“I am not a Republican, I am not a Democrat! I am a noisy Baptist!”
— The Rev. Jerry Falwell
LYNCHBURG, Va. – A funeral was planned next Tuesday for the Rev. Jerry Falwell, 73, who was found without a pulse at his Liberty University office and pronounced dead about an hour later Tuesday.
Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell’s physician, said the evangelist had a heart condition and presumably died of a heart rhythm abnormality. The Washington Post reported that Falwell died of congestive heart failure.
With his outspoken pronouncements on matters moral, political and religious, Falwell became not only one of the most polarizing religio-political figures in America but also one of the most powerful. He built one of the nation’s first mega-churches, founded a cable television network and a growing Bible-based university, and was considered the voice of the religious right in the early 1980s.
Moral Majority’s power
Driven into politics by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established the right to an abortion, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. Fellow fundamentalist Bob Jones called the organization “the work of Satan,” because the organization was making common cause with Catholics, Mormons and Jews in an ecumenical-political alliance.
One of the conservative lobbying group’s greatest triumphs came just a year later, when Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. president. Falwell credited the Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered.
Fellow TV evangelist Pat Robertson, himself a one-time GOP candidate for president, declared Falwell “a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation.”
“I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved,” Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.
“Moral Majority by necessity became the lightning rod of the conservative movement,” Falwell told the New York Times in 1987. “It was first. It was extremely successful in 1980. And that brought down a firestorm from all who disagreed.”
The rise of Christian conservatism – and the Moral Majority’s condemnation of homosexuality, abortion and pornography – made Falwell perhaps the most recognizable figure on the evangelical right, and one of the most controversial ones, too.
The 1980s marked the religious conservative movement’s high-water mark.
Son of an atheist
Falwell’s father and his grandfather were militant atheists, he wrote in his autobiography. He said his father made a fortune off his businesses – including bootlegging during Prohibition. He died when Falwell was 15.
In high school, Falwell played football and edited the school newspaper. He graduated as valedictorian, but the principal would not allow him to give the valedictory address because of a bit of mischief he committed in the third grade.
He ran with a gang of juvenile delinquents before becoming a born-again Christian at 19. He turned down an offer to play professional baseball and transferred from Lynchburg College to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo.
“My heart was burning to serve Christ,” he once said in an interview. “I knew nothing would ever be the same again.”
The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice returned to his hometown in 1956 and, at 22, founded Thomas Road Baptist Church. Today Thomas Road has more than 22,000 members and held its 50th anniversary celebration last year in a new building near Liberty University.
His religious empire expanded to include the “Old Time Gospel Hour” carried on TV stations around the country and 9,600-student Liberty University, which Falwell founded in 1971 as Lynchburg Baptist College.
From his living room, he broadcast his message of salvation and raised the donations that helped his ministry grow.
Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but changed his views. The Moral Majority grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and railed against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer.
Falwell became the face of the religious right, appearing on national magazine covers and on talk shows. In 1983, U.S. News &World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.
“Jerry’s passions and convictions changed the course of our country for the better over the last 20 years,” said James Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian Focus on the Family ministry. “It was Jerry who led an entire wing of Christianity, the fundamentalist wing, away from isolation and into a direct confrontation with the culture.”
Falwell draws critics
In 1984, Falwell sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by a liquor-ad parody that quoted him as saying he lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.
A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. The verdict was overturned in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.
With Falwell’s high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on “nonmoral issues.”
In 1987, Falwell took over the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministry in South Carolina after the Rev. Jim Bakker got caught in a sex and money scandal. He gave it up seven months later after learning the depth of PTL’s financial problems.
Largely because of the sex scandals involving Bakker and fellow evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, donations to Falwell’s ministry dropped from $135 million in 1986 to less than $100 million the following year. Hundreds of workers were laid off and viewers of his television show dwindled.
Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being “a lightning rod” and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.
In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief.
A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents purse-carrying Tinky Winky of the children’s TV show “Teletubbies,” was a gay role model and morally damaging to children.
Falwell had become a problematic figure for the GOP. His remarks a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, essentially blaming feminists, gays and liberals for bringing on the terrorist attacks, drew a rebuke from the White House, and he apologized.
Falwell was re-energized after family values proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the “21st century resurrection of the Moral Majority,” to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and more conservative elected officials.
But Falwell’s declining political star seemed apparent when he was quietly led in and out of the Republican Party’s 2004 national convention. Just four years earlier, he was invited to pray from the rostrum.
Falwell is survived by his wife, Macel; his two sons, Jerry Jr. and Jonathan; and a daughter, Jeannie Falwell Savas. The funeral is set for 2 p.m. Tuesday at Thomas Road Baptist Church.
Key events in Falwell’s life
Aug. 11, 1933: Born, along with twin brother Gene, to Carey and Helen Falwell in Lynchburg, Va.
1956: Starts Thomas Road Baptist Church; quickly moves into radio broadcasting, then into television with the “Old Time Gospel Hour.”
1971: Opens Lynchburg Baptist College, later Liberty University.
1979: Founds Moral Majority.
1983: Listed by U.S. News &World Report as one of 25 most influential Americans.
1984: Sues Hustler magazine, charging he was libeled by an obscene parody. U.S. Supreme Court overturns $200,000 damages verdict for emotional distress in 1988.
1987: Leaves Moral Majority, takes over the Rev. Jim Bakker’s scandal-rocked PTL ministry for several months.
1989: Moral Majority disbands.
1990s: Grapples with dropoff in contributions, viewers stemming from the 1980s televangelism scandals.
2001: Suggests after the Sept. 11 attacks that feminists, gays, ACLU are partly to blame. He later apologizes.
2004: Announces he will leave day-to-day operations of Liberty University, Thomas Road Baptist Church to sons Jerry and Jonathan, focus on new Faith and Values Coalition.
February-April 2005: Hospitalized twice with serious heart and lung problems.
July 2006: Celebrates the 50th anniversary of Thomas Road Baptist Church.
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