading the book, anybody ready to jump in delight upon any insider scoop against Jerry the Fundamentalist would find more fodder for the cannon. If you are searching for truth, one would find this personal memoire sad and at times pedantic or in a word, just arrogant. Large gaps of knowledge are quickly filled up with innuendo and third party gossip.
John Killinger is a prolific author and well known preacher among mainline pulpits having criss-crossed denominational lines at ease at the call of tall steeples and academic professorships. It is surprising that one so educated and esteemed in his circles would write a book that is on the level of a cheap “kiss and tell” narrative of sour grapes.

The title itself gives one an inkling that this book is about ego- pure and simple. Lynchburg had more than two preachers, several who never were in the spot lights, but nonetheless faithful preachers of the gospel. While one was famous for a television ministry, the founder of a university and the major inspiration of the Christian Right’s political activism, Killinger was one who seems to sulk in the shadow of one greater.
I do not and cannot defend everything about Falwell or Liberty. It was a mixed bag of experiences for me. Some bad, but some really good – which is pretty much a commentary on most things in life. In fact, overall, coming up as a Fundamentalist is not the worst thing to experience in life. Liberals and progressives can be just as mean, deceptive and duplicitous as any fundamentalist ever thought about being. The book brings together a line-up of disgruntled professors and students ready to expose the dark interior of life at Falwell’s school. I laugh at some of the examples attributing a Nazi like atmosphere to the school with its strict rules, which is like saying West Point is too regimented and uptight about hairstyles. Some of its legalistic trappings are long gone and good riddance, too. One did not go to Liberty during those days expecting it to be like Berkeley or even Lynchburg College, for that matter. The metal buildings that looked “like chicken houses” as, Will Campbell called them, were embraced by forward looking students who believed in the kind of education they would receive at such a school fully committed to conservative Christian beliefs. While some may have relished the grounds and buildings at the University of Virginia, they did not covet the content of the classrooms. Of course there is always the disgruntled minority forced into the school by hook or by crook. There are parents who think Christian Colleges are the answer in a last ditch effort of redeeming a botched up job of parenting.
I became a Presbyterian while at Liberty, not in any way thanks to the likes of Killinger (his well known pointed jabs from the pulpit were part of campus discussion), but because of what historic Presbyterian theology stood for: a cogent, intelligent belief in the Bible as the Word of God. That was something of which a nondenominational liberal fashioned in the style of Emerson Fosdick would never be accused of. For him, Fundamentalism was the social ill on the fabric of an open-minded free society. From Lynchburg to Birmingham, John Killinger recounts the victimization of a “progressive thinker” by exploitive mean- spirited fundamentalists who made his life less than a dream. His days at Beeson Divinity School also come into play as another case where Falwell and cronies undermine and discredit his work and ministry. This is a sad tale of hubris offended. It will be especially sad that people will even believe it.