The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the US evangelical Christian leader, who both supporters and critics alike acknowledged was instrumental in building a conservative Christian movement as a potent political force in the United States, has died aged 73.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the US evangelical Christian leader, who both supporters and critics alike acknowledged was instrumental in building a conservative Christian movement as a potent political force in the United States, has died aged 73. His founding of the university in 1971, of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in 1956 and, perhaps most prominently, of the Moral Majority movement in 1979, were cornerstones of a remarkable career in which Falwell was both admired and severely criticised for a media-fuelled, high-profile leadership of conservative US evangelicals. Falwell’s death, said fellow evangelist Billy Graham, "leaves a gigantic vacuum in the evangelical world".
