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By Dr. Bill Bray

JERRY FALWELL will be remembered for many things, but it is fitting that he should graduate to glory in May at the end of the American academic year. His funeral, during graduation week at Liberty University, is a promotion to glory. I think he is smiling down from heaven at this. He was much more than a missionary pastor; his most enduring legacy will undoubtedly be his role as the father of post-modern Christian education.

He was always a missionary. He reached out and led the culture wars of the baby boom era—helping believers cope with the growing post-Christian culture that swept into control of American culture following World War II. He was the first champion or hero of what socialist academics and secularized media would eventually label “the religious right”.

Spiritual warfare was real to Jerry Falwell. He was publicly opposed by Satan as no American Christian I have known. From the first days that I served him while running a newsroom at the National Broadcasters Convention in the early 1970’s, I was puzzled why so many of my professional media colleagues seemed to hate him with such passion. Otherwise objective and reasonable journalists openly mocked him; homosexual and lesbian liberationists opposed him with such violence that at times I feared for his life.

This was strange because Jerry loved people. He remembered names and faces from years back—and I always remember his speaking in love even to his worst opponents. Because he said what he believed without thinking at times, he did put his foot into his mouth and was easy to quote out of context. Some in the media had a field day with him, but it was mostly sloppy reporting.

In reality, he seemed open to debate and reason, and there was never a doubt that he loved even his most bigoted critics. I can never forget his debates with pornographer Larry Flynt; love flowed from Jerry even though the two men represented opposite world views, and at times I felt Larry wanted to believe in Christ. He even claimed to be “born again” for a while but refused to give up his vice.

Many other critics melted in Jerry’s personal presence. However, his loyalty to Christ and the Bible were never in doubt. While some of his placard-carrying followers and staff embarrassed Christ—lacking ethics and even common grace at times—I never detected a mean bone in Jerry Falwell’s body.

In person, he was friendly and grandfatherly, even way back then in the 1970’s. He never spoke in the fear-mongering rhetoric of the professional copywriters who wrote his direct-mail appeal copy.

What’s more he was no hypocrite. I was terribly impressed by the sincerity and authenticity of his practical actions. Here are just a few examples:

• He didn’t just talk against the horrors of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision against human life. Instead, he reached out to girls with unplanned pregnancies. He started homes for unwed moms and helped find loving families to adopt children that would have otherwise been killed in the newly-opened abortion mills. This was at a time when few evangelical Christians were involved in compassionate ministries or even pregnancy centers.
• He didn’t just moan about the humanistic take-over of the government school systems by anti-Christian secularists. Instead he used his church-base to quietly build a successful alternative public school system. He provided education from pre-school to university that quickly excelled the results of the Virginia government schools.
• He had a sense of the whole body of Christ, not just Baptist fundamentalists. He refused to stay independent but joined the Southern Baptist convention, engaged with the NAE, conservatives within traditional protestant denominations, and formed working alliances with Jews and Roman Catholics.
• When the jihadist fanatics started to polarize religious communities and started hate campaigns, he welcomed Arabs, Indian Hindus and Muslims to the Liberty campus. He made his Christian university a place where people from non-Christian backgrounds were welcome to study alongside Christians.

In short, Jerry Falwell was a Christian who was unwilling to be relegated to the sidelines of culture and history. His many schools continue to emphasize personal piety and revival, foreign missions and leadership development as well as the liberal arts. He appears to have left an able team to manage things. Let us pray that they will be wise and transition the ministry to a new generation of leadership without destructive politics and infighting. If we have every needed a new generation of Jerry Falwells and Billy Grahams it is now.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Bill Bray has been a journalist, missionary and humanitarian since 1966. He turned 60 on February 23, 2007 and witnessed the rise of Jerry Falwell.