What we have here are two stories about Christian higher education during the coronavirus crisis.

One is set in a rather remote part of America, but it involves — kind of — Citizen Donald Trump. The other is a national-level story with news hooks that will affect institutions (and thus newsrooms) in several hundred communities spread out from coast to coast.

So which of these two stories is grabbing national headlines, including chunks of time on TV news?

That isn’t a very hard question, is it?

Here is the main New York Times headline on the latest chapter in the saga of Jerry Falwell, Jr., and his mano y mano fight with the coronavirus: “Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus Fears, Too.” We can expect all kinds of updates and national coverage about this issue, of course.

LYNCHBURG, Va. — As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.

“We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.

So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. Another eight were told to self-isolate.

Note that Falwell is an “influential voice” in “the evangelical world” — as opposed to one corner of a large and complex movement. At the very least, this implies that he is an “influential voice” in the larger world of evangelical and conservative Protestant higher education — which is a hilarious statement. He’s “famous,” for sure. “Influential?” For some people, yes, but for most evangelicals — statistically — the answer is “no.”