So Jerry Falwell dies and finds himself before the Pearly Gates.

"What happened?" says Falwell, a bit confused.

"Heart attack," says a young man, dressed entirely in white. He's sitting behind a table, filling out a stack of paperwork. "All quite painless, really. Welcome to heaven."

"Hallelujah!" shouts Falwell, grinning. "Are you an angel?"

"No, no," chuckles the man. "I'm kind of a temp. St. Peter took a few of the Disciples fishing this week."

"I see," mumbles Falwell. "What are you working on?"

"Oh, this is your application for Heaven," replies the man. "Of course, we knew you were coming -- omniscience and all -- so I've taken the liberty of filling most of it out. But there's an essay question, if you don't mind answering."

"Fantastic, brother!" grins Falwell. "What's the question?"

"It's pretty straightforward: why should we let you into heaven?"

"Well, then," begins Falwell, clearing his throat. "I am the faithful servant of our Lord. I have tirelessly preached His holy Gospel. I founded a major Christian university, and our graduates populate the highest offices in the land. I've helped godly Christian men become President. And I have tirelessly warned America about the pernicious influence of pornographers, homosexuals, ACLU lawyers, feminists, liberals, and reprobate Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews."

"Very impressive," says the man, noting his answer.

"Thank you son," says Falwell. "Tell me: I didn't catch your name."

"It's Schwartz."

The call by Christians to pray for Falwell’s soul has the stench of hypocrisy about it. Why were these people so silent while he was alive? Why did they not silence him in their defence of the victims of his attacks. You’re no Christian if you are a silent witness to injustice.

Secondly; if Christians believe that ….”your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you..” why don’t they preach against the slow but sure suicide of over eating.

The author is on-target about Falwell, but some the verbal tricks here seemed to have been learned at his feet.

Take the assertion that

cable television, the perfect medium for someone as shallow as this man

This is surely a Falwellesque example of demonization. The statement doesn't even limit the statement to cable news but all cable. It’s all bad. All shallow. All propaganda. All hate. Come on. HBO? And what about C-SPAN?

We also get

Once the Ralph Reeds and Karl Roves took over the task of blending religion and politics, there was no room for Falwell.

Agree about Reeds, but though I dislike Rove he doesn’t blend religion and politics. And his warhawk attitude towards Iraq isn’t based on their religious beliefs.

There is even a manipulative use of theology

The Manichees, a Persian sect that for a time attracted the great Saint Augustine, adhered to a black-and-white reality in which evil was always in an endless struggle with the good.

Well, I suspect Wolfe would find Augustine’s religious beliefs themselves black and white. Augustine surely would have found this country as sinful as Falwell does, and been equally intolerant of birth control, pro-choice, and gay rights (Mother Theresa said there is more spiritual poverty in America than there ever was physical poverty in Calcutta; I think Augustine would have agreed). So the evocation of this great religious philosopher seems pretty much a rhetorical device.

And I think Augustine would agree with the concept of an ongoing struggle between good and evil on this planet since the time of the Fall. He'd disagree that they were equal forces, for eternity destined to battle. Good existed before evil, was stronger, and would obviously triumph, essentially had triumphed through Jesus' birth death and resurrection. All evil would be banished to hell at the end of time. But clearly he believed evil was present in the world and always a potential threat to man.

By clouding these issues, Wolfe has come up with a piece at times as shallow and misleading as Falwell's own assertions.

I had the unusual experience yesterday of being pleased to hear about the death of another. That's a first in my life. I'll be eager to see who replaces him on Wolf Blitzer's show. Let's hope it's a NEW voice from the Christian community, and not simply his successor at Liberty University.

Nicely done, Mr. Wolfe. You gave Falwell what he deserved. A man leaves the world no poorer for his absence from it. One thing I heard (on NPR) about him was his dad hated preachers, and his grandfather was (eek) an atheist -- so, I wondered if the hatefulness of his approach to faith was, perhaps, a vendetta against his own father. Honor thy father? Not Falwell, I guess.

One thing you wrote, of 9/11...

A sacred moment had been used for profane purpose.

I would never call 9/11 a sacred moment; I think Falwell took a profane moment in our country's history, and managed to make it more profane. In that, he creepily mirrored the fanaticism of Al Qaeda itself -- they could only look at the permissiveness of secular America and agree with Falwell's ham-handed assessment.

But, I do feel sorry for him; not in the dying (happens to everybody), but in how some deep wounds in his past led him to create a more ghoulish, hateful Christianity that so many Americans unfortunately took to.

Going by Falwell's own penchant for drawing doubtful conclusions from factual events, the suddness of Falwell's death can ONLY be understood as God's righteous punishment for Falwell's failure to force the nation to live by one narrow interpretation of the bible as laid out by the man who knew the mind of God best: Falwell himself. God is patient, but not infinitely patient, and eventually He will exact his vengeneance.

Picture God as a shadowy villain in an early Bond movie, slowly stroking a cat in his lap. "You have failed me for the last time, Mr. Falwell," he says, pushing a button on the arm of his chair. Suddenly, in an office in Virginia, Mr. Falwell drops dead, plunged, as it were, into a metaphorical tank full of sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads.

This is exactly what happened; it's the ONLY conclusion that can be drawn. It is true because I say it is true, and if you question its truth you are Satan's pawn.