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The Rev. Jerry Falwell said late Thursday he did not mean to blame feminists, gays or lesbians for bringing on the terror attacks in New York and Washington this week, in remarks on a television program earlier in the day...

Ezra Klein’s a smart guy, so I’m assuming this is a parody of liberal cluelessness rather than the real thing: "Does anyone believe a long association with Jerry Falwell's church would have done anything but help McCain in the Republican primary, and gotten Democrats tagged as anti-religion when they tried to point out Falwell's nuttiness in the general? It's fine to be a Christian extremist in America. It's fine to believe, and say publicly, that everyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their heart will roast in eternal hellfire, fine to believe that the homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina and the...

In the 1970's and early 80's a new cliche emerged based on the Bible and the New Testament passage (John 3:16) where Christ spoke of the need to be "born again." Celebrities including President Jimmy Carter had the description "born again Christian" applied to their names. The man who was once Richard Nixon's "hatchet man" as White House Counsel, Chuck Colson, authored a best-selling book "Born Again" describing his conversion to Christianity. This wave of publicity got the national media and political leaders alike thinking about this group of Americans, described as being in the tens of millions. Meanwhile, the...

The cover story of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine pronounced the demise of the religious right in America. The ranks are demoralized, split, and liberal evangelicals are taking over with a new agenda for the environment and the poor. On the editorial page, the acerbic Frank Rich coordinated his column with the magazine, concluding, “Inauguration Day 2009 is at the very least Armageddon for the reigning ayatollahs of the American right.” Wow! Just three years ago the press touted conservative evangelicals as the most powerful voting block in America. What happened? Nothing. The press is up to its old tricks....

Like a youngster stubbornly unwilling to admit that the Tooth Fairy isn't real, Keith Olbermann seems unable to accept that Tinky Winky is gay. Perhaps Keith should check with some of his more sophisticated friends. On last night's show, the Countdown host thought he was having fun at this NewsBuster's expense. Readers might recall my item from earlier this week, Gay Dumbledore: Somewhere, Jerry Falwell Is Smiling. View video here.

"It’s a children’s show, folks. To think we would be putting sexual innuendo in a children’s show is kind of outlandish." Spokesman for Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co., which licenses Teletubby characters in the United States. Yeah, outlandish. I mean, how could anyone imagine there could be undisclosed gay characters in pop-culture materials for children? That Jerry Falwell, what a Christian conservative crank! We all remember how the MSM rightly unloaded on him when he suggested that the Teletubby Tinky Winky could be a hidden homosexual, because "he is purple, the gay pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a...

Falwell's insurance policies pay off Liberty University debt Associated Press Staff Reports OneNewsNow.com August 26, 2007 LYNCHBURG, Va. - Dr. Jerry Falwell had life insurance policies worth $34 million and the money has been used to erase the debt of Liberty University, the school he founded. The televangelist's son, Liberty Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr., says his father named the university and Lynchburg's Thomas Road Baptist Church as beneficiaries to protect their future. The policies left $29 million to Liberty and another $5 million to the 22,000-member Thomas Road congregation, which Falwell had led, according to the News & Advance of...

There is a proposal to name part of the highway that borders Falwell's Liberty University after him. The local newspaper, very influential in the community of Lynchburg, is taking a poll. I attend Liberty's law school, and would like to see this proposal put into action. If you have time, please vote on the online poll. It is located on the left-hand side of the page. Thank you Freepers.

Racism propelled Falwell's career Wednesday, May 30, 2007 3:55 AM In his May 17 Dispatch Forum column, "Rev. Falwell changed the face of politics," appraising the late minister's legacy, Cal Thomas disingenuously characterized the Rev. Jerry Falwell's 1965 sermon, "Ministers and marches," as a critique of religious political activism. The sermon was actually an expression of Falwell's white-supremacist ideology. Falwell was an outspoken segregationist. Racism, not "values," launched Falwell and the Christian Right into politics. In a 1958 sermon to his Lynchburg, Va., congregation, one of many decrying civil rights, Falwell said, "When God has drawn a line of distinction,...

