Sirrich3

LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built 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, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."

http://www.yahoo.com/s/581727

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clutchy

wow crazy.

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LK was treated unfairly

thanks X

WhiskeyPapa

We all have to go sometime.

He may have come across as kind of a fool in the media sometimes, but he built a darn fine school and made a positive impact in many lives.

I'm pretty sure he'll be surprised to hear that God wasn't as fired up about the same topics as Ol' Jerry.

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johnnymk

Memo

Good riddance.

Airencracken

One less bigoted loud mouthed zealot.

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"I remember my first orgasm, I just wish someone was there to share it with me..."11-05-2003 05:33 AM - Topane
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opiate of the masses. - Karl Marx
Hell is other people - Jean-Paul Sartre

Markel

http://www.gotapex.com/1175659-post1.html

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stay low... keep moving...

Memo

Respect is earned. Simply dying doesn't change that.

Houdini

Name calling? C'mon guys. You're better than that. I didn't agree with everything he said, but point out with what you disagree, etc. Don't stoop to that kind of stuff.

The "moral majority" wasn't much bigger than a few thousand people at its heyday, and the "religious right" is still as undefined as 1/0.

Airencracken

Agreed. I don't see why people will call someone an ******* every day he's alive, but as soon as he croaks, he's the nicest guy on earth.

Either way, I'm not shedding any tears over his death and I don't feel the need to respect him in death any more than I did when he was alive. Both are 0.

yippiekiyeh

But because he's dead, no need to kick dirt, or insult someone that cannot defend themselves anymore. If you dislike them, that's fine. But the dude is dead, he ain't going to be hearing your hatred.

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eSDee

Yeah even though I didn't like the guy at all, he's dead now so he doesn't have to answer to me (not like he did when he was alive either). Hopefully he got some things right while on Earth and now he's in the place he considered heaven. As long as God isn't a (insert name of all the cultures he insulted) then he'll be alright.

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3 days I dread to see arrive
3 days I hate to be alive
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yesterday today and tomorrow

ShawnLee

God bless, ye good and faithful servant.

For as much as people hate him, I can fairly guarantee that the man has done far more good than anyone in this thread or forum will likely ever do. If you can't appreciate that, well, then that's all we have.
That's all that I can add here in what's otherwise become a cesspool of hate for a good man.

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johnnymk

Unfortunately, like many other preachers, he spoke things that were true but not very popular or politically correct in today's world. But then so did Jesus, the disciples, the early prophets and numerous others still living today.

Skidude

I am not a bible scholar but I never saw anywhere in the Bible that Jesus preached hate against other groups of people. When it came down to it he was all about forgiveness and acceptance. It took man to twist his word into darkness.

LPMiller

Which true thing? That blacks shouldn't be around whites? That true thing? Or the whole 9/11 is because of the gays? That true thing? Jesus would be big on those things, would he?

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lpmiller
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johnnymk

Are you sure he said those two things? If he did, that was incorrect.

I was never a big fan of Falwell. I never felt that he nor Billy Graham or Pat Robertson or many of the televangelists were representatives of my faith. I never elected them. I do admire TV preachers such as Charles Stanley and James Kennedy, though.

But when they say things like that, it definitely wins no friends to the non-Christian world. They really should think before they speak.

LPMiller

Yes, he did those two things. He started his career as a man preaching the values of segregation. And yeah, he announced the same week as 9/11 that is was the fault of the gays, the feminists, and whomever else he didn't like.

I don't think most guys like that ever represent faith. They represent power. About the only tv preacher I ever had respect for was Billy Graham, because all he ever does is preach, he doesn't judge and condemn.

Airencracken

Your definition of good != my definition of good




Your definition of truth != my definition of truth

Memo

He did it all with twisted intentions and to spread his bull****. It's like building an orphanage just so you can rape the children.

johnnymk

Yes, he did preach love and forgiveness. But on his terms.

He said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And if anyone comes to Him, he will in way cast out. But if he is rejected, his heavenly Father would reject him. So forgiveness by the Father is conditonal on whether a person accepts/rejects the Son.

If a person accepts Jesus as their sole payment for their sins, they will immediately have forgiveness and eternal life. If they reject the only means which God has presented to a dying world, they will have to stand before God on judgement day and pay for all of the sins they committed during their life.

Since it will be too late by then, they will not be forgiven and will face the consequeences: eternal death.

oblongmelon

I like Billy Graham..Falwell though..I think he's "falling well" if you ask me..
Didn't he patronize the prossies at one time?

Napoleon54

The who?

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The unsustainable cannot be sustained.

Markel

I think you're thinking of Jimmy Swaggart.

The Happy Squirrel

wow this got hot way to fast and just reading it now they is no way i can step nto the fray.

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Lion face / lemon face!

Memo

Jerry Fallwell...

On Sept. 11: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.' "

On AIDS: "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals."

On homosexuality: "I believe that all of us are born heterosexual, physically created with a plumbing that's heterosexual, and created with the instincts and desires that are basically, fundamentally, heterosexual. But I believe that we have the ability to experiment in every direction. Experimentation can lead to habitual practice, and then to a lifestyle. But I don't believe anyone begins a homosexual."

On Martin Luther King Jr.: "I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations."

On Martin Luther King Jr., four decades later: "You know, I supported Martin Luther King Jr., who did practice civil disobedience."

