Biography

Jerry Lamon Falwell (born on August 11, 1933 in Lynchburg, Virginia) is a Fundamentalist Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservative activist. He is also founder of the Moral Majority movement, Liberty University, Thomas Road Baptist Church, and his television program, The Old Time Gospel Hour. His parents were Carey and Helen Falwell and he has a fraternal twin brother, Gene Falwell.

Falwell has been married to the former Macel Pate since April 12, 1958, and they have two sons (one, Jerry Jr., is a lawyer and the other, Jonathan, a pastor at Thomas Road Baptist Church) and one daughter (Jeannie, who is a surgeon).

Jerry Falwell has long associated himself with 'Bible-believing, independent, local-church oriented, Baptist fundamentalism' and leads services at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. He changed affiliations from the more traditional Baptist Bible Fellowship International to the mainly conservative Southern Baptist Convention.

The National Liberty Journal

In 1995, Jerry Falwell began publishing a politically conservative, monthly newspaper. Its articles include religious freedom cases, abortion, the homosexual-rights movement, as well as examinations of the United States government. It also features articles on biblical prophecy, religious freedom, and Christian family issues.

The NLJ's stated objective is to:

Inform Christians on the pertinent political, social and religious news of the day so that they are an educated voting bloc during election times; Identify the key religious freedom cases of the day; Encourage Christians by presenting modern interpretation articles on biblical prophecy, the Last Days, and the imminent return of Christ and 21st Century ministry strategies.

Thomas Road Baptist Church

Jerry Falwell attended High School at Brookville High School in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he was a student athlete (a multiple letterman), playing on both the football and the basketball teams as a starter. Jerry Falwell converted to Christianity as a young man in college and quickly felt a great burden to re-claim his home city for Christ. After attending Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, he founded Thomas Road Baptist Church.

In 1956, Jerry Falwell became the first pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Only 35 adults were recorded in attendance at the church's first meeting in the elementary school that he once attended. The church subsequently found its first permanent home in a structure which had been a Donald Duck Bottling Company building, a short distance from the location of what was at that time Brookville High School (subsequently Brookville Elementary School) and later the first campus of Liberty Baptist College, an institution of higher learning, associated closely with the church and with Falwell. From these humble beginnings, Thomas Road Baptist Church has grown to a membership in excess of 24,000, based in a 3,000 seat sanctuary.

Within weeks of founding his new church in 1956, Falwell began the Old-Time Gospel Hour, a daily local radio ministry and a weekly local television ministry. Nearly five decades later, this Old-Time Gospel Hour is now seen and heard in every American home and on every continent except Antarctica. Through the years, over three million persons have communicated to the Falwell ministries that they received Christ as Lord and Savior as a result of this radio and television ministry.

Liberty University

In 1971, Liberty University was founded.  Today, over 21,500 students from 50 states and 80 nations attend this accredited, liberal arts Christian university.

Some Social and Political Viewpoints

The Anti-Defamation League and its leader, Abraham Foxman have expressed strong support for Jerry Falwell's staunch pro-Israel stand, sometimes referred to as "Christian Zionism." Falwell has repeatedly denounced certain teachings in public schools and secular education in general, calling them breeding grounds for atheism, secularism, and humanism, which he claims are in contradiction with Christian morality. He advocates that the United States change its public education system by replacing it with a school voucher system that allows parents to send their children to either public or private schools. Jerry Falwell wrote in "America Can Be Saved" that "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them."

Falwell supported President Bush's Faith Based Initiative, but had strong reservations concerning where the funding would go and the restrictions placed on churches. "My problem is where it might go under his successors. I would not want to put any of the Jerry Falwell Ministries in a position where we might be subservient to a future Bill Clinton, God forbid. It also concerns me that once the pork barrel is filled, suddenly the Church of Scientology, the Jehovah Witnesses, the various and many denominations and religious groups, and I don’t say those words in a pejorative way, begin applying for money, and I don’t see how any can be turned down because of their radical and unpopular views. I don’t know where that would take us."

Books

* Church Aflame - Impact, 1971
* Capturing a Town for Christ - Revell, 1973
* Liberty Bible Commentary on the New Testament - Thomas Nelson, 1978
* Listen, America! - Doubleday, 1980
* The Fundamentalist Phenomenon - Doubleday, 1981
* Finding Inner Peace and Strength - Doubleday, 1982
* Liberty Bible Commentary - Thomas Nelson, 1982
* When it Hurts Too Much to Cry - Tyndale, 1984
* Wisdom for Living - Victor Books, 1984
* Stepping Out on Faith - Tyndale, 1984
* Champions for God - Victor Books, 1985
* If I Should Die Before I Wake - Thomas Nelson, 1986
* The Fundamentalist Phenomenon/the Resurgence of Conservative Christianity - Baker, 1986
* Strength for the Journey - Simon & Schuster, 1987
* The New American Family - Word, 1992
* Falwell: An Autobiography - Liberty House, 1997
* Fasting Can Change Your Life - Regal, 1998
* Achieving Your Dreams - World Publishers, 2006
* Building Churches of Dynamic Faith: A Five-Session Study Guide - World Publishers, 2006
* Dynamic Faith Journal - World Publishers, 2006

Education

B.A., Baptist Bible College (1956)

Honorary Degrees

D.D., Tennessee Temple Theological Seminary
D.Litt., California Graduate School of Theology
LL.D., Central University, Seoul, Korea

Link

Falwell Ministries
Liberty University - Jerry Falwell, Chancellor
The National Liberty Journal - Jerry Falwell, Publisher
Extended Biography