c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Fifty years after starting his ministry in Lynchburg, Va., the Rev. Jerry Falwell will unveil a new 6,000-seat sanctuary for his Thomas Road Baptist Church on Sunday (July 2).

“Very few people are blessed with the privilege of starting a ministry at age 22 and then 50 years later, at age 72, see the original dream become a reality,” Falwell said in an interview.

“Our original dream, as we started the new church with 35 people, was to build a church and out from that church, a full-blown Christian education system from preschool through a Ph.D.”

Falwell said he has fulfilled that dream with a 24,000-member church and Liberty University, which has grown from 154 students in 1971 to 23,000 residential and long-distance students. The church, which became affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1990s, also spawned a Christian day school with students from preschool through 12th grade and has long included a television ministry.

From this complex of ministries on what he calls “Liberty Mountain,” Falwell emerged as a key leader of the religious right. And though some of his influence may have waned, he continues to be a local pastor with a national audience.

A decade and a half after he shut down his Moral Majority organization, Falwell’s latest political efforts stem from his Moral Majority Coalition, which he began shortly after the 2004 election to encourage evangelicals to “vote values” at the polls.

James J.H. Price, co-author of “Jerry Falwell: An Unauthorized Profile,” said Falwell’s influence continues more on an individual than an organizational basis. That influence contributed to the May appearance of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as a commencement speaker at Liberty University.

“They know he still has some power,” Price said of politicians. “He’s a guy that commands a lot of attention but the Moral Majority (Coalition) as a movement, I don’t think it has great power, not like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.”

Ron Godwin, Falwell’s spokesman, said the church’s regular attendance ranges from 3,500 to 5,000 each Sunday, but larger numbers than usual are expected to fill the new sanctuary for the special occasion. The sanctuary is part of an $80 million complex that includes more than 1 million square feet of “educational, recreational and worship space” on property adjoining the university, Falwell said.

“It’s a considerable milestone when you think about 50 years,” said Price, a professor of religious studies at nearby Lynchburg College. “It started as a very small church.”

Price said some of the church’s initial growth stemmed from racial tension in the Southern setting.

In a 1958 sermon titled “Segregation or Integration: Which?”, Falwell made the following comment about the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which outlawed public school segregation: “If Chief Justice (Earl) Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made.”

Falwell said he didn’t recall that sermon, but attributed it to being raised in segregated times.

“As a youngster growing up in the South, all the pastors I knew and all the people I knew were pretty well ingrained in the culture of the South,” he said. “The spirit of God brought me out of that early in my ministry.”

He said he later baptized blacks in his predominantly white church, and African-Americans now comprise about 14 percent of the Liberty University student body.

Falwell said he had another change of heart over the years regarding his role in politics.

“Early in my ministry, I did not believe that ministers should be involved in political matters,” he said, but that changed after abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973. “It was not until 1979, following Roe v. Wade about six years, that I completely reversed myself and formed the Moral Majority.”

He dissolved the conservative Christian ministry 10 years later.

“By that time, the religious right, that is religious conservatives, had been created, organized and, very frankly, have not needed a single leader,” Falwell said. “But I’ve been an outspoken conservative and I am to this day.”

Despite some changes in views, Falwell said most of his ministry has represented consistency, serving 50 years as pastor of the same church and 35 years as founder and chancellor of Liberty University.

But talk of retirement is out of the question, said Godwin, Falwell’s spokesman.

“He had a couple of serious health episodes last year (but) he’s enjoying a real revitalization,” Godwin said. “He keeps me worn out.”

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Editors: To obtain file photos of Falwell and new photos of Thomas Road Baptist Church, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.