A Sea Of Red

Falwell's sons carry on in the name of their father

Sunday, Sep 30, 2007 - 12:01 AM
By CARLOS SANTOS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER



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LYNCHBURG Four months after the Rev. Jerry Falwell's death, his sons are emerging from his shadow with plans to expand their father's evangelical empire.

Falwell became one of the nation's most famous -- and controversial -- evangelicals by injecting religious values into the public square. He founded the Moral Majority to mobilize the fundamentalist vote for conservatives and against abortion and gay rights, and he drew derision later for blaming the Sept. 11 attacks in part on pagans, abortionists, feminists and homosexuals.

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Sorry, I should have posted this earlier. It was a great article! Very positive. Front page of Richmond paper this past Sunday!

Good article, although I take issue with one thing -- Big Red saying he's going to vote GOP next year. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, but you can really invite scrutiny from the IRS and jeopardize your tax-exempt status by coming out and supporting a candidate.

Jerry Falwell Jr. says the mansion may be turned into a visitors center; his father's office will remain untouched and become a museum.

That's good news and the first that I have heard of this.

Cider Jim wrote:

Jerry Falwell Jr. says the mansion may be turned into a visitors center; his father's office will remain untouched and become a museum.

That's good news and the first that I have heard of this.

He's already started moving his office to Campus North and is holding most of his meetings there now. He's in that sweet corner executive office on the second floor. Not sure when the entire office will be moved over or how long until they start converting the mansion after that.

Ed Dantes wrote:Good article, although I take issue with one thing -- Big Red saying he's going to vote GOP next year. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, but you can really invite scrutiny from the IRS and jeopardize your tax-exempt status by coming out and supporting a candidate.

Pastors have rights too. His father proved that. As a citizen and as a lawyer and as a businessman and as a guy with red hair and as a married man, etc... He can endorse whomever he pleases. He cannot do those activities while performing duties of the office of Pastor. He also can't use the churches mailing, logo, etc. to do those things. As far as a paper quoting whomever he's liking... that has no bearing on the tax exempt status.

In the history of the world I only know of one church who actually lost their tax exempt status and if you look at the case law they basically begged to have it taken away. They published campaign materials on church stationary, held political rallys from the pulpit, etc. I believe they even took out full page adds in their newspaper.

You have to be pretty stupid to go so far as to lose your tax exempt status over the political issue. And apparently only one church has been that extreme. If comments in public were enough to drop your tax exempt status don't you think Thomas Road would have been gone long ago? Don't believe the hype.