In 1984, the United States rectified a diplomatic anomaly when it formally recognized the Vatican and agreed to exchange ambassadors with the papal mini-state in Rome. But when Congress held hearings on the measure, at least one discordant voice was heard in dissent. Rev. Jerry Falwell, by then already a familiar figure as the head of the "Moral Majority" group, hustled to the Capitol to testify against the move. One might have expected Falwell's position to be based in the sort of theological antagonism between Baptists and Catholics that had its roots in the Reformation. But the roly-poly evangelical had...

LYNCHBURG, Va. — The Rev. Jerry Falwell was remembered by thousands Tuesday as a champion of conservative Christian values who fearlessly galvanized the religious right into a powerful force in American politics. The funeral returned Falwell to his roots — the Thomas Road Baptist Church, where he started as a young preacher in 1956 with just 35 parishioners in an old, abandoned soda bottling plant. More than 10,000 people attended the funeral, many forced into overflow seating. "He was a champion of the fundamental values that we hold dear," fellow Virginia evangelist Pat Robertson said as he entered the sanctuary....

Jerry Falwell's funeral is today, and now that he is being laid to rest, it is appropriate to dissect the vicious treatment he has received at the hands of his enemies since his unexpected demise. We might have guessed that Jerry Falwell's death would be the occasion for a nice little corpse-kicking spree, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant to witness. The San Francisco gays held an "anti-memorial" in light of Falwell's adamant opposition to gay rights (though Falwell was on record in his support for basic civil rights for gays). The posts at Democratic Underground and Kos were...

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, in light of recent remarks regarding the religious right I wanted to urge my colleagues to read the following Review & Outlook article from today's Wall Street Journal. I found the article very interesting and believe my colleagues will also. Call it whatever they may--the Christian right, the radical religious right, conservative Christians--it's clear that word of a vast new conspiracy against freedom, democracy and, oh yes, tolerance, is getting to be big news. This process oozed to a peak of sorts last week when Rep. Vic Fazio, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, condemned...

In many of his talks to Liberty University students, the Rev. Jerry Falwell emphasized the importance of "finishing well." On Tuesday, May 18, he was at the top of his game when he unexpectedly died in the college office where he was planning more expansions of the fast-growing university that he founded in 1971. The Rev. Falwell did a lot of things well, ticking off leftists right up to the end. How else would he have garnered the kind of tribute from a major newspaper's religion writer that was headlined, "Sigh of relief over Falwell death." To make sure no...

The nation’s leading Christian conservative is dead. On CNN’s “Crossfire” and other shows, I debated Jerry Falwell many times. I’m still trying to recover from that fact that he once called me “his favorite liberal.” But I will say: He was a true gentleman, always tough, and always fair. Jerry Falwell was a true believer. It’s too bad his brand of Christianity was so narrow and so negative. As a Christian myself, listening to Falwell, I often wondered if he and I had read the same Scripture. Certainly the Gospel of Jerry Falwell was not the Gospel of Jesus Christ....

WASHINGTON -- Speak not ill of the dead. That's easy advice to follow until you are remembering those who spoke a lot of ill while they were alive. Yes, I am talking about the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. The founder of the Moral Majority was found dead Tuesday at age 73 in his Lynchburg, Va., office. Reports that his heart had failed were greeted with grim irony by those who thought it had failed years earlier. This, after all, is the preacher who declared back in the 1980s that "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals." Of...

THE FIRST TIME the Rev. Jerry Falwell put his hands on me, I was stunned. Not only had we been archenemies for 15 years, his beliefs and mine traveling in different solar systems, and not only had he sued me for $50 million (a case I lost repeatedly yet eventually won in the Supreme Court), but now he was hugging me in front of millions on the Larry King show. It was 1997. My autobiography, "An Unseemly Man," had just been published, describing my life as a publisher of pornography. The film "The People vs. Larry Flynt" had recently come...

Ultimately, Jerry Falwell was a man who loved God and who loved people, one who tried to live out the greatest Commandment in his life. Comparisons have been made between Falwell and his contemporary (they both were in the spotlight in the early 1980's) President Ronald Reagan. Both men shared something in common from their early lives. They grew up in homes where their fathers were addicted to alcohol and their mothers were addicted to prayer. And they both went on to great achievement while being known as followers of Jesus Christ. Jerry Falwell's mother listened to a preacher on...

