By PETER APPLEBOME
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the fundamentalist preacher who founded the Moral Majority and brought the language and passions of religious conservatives into the hurly-burly of American politics, died yesterday in Lynchburg, Va. He was 73.
His death was announced by Liberty University, in Lynchburg, where Mr. Falwell, its founder, was chancellor. The university said the cause had not been determined, adding that he died in a hospital after being found unconscious yesterday morning in his university office.
Mr. Falwell went from a Baptist preacher in Lynchburg to a powerful force in electoral politics, at home in both the millennial world of fundamentalist Christianity and the earthly blood sport of the political arena. As much as anyone, he helped create the religious right as a political force, defined the issues that would energize it for decades and cemented its ties to the Republican Party. (more…)
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