Jerry Falwell was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia.
49 Facts About Jerry Falwell
2.
Jerry Falwell founded Lynchburg Christian Academy in 1967, founded Liberty University in 1971, and co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979.
3.
Jerry Falwell's father was an entrepreneur and one-time bootlegger who was agnostic who shot and killed his own brother Garland and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1948 at the age of 55.
4.
Jerry Falwell was a member of a group in Fairview Heights known to the police as "the Wall Gang" because they sat on a low concrete wall at the Pickeral Cafe.
5.
Jerry Falwell met Macel Pate on his first visit to Park Avenue Baptist Church in 1949, where she played piano.
6.
Jerry Falwell graduated from Brookville High School in Lynchburg, and from the then-unaccredited Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, in 1956, where he enrolled in order to subvert Pate's relationship with her fiance there.
7.
Jerry Falwell was later awarded three honorary doctorates: Doctor of Divinity from Tennessee Temple Theological Seminary, Doctor of Letters from California Graduate School of Theology, and Doctor of Laws from Central University in Seoul, South Korea.
8.
In 1956, aged 22, Jerry Falwell founded the Thomas Road Baptist Church.
9.
When Jerry Falwell died, his son Jonathan became heir to his father's ministry, and took over as the senior pastor of the church.
10.
In 1971, Falwell co-founded Liberty University with Elmer L Towns.
11.
Jerry Falwell's accomplishments went beyond most clergy of his generation.
12.
Later that summer, as donations to the ministry declined in the wake of Bakker's scandal and resignation, Jerry Falwell raised $20 million to keep PTL solvent and delivered on a promise to ride the water slide at Heritage USA.
13.
Jerry Falwell strongly advocated beliefs and practices influenced by his version of biblical teachings.
14.
The church, Jerry Falwell asserted, was the cornerstone of a successful family.
15.
Jerry Falwell found the Vietnam War problematic because he felt it was being fought with "limited political objectives", when it should have been an all out war against the North.
16.
On his evangelist program The Old-Time Gospel Hour in the mid-1960s, Jerry Falwell regularly featured segregationist politicians like governors Lester Maddox and George Wallace.
17.
Twenty-eight years later, during a 2005 MSNBC television appearance, Falwell said he was not troubled by reports that the nominee for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John G Roberts had done volunteer legal work for gay rights activists on the case of Romer v Evans.
18.
Jerry Falwell told then-MSNBC host Tucker Carlson that if he were a lawyer, he too would argue for civil rights for LGBT people.
19.
When Carlson countered that conservatives "are always arguing against 'special rights' for gays," Jerry Falwell said equal access to housing and employment are basic rights, not special rights.
20.
Jerry Falwell repeatedly denounced certain teachings in public schools and secular education in general, calling them breeding grounds for atheism, secularism, and humanism, which he claimed to be in contradiction with Christian morality.
21.
Jerry Falwell advocated that the United States change its public education system by implementing a school voucher system which would allow parents to send their children to either public or private schools.
22.
Jerry Falwell urged his followers to buy up gold Krugerrands and push US "reinvestment" in South Africa.
23.
In 1994, Jerry Falwell promoted and distributed the video documentary The Clinton Chronicles: An Investigation into the Alleged Criminal Activities of Bill Clinton.
24.
The film's production costs were partly met by "Citizens for Honest Government", to which Jerry Falwell paid $200,000 in 1994 and 1995.
25.
The infomercial for the 80-minute videotape included footage of Jerry Falwell interviewing a silhouetted journalist who claimed to be afraid for his life.
26.
Later, Jerry Falwell seemed to back away from personally trusting the video.
27.
Jerry Falwell's legacy regarding homosexuality is complicated by his support for LGBT civil rights, as well as his attempts to reconcile with the LGBT community in later years.
28.
In October 1999, Jerry Falwell hosted a meeting of 200 evangelicals with 200 gay people and lesbians at Thomas Road Baptist Church for an "Anti-Violence Forum", during which he acknowledged that some American evangelicals' comments about homosexuality entered the realm of hate speech that could incite violence.
29.
Jerry Falwell added that "role modeling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children".
30.
Jerry Falwell believed the attacks were "probably deserved", a statement which Christopher Hitchens described as treason.
31.
Jerry Falwell set out in his Christian ministry as a fundamentalist, having attended a conservative Bible college and following strict standards of ecclesiastical and personal separatism; he was thus known and respected in Independent Fundamental Baptist circles, being praised in Christian fundamentalist publications such as The Sword of the Lord.
32.
Cultural anthropologist Susan Friend Harding, in her extensive ethnographic study of Jerry Falwell, noted that he adapted his preaching to win a broader, less extremist audience as he grew famous.
33.
Jerry Falwell further mainstreamed himself by aiming his strongest criticism at "secular humanists", pagans or various liberals in place of the racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic rhetoric that was common among Southern fundamentalist preachers but increasingly condemned as hate speech by the consensus of American society.
34.
Egyptian Christian intellectuals, in response, signed a statement in which they condemned and rejected what Jerry Falwell had said about Muhammad being a terrorist.
35.
Jerry Falwell filed a $10 million lawsuit against Penthouse for publishing an article based upon interviews he gave to freelance reporters, after failing to convince a federal court to place an injunction upon the publication of that article.
36.
Jerry Falwell sued for $45 million, alleging invasion of privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
37.
Jerry Falwell would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses.
38.
When Sloan insisted he had a tape, Jerry Falwell promised $5,000 if he could produce it.
39.
Sloan did, Jerry Falwell refused to pay, and Sloan successfully sued.
40.
Jerry Falwell appealed the decision with his attorney charging that the Jewish judge in the case was prejudiced.
41.
Jerry Falwell lost again and was made to pay an additional $2,875 in sanctions and court fees.
42.
In 1999, Jerry Falwell declared the Antichrist would probably arrive within a decade and "of course he'll be Jewish".
43.
In early 2005, Jerry Falwell was hospitalized for two weeks with a viral infection, discharged, and then rehospitalized on May 30,2005, in respiratory arrest.
44.
Jerry Falwell was released from the hospital and returned to his duties.
45.
Jerry Falwell's condition was initially reported as "gravely serious"; CPR was administered unsuccessfully.
46.
Jerry Falwell's funeral took place on May 22,2007, at Thomas Road Baptist Church after he lay in repose both at the church and at Liberty University.
47.
Jerry Falwell is interred at a spot on the Liberty University campus near the Carter Glass Mansion and Falwell's office.
48.
Jerry Falwell's last televised sermon was his May 13,2007, message on Mother's Day.
49.
At one point, prank callers, especially gay activists, constituted an estimated 25 percent of Jerry Falwell's total calls, until the ministry disconnected the toll-free number in 1986.