Jerry Falwell, the outspoken evangelical Christian leader who became a strong but divisive right-wing force in US politics, died Tuesday aged 73, an official at his Liberty University said.
Falwell was found unconscious late Tuesday morning in his office at the university in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, the university's executive vice-president Ronald Godwin told a press conference.
The minister's doctor, Carl Moore, said efforts to resuscitate him in his office and later at the hospital were unsuccessful. He said Falwell had a known heart condition and he presumed the death was heart-related.
US President George W. Bush in a statement said he was "deeply saddened" by the death of Falwell, whom he hailed as "a man who cherished faith, family, and freedom."
However, the firebrand preacher was as provocative as he was influential.
Two days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, he blamed them on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians ... who have tried to secularize America."
Over a long career as a conservative firebrand, Falwell's Christian movement's alliance with Republican conservatives was key to helping elect Ronald Reagan to the presidency twice in the 1980s.
But his reputation was also marked by inflammatory statements against blacks, Muslims, Jews, civil and women's rights activists as well as liberals in general. In 2002 he called the Muslim prophet Mohammed "a terrorist."
Born to a well-off family in Lynchburg, in southwestern Virginia in 1933, Falwell joined the Baptist church in 1952. He was ordained four years later and launched his Thomas Road Baptist Church in a former soft drink bottling plant.
He popularized the church through his television show "The Old Time Gospel Hour," a prototype for modern "televangelism," and its congregation had grown to some 22,000 members in the years before his death.
He established Liberty University in his hometown, building it into an institution with more than 7,000 students.
He made his mark on national politics in 1979 with Moral Majority, a Christian political coalition with millions of members that aimed to elect conservatives, ban abortion and reinstate Christian prayer in schools.
Falwell "gave voice to a conservative people of faith who previously had been marginalized in politics," said Republican strategist and one of the political gurus of the religious right, Ralph Reed.
"Jerry has been a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation," said fellow evangelist and political activist Pat Robertson.
Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith poses a barrier among conservative Christians to his challenge for the US presidency in 2008, also praised Falwell as "a man of deep personal faith and commitment to helping those around him."
Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich hailed him as "a person totally sustained by his faith but able to work with many people from many different backgrounds without imposing rigidity on anyone else."
The Democratic gay and transgender rights group Stonewall, acknowledging that he had been an "adversary," said: "We extend to Reverend Falwell the simple dignity and deference that our own families seek as part of the American family."
The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against anti-Semitism, expressed sadness over Falwell's death, calling him "a dear friend of Israel."
"While we often did not see eye-to-eye with him on many of the key issues of the day, we always respected his strong devotion to his views."
The political journalist Christopher Hitchens, however, accused Falwell of anti-Semitism, describing Falwell as a "charlatan, a bully and a fraud."
"I think it's a pity that hell isn't real for him to go to it," Hitchens said on CNN.
"He proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you'll get yourself called reverend."
