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WASHINGTON - US evangelist Jerry Falwell, a leader of the religious right who battled in the political arena against abortion and homosexuality, died today after collapsing in his Virginia office.
Falwell, 73, was found unconscious in his office and was taken to a nearby hospital. He had a history of congestive heart problems.
"Dr. Falwell was found unconscious without a heartbeat at his office today at Liberty University around 11:30 a.m. by his associates," Dr. Carl Moore, his personal physician, told a news conference.
Falwell founded the Thomas Road Baptist Church in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1956 and rose to be one of the most prominent figures in the Religious Right, a powerful movement that seeks to redraw public policy along Christian lines.
He founded Liberty University in 1971 -- a conservative centre of higher learning -- and in 1979 started the Moral Majority organisation, which became a major vehicle for getting out the vote for the Republican Party.
He disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989 but it was resurrected as the Moral Majority Coalition, with an explicit political purpose, after President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.
In 1985 Falwell had a special encounter with late New Zealand's former Prime Minister David Russell Lange.
Lange, who died in 2005, was invited to debate the morality of nuclear weapons at the Oxford Union.
During the debate Lange famously responded to an interjector by saying: "Hold your breath just for a moment. I can smell the uranium on it".
With his gray hair and heavy jowls, Falwell was a familiar face on the televangelist circuit, while his views on a range of social issues firmly placed him on the far right of the American political spectrum.
Mr Falwell led a fight against abortion, homosexuality and feminism.
"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals, it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals," he said.
Mr Falwell used his influence within the Christian movement to lever political power.
Mr Falwell once said: "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country." In 1994 Mr Falwell produced a "documentary" called The Clinton Chronicles which sought to implicate the then president in a cocaine smuggling conspiracy.
During the 1980s he was an outspoken supporter of apartheid in South Africa, although more recently he denounced segregation.
Mr Falwell received international notoriety in the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
Several days after the attacks, Mr Falwell said: "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 secularise America.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley recalled Falwell's long influence on US politics.
"He became a leading voice by the time of Ronald Reagan's emergence in 1980 and the whole concept of family values was adopted by the Republican Party," Brinkley told Fox News.
"There's not a conservative in America that hasn't taken Jerry Falwell seriously. Liberty University's become a bellwether spot, a place where if you're going to be a real conservative and get the conservative vote, you have to go spend a day with Rev. Falwell."
Ronald Godwin, Executive Vice President at Liberty University, said he had eaten breakfast with Falwell on Tuesday morning.
"He was found unconscious where he was working in his office ... "Everything possible that could be done was done in a very timely way," Godwin said.
"He has left instructions to those of us who have to carry on and we will be faithful to those plans."
- REUTERS, INDEPENDENT
