Washington – Jerry Falwell, a Southern Baptist preacher who as the founder of Moral Majority presided over a marriage of Christian religious belief and conservative political values, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure after he was found unconscious in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. He was 73.
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 megachurches, founded a cable television network and a growing Bible-based university, and was considered the voice of the religious right in the early 1980s. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of the 25 most influential people in America.
Although his political influence and public profile had diminished in recent years as he devoted more of his time to Liberty University, his positions on core issues have become canonical for the mainstream of the modern Republican Party.
A large man whose preacherly voice and cocksure confidence could drive his detractors into fits of rage, he had a penchant for provocative comments. Perhaps his most provocative came Sept. 13, 2001, when he appeared on “The 700 Club,” the Rev. Pat Robertson’s TV show, and blamed pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, the American Civil Liberties Union and others for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen,”‘ he said.
He later apologized on CNN.
“I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize,” he told the network.
Although Falwell told Geraldo Rivera his controversial comment was the result of fatigue, he was a master media provocateur, said Mel White, Falwell’s former speechwriter and ghostwriter for many of his books.
“He was a media genius, but part of that was in exaggerating, hyperbole and outrageousness,” White said. “He told me once that if he didn’t have people protesting him, he’d have to hire them. He felt it was publicity for the kingdom of God.”
White, who left Falwell’s employ when he announced in 1994 that he was gay, continued to attend Falwell’s church and to live with his partner across the street from the church. He and Falwell remained friends.
“I invested so much in believing he could change, but he went and died instead,” White said.
Before Falwell, Southern Baptists and most other evangelical Christian groups were reluctant to get involved in “things of this world,” including politics; they had their eyes primarily on saving souls. When Falwell founded Moral Majority in 1979, fellow fundamentalist Bob Jones called the organization “the work of Satan,” because it was making common cause with Catholics, Mormons and Jews in an ecumenical-political alliance.
“He came to understand that if people of faith were not engaged in the larger culture, eventually the culture would move in a direction so hostile to its values it would be difficult to live in that culture,” said Ralph Reed Jr., former executive director of the Christian Coalition. “If the culture becomes polluted, then ultimately the church and the faith community suffer.”
Meanwhile, Falwell, Robertson, Jim Bakker and other televangelists throughout the South quickly mastered the new media available to them, primarily cable television, and built huge new audiences of people hungry for traditional values and increasingly agitated by what they saw as the moral decline of America. Falwell, who started out doing local radio and television in Lynchburg, became president of the Liberty Broadcasting Network in 1985.
He decried prayer’s expulsion from public schools, legalized abortion, a high divorce rate, teen pregnancy, a drug epidemic, the gay and lesbian “lifestyle,” school violence and pornography. “America is in serious jeopardy of self-destructing,” he said.
Liberals, leftists, anti-God politicians and activist judges were primarily to blame, Falwell said over the years. A fusion of politics and conservative Christian piety became the antidote.
Falwell founded Moral Majority with the express purpose of organizing a Christian-right electorate, registering voters, raising funds for candidates, and exerting political leverage at state and national levels. The organization first applied that leverage in Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980, helping forge a bond between the Republican Party and the religious right that remains strong.
Although George H.W. Bush shared many of the same positions as his predecessor, he didn’t claim the affections of the religious right the way Reagan did. After enduring eight years in the Bill Clinton wilderness – despite Clinton’s Southern Baptist heritage – the religious right became increasingly euphoric during the first term of George W. Bush’s administration, as political adviser Karl Rove courted Falwell and other religious-right leaders.
In 1983, Larry Flynt’s sex magazine Hustler carried a parody of an ad that featured a fake interview with Falwell in which he admits to incest with his mother.
He sued, alleging invasion of privacy, libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress. A jury rejected the invasion-of-privacy and libel claims, holding that parody could not reasonably be considered a description of actual events, but ruled in favor of Falwell on the claim of emotional distress.
After the ruling was upheld on appeal, Flynt appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and won. The court confirmed that public figures cannot recover damages based on emotional distress caused by parodies.
In 1987, Falwell took over the scandal-plagued PTL ministry of disgraced founder Bakker. Unable to salvage it, with its deficit of about $70 million, he resigned a few months later.
Falwell dissolved Moral Majority in 1989, insisting it had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish.
“He had awakened the slumbering giant of evangelical politics,” Reed said, “and made it a force to be reckoned with.”
