Jerry Falwell (1933-2007)

Jerry Laymon Falwell Sr. was an American religious leader, televangelist and founder of the Moral Majority.

He accepted Jesus in 1952. He was a good athlete and entered Lynchburg College but transfered to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri,and graduated in 1956.

In the same year he founded and stayed at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg. The congregation grew from a modest 35 members to 20,000 by his death. He also started to broadcast his sermons on the Old Time Gospel Hour- a radio and television programme . This quickly moved from local, to national, to international and claimed 50 million viewers.

He founded the Lynchburg Christian Academy in 1967. In 1971 he founded and led Liberty Baptist College - later Liberty University - a fundamentalist Christian University, until his death.

Jerry created a Christian media empire. In 1995 he started the monthly National Liberty Journal for evangelical Christians. In 2002 he created the Liberty Channel a satellite based network which offers a variety of content all from a Christian perspective.

He also wrote more than 12 books. He shared his faith and ideas in Champion of the Gods (1985) and The New American Family (1992).

Throughout his career he engendered controversy on a number of topics and was perceived as intolerant or bigoted. This included his thought on abortion, feminism, gay and lesbian rights,homosexuality/ AIDS and other causes.

Jerry is perhaps best known for his political activism. He founded in 1979 the Moral Majority organization which mobilized religious voters… It grew to have millions of supporters and was credited in helping Republican Ronald Reagan become president in 1980. He disbanded it in 1989 - Jerry said it had accomplished its mission. In 2004 however, buoyed by George W. Bush’s success he founded the Faith and Values Coalition- which became the Moral Majority Coalition. He wanted to keep the evangelical movement as a strong force in politics.

Jerry had health problems in 2005 and was hospitalized twice. On 15th May, 2007 he died, having been discovered unconscious in his office at the school.

He had a marked impact, sometimes controversially , on both American religious and political life, in the late 20th century.

Sources used
Britannia Online Encyclopedia
Biography.com/personality/jerry-falwell