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From BBC News:
US evangelist Jerry Falwell dies
The Reverend Jerry Falwell, a leading US conservative evangelist, has died in hospital in Virginia after being found unconscious in his office.
Doctors gave Mr Falwell emergency treatment at Lynchburg General Hospital but could not revive him.
US President George W Bush paid tribute to Mr Falwell, 73, who he said lived a life of “faith, family, and freedom”.
Mr Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority movement in the 1970s, had a history of heart problems.
He rose to prominence after founding Liberty University, a conservative educational establishment in his home town of Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1971.
Mr Falwell was regarded as the father of the political evangelical movement.
The article ends with:
Mr Falwell was a strong opponent of abortion, homosexuality and many other issues that conflicted with his fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
His statements on feminism and race issues often outraged liberals.
In 2002, he sparked anger across the Muslim world by calling the Prophet Muhammad a “terrorist”. He later apologised.
Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks, he said that gays, atheists, civil-rights activists and legal abortions in the US had angered God and “helped this happen”.
In 1999, he denounced the BBC TV children’s show The Teletubbies, because he believed one character, Tinky Winky, was homosexual.
Soulforce released a statement:
Soulforce Observes the Passing of Rev. Jerry Falwell
Today, the staff and board of directors of Soulforce observe the passing of Rev. Jerry Falwell and offer our sincere condolences to his family, the members of Thomas Road Baptist Church, and the students at Liberty University.
“While Soulforce has a long history of nonviolent direct action at Jerry Falwell Ministries, our adversary was never Jerry Falwell, but rather the misinformation about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people espoused by Falwell and so many others,” said Soulforce Executive Director Jeff Lutes.
Soulforce was founded in October, 1999, when Rev. Dr. Mel White and his partner, Gary Nixon, took 200 delegates to meet with Rev. Falwell and his representatives. The purpose of the meeting was to help end hate speech and violence against sexual minorities. Prior to coming out as a gay man, White ghost wrote two books for Falwell (If I Should Die Before I Wake and Strength for the Journey).
Upon hearing the news of Rev. Falwell’s death, White said “It breaks my heart to think that Jerry died without ever discovering the truth about God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children. I sincerely hope that one day his school and his church will have a change of heart.”
Soulforce remains committed to changing hearts and minds and ending the political and religious oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.