On public education: "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."

On the separation of church and state: "There is no separation of church and state."

On feminists: "I listen to feminists and all these radical gals. ... These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men; that's their problem."

On global warming: "I can tell you, our grandchildren will laugh at those who predicted global warming. We'll be in global cooling by then, if the Lord hasn't returned. I don't believe a moment of it. The whole thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."

On Bishop Desmond Tutu: "I think he's a phony, period, as far as representing the black people of South Africa."

On Islam: "I think Mohammed was a terrorist. I read enough of the history of his life, written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war."

On Jews: "In my opinion, the Antichrist will be a counterfeit of the true Christ, which means that he will be male and Jewish, since Jesus was male and Jewish."

Rest in peace, you blowhard.

Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2166220?nav=tap3

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Also, I didn't see anyone say they took pleasure in his death.

Markel

It seems that some are dancing on his grave.

zenbooty

After these past 7 years some of us are looking for any reason to dance we can get.

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zenbooty

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature.../jerryfalwell/


The stone is cast

Jerry Falwell spent a career demonizing others. Upon his death, what else could he expect in return?

By Alan Wolfe
May 15, 2007

One never wants to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Jerry Falwell, how can one not? Falwell will always be remembered for his "700 Club" comment in the wake of Sept. 11: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'" Even though Falwell later apologized, the damage had been done: A sacred moment had been used for profane purpose.

And that, really, is Falwell's legacy. To the religious life of the United States he made no significant contribution. But to the political life of the country, he made one: He founded the Moral Majority. In so doing, Falwell managed to take something holy -- one does not have to be a Christian to admire the life and teachings of Jesus Christ -- and turned it into something partisan and divisive. Falwell, the quintessential conservative Christian, was always more conservative than Christian. To the extent that history will remember him, it will be as a politician, not as a preacher.

Even Falwell's political contribution, despite the success of the Republicans during the Reagan years, left a mixed legacy behind. But the Moral Majority disbanded in 1989, prompting the inevitable thought that Falwell's ideas were neither moral nor in the majority. The movement of conservative Protestants into the base of the Republican Party was far too important a task to be entrusted to a man as oblivious to public relations as Falwell. Once the Ralph Reeds and Karl Roves took over the task of blending religion and politics, there was no room for Falwell. Longing for Washington, he had to settle for Lynchburg, Va.

But then there was cable television, the perfect medium for someone as shallow as this man. Falwell appeared so many times on cable news that one tended to forget how little influence he actually wielded. Had it not been for cable television, Falwell would have been forgotten long ago (and I would not be writing about his legacy). He was perfect for the world created by Fox: extremist, polarizing, Manichaean. (The Manichees, a Persian sect that for a time attracted the great Saint Augustine, adhered to a black-and-white reality in which evil was always in an endless struggle with the good.) Five minutes of hate followed by a commercial break: It is not a format fit for all, but for Falwell, it fit like a glove.

Conservative Christianity has been trying to recover from Falwell for the past two decades. Just as his political views were too buffoonish to make the Moral Majority a reality, his religious sensibilities were too shallow to spread evangelical Protestantism. Evangelicalism grew in the exurban megachurches, and the megachurches, implicitly and occasionally explicitly, rejected Falwell's approach to the faith. Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Bill Hybels -- these inclusive preachers inherited the mantle of Billy Graham, not Falwell and his great rival Pat Robertson. With the maturation of American evangelicalism has come an interest in social justice, environmentalism and peace. The people who represent evangelical Protestantism's future want little or nothing to do with injustice, pollution and war.

Of course America's megachurches offer a thin theology equivalent to 12-step therapy. But Falwell's contribution to American religion was even less than that. Falwell's university -- Liberty University -- never achieved anything resembling serious academic status, although it did produce a decent enough basketball team. Falwell's church, Thomas Road Baptist Church, with its Scopes-trial era insistence on hell and damnation, was not what American Christians wanted to hear. Falwell's 1980 book, "Listen, America," is an embarrassing string of clichés. "Sin is a transgression of God's law and God's law is unalterable," Falwell wrote. "To sin is to voluntarily disobey God and His divine laws." But it was not the sinfulness of human beings that preoccupied Falwell; it was the sinfulness of the country in which they lived: "Sin brings reproach upon a people. This is the reason we are in a nosedive as a nation." Less than 50 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Falwell could write of America that "we have become one of the most blatantly sinful nations of all time." Falwell's theology, such as it was, never made clear how America could be both the promised land and Gomorrah at the same time.

Instead of pondering Jerry Falwell's legacy, we would be better off asking how this man ever became a public figure in the first place. America has had more than its share of religiously inspired demagogues -- Dr. Fred Swartz, Billy James Hargis, Carl McIntyre come to mind -- but they are forgotten figures, marginal even to the times in which lived. One would like to believe that the United States has become a bigger and better country since the days when men like them preached about captive nations and denounced the pernicious influence of rock 'n' roll. But then there is Jerry Falwell. In death, as he did in life, he reminds us that demagoguery never dies; it just changes its form. Jerry Falwell expressed great hate for a lot of his fellow Americans. It is no wonder that so many of them will greet his death with something less than love.

mechmike0034

http://www.tmz.com/2007/05/15/jerry-falwell-1933-2007/

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