Jerry Falwell, Founder of Christian Conservative Political Movement Dies Suddenly

By Hilary White
 
LYNCHBURG, Virginia, May 15, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – American television evangelist and political organizer, founder of universities and pro-life political pioneer, the Rev. Jerry Falwell has died suddenly at 73 of a possible heart rhythm abnormality.
 
  The pro-life movement around the world is to a significant degree a result of Falwell’s organization in the late 1970’s of the Christian conservative movement that has defined the political discourse for decades.
 
  The movement has responded to his sudden death with outpourings of praise and sorrow. Randall Terry, Founder, Operation Rescue said, “Reverend Jerry Falwell masterfully integrated Christian ethics and political duty in a way that resonated with Evangelicals.”
 
  Terry identified Falwell’s mastery of interfaith and interdenominational organising with the success of his movement, bringing together fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and biblically sound mainline Protestants.
 
  Catholic League president Bill Donohue said Falwell not only inspired Evangelicals to become active politically, “he encouraged them to rethink their positions on a host of issues, especially abortion and school choice.”
 
“Jerry was a great fighter in the culture wars. He was both an exemplary evangelical and a renowned social activist, always exuding the kind of moral courage so often lacking in religious leaders of all faiths. He will be sorely missed,” Donohue said.
 
  From the son of a bootlegger, to advisor to presidents, Jerry Falwell defined the Christian conservative political movement he helped to found in response to the social revolution of the 1960’s. His founding in 1979 of the Moral Majority transformed the face of US and international politics and helped establish the pro-life movement around the world as a political force for life and family.
 
  It was the 1973 Roe v. Wade US Supreme Court decision legalising abortion that launched Falwell into politics. Throughout the 1980’s Falwell and his political supporters carved a place for an immensely influential, organized, vocal and politically savvy conservative Christianity in the political discourse.
 
  The Moral Majority was instrumental in the election of then-California governor Ronald Reagan as President in 1980. It was to remain a massively powerful force in US politics to the time of Falwell’s retirement from the organization in 1987.
 
“I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved,” he said when he stepped down.
 
  In 1956, Jerry Falwell, the son of a former bootlegger, became the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church of Lynchburg, having just graduated college and conceived a desire to convert his home town to Christianity. The church’s first collection totalled $135. But it was his folksy and appealing personal style as a television evangelist that helped Falwell make his real start. In the same year he founded the Old-Time Gospel Hour, a daily local radio ministry and a weekly local television ministry that by the 1980’s had been heard in millions of US homes.
 
  Falwell ministries writes that within the first two years of its existence, “the Moral Majority attracted over 100,000 pastors, priests, and rabbis and nearly seven million religious conservatives who mobilized as a pro-life, pro-family, pro-Israel, and pro-strong national defense lobbying organization.”
 
  During the 2004 presidential election, Falwell re-entered the political fray, forming the Faith and Values Coalition as the “21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority.” The group sought pro-life judges and a constitutional amendment banning “gay marriage”.
 
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