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According to his official web site, Jerry Falwell is the executive pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was the founding pastor of this church in 1956, when it had just 35 adult members. The church now boasts 22,000 members, thanks in large part to Falwell's television program The Old-Time Gospel Hour, which began airing shortly after the church was founded. Falwell became a Baptist Christian in 1952 at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Lynchburg when he was 18 and a sophomore at Lynchburg College. He transferred to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, to complete his
education. He holds honorary doctorates from Tennessee Temple University and the California Graduate School of Theology. The Thomas Road Baptist Church is an independent Baptist church, but it's listed on the web site of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Falwell himself attended and voted at the SBC's annual meeting in 1998. The SBC is a loose organization of over 40,000 churches in the U.S. that generally share the same religious beliefs. However, SBC churches are self-governing and autonomous in their teachings and worship. While Falwell preaches a deeply conservative brand of Christianity that makes him reviled
among many groups (particularly gays and lesbians) and was the founder of the Moral Majority, some feel he isn't fundamentalist enough.
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