"The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who led a movement of conservative Christians into the political realm over 30 years, was a Lynchburg Baptist preacher whose visits to Charlottesville usually sparked interest and sometimes controversy.

More than 200 students protested his Oct. 2, 1984, speech that drew a crowd of more than 1,500 to the University of Virginia’s Old Cabell Hall in which he challenged the political left head-on in characteristic Falwellian fashion.

“I could neither be true to my country nor my God if I were to separate my religious convictions from my political views,” Falwell said that Tuesday night. “We are here tonight to see that the American Civil Liberties Union, that the National Organization of Women and that other sundry groups in this country do not impose their non-values on us.”

“This was not his territory,” Larry J. Sabato, head of UVa’s Center for Politics, said Tuesday of the Moral Majority founder.

“Jerry Falwell was a double-edged sword politically, and certainly nationally,” Sabato said. “His peak in political power was 1980, and it was downhill from there” as he became a dangerous figure to have a political endorsement from even as soon as 1981 in Virginia’s governor’s race. Falwell endorsed GOP nominee J. Marshall Coleman, which helped Democrat Charles S. Robb that year, Sabato said.

Heather Warren is an associate professor of religious studies at UVa and has studied Falwell since the 1980s.

Controversy aside, Falwell should be remembered as a man who mobilized a portion of the population whose members felt they were being ignored, Warren said.

“His ability to articulate and speak for a segment of the American population when they were feeling voiceless and powerless is very important,” Warren said. “I’m not going to say if it was good or bad, but it was a significant moment and it did have a lasting influence.”

Falwell was also among a group of early televangelists who were able to embrace technology and use it to spread their message nationwide, she said.

In 1997, Falwell famously met Larry Flynt, publisher of the raunchy Hustler magazine, for a debate at UVa a decade after Falwell unsuccessfully sued Flynt over a mock ad in a case the U.S. Supreme Court used to redefine libel law.

Characteristically, Falwell had befriended Flynt by the time of their joint appearance as they somewhat playfully debated First Amendment issues and pornography.

“I love Larry and he loves me - we just have a strong disagreement,” Falwell announced at the UVa joint appearance during which students found him friendly and charismatic.

Though others may try to fill the political and religious void left by his passing, the conservative evangelical movement he helped start has diversified and grown far beyond the Moral Majority, Warren said.

“He’s a giant of our generation,” said the Rev. Harold L. Bare, pastor of Covenant Church on Rio Road the past 25 years.

“I do think there is a vacuum that is growing in America in conservative circles as Dr. [Billy] Graham is less public. Who is our advocate? Who is our advocate for a moral force for Christianity in America?” Bare said.

Falwell impressed people as “an approachable person. He was a down-to-earth person [who] started a major university and worldwide training for ministers. He has been a moral force.”" (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 16, 2007)

Daily Progress staff writer Rob Seal contributed to this story.