Rev. Jerry Falwell – Sr
Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007) was an American evangelical Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and a conservative political commentator. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. He founded Lynchburg Christian Academy (now Liberty Christian Academy) in 1967, Liberty University in 1971, and co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979.
PERSONAL LIFE
Falwell and twin brother Gene were born in the Farview Heights region of Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of Helen and Carey Hezekiah Falwell. His father was an entrepreneur and one-time bootlegger who was agnostic. His grandfather was a staunch atheist. Jerry Falwell married the former Macel Pate on April 12, 1958. The couple had two sons and a daughter (Jerry Falwell, Jr., a lawyer; Jonathan Falwell, a pastor; Jeannie, a surgeon).
He graduated from Brookville High School in Lynchburg, Va., and from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri in 1956. This Bible college was unaccredited until 2001. Falwell was later awarded three honorary doctoral degrees. The honorary doctorates were 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.
THOMAS ROAD BAPTIST CHURCH
Main article: Thomas Road Baptist Church
In 1956, at age 22, Falwell founded the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, where he served as pastor. The Church went on to become a megachurch, and is now run by Jerry Falwell’s son Jonathan Falwell, who serves in the same capacity as his father. The original church was located at 701 Thomas Road.
LIBERTY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY
Main article: Liberty Christian Academy
During the 1950s and 1960s, Falwell spoke and campaigned against the U.S. civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. and the racial desegregation of public school systems by the U.S. federal government. Liberty Christian Academy (LCA, founded as Lynchburg Christian Academy) is a Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia, which was described in 1966 by the Lynchburg News as “a private school for white students.”
The Lynchburg Christian Academy later opened in 1967 by Falwell as a segregation academy and as a ministry of Thomas Road Baptist Church.
The Liberty Christian Academy is today recognized as an educational facility by the Commonwealth of Virginia through the Virginia State Board of Education, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and the Association of Christian Schools International.
LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
Main article: Liberty University
In 1971, Jerry Falwell founded Liberty University, the largest private, nonprofit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world. Liberty University offers over 350 accredited programs of study, with approximately 13,000 residential students and 90,000 online.
Falwell strongly advocated beliefs and practices he believed were taught by the Bible. The church, Falwell asserted, was the cornerstone of a successful family. Not only was it a place for spiritual learning and guidance, but also a gathering place for fellowship and socializing with like minded individuals. Often he built conversations he had with parishioners after the worship service into focused speeches or organized goals he would then present to a larger audience via his various media outlets.
WAR VS. COMMUNISM
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. In general, Falwell held that the president “as a minister of God” has the right to use arms to “bring wrath upon those who would do evil.”
CIVIL RIGHTS
On his evangelist program The Old-Time Gospel Hour in the mid 1960s, Falwell regularly featured segregationist politicians like Lester Maddox and George Wallace. About Martin Luther King he said: “I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left wing associations.”
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 IFB circles, being praised in far-right publications such as The Sword of the Lord. Though he never officially stated his rejection of this movement, the evidence of his life from the late 1970s onwards indicates he moved toward a conservative Evangelical standpoint to the right of mainline Protestantism or “open” Evangelicalism but to the left of traditional, separatist Fundamentalism. It was reported that he had refused to attend parties at which alcohol was served early in his life, but relaxed this stricture as he was increasingly invited to major events through the contacts he developed in conservative politics and religion.
His foray into national politics appears to be a catalyst for this change; when he established the Moral Majority which joined “Bible Christians” (Independent and conservative Southern Baptists) in a political alliance with Charismatics, Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons and others he rejected the level of separation preached by most movement Fundamentalists. Bob Jones University declared the Moral Majority organization “Satanic”, holding that it was a step toward the apostate one-world church and government body as it would cross the line from a political alliance to a religious one between true Christians and the non-born-again, as forbidden by their interpretation of the Bible. David Cloud’s Way of Life Literature also criticizes Falwell for associations with Catholics, Pentecostals and liberal Christians, tracing his alleged “apostasy” back to his role in the political Religious Right.
Though he never wavered in his belief in the inerrancy of the Bible (except for moderating its alleged view of racial differences, significance of baptism, and other concepts relative to his theology) and the doctrines conservative Christians widely see as essential to salvation, his rhetoric became generally more mellow, less militant and comparatively more inclusive from the 1980s onward. Cultural anthropologist Susan Friend Harding, in her extensive ethnographic study of Falwell, noted that he adapted his preaching to win a broader, less extremist audience as he grew famous. This manifested in several ways: among them were no longer condemning “worldly” lifestyle choices such as dancing, drinking wine, and attending movie theaters; softening rhetoric of apocalypse and God’s vengeful wrath; and shifting from outright Biblical patriarchy to a complementarian view of appropriate gender roles. He further mainstreamed himself by aiming his strongest criticism at “secular humanist”, pagans or various liberals in place of the racist, anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic rhetoric common among Southern Fundamentalist preachers but increasingly condemned as hate speech by the consensus of American society.
Barnabas Ministries UK 