WASHINGTON (ABP) — Jerry Falwell, the pastor, university founder and media impresario who received both credit and blame for making the Religious Right a political force in American politics, is dead at age 73.
According to multiple news reports, Falwell was found unconscious in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., the morning of May 15 and was taken to a local hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.
Falwell had two significant health scares in 2005, after which doctors treated him for cardiac problems.
Falwell was perhaps the most widely known Southern Baptist pastor, but early in his ministry he was an independent Baptist. Starting with 35 people meeting in a Lynchburg elementary school in 1956, Falwell built Thomas Road Baptist Church into one of the nation's largest congregations. He and the church also founded Liberty University, a prominent evangelical Christian university, in 1971. According to the Lynchburg News & Advance, the school expects to enroll more than 11,000 students next fall.
Although as recently as the 1960s Falwell — like many fundamentalist Protestant leaders of his time — criticized more moderate and liberal ministers for getting involved in the civil-rights movement and other contemporary political debates, but he had changed his mind by the 1970s. In 1979, he founded the Moral Majority — widely credited with helping elect Ronald Reagan to his first term and, for the first time, organizing conservative evangelical voters in a nationwide activist organization.
The organization attempted to unify conservative Christians to vote for candidates who opposed legalized abortion and civil protections for homosexuals, and who supported government endorsements of religion.
Even though the group disbanded in 1989, Falwell continued to exert influence among conservative Christians and in the Republican Party, cementing the partnership between the two groups that dominated American politics for more than 20 years.
Throughout his involvement in politics, Falwell received heavy criticism from liberals and secularists — and also from other Christian leaders who believed his goals and methods were inimical to the gospel they claimed to serve.
In one of his most infamous public gaffes, he was forced to apologize for his televised comments that blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on gays, abortion-rights activists, atheists, liberals and civil libertarians.
Still, even one of Falwell's arch-adversaries acknowledged his towering presence in American civic life in recent decades.
“Jerry Falwell politicized religion and failed to understand the genius of our Constitution, but there is no denying his impact on American political life,” said Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in a statement released shortly after Falwell's death was announced.
The statement concluded, “Americans United extends its condolences to members of Dr. Falwell's family, the congregants of Thomas Road Baptist Church and the students and staff of Liberty University.”
Meanwhile, Falwell's co-belligerents in the “culture wars” of the past two decades mourned his passing.
“For more than 50 years, Dr. Falwell has been an uncompromising ambassador for the gospel in the community of Lynchburg, nationally via the broadcast airwaves, and in American public life,” said a statement from Coral Ridge Ministries, the broadcast arm of conservative Presbyterian preacher D. James Kennedy. “He leaves an enduring legacy of leadership for the gospel, Christian education, and Christian moral engagement in American public life.”
Falwell, a Lynchburg native, was born in 1933 to a devoutly Christian mother and a father who, Falwell said, was an entrepreneur dismissive of his wife's faith. The younger Falwell was reportedly something of a ne'er-do-well himself, but he embraced his mother's faith in 1952 while attending a local college.
He professed his faith at a local Baptist church and completed his undergraduate education at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo. Falwell became involved in the independent Baptist movement while there and remained an independent Baptist most of his life. However, in the 1990s he led his church to affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention through the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, a new state convention formed by fundamentalists disgruntled with the moderate leadership of the established Baptist General Association of Virginia.
Although Falwell and his followers often used the courtesy title “Dr.” before his name, he never earned a doctorate.
He stepped down from his day-to-day duties as pastor of the Thomas Road congregation, turning them over to one of his sons to focus on his work for the university. He is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, the former Macel Pate, and three children.
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Read more:
Falwell said to be recovering after second hospitalization (3/31/2005)
Falwell comment on terrorism draws response from fellow Baptists (11/2/2004)
Christian leaders denounce Falwell, Robertson in New York Times ad (8/31/2004)