Commencement today marks new beginning for school he founded LYNCHBURG -- The Rev. Jerry Falwell planned to save America through his students, 3,598 of whom will graduate today from Liberty University inculcated with his evangelical, conservative vision. "The reason he built this place was to change the world," said Liberty student Mark Krom. "It's easy for me to buy into that. He was training champions for Christ." Falwell, 73, died from a heart condition Tuesday in his campus office. Thousands have come to the campus to view his body over the past several days. Falwell, in repose in a coffin...

The stand holding the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s coffin is the same one used for former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s coffin at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., in June 2004. Known as a bier, the stand was received by Lynchburg’s Whitten Funeral Home from its parent company. “We thought it would be fitting,” said Jerry Falwell Jr., Falwell oldest son. “I think dad would be honored because he respected President Reagan so much.” Falwell Sr. often said Reagan was the greatest president he had known in his lifetime. Reagan died three years ago at the age of 93. Falwell passed...

Even in death, the Rev. Jerry Falwell on Thursday was clutching a Bible, which had been his centerpiece for most of his adult life. And to the thousands who filed past his body in the grand lobby of Liberty University’s Arthur S. DeMoss Learning Center, remembrances were deeply personal. They remembered the man who loved to laugh, lived to minister, or simply scared the daylights out of you with his loud truck horn. Beyond his résumé - which includes being the founding father of LU, Thomas Road Baptist Church and the Moral Majority - Falwell’s legacy is built on little...

A lot of ink has been spilled, and a lot of electrons spent, in the past 24 or so hours, on this topic. And it would be very easy for me to simply sit down and write a defense of Jerry, or a critique, or to simply post a rant against the people who (as happened last night on Anderson Cooper 360) will simply choose to call names and hate, even as they cry out against his "hatred." But that's all been done before. Ever since I walked on campus at Liberty University in August of 1986, I've been defending...

Almost from the moment that Jerry Falwell's death was announced on Tuesday, the leftwing nutroots at the Democratic Underground began gleefully dancing upon his grave. Here are just a few of their hate rants about Falwell: Uncharitable or not, I am sorry his death was not more painful and drawn out. He did not deserve a relatively peaceful, painless and quick death. Rot in Hell Falwell! May Pat Robertson and James Dobson be next. I'm putting on my dancing shoes and am going to look for his grave! One more nail in the coffin for the hate crime that is...

No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates my warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals. Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN. He was such a...

On the heels of the DUmmies dancing on Jerry Falwell's grave as was fully illustrated in yesterday's DUFU EDITION, we are now hearing a few worried voices from DUmmieland about what effect this will have in future elections. One such voice is DUmmie earthlover who in this THREAD nervously asks, "Is Our Response To Falwell's Death Hurting Our Cause?" This is actually a good question on the part of DUmmie earthlover since I can guarantee that a lot of religious conservatives who sat on their hands during the 2006 Congressional elections will be showing up at the voting booths...

Secular militants have provided no shortage of intemperate, vicious, mean-spirited reactions to the death of Jerry Falwell but perhaps the most revealing came from Christopher Hitchens (author of a new book attacking religious delusions, “God is Not Great.”) Interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN, Hitchens seemed oddly obsessed with repeatedly applying a single—and singularly inappropriate -- adjective to the late Dr, Falwell. In the course of the interview, Hitchens decried “the empty life of this ugly little charlatan…” and then asked “who would, even at your network, have invited such a little toad….” Shortly thereafter, he declared, “The whole consideration...

Even in his final years, the Rev. Jerry Falwell personified the religious right for many Americans. But the pastor, who died Tuesday at age 73, was from a generation of leaders that many evangelicals came to view as members of an "old guard" whose approach was outdated. Many conservative Christians active in politics today believe that the way Falwell confronted political foes made evangelicals seem hateful. The younger leaders also have been pressing for a broader policy agenda beyond abortion and traditional marriage by trying to include AIDS care, environmental protection and education. "It's a very important debate about the...

WBC to picket the funeral of Rev. Jerry Falwell - at Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia - in religious protest and warning: "God is not mocked!,, Gal. 6:7. God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and all such Arminian heretic preachers - from fundamentalist evangelicals to openly gay Episcopalians and pedophile Catholics - all of whom have created the Satanic Sodomite Zeitgeist wherein America has irreversibly gone the way of Sodom. There is little doubt that Falwell split Hell wide open the instant he died. The evidence is compelling, overwhelming, and irrefragable....

