JERRY FALWELL: On to his eternal reward …

(UPDATED, 4:10 P.M.)

LYNCHBURG, Virginia — The Rev. Jerry Falwell has died, a Liberty University executive said Tuesday. He was 73.

Earlier, the executive said Falwell was hospitalized in “gravely serious” condition after being found unconscious in his office.

Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of Falwell’s Liberty University, said Falwell was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but “he has a history of heart challenges.”

“I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast,” Godwin said. “He went to his office, I went to mine and they found him unresponsive.”

Falwell, a television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority, became the face of the religious right in the 1980s. He later founded the conservative Liberty University and serves as its president.

Falwell survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest.

SOURCE: 1:55 P.M. TUESDAY, AP VIA CNN

More on the passing of the Rev. Falwell

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Jerry Falwell, the fundamentalist preacher who founded the Moral Majority and helped bring the language and passions of religious conservatives into American politics, died today shortly after he was found unconscious in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. He was 73 years old.

Mr. Falwell had a history of heart problems, and probably died of cardiac arrythmia, his physician, Dr. Carl Moore, said today. Mr. Falwell had no pulse when he was found, the doctor said, and efforts to revive him at the university and on the way to the hospital were unsuccessful.

Dr. Moore said Mr. Falwell was pronounced dead at 12:40 p.m. Eastern time.

The university’s executive vice president, Ronald Godwin, told a news conference this afternoon that he had had breakfast with Mr. Falwell at 8:30 a.m., and said the university mourns his loss.

“Dr. Falwell is a huge, huge leader here in this area and in the nation at large,” Dr. Godwin said.

Mr. Falwell went from being a Baptist preacher in Lynchburg to carving out a powerful role in national electoral politics. He was at home in both the millennial world of fundamentalist Christianity and the earthly blood sport of the political arena. As much as anyone, he helped create the religious right as a political force, defined the issues that would energize it for decades and cemented its ties to the Republican Party.

He came to prominence first as a televangelist, through his “Old-Time Gospel Hour” programs, and then as the leader of the Moral Majority, an organization whose very name drew a vivid, divisive battle line in the sand of American politics.

After the organization disbanded in 1989, he remained a familiar and powerful figure, supporting George W. Bush when he ran for president, as he did his father George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before him, mobilizing conservatives and finding his way into a thicket of controversies.

Mr. Falwell grew up in a household that he described as a battleground between the forces of God and the powers of Satan. In his public life he often had to walk a fine line between the certitudes of fundamentalist religion, in which the word of God was absolute and inviolate, and the ambiguities of mainstream politics, in which a message warmly received at his Thomas Road Baptist Church might not play as well on the NBC Nightly News.

As a result, he was a lightning rod for controversy and caricature. He apologized, for example, after televised remarks suggesting that the 9/11 terrorist attacks reflected God’s judgment on a nation spiritually weakened by the American Civil Liberties Union, providers of abortion and supporters of gay rights, and after he called Muhammad a terrorist. He was ridiculed for an article in his National Liberty Journal that suggested that Tinky Winky, a character in the “Teletubbies” children’s show, could be a hidden homosexual signal, because the character was purple, had a triangle on its head and carried a handbag.

But behind the controversies was a shrewd, savvy operator with an original vision for affecting political and moral change. He rallied religious conservatives to the political arena at a time when most fundamentalists and other conservative religious leaders were inclined to stay away, and helped pulled off what once seemed the impossible task of uniting religious conservatives from many faiths and doctrines over what they had in common, rather than focusing on the differences that kept them apart.

He had numerous failures as well as successes, and always remained a divisive figure, demonized on the left in much the way that Senator Edward M. Kennedy or Jane Fonda were on the right. But political experts agree he was an enormously influential figure.
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FROM CBN.COM (PAT ROBERTSON’S SITE):
Statement from Pat Robertson
Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Chancellor of Regent University expressed his admiration for Falwell after receiving the news of his passing.

“My wife and I have sent our condolences to Macel Falwell and her family,” he said in a released statement. “Jerry has been a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation. Liberty University is a magnificent accomplishment and will prove a lasting legacy. Jerry’s courage and strength of convictions will be sadly missed in this time of moral relativism. I join with the tens of thousand of his friends to mourn the passing of this extraordinary human being.”

Statement from Billy Graham
Evangelist Billy Graham, known for his worldwide crusades, also expressed condolences on the death of his friend.

“Jerry Falwell was a close personal friend for many years. We did not always agree on everything, but I knew him to be a man of God. His accomplishments went beyond most clergy of his generation. Some of my grandchildren have attended, and are attending, Liberty University. He leaves a gigantic vacuum in the evangelical world. I am praying for his family, and especially the university that he headed.”
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