Falwell Inc.
Inside a Religious, Political, Educational, and Business Empire
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Spiritual Street Fighter. Radical Educator. Christian Entrepreneur.
The late Reverend Jerry Falwell was a controversial and divisive religious and political figure whose legacy will long outlive him. Falwell Inc. is the first close examination of how he built his conservative empire, from the inner workings of the fund-raising juggernauts behind his church, university, and conservative causes, to the explosive growth of Liberty University, founded by Falwell to mint conservative lawyers, judges, and politicans. Falwell's religious ventures are now in the hands of his two very different sons. They are expanding their father's empire beyond what he ever achieved.
Investigative reporter Dirk Smillie reveals the financial rapids Reverend Falwell and son Jerry Jr. hit when business failures piled up $100 million in debt and nearly sank his school and ministry. Smillie uncovers the extraordinary impact Falwell, in saving his spiritual enterprises, has had on Lynchburg, Virginia, and how savvy real estate investments and relentless fund-raising saved the empire. Falwell Inc. details the spreading influence his legacy continues to exert on our country.
Falwell Inc. is above all an astonishing behind-the-curtains look at a powerful but flawed man and his multimillion-dollar business, political, religious, and education enterprises, by a reporter with unprecedented access to the family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For a man who forswore vices of all kinds, Reverend Jerry Falwell was a man of huge appetites not least for profit and Smillie's business biography examines how the son of Virginia bootleggers transformed himself from a smalltown preacher into a multimedia oracle. Armed with a siege mentality, dogged work ethic and surprising openness to the best idea, Falwell pioneered a direct-mail empire with a sophisticated electronic database and a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity that appealed to Americans turned off by mainline Protestantism's reforms in the 1960s. Smillie's Falwell is an indomitable risk taker, constantly weathering cycles of prosperity and crushing debt as he raises up his empire, founds Liberty University with sweepstakes, starts a wildly lucrative online school, exploits his opponents (like Larry Flynt) and generally raises hell. The author's access to the Falwell estate and family perhaps explains the paucity of more stringent critical (or political) analysis as Smillie focuses primarily upon the Gospel Hour's balance sheets. The book suffers when Falwell drops out of the book midway and it loses its controversial protagonist and most of its steam; unsurprisingly, the real heat is generated by the visionary huckster.