Westboro Baptist Church is at it again, this time planning a protest of Jerry Falwell's funeral. Westboro Baptist Church (WBC Chronicles - Since 1955) 3701 SW 12th St. Topeka, Kansas 66604 785-273-0325 GodHatesFags.com Religious Opinion and Bible Commentaw on Current Events Tuesday, May 15,2007 NEWS RELEASE WBC to picket the funeral of Rev. Jerry Falwell - at Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia -in religious protest and warning: "God is not mocked!,, Gal. 6:7. God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and all such Arminian heretic preachers - from fundamentalist evangelicals to openly...

Though he was the nation's most prominent evangelist since Billy Graham, the Rev. Jerry Falwell was best known for preaching a political gospel rather than a biblical one. In that respect, Falwell - who died yesterday at age 73 - accomplished something remarkable: Along with such figures as Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, he gave powerful political voice to a sizable community, evangelical Christians, who long felt ignored by the national political leadership. To some, this proved a mixed blessing. True, his efforts in mobilizing these voters into a political force lay the groundwork for the election of Ronald Reagan...

JERRY FALWELL — SAY HELLO TO RONALD REAGAN! May 16, 2007 No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates my warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals. Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show...

No need to mourn his death, but bloggers go too far. If you were offended by some of Jerry Falwell's more bigoted and ignorant comments over the years, perhaps you felt a smile cross your face when you heard Falwell was dead. Lord knows there was plenty of blog-dancing around Falwell's corpse: "Jerry Falwell Finally Dead by God's Hand," read the headline from Gawker. "Apartheid supporter and Martin Luther King Jr. critic Jerry Falwell is finally dead. We guess if you say enough ignorant, intolerant s - - - over enough time, God finally does call you home . ....

Atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of the new book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," told CNN's Anderson Cooper last night he wishes there were a Hell just for Jerry Falwell. Asked if he thought Falwell were in heaven, Hitches, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, replied: "No. And I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to." In answer to the question of what stirred such vitriol in his heart, Hitches said: "The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary...

Falwell's judgment day The Rev. Jerry Falwell died Tuesday. A lifetime spent judging others has ended. The Rev. Jerry Falwell met with his maker Tuesday. We hope he was embraced by a loving, forgiving God. Falwell did enough judging for any one man here on Earth during his 73 years. His most dramatic proclamation -- one for which he would apologize but that cost him many supporters -- came in the days following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Falwell blamed it on gays, lesbians, feminists and liberals. He commonly attacked these groups as being responsible for the moral...

Over the past years, the liberal mainstream media has produced gushing tributes to deceased "secular saints" such as Princess Diana, John F. Kennedy, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. It would have been practically sacrilegious for these outlets to air any kind of immediate criticism of such figures. Yet, in the 24 hours or so since the death of Christian conservative leader Jerry Falwell, the mainstream media has given air time to every sort of criticism of the late evangelical. On Tuesday night's "Anderson Cooper 360," noted atheist Christopher Hitchens launched one of the most vitriolic attacks to date on Falwell....

I mean no disrespect to the dead, but I take the British view of obituaries, which is to try to capture the true public significance of the person who died, not just his good qualities. The truth about the Rev. Jerry Falwell is that he was a character assassin and hype artist who left little positive impact on the United States-and little negative impact either, for that matter. Besides founding Liberty University, he won’t be remembered as nearly as influential as he’s made out to be. .................. According to lore (and much of the coverage of his death), November, 1980...

COOPER: Author and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens is about as far from Jerry Falwell in his beliefs as one could get. Christian fundamentalists are a major target of his new book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." He joins me now from Raleigh, North Carolina. Christopher, I'm not sure if you believe in heaven, but, if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it? CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "VANITY FAIR": No. And I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to. COOPER: What is it about him that brings up such...

As soon as I heard the news on the radio yesterday, I already knew the title of today's DUFU edition---"DUmmies Dance On Jerry Falwell's Grave." And as you can see in this DUmmie THREAD titled, "The Rev. Jerry Falwell dies at 73," I was right on the mark. So what was Falwell's great "crime" that has stirred such hatred in the DUmmies in particular and the left in general? Oddly enough it wasn't really Falwell's specific beliefs that caused this antipathy. It was the fact that he was politically effective on behalf of conservatives. What happened is that before...

