Jerry Falwell: Full obit
Posted: Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 12:13 pmLYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) — The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73.
Ron Godwin, the university’s executive vice president, said Falwell was found unresponsive late Tuesday morning and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later. …
Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell’s physician, said the evangelist had a heart rhythm abnormality. He said Falwell was found without a pulse and never regained consciousness. …
Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents. …
Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.
“I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved,” Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987. … Read full obituary
