Rev. Falwell dead at 73

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The Rev. Jerry Falwell, one of the founders of contemporary religious conservatism and a friend and ally to Republican presidents, died today on the campus of the Lynchburg university he founded. He was 73.

He was discovered unconscious by an aide after missing a meeting at Liberty University.

“He was a wonderful human being,” said Michael Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Reagan told NBC News as the network initially announced Mr. Falwell’s death that the Baptist preacher and his father had “a moral partnership.”

Dr. Carl Moore, the Rev. Falwell’s physican, said he was found at 11:30 a.m. in his office “without a heartbeat” and that several efforts to resuscitate him in his office, en route to the hosital and at the hospital, were unsuccessful.

He was pronounced dead at 12:40 p.m.

“We was found without a pulse and never regained a pulse,” Dr. Moore said.

Dr. Moore said it is too soon to determine cause of death but speculated that it was due to heart failure or cardiac arrhythmia.

“He is known to have a heart condition and this … occurs without warning,” Dr. Moore said.

Mr. Falwell won national and international fame by using his leadership and entrepreneurial skills to combine religion and politics in a way never quite seen before in America.

In the world of campaigns and elections, he was best known for forming the Moral Majority in 1979, which transformed American politics by galvanizing long-dormant evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, who had been largely indifferent to national politics, and by bringing them in cooperative relations with conservative Catholics.

“He helped politicize Christian evangelicals …. and was able to make them a major political force,” historian Douglas Brinkley told Fox News this afternoon, saying that the term “moral majority” was “building on Richard Nixon’s ‘silent majority’” in reacting against the 60s counterculture, including the loosening of laws and moral standards against abortion and homosexuality.

“Here was Rev. Falwell talking about issues: we don’t believe in Roe v. Wade; we don’t believe in all aspects of equal rights for homosexuals; we believe … family values are being neglected,” Mr. Brinkley said.

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