In America, freedom and faith have always been defining parts of the political culture, but they have bred an inevitable tension in this land of many faiths and none, of faith-based certainty and secular tolerance.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died Tuesday at 73 at Liberty University, the college he founded in Lynchburg, Va., strode into this problematic, tension-filled terrain with the heavy-handed certainty and zeal of the evangelist he was. He meant to do good. He did not always succeed.

As evidenced by his actions, he cared little or nothing for the wall of separation between church and state, that constitutional bulwark which has kept the bigotries of the Old World at bay and allowed religion to prosper to an extent undreamed of in nations that have established religions. His mission was to inject religion into the public square at every turn -- and to hell (or by his lights, heaven) with the consequences.

For taking his labors beyond the vineyard of his church and into politics, he is mourned now by religious conservatives across the country for energizing the issues they care about, especially abortion and marriage for gays. Their tributes to his historical importance are accurate. He was -- as a press release from Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, observed -- "a great general in the culture wars."

But any attempt to weigh the legacy of Mr. Falwell must also take into account the bitterness and division of the culture wars that, as a founder of the Moral Majority, he helped ignite. While in hindsight, America at a dispiriting time may have needed Ronald Reagan, the first of the conservative presidents he helped elect, the Rev. Falwell's vision has led to an America where the tension between faith and freedom has been disrupted to poisonous effect.

Sometimes his forays were plainly absurd (and later recanted) -- such as his pronouncement that the attacks of 9/11 were somehow the fault of America's moral degeneration. He also thought that a lovable children's TV character was a subversive homosexual. That is what happens when conservative thought poses as religious principle. In his early years, he had disparaged the civil rights movement.

It is a natural instinct that people want politicians to reflect their moral values, but the work of Jerry Falwell advanced that idea in ways harmful to America's comity. That he and others turned the Republican Party into their designated party of God presents an affront to the faith of everyone else. In recent presidential elections, the mix of politics and religion has led to narrow moral issues derailing a proper accounting of issues that affect all Americans -- such as the war in Iraq. Intolerance today comes clothed in piety.

For all the praise of this famous man, it is Jerry Falwell's legacy that religion now has its place firmly in the public square while too often reason has been banished to its fringes. After a cultural war that took no prisoners, we are increasingly one divided nation under God.