Jerry Falwell had no greater ambition than to serve God as a father, a good neighbor and as a local pastor. Yet when he saw direct challenges to the ideas and ideals that he believed honored God and fortified this country, he could not stand idly by.

Jerry Falwell was born 1933 in Lynchburg, Virginia, the city he loved and lived in most of his life. Jerry initially attended Lynchburg College but later transferred to and graduated from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri in 1956.

That same year, at age 22, Jerry became the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, back in Lynchburg. Jerry and thirty-five adults and their children worshiped in the Mountain View Elementary School in Lynchburg, Virginia for the church’s first Sunday worship service. Determined to find a real home for his church, Jerry secured the Donald Duck Soft Drink Bottling Company building as the church’s home.

In a matter of weeks, Jerry started a radio ministry. Six months, later he began to videotape the Old Time Gospel Hour in a local studio and air the program on a local television station. By 1964, the congregation moved into its third auditorium on Thomas Road. Today Thomas Road Baptist Church is one of the largest churches in America, with a membership of 22,000.

With the goal of training champions for Christ to go into all walks of life, the Thomas Road Baptist Church founded Lynchburg Christian Academy in 1967 and Liberty University in 1971. From its inception, this unique educational system stressed academic excellence and the local church in its Christ-centered, action-oriented curriculum. Today, Liberty University has 350 fulltime faculty, a current enrollment of over 10,000 residential students on a 4,400 acre campus.

In 1979, Jerry founded the Moral Majority. Moral Majority campaigned on issues important to maintaining an articulate Christian conception of moral law, a conception he believed represented the opinions of the majority of Americans. With a membership of millions, the Moral Majority was one of the largest conservative lobby groups in the US. A few of the issues for which the Moral Majority campaigned included:
• outlawing abortion
• Protecting the State of Israel
• Opposing the state recognition and sanctioning of the homosexual lifestyle
• Protecting of family life and traditional values
• Curbing media that promote what he called an ‘anti-family’ agenda

Jerry was the organization’s best-known spokesperson throughout the 1980s. The organization dissolved officially in 1989.

Jerry strongly advocated beliefs and practices he felt were taught by the Bible. He repeatedly denounced policies, teachings, legislators and opinion makers that violated Christian morality. Jerry did not give himself the luxury of indifference when it came to confronting moral issues. He spoke out and encouraged others to speak out, in the historic tradition of pastors who spoke against the evils of their day – from Chrysostom and Athanasius to Luther and Bonhoeffer.

It was May of this year that Jerry went home to be with Jesus. He is succeed by his two sons in roles leading the two institutions he loved most — Jerry Falwell, Jr. serves as Chancellor of Liberty University while Jonathan Falwell is the Senior Pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church.

The men of 2007 honor Jerry Falwell for his devotion to his church and his family, his commitment to publicly confronting moral evils, and his passion to educate a next generation in vital Christian faith and worldview.

Stand in the Gap 2007
Washington, D.C.
October 6, 2007