He did create one of the first big suburban megachurches, establishing a model that would be further developed by more mass-audience-acceptable successors around the country.

And he successfully snookered the news media, and many of his ideological opponents, into believing that he, Falwell, personally led a mass groundswell of reactionary fervor out in the vast expanses beyond the U.S. media capitals. For nearly a quarter century, millions of non-right-wing Americans accepted this concept.

Falwell was a man who made people believe.