GetReligion
Friday, April 04, 2025

Politico

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Pop quiz: Can you answer seven questions about exit of Jerry Falwell Jr. at Liberty?

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Was it just three weeks ago that we were talking about a “racy picture” of Liberty University’s then-president, Jerry Falwell Jr., sparking curiosity and controversy?

Given the allegations that surfaced this week, that infamous deleted photo of Falwell with his pants unzipped, belly button showing and arm around a woman (not his wife) suddenly seems tame.

So does the news — reported earlier this month by Religion News Service’s Emily McFarlan Miller — that Falwell “liked” a handful of Instagram images showing young women in swimsuits.

For anyone who spent the week taking a long nap in a cave without TV or internet (I envy you, friend), here is a Reader’s Digest version of what occurred: On Sunday night, the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard broke the news that Falwell said he had “suffered depression caused by a former family friend who had an affair with his wife and who has been threatening to expose it.”

Then on Monday, Reuters dropped a bombshell that seemed to explain why Falwell had sought friendly coverage with a conservative publication the previous day.

“Giancarlo Granda says his sexual relationship with the Falwells began when he was 20,” journalist Aram Roston reported. “He says he had sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell Jr., head of Liberty University and a staunch supporter of President Trump, looked on.” (In an interview with Washington Post religion reporter Sarah Pulliam Bailey, the Falwells denied the accusation that Jerry was involved in his wife’s affair.)

After Reuters’ story was published, developments happened fast. Falwell, already on an indefinite leave of absence as president of the world’s largest evangelical university, reportedly resigned. Then he insisted he hadn’t resigned. Then he really did resign.

But the headlines didn’t stop: On Thursday night, Politico published an exclusive story by Brandon Ambrosino about a claim, denied by the Falwells, that Becki initiated a sexual act with a student. And in the wake of Falwell’s departure, Liberty alumni are demanding change and action by the university’s board, report Religion Unplugged’s own Meagan Clark and Paul Glader.

How well did you pay attention to the Falwell news? Let’s try another pop quiz and see. I’ll share the answers at the bottom of this column.


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Plug-in: 'Racy' snapshot of Liberty's Jerry Falwell Jr. sparks heat, curiosity and wisecracks

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“Wut is happening,” Houston Chronicle religion writer Robert Downen quipped on Twitter this week.

Downen’s colloquial query about an, um, unexpected snapshot of Jerry Falwell Jr. quickly went viral.

Falwell is, of course, the president of Liberty University and a prominent evangelical ally of President Donald Trump.

As noted by Julie Roys, an independent Christian journalist, the “racy picture” of Falwell and a woman was seemingly taken at a party on his yacht. Falwell posted the image to his Instagram page and then quickly deleted it.

“In the picture,” Roys explained, “Falwell and a woman, described as a friend, appear with their shirts hiked up and pants unzipped with the caption: ‘Lots of good friends visited us on the yacht. I promise that’s just black water in my glass.’”

Roys added: “A video of the party also showed up on the internet, featuring Falwell and others at what appears to be a Trailer Park Boys themed party. The scenes are surprising, given that Falwell is the president of the largest Christian university in the country. One guest in the video makes a vulgar gesture toward the camera. Some are wearing tight clothes with bellies exposed. Many have cigarettes dangling from their mouths.“

At first, some questioned whether the man in the picture was actually Falwell. But it soon became clear that it was indeed him.

Later, Falwell apologized for posting the photo, Politico reported. But the same news article said he “also defended the incident as a vacation ‘costume party’ that was ‘just in good fun.’”

“I’ve apologized to everybody,” Falwell said in an interview with radio station WLNI 105.9 FM in Lynchburg, Va. “And I’ve promised my kids I’m going to try to be — I’m gonna try to be a good boy from here on out.”

For his part, Downen — best known for his award-winning investigative project on sex abuse in Southern Baptist churches — said he was surprised by the heavy response to his tweet.


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Plug-in: Trump vs. Biden -- four months before Election Day and religion angles abound

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President Donald Trump came to my home state of Oklahoma last weekend, and I kept my social distance (read: stayed in my living room).

I followed developments via social media, including tweets by my son Keaton Ross, a reporter for Oklahoma Watch. The president even gave Keaton — and all of the news media — a shoutout.

As you may have heard, the symbolic relaunch of Trump’s re-election campaign drew an underwhelming crowd of about 6,200 to a Tulsa arena.

Already, some are pointing to polls that show Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by a wide margin. Honk if that sounds familiar. With Election Day four-plus months away, religion angles — no surprise! — abound.

Among the most interesting pieces of the last week:

• Gabby Orr, White House reporter for Politico, writes that Trump allies “see a mounting threat: Biden’s rising evangelical support.”

• Isaac Chotiner, staff writer for The New Yorker, interviews Albert Mohler about “How the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary came around to Trump.”

• Jeff Sharlet, in a piece for Vanity Fair, goes inside what the magazine characterizes as “the cult of Trump,” where “his rallies are church and he is the Gospel.”

• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Bill Glauber, Molly Beck and Annysa Johnson report on Vice President Mike Pence’s focus on religious faith in a campaign stop in battleground Wisconsin.

• Nicholas Casey, a national politics reporter for the New York Times, travels to Alabama to highlight a Baptist church touched by differing opinions over the Trump era. (Be sure to read, too, Terry Mattingly’s GetReligion analysis of this story, making the case that the Times ignores doctrine to focus on politics.)


