The Rev. Jerry Falwell — televangelist, Moral Majority founder and head of Liberty University — was found unresponsive in his office on campus Tuesday morning and pronounced dead shortly thereafter of heart failure.

AP via My Way News:

Driven into politics by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established the right to an abortion, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. One of the conservative lobbying group’s greatest triumphs came just a year later, when Ronald Reagan was elected president.

Falwell credited the Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, aiding in Reagan’s victory and giving Republicans control of the Senate.

“I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved,” he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

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