No glee here but rather a shrug of indifference to a man who himself made so many of his fellow human beings into mere objects of his obscene greed and will to power - as ye sow the wind etc. A bit of annoyance that, despite his fall from central fundy power and rumors of financial problems, he probably would have thought he died with the most toys after all. He made it to three-score-and-thirteen - pretty good for a guy 100 pounds overweight, he was probably still rich, and most of all in his prime he was a big shot. He started something that he couldn't finish but his work shows all around us in the power-mad "conservative" movement, and he was probably very happy about that. And let's not pretend that hate and lust for absolute power will die with him, just as hatred of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights will not die because Bush-Cheney got too greedy and didn't make it look good. The 25% will still be with us and Big Money will still stoke them up and pollyannas will still pretend that it's only a few bad apples ... Like the political movement he helped greatly to create, he was history less as farce than as travesty.

"we would be better off asking how this man ever become a public figure in the first place", i think the answer is simple. because journalists and commentators gave him air time, space, editorial, comments -- when the best thing that could have been done, was to ignore this lunatic. he might have claimed he was from the christian right, but he certainly wasn't the right christian.

First they build a bypass around Lynchburg, and then Falwell croaks. The world is a slightly better place...

It couldn't have happened to a nicer- ahem- guy.

I got an e-mail from a gay activist friend yesterday. It was brief and to the point:

"Speak only good about the dead. He is dead. Good."

Yesterday at about 1PM I heard a bird singing.

I like to think that's just about the time that Falwell got to hell. Enjoy it Jerry.

"To the extent that history will remember him, it will be as a politician, not as a preacher."

Sooner than we can imagine, history will, at best, ask "Jerry who..?"

Did more to further the belief of atheism than anyone in modern times!

No not quite. Ayin Tachet Ayin means making the punishment fit the crime. Render unto Caesar, etc. etc. It is a moral and ethical stance to ensure that there a) is a rule of law b) that it's followed and c) that it is just.

I enjoy the BBC News website, especially when some world-known individual has passed and they post a memoriam section. In every case there has always been good things said to the deceased(even Saddam) but I couldn't believe the resentment towards a religous icon like Falwell.....and I felt good about that! I truly felt it was an abuse of trust in his power and he was closer to the anti-christ than anybody.

In conclusion....great column on this hypocrite.

The leader dies, 100 are waiting to take his place.

This evil man is gone; the struggle continues.

What worries me most is that Falwell's legacy of hatred lives on in the Republican party base.

Bush's cynical exploitation of right-wing Christians is sickening. It is sad that so many people still believe he is an honorable man, after years of actions that betray his words, again and again.

It is a sign of how disconnected the GOP candidates and their base are getting, when they spend significant amounts of airtime trying to outdo each other on abortion, torture, and macho military posturing.

These are not Christians. These are bullies waving bibles around, just like Rev. Falwell taught them. And they are the people who are truly destroying America, by aiding and abetting Bush's kleptocracy of a government.

How did Falwell become such a prominent figure? In the late 1970's, he helped turn the "religious right" into a potent political force by telling conservative Christians something they desperately wanted to hear.

Until that point, conservative Christian leaders had been telling their followers to avoid political activism. This was based on the doctrine of Premillenial Dispensationalism: God's plan is for the world to get continually more depraved until it hits rock bottom, triggering Armageddon and the second coming of Christ. Therefore, the leaders argued, you should withdraw from politics and concentrate on maintaining your own purity -- because if you try to make the world a better place, you're interfering with God's plan.

Falwell was one of the first and most prominent conservative Christians to rebuke this argument and call for their followers to become politically active. Those followers responded eagerly to his message. Deeply frustrated after sitting on the sidelines during the turbulent 1960's and 70's, they started organizing politically and voting in large numbers, playing a decisive role in the 1980 election.

So we largely have Falwell to "thank" for organizing America's religious conservatives into the powerful bloc they are today.

"Conservative Christianity has been trying to recover from Falwell for the past two decades. Just as his political views were too buffoonish to make the Moral Majority a reality, his religious sensibilities were too shallow to spread evangelical Protestantism. Evangelicalism grew in the exurban megachurches, and the megachurches, implicitly and occasionally explicitly, rejected Falwell's approach to the faith. Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Bill Hybels -- these inclusive preachers inherited the mantle of Billy Graham, not Falwell and his great rival Pat Robertson. With the maturation of American evangelicalism has come an interest in social justice, environmentalism and peace. The people who represent evangelical Protestantism's future want little or nothing to do with injustice, pollution and war."

Jerry Falwell was the poster boy for the toxic and corrosive Conservative Christianity" that has become a cancer in the this country. That is quite possibly the most rediculous paragraph I have ever read. Those people people have inflicted untold damage on the very fabric of this nation. May they ALL burn in hell with that pig Falwell.