Prominent conservative reverend founded the movement that helped mold the religious right into a political power.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFfalwell 298.88(photo credit: AP)
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, a prominent conservative televangelist who founded a movement that helped mold the religious right into a political power, died Tuesday, his aide said. He was 73.
Falwell was found unresponsive at his Liberty University office around 10:45 a.m. and was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, said Ron Godwin, the executive director of the university which Falwell founded. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said.
"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."
Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's physician, said the evangelist had a heart rhythm abnormality. He said Falwell was found without a pulse and never regained consciousness.
Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents.
Falwell had made careful preparations for a transition of his leadership to his two sons, Godwin said. "He has left instructions for those of us who had to carry on, and we will be faithful to that charge," Godwin said.
"Jerry has been a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation," fellow evangelist Pat Robertson said Tuesday.
Falwell credited his Moral Majority, a conservative Christian political lobbying organization which he founded in 1979, with getting millions of conservative voters registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.
He went on to become the face of the religious right in the 1980s, appearing on national magazine covers and on television talk shows. In 1983, US News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.
The organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer.
"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.
The fundamentalist church that Falwell started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that includes the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church. It also included the "Old Time Gospel Hour", a television show carried on stations across the United States and the 7,700-student Liberty University, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.
Liberty University's commencement is scheduled for Saturday, with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker.
In 2006, Falwell marked the 50th anniversary of his church and spoke out on stem cell research, saying he sympathized with people with medical problems, but that any medical research must pass a three-part test: "Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?"
In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 US Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy constitutional free speech protection.
The case was depicted in the 1996 movie "The People v. Larry Flynt."
With Falwell's high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on "non-moral issues."
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.
Days after Sept. 11, 2001, Falwell essentially blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and liberal groups for bringing on the terrorist attacks. He later apologized.
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 that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies" show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children.
Falwell was re-energized after moral values issues 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 same-sex marriage and more conservative elected officials.
The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started his independent Baptist church with 35 members. From his living room, he began broadcasting his message of salvation and raising the donations that helped his ministry grow.
"He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry," said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell's career.
In 1987, Falwell took over the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministry in South Carolina after Jim Bakker's troubles. Falwell slid fully clothed down a theme park water slide after donors met his fund-raising goal to help rescue the rival ministry. He gave it up seven months later after learning the depth of PTL's financial problems.
Largely because of the Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals, donations to Falwell's ministry dropped from $135 million (€100 million) in 1986 to less than $100 million the following year. Hundreds of workers were laid off and viewers of his television show dwindled.
Liberty University was $73 million in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy, and his "Old Time Gospel Hour" was $16 million in debt.
By the mid-1990s, two local businessmen with long ties to Falwell began overseeing the finances and helped get companies to forgive debts or write them of as losses.
Falwell devoted much of his time keeping his university afloat. He dreamed that Liberty would grow to 50,000 students and be to fundamentalist Christians what Notre Dame is to Roman Catholics and Brigham Young University is to Mormons. He was an avid sports fan who arrived at Liberty basketball games to the cheers of students.
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.
Falwell was a star athlete and student, but also a prankster who was barred from giving his high school valedictorian's speech because he and other athletes were caught using counterfeit lunch tickets the entire senior year.
He ran with a gang of juvenile delinquents before becoming a born-again Christian at age 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."
He returned home and founded his ministry.
Falwell is survived by his wife, Macel, and three children, Jerry, Jonathan and Jeannie.
