Evangelist Jerry Falwell led Christian right to political power

WASHINGTON — Admired or reviled, the Rev. Jerry Falwell played a role in American history that will reverberate long past his death Tuesday at age 73.

Falwell’s influence extended far beyond his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., which he founded in 1956. He was among the first socially conservative ministers to recognize the potential political power of his fellow believers and to harness that power.

That led to an alliance with the Republican Party that had profound consequences for public life over the past quarter-century.

Falwell was found unconscious Tuesday morning in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg and was taken to a nearby hospital, where he couldn’t be revived. He had a history of heart troubles.

”Jerry Falwell was a pivotal figure in the political awakening and mobilization of American evangelicals,” said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. “He was a major catalyst in pushing cultural issues to the forefront of American politics.”

It was no easy feat. Falwell emerged from a faith tradition that had long eschewed political activism.

”From the failure of Prohibition on, many people who belonged to the conservative evangelical tradition withdrew from trying to reshape society,” said David Holmes, a professor of religious studies at the College of William & Mary.

As late as 1965, Falwell preached that ministers should stay out of the civil rights movement. ”Preachers are not called to be politicians but to be soul winners,” Falwell said then.

But deeply unsettled by the social and sexual upheaval of the late ’60s and ’70s, Falwell began meeting with other conservative leaders, seeking ways to counter what he regarded as a decline in moral values.

By then, conservative Christians ”were ready to heed the call of a leader who could articulate their concerns and inspire them to do something about the changes in America that they disliked,” Holmes said, citing the national legalization of abortion, increased divorce rates and a seeming coarsening of popular culture.

In 1976, Falwell said, “the idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”

Already well-known nationally because of his early embrace of television to broadcast his sermons via The Old-Time Gospel Hour, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. The organization grew to more than six million members and, through direct mail, campaign-style rallies and fundraising, successfully encouraged evangelicals to become more politically active.

Disappointed in Democrat Jimmy Carter’s presidency, evangelicals embraced Ronald Reagan in 1980 and never looked back.

”It led to a major religious political realignment,” Lugo said. “Evangelicals became a mainstay of conservative politics and are now a core part of the GOP.”

Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based law and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, said a generation of Christian activists had been inspired by Falwell fusing faith and politics.

”He really is the father of much of the conservative movement,” Staver said.

Evangelicals’ power within the Republican Party — and the divisions it brought — came into sharp relief in 2005 with the Terri Schiavo saga, when Congress and President Bush responded to pressure from Christian conservatives with extraordinary legislation designed to save the life of a woman whose Florida doctors said had been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. Many moderate Republicans were troubled by the intervention.

”You could never imagine that happening in 1980,” said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron in Ohio who specializes in religion and politics. “That’s now possible because of the political innovations Falwell introduced.”

But some leaders took issue with Falwell’s legacy of mixing religion and politics.

”We disagreed often and deeply on the application of religious teachings and traditions to the public sphere,” Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said. “Yet his commitment to encouraging Americans to express their faith was genuine, unmistakable and admirable.”

The evangelical migration to the GOP is a major reason why Democrats have had difficulty competing in rural and Southern states. That Democrats are now trying to speak the language of the faithful is evidence of the success Falwell and others had in making politics as much about cultural as economic issues, Lugo said.

Falwell also helped evangelicals find alternatives to secular cultural institutions, even as he urged them to confront secular society.

That was manifested most in Liberty University, which Falwell founded in Lynchburg in 1971. The school — with 7,700 full-time students — requires its students to attend chapel three times a week and boasts on its website that it provides “academic excellence in a Christ-centered environment.”

Falwell’s penchant for controversy lessened his influence over time.

For the left and many in the middle, Falwell was a virtual caricature of all they found troubling about religious conservatives.

Falwell once criticized the children’s show The Teletubbies because he thought one character might be gay, and he routinely vilified gay people.

Miami Herald staff writer Alexandra Alter contributed to this report.

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