Today's Religion Report: Falwell the racist

Today's Religion Report (Radio National) features an interview with John Shelby Spong on the late Jerry Falwell's roots as a racist and segregationist in Lynchburg, Virginia.

So of course FOX's Sean Hannity and guest Ralph Reed were justified in calling Christopher Hitchens a big meanie for not joining the rest of conservative America in paying due tribute to the recently departed bigoted hatemonger.

I'll be teaching when the show is broadcast in Perth, so I'll have to download the podcast later.

UPDATE: Falwell's even inspired Christian terrorism (only we're probably not allowed to call it that, since the perpetrators are--you know--Christian):

Even in death, the Rev. Jerry Falwell rouses the most volatile of emotions.
A small group of protesters gathered near the funeral services to criticize the man who mobilized Christian evangelicals and made them a major force in American politics -- often by playing on social prejudices.
A group of students from Falwell's Liberty University staged a counterprotest.
And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having
several homemade bombs in his car.
The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

But Rachael Kohn told me that people in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" wouldn't do this kind of thing.

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.