Falwell, evangelist who blamed 9/11 on liberals, dies aged 73

The US evangelical movement lost one of its most powerful and influential leaders yesterday when Jerry Falwell ­ a man who lay part of the blame for the 9/11 attacks on liberals and gays ­ died after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a conservative establishment that he founded in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Mr Falwell, who was 73, had a history of congestive heart problems. Ron Godwin, executive vice-president of the university, said: "I had breakfast with him, and he was fine then. He went to his office, I went to mine and they found him, unresponsive."

The televangelist rose to prominence in the 1970s when he founded the Moral Majority, an organisation that used the conservative Christian movement to create genuine political power. Until its dissolution in 1989 the movement was the face of the religious right in the US as Mr Falwell led a fight against abortion, homosexuality and feminism. "Aids is not just God's punishment for homosexuals, it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals," he said.

Mr Falwell once said: "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

In 1994 Mr Falwell produced a "documentary" called The Clinton Chronicles which sought to implicate the then president in a cocaine-smuggling conspiracy. It later emerged that "an investigative reporter", who featured in silhouette in a trailer for the film and claimed that Mr Clinton was organising the assassination of journalists, was the film's producer.

Some religious figures were quick yesterday to pay tribute to Mr Falwell.

Pat Robertson, another leading televangelist, said: "Jerry's courage and strength of convictions will be sadly missed in this time of increasing moral relativism." But few mentioned Mr Falwell's history as a segregationist who opposed Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. During the 1980s he was an outspoken supporter of apartheid in South Africa, although more recently he denounced segregation.

Mr Falwell received international notoriety in the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington when he said: " I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularise America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'you helped this happen'."

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said: "Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America's anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation's appalling response to the onslaught of the Aids epidemic..."

In 1984 Mr Falwell sued Hustler magazine, claiming he had been libelled by an obscene parody in an advertisement. The United States Supreme Court overturned the $200,000 (£100,000) damages payout he received for emotional distress four years later.

Mr Falwell survived two health scares ­ one a virus infection and one a respiratory arrest ­ in early 2005.

Interesting? Click here to explore further