The Rev. Charles F. Stanley, an influential Baptist pastor who for more than 50 years preached a conservative message from his Atlanta megachurch, through an extensive network of television and radio stations, and in many books, died on Tuesday at his home in Atlanta. He was 90.

In Touch Ministries, Dr. Stanley’s nonprofit organization, announced his death but did not state a cause.

As the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Dr. Charles F. Stanley was known as one of the leading American preachers of his time, alongside figures like the Rev. Billy Graham. He was also a board member of the Moral Majority, the right-wing religious organization, and a close friend of its founder, the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

“Evangelicals just loved him,” Barry Hankins, a professor of history at Baylor University who, with Thomas Kidd, wrote “Baptists in America” (2015), said in a phone interview. “He was a very winsome preacher. He didn’t exude the hard fighting edge that conservatives sometimes did.”

Dr. Stanley built a significant national profile through his church and his television ministry, and in 1984 he was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

He brought staunch beliefs — among them that the Bible was infallible and that women should not be ordained — to a continuing battle over control of the convention between conservatives, who were in ascent, and moderates.

In his first year as president, Dr. Stanley backed measures within the convention to stop churches from ordaining women. By 1984, Christian Today magazine reported, the convention had ordained more than 200 women.

“The Bible does not forbid women from preaching,” Dr. Stanley said at the time. “The issue is authority, not service. Role, not work.”

Dr. Stanley was re-elected in 1985 with a record turnout of the convention’s delegates, extending the denomination’s conservative resurgence.

After the vote, Dr. Stanley was asked about his positions against abortion and in favor of prayer in public schools. He told The Associated Press that he took those stands as a “strong Christian citizen and not a right-winger.”

Charles Frazier Stanley Jr. was born on Sept. 25, 1932, in the farming community of Dry Fork, Va. When he was nine months old, his father died of nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys. His mother, Rebecca (Hardy) Stanley, an unskilled laborer, worked for $9 a week at a textile factory in Danville, Va.

She also introduced Charles to the Bible.

“I remember how we would turn to the index in her well-worn, thick black Bible — which was the only book she owned — and looked up subjects together,” Mr. Stanley wrote in his autobiography, “Courageous Faith: My Story From a Life of Obedience” (2016). “Those are times children just don’t forget.”

Dr. Charles F. Stanley, whose paternal grandfather was a preacher, felt a calling to the ministry at age 14. He graduated from the University of Richmond with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1954 and, two years later, was ordained at a Baptist church in Danville. He later became a pastor at churches in Hendersonville, N.C., Fairborn, Ohio, and Miami and Bartow, Fla., before joining First Baptist Church of Atlanta in 1969 as associate pastor.

He earned a master’s degree in 1968 and a doctorate in theology in 1971 from Luther Rice College & Seminary.

Dr. Stanley’s path to becoming the church’s senior pastor, after the previous senior pastor stepped down, was rocky. The search committee initially rejected him. One of its members told The Atlanta Constitution that he was power hungry. And during a heated church meeting, Dr. Stanley was punched in the face by a member of the church board after cautioning him about using a curse word.

“I was preaching a lot of things that made some of the church leaders uncomfortable — the Holy Spirit, the coming of the Lord, evangelism,” Dr. Charles F. Stanley told The Constitution in 1982, explaining why his acceptance had come slowly. “Secondly, there were a small group of men who’d always made the decisions, and when I would say we’ve got to obey God, that’d disturb them a bit.”

“So,” he added, “I became a thorn in their plans. But I was willing to stay or leave, whatever God wanted.”…