The Beginning of Jerry Falwell's Journey

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) was a Fundamentalist Evangelical Baptist denomination pastor from Lynchburg, Virginia. He was born on August 11, 1933, into a family that sufered trauma. His father, Carey Falwell, killed his uncle, who was considered Lynchburg's “troublemaker.” This event shaped the future of his father and the rest of his family. Although the court acquitted his father, it did not change the course of his life. Instead, he became an alcoholic and sufered from it until his death. Jerry was only 15 years old at the time; however, his father's memory continued to shape his life over time. His father's fondness for alcohol was a signifcant trigger in his life to engage in the rescue and healing of alcoholism: “I believe that observing my father drinking heavily throughout my childhood has afected me, and that's why I have a hatred for that bitter drop, and why it has never been a problem in my personal life.” The Mother, Helen Falwell was an Evangelical Born-Again Christian who grew up in a family of 16 siblings, all working in their father's tobacco feld, harvesting tobacco leaves. Jerry's mother raised her children according to Evangelical Christian values, and he absorbed his love for Christianity from her. “I owe my personality to my mother; there's no question about it.

About the Decision to Enter Politics

Patricia A. Pingry, author of the book about Jerry Falwell, was asked: “How can it be that one person, who holds the answer for the nation's redemption, manages to convince people to surrender to GOD?” She answers that Falwell, a man who believed in GOD when he founded a church in an old bottle factory with 35 devotees, and since then, it has grown to 17,000 followers by 1980; a man who turned a 30-minute radio program into the most-watched televangelist program in the world; and a man who turned a college with a meager student body into a large university—never doubted how it should be done. Falwell is quoted saying:

In an age of unprecedented information access, the discovery of overlooked historical narratives becomes all the more remarkable. Dr. Kobby Barda's scholarship stands as just such an achievement—unearthing crucial yet forgotten connections that illuminate our present moment.

Where others have relied on assumptions about Evangelical-Jewish relations, Dr. Barda approached his research with extraordinary objectivity and scholarly persistence. What emerged from his meticulous investigation was not merely isolated historical fragments, but a rich tapestry revealing the depth and complexity of a once-unimaginable alliance: the profound friendship between hundreds of millions of Christians and the Jewish people worldwide.

By opening this new scholarly domain, Dr. Barda has revealed compelling narratives that demonstrate how Jewish-Christian relations have fundamentally shaped both modern Israel and America during its period of global preeminence. His initial discoveries provided the catalyst for my own doctoral research, allowing me to further develop crucial aspects of this historical relationship.

My life's work centers on transforming Jewish-Christian relations—particularly regarding the hundreds of millions of Christian Zionists—from sentimental goodwill into substantive partnership. In this mission, Dr. Barda's research proves invaluable. We must acknowledge uncomfortable truths: Jewish communities often question Christian motivations, while Christians frequently fail to recognize how history justifes such wariness. Yet Dr. Barda reveals that we stand at the threshold of a new era in this relationship.

Nathalie Carnes takes a fine selection of concrete examples from different times and cultures to show that material objects, icons, images, and art can be a natural extension of Christian worship. Through the incarnation and its continuation, they can carry a set of meanings that enhance and clarify the liturgy and make it a sensory reality in complementary ways.

Clare Johnson provides a careful discussion of the “other” six sacraments that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church celebrate. Relying on the liturgical books themselves, she investigates their biblical roots, the logic behind their coherence, and their theological significance.

I begin by highlighting three characteristics that ancient elites imagined that enslaved persons ought to have: usefulness, loyalty, and property. I start by noting how discourses of enslavement and utility are intertwined. The Shepherd’s concern for utility is most clearly expressed in its two visions of a tower under construction, in which enslaved believers are represented as stones who will be useful (or not) for the construction of the tower before the eschaton. Second, I turn to the concept of loyalty (pistis), suggesting that the Shepherd uses such language in a way that encourages God’s enslaved persons to exhibit loyalty to God at all costs. Finally, I point to how enslaved persons in antiquity were often characterized as commodified by placing the Shepherd alongside inscriptions about enslaved people from Delphi and documentary correspondence. Not only does the Shepherd portray its protagonist Hermas as lacking bodily autonomy while being exchanged between divine actors, but the text also calls on God’s enslaved persons to purchase other enslaved people who are imagined to be their physical property (e.g., as houses, fields) when they arrive in God’s city.

Jan Schnell picks up the thread in the formative period of the late Middle Ages and early modernity, the era of the Reformation. She surveys the ways in which Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Jean Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, and John Knox, among others, brought about substantial adaptations to the traditional liturgies they had inherited from Catholicism, and what motivated them theologically to do so.

The introduction sets the scene at the catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples, where our only early Christian fresco from the Shepherd of Hermas is painted on a tomb wall. I lay out the thesis and roadmap for the book, namely, that the Shepherd crafts obedient early Christian subjects within the ancient Mediterranean discourse of enslavement. A brief overview of the Shepherd’s content is provided, as well as regarding its popularity and transmission history across the ancient, late ancient, and medieval worlds. I especially note how the Shepherd became a pedagogical tool in late antiquity, and that the Shepherd’s teachings are even placed in Jesus’s own mouth by some late ancient writers, heightening the stakes for understanding how enslavement is utilized in a text used to shape Christian thought and practice for centuries after its composition. Also provided is a brief introduction to slavery in antiquity to situate the reader, as well as outline some of the major influences on my approach to reading the text, especially womanist translational theory and Chris de Wet’s concept of doulology.