Reese is absolutely correct to remind readers that Falwell was first and foremost a pastor, who led a congregation of 35 persons to rent a metal building in Lynchburg, Va., in the late 1950's.  That was the beginning of the Thomas Road Baptist Church.  He was first and last a pastor.  Then Reese and Hampton point out the leading role of Falwell in organizing evangelicals through the Moral Majority in the late 1970's and 1980's.  Falwell wanted to give evangelical Christians a place to stand politically in this country.  Hampton comments that the name was probably a bad choice.  He says that the Moral Majority was "neither."  I resonate with that remark primarily because of my political differences with Falwell.  I saw him as a spokesman for the right wing of the Republican Party.  That is not where I stand, nor is it a place where a considerable number of people in this country stand.  Majority?  How would anyone know that?  Yet, despite my differences, I have a certain admiration for him because of his ability to organize people.  This was one of his gifts.

He was also an educator/teacher.  Every pastor should teach as well as preach.  Sermons should be a blend of exhortation and instruction.  Falwell organized and established what is now Liberty University.  He was the Chancellor of the school at the time of his death.  He wanted to take higher education back to its Christian roots in this country.  Remembering that Harvard, Yale, and Brown and other schools were started as religious based schools, Falwell intended that Liberty University provide Christian students a place where they could receive the kind of education which Christian students in this country received some 400 years ago.

I understand what Falwell was trying to do.  He and the evangelical right and the right wing of the Republican Party have been trying to accomplish the reformation of religious studies and theological education in this country for more than 40 years.  I grew up in the midst of that which they have been  attempting to change.  Though I support their freedom to do what they have done, I don't agree with their interpretation of religious studies or theological education over these years--not entirely.  They have made some simplistic assumptions about themselves, the good guys, and about others--liberals, the bad guys, who disagree with the good guys--which are not true.  One of the most important of which is the assumption that anyone who disagrees with them does not believe the Bible.  Absolutely false.  We may not agree on how the Bible should be interpreted in some places, but we do believe the Bible; we preach from it; and we build our ministries around its truths.

Some would call Falwell a modern day prophet.  Maybe in some ways he was a prophet, but I would hesitate to put him in the same category of the great Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Hosea.  He was unpopular with some, as were these others.  He was unpopular with the Democrats largely, but he was a court prophet for the Republicans.  In my opinion, he was too tied in with their narrow agenda to be a true prophet.  A prophet has to be a bigger person with a larger outlook than that.  A prophet is someone more on the line of Billy Graham, who realized early on in his ministry that he should not be in anyone's political camp or in any politician's back pocket.  He has spoken the word of God effectively to the powerful in all political parties here and in many of them around the world.

My sympathy goes out to the Family of Jerry Falwell as it goes out to the family of anyone who has lost a loved one.  I would hesitate, however, to canonize him.