Moral majority leader Jerry Fallwell died today after being found unconscious in his office, according to Liberty University executives and reports from MSNBC.

Falwell, one of America's most famous evangelists and founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital at around 10:45 AM after being found unresponsive.

"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," said Ron Godwin, executive vice president of Liberty. "He went to his office, I went to mine and they found him unresponsive."

As of 1:00 PM, Fallwell's website had no mention of his death. Jerry Fallwell has had a long history of heart problems, stemming back to an episode with cardiac arrest in 2005. Some reports state that CPR was administered unsuccessfully.

Fallwell had long garnered criticism for his far right-wing conservative viewpoints and occasionally harsh tone towards the homosexual community. His publication, National Liberty Journal, was thrust ito the public eye in after an article in February 1999 suggested that the children's television show character Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies was gay, due to the character's trademark handbag and pink triangle marking (a similar marking was used to identify homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps). Fallwell denied any direct association with the article; however, his own view of homosexuals was often publicized in statements such as "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals."

The face of the right-wing Christian movement in the 1980s, Falwell was an outspoken critic of Bill Clinton's presidency in the 90s (this included the release of a documentary called The Clinton Chronicles which Falwell later admitted may have been inaccurate), and delivered the benediction at the Republican National Convention in 1996.

Fallwell also made repeated public statements regarding a coming apocalypse, and early in his career criticized Martin Luther King, Jr. for Dr. King's views on Civil Rights, though later in life he changed his views and opposed segregation. Nevertheless, he was a supporter of South African apartheid and a critic of Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

He was also the author of many articles and books, the most recent being 2006's Dynamic Faith Journal. His church has over 24,000 members and holds four services per week.

He was 73 years old at the time of his death. Jerry Falwell is survived by his wife Macel, three children, and eight grandchildren.

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