People

Jonathan Falwell, the younger son of the late Jerry Falwell, was unanimously chosen June 3 to take his father’s place in the pulpit of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. The 40-year-old minister has since 1994 been executive pastor of the 24,000-member congregation, which affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention in 1996. The congregation moved into a 6,000-seat sanctuary as it marked its 50th anniversary last year. Falwell’s older son, Jerry Falwell Jr., 44, is now chancellor and president of Liberty University, the school his father founded in 1971.

More than 1,300 family and friends filled First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, May 30 to bid farewell to Herb Reynolds, the president of Baylor University from 1981 to 1995. He founded the university’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, and his administration changed the campus charter to prevent conservative Baptist leaders from taking control of school polity and theology. Reynolds, 77, died of an apparent heart attack May 25, a day after he and his wife, Joy, arrived at their summer home in Angel Fire, New Mexico. Before teaching at Baylor, Reynolds had a 20-year career in the U.S. Air Force, working with NASA and directing research for the Aeromedical Research Laboratories at Almogordo, New Mexico.