May 15, 2007
Jerry Falwell Dies At 73
UPDATED.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell has died after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University this morning. He was taken to a hospital in Lynchburg, Va., around 11:30 a.m. and pronounced dead about an hour later.
Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's regular cardiologist, said at a news conference that the televangelist was brought in without a pulse, and therefore could not be revived despite "aggressive efforts" made at the emergency room. Sudden cardiac death is the likely diagnosis, although Moore would not confirm a heart attack specifically. Falwell had a history of heart problems.
Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, added that Falwell had been talking about Liberty University students at breakfast this morning. Godwin called him a "visionary leader" and said "he has left the instructions for those of us to carry on, and we will be faithful to that charge."
Godwin also said that Liberty University's commencement ceremony -- at which potential GOP White House contender Newt Gingrich is scheduled to speak -- will continue as planned on Saturday.
White House spokesman Tony Snow passed on condolences to Falwell's family.
The 73-year-old Baptist evangelist founded the Moral Majority in 1979 and had long served as a leader of the religious right movement. He is widely credited with turning Christian conservatives into a political force at the voting booth.
Falwell's influence grew from a small fundamentalist church he founded in 1956 at an abandoned bottling plant. It grew into a sprawling network that includes the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church and the 7,700-student Liberty University in Lynchburg. He also published a monthly conservative newspaper called the National Liberty Journal.
But it was television that truly extended Falwell's reach, with his broadcasts drawing in scores of viewers every week. CNN quotes him as being proud of the fact that his show was televised on every continent in the world.
Both on TV and through his sermons in person, Falwell weighed in on issues of the day. Some of the most memorable include his support of racial segregation in the South in the 1960s and apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s; a 1983 lawsuit against Hustler publisher Larry Flynt for publishing a fake interview as a Campari ad; and a 1999 flap over a Teletubby that Falwell accused of acting as a gay symbol.
In recent years, he was sharply criticized for comments connecting the 9/11 terrorist attacks with "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America" -- a statement for which he later apologized.
FOX News has a bio of Falwell.
(Photo from Jerry Falwell Ministries)
Posted at 2:50 PM
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