Politics & Power Quote by Jerry Falwell

For a man whose brand was culture-war certainty, Falwell’s conditional tolerance lands like a carefully worded concession that still keeps the gate in his hands. “If I were president” isn’t humility; it’s stage-setting. He’s imagining executive power so he can define the terms of belonging. And “include Moslems in my presidency” sounds expansive until you hear the hierarchy embedded in the possessive: my presidency, my coalition, my permission slip.

The line reads as an attempt to look broad-minded without surrendering the moral authority Falwell spent decades claiming for conservative Christianity. In the late-20th-century evangelical political project, Muslims were often treated less as citizens with equal standing and more as symbols in a larger narrative about American identity. Falwell’s phrasing nudges Muslims into the language of representation (a seat at the table) while avoiding the language of equality (rights that don’t require invitation). “Include” is a verb of management, not mutuality.

Context matters: Falwell was a master at recalibrating rhetoric when the optics demanded it. When religious pluralism became harder to dismiss outright, the move was to soften the edges without changing the architecture. The sentence performs moderation, signaling to mainstream listeners that he isn’t overtly exclusionary, while still reassuring his base that inclusion remains conditional, administered from above.

It’s less a promise of shared power than a demonstration of who gets to decide what “shared” means.