The Rev. Jerry Falwell says he’s sworn off two of his longtime favorites — politicians and banana pudding.

Falwell said last week he expects to regularly “confront the culture” on national television programs instead of supporting political candidates, and start a new diet following a recent heart operation.

Over the past year, Falwell has re-emerged on the national stage in a flurry of television appearances after years of financial problems.

A series of cutbacks and gifts, the most recent a $27 million donation in September, has erased the bulk of the $120 million debt that burdened Falwell’s operations ministries only seven years ago. Now Falwell’s Liberty University has its academic accreditation off probation and is looking at adding more dorms and other buildings.

And the televangelist, whose show the “Old Time Gospel Hour” never left the airways, says his aim hasn’t changed, just some of his targets. Falwell has given up campaigning for politicians as he did for President Reagan in the 1980s.

“I don’t plan ever to get back into Moral Majority-type work,” he said. “What I did I did because I felt led to do it then and I’m glad I did it. . . . My thing [now] is a nonpartisan biblical approach to moral and social issues.”