Falwell, Merges With Anti-Separationist Legal Group In Fla.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell has announced that one of his organizations is merging with Liberty Counsel, a Religious Right legal group based in Orlando, Fla.

Falwell's National Liberty Journal carried a brief item about the merger last August. It reported that Liberty Counsel, founded and run by attorney Mat Staver, would merge with Jerry Falwell Ministries. No other details were given, except to say that Falwell's son, Jerry Falwell Jr., who is an attorney, would go to work for Liberty Counsel.

In at least one respect, the new partnership is unusual. Falwell is a fundamentalist Baptist with little tolerance for differing religious viewpoints. Stayer, according to a 1998 profile of him that ran in the Orlando Sentinel, is a Seventh-day Adventist pastor turned attorney. Adventist doctrines are based in part on the revelations of SDA leader Ellen White, and the church has sometimes been attacked as unorthodox by some fundamentalist Christians.

Adventists have historically supported church-state separation, but Staver toes the common Religious Right line on religion and government. He often tries to find a place for official prayer in public schools by calling it free speech. Last year Staver defended the West Monroe, La., public schools, which were sponsoring prayers and other forms of religious activity. Attorneys with Americans United had sued the school and defeated Staver in court.

Earlier this year Staver filed a lawsuit against a public school in Willis, Texas, after two sisters accused a teacher of throwing their Bible in the trash. The school denied the allegations, and just weeks after the case was filed, Staver abruptly withdrew it without explanation.

Falwell, meanwhile, is becoming more and more outspoken about his disdain for church-state separation.

During an Aug. 2 online chat with USA Today, the TV preacher was asked about church and state. He replied bluntly, "I do not believe in the separation of church and state, nor did our founders. This is a nation under God, built upon the Judeo-Christian ethic. America is in trouble today because she has forgotten her religious heritage."