[Sly Fox]

Falwell supports college
Moral Majority founder comes to raise money for Wesley

By Jean Gordon
jmgordon@clarionledger.com



After paying a social visit to Gov. Haley Barbour, the Rev. Jerry Falwell addressed a religious conference in Jackson Wednesday evening, where he urged believers to support Christian higher education.

"The hope for America is that our churches might jointly provide Christian education so that the next generation, our young people today, might be trained in the Christian world view and in the inerrant Bible," Falwell told a crowd of more than 300 gathered at the Regency Hotel in Jackson for the 40th General Conference of the Congregational Methodist Church.


Located in Florence, the Congregational Methodist Church claims some 180 churches and 18,000-20,000 believers scattered throughout the South.

Falwell said he agreed to speak at the conference to help raise money for Wesley College, a small Christian college in Florence the church operates.

During his 40-minute message, Falwell, 72, talked about the humble beginnings of Liberty University, the Christian school he founded in 1971 in Lynchburg, Va.

The university now enrolls 25,000 students, and Falwell said he's been praying to live another 15 years to see enrollment increase by another 10,000 students.

"If I can do it, I'll make every liberal in the world miserable," he quipped.

General conference president the Rev. Phillip Knight, a graduate of Liberty University, invited Falwell to speak.

"Dr. (James) Dobson and Dr. Falwell have done more to influence North American Christians than anyone else," Knight said, also speaking about the head of the conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family.

"There was not an evangelical voice in culture and politics through the 1960s and 1970s," he said.

Falwell founded the Moral Majority in the late 1970s, which lobbied against abortion and claimed credit electing President Ronald Reagan.

Since then, he has remained at the intersection of religion and politics, speaking out on issues ranging from Israel to gay marriage.

Like Falwell, Knight said the Congregational Methodist Church advocates that Christians be active in public life.

And one of the denomination's distinctions is "the influence we are garnering as Wesleyans in the political process," Knight said, speaking of Methodism's founder John Wesley.

"Our partnership with Dr. Falwell is an example of that."

Founded in 1852, the Congregational Methodist Church is one of more than two dozen branches of American Methodism.

Unlike the largest body of Methodists, the United Methodist Church, which claims 8.6 million U.S. members, local churches are autonomous.

"They're an independent bunch," said retired missionary Gene Little, 78, of Lake Charles, La., who traveled to Jackson for the conference.

Congregational Methodists also believe in the doctrine of entire sanctification as the second definite work of grace after regeneration.

"It just comes one time in your life when you completely dedicate your life to the Lord," Little said.

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