Sure, it's a basic Judeo-Christian tenet that we will be accountable to God for our actions on earth. But if a reverend from the religious left had died yesterday, do you think Diane Sawyer, immediately after reviewing controversial statements he had made in the course of his career, would conclude by archly observing that the reverend has "gone to answer to his Maker"? Neither do I. But that is just what the Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer did today on the occasion of the death of Jerry Falwell. After a brief biographical review, Sawyer stated "as the years...

In 1979, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, then the head of a congregation he founded in Lynchburg, Va., with a popular television show, founded a group called the Moral Majority that would have a lasting effect on American politics. Mr. Falwell mobilized socially conservative Christian voters and turned them into an influential voting bloc, helping to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Although the Moral Majority dissolved in 1989, the mobilized religious conservatives, the so-called values voters, helped carry President Bush to victory in 2000 and 2004. Mr. Falwell died yesterday after collapsing in his office at Liberty University, but...

See for example this thread first. TV preacher Jerry Falwell has now bid his final farewell to use here on Earth. With mixed grief and mirth Because he's in Heaven, not Hell...

While some mourned Tuesday after Rev. Jerry Falwell died at 73, there were also those who took his death in a different light. Falwell and his Moral Majority group widely condemned homosexuality, making him a controversial figure to many — especially the gay community. "Jerry Falwell was one of the first and most visible advocates of a more-than-30-year-old movement to bring fundamentalist Christianity into the political sphere in ways that are particularly vicious and painful to millions of LGBT people around the country," read a press release by the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center's executive director. “He...

LYNCHBURG, Va. - 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, Liberty's executive vice president, said Falwell had been found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse but noted that Falwell had “a history of heart challenges.”

The anti-Jerry Falwell venom flowed on weblogs even before the Moral Majority founder's death was confirmed. "I knew something had happened because I went outside and I was suddenly surrounded by Munchkins and they were singing," wrote Aaron on the joemygod blog in one of the comments that actually could be repeated. Bob Owens of NewsBusters.org, a blog hosted by the Media Research Center, said he was not a fan of Falwell but was "quite disgusted with the pathological hatred displayed by liberal bloggers in their reactions to his death." "Good riddens!!! (sic)" wrote joe on joemygod blog. Richard Weaver...

LYNCHBURG, Va. - 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, a school executive said. He was 73. Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges." "I had breakfast with him,...

He took too many Christians out of the mainstream. It's tempting, at the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, to wonder whether he finally found what he seemed to be looking for. Whatever his personal faith might have been, Falwell's public and very political spirituality seemed based on a belief in a vengeful God: AIDS was punishment for homosexuality, Sept. 11 was punishment (though he later recanted) for abortion, paganism and the ACLU. Oh yes, and homosexuality. So how might Falwell himself have characterized the sudden death, at 73, of a man who founded the Moral Majority and did as...

Some comments on the death of Jerry Falwell: "Jerry has been a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation." — evangelist Pat Robertson. ___ "Dr. Falwell's shadow falls across the face of the rebirth of conservative values in our nation, in the Southern Baptist Convention, and in the entire evangelical world. Only once in a generation will a man of his stature arise. We all owe him a debt of eternal gratitude." — Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. ___ "Unfortunately, we will always remember him as...

My wife and I have sent our condolences to Macel Falwell and her family. 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 increasing moral relativism. I join with the tens of thousands of his friends to mourn the passing of this extraordinary human being.

Jerry Falwell will be remembered as a man who strongly believed in his ideas and core values and acted upon them by dedicating his life. In the days when many politicians and leaders are putting their fingers to the wind maybe some of them will look at Falwell's example.

In the May issue of my National Liberty Journal newspaper, we featured the story of Megan Chapman, who last year was forced to make a choice between standing up for her faith in Jesus Christ or allowing school officials to silence her. She chose not to be silent, even though Russell Springs, Kentucky school officials told her she could not mention Jesus or her faith in her valedictorian speech. At the commencement, more than 3,000 people packed her school gymnasium, with members of the press in attendance. And before the principal of the school could finish making his opening remarks,...