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What explains Donald Trump's unusual and controversial brandishing of the Bible?

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Observers are still scratching heads over President Trump’s unusual June 1 walk alongside top administration officials to the arson-damaged and boarded-up St. John’s Episcopal Church, not to pray or speak to an anxious nation but simply to brandish a Bible for the cameras. Politically risky removal of nearby demonstrators preceded the walk, which provoked a media / military / political uproar.

What’s going on here? Much of the following will be familiar for religion specialists. But amid all the 2020 discussion of, say, suburban women or the race of Joe Biden’s running mate, political reporters should be alert to religious dynamics. A related event June 2 said much and deserved more attention as the President and First Lady paid a ceremonial visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.

Simply put, Trump cannot win unless he maintains Republicans’ customary lopsided support from white evangelical Protestants. He also needs a smaller but solid majority of non-Hispanic Catholics, the more devout the better. Think Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

Politico’s Gabby Orr nailed things in a May 22 analysis after the president prodded governors to reopen churches. “A sudden shift in support for Donald Trump among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his re-election campaign,” because a downward slide in their enthusiasm “could sink” his prospects.

The White House no doubt reacted to its own internal polls, but Orr especially cited data from the Pew Research Center (media contact Anna Schiller, aschiller@pewresearch.org, 202–419-4514) and the Public Religion Research Institute or PRRI www.prri.org (contact Jordun Lawrence, press@prri.org, 202–688-3259). These two organizations are important because their polls usually distinguish white evangelicals from other Protestants, and white from Hispanic Catholics.

Turn to the PRRI report on “favorable” opinion toward Trump’s performance — not respondents’ voting intentions — as of March, April, and the latest survey May 26-31.

Looking at Trump’s two pivotal religious categories, with white evangelicals his favoribility in the three surveys went from 77 to 66 to 62%, down 15 points. With white Catholics, the decline went from 60 to 48 to 37%, a heart-stopping 23-point change.


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New podcast: Was Trump preaching to an evangelical choir at the March for Life?

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To start things off, please get yourself a map that includes Washington, D.C., and nearby states. If you have lived in that region, just pull one up in your mind’s eye.

Now, draw an imaginary 300-mile circle — or perhaps one bigger than that — around the Beltway kingdom.

If you were the principal of a Christian middle-school or high-school, how many hours would you allow students and some faculty members or parents to ride on a school bus to attend the March for Life that marks the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision? What if they were on a rented touring bus, with better seats and (most importantly) a better safety rating?

Would you let them drive for five hours to the march? How about eight? Now, to understand the topic discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), ask these questions:

(1) What are the key states touched by that big circle around D.C.? Obviously there’s Maryland and Pennsylvania and Virginia. But Ohio isn’t out of the question, is it?

(2) Thinking about religious schools and institutions, would there be more Catholic schools in this circle or evangelical Protestant? Think about the size of the Catholic populations in several of these states.

(3) Which of these states have significant clout in American politics, especially in White House races? Obviously, Ohio (think of all that history) and Pennsylvania would be at the top of that list.

So now, picture the massive crowds at the March for Life. You can understand why, year after year, it is dominated by waves of buses containing Catholic students of all ages — even though it is true that evangelical Protestants are now active in the Right to Life Movement. If you’ve attended or covered a March for Life, you know — to be blunt — that this is not an event dominated by white evangelicals.

Let’s add one more lens, as we look at media coverage of the 2020 march. It’s a political lens.

Name the key states that, in 2016, elected Trump to the presidency. Do white evangelicals dominate those states — the Rust Belt (especially Ohio and Pennsylvania) and Florida — or do Catholics of varying degrees of religious practice?

So here is my question: Was the main reason that advisors sent Trump to the March for Life to preach to his white evangelical Protestant base?


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Yo, Politico scribes: You might want to attend March for Life next year and count the Catholics

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Anyone who works on Capitol Hill or within a mile or two of Union Station in Washington, D.C., knows what happens on the day of the annual March for Life.

Lots and lots of folks roll into town. The streets are lined with buses packed with students — often the orange-yellow school buses used for short-range work. Then there are miles of rented buses that roll in from schools — middle schools, high schools and colleges — all over the Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and even the Midwest.

It’s pretty easy to note that the vast majority of the buses are from Catholic institutions. It’s harder to judge the points of origin for groups that fly into D.C. to take part.

If you watch the march itself, you’ll see all kinds of unusual groups: Feminists for Life, Atheists for Life, Democrats for Life, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, etc. There are lots of evangelical Protestants present and their numbers have risen since the marches began in 1974. following Roe v. Wade.

But the vast majority of people who arrive early — especially for the annual Vigil for Life (first photo) at the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception — and stay late are Roman Catholics. This is fitting since the march began with the work of a Catholic Democrat named Nellie Gray who, after Roe, left her work as a Labor Department lawyer to become an activist. The symbol of the march — a rose — is also a popular symbol for St. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Why bring this up?

Well, have you heard that 81 percent of white evangelicals just love Donald Trump? It’s safe to assume that most readers have heard that, methinks.

Somehow, that often cited (but rather complex) fact led — according to the Politico — to Trump’s historic decision to address this year’s March for Life, as seen in this headline: “Trump tries to shore up evangelical support at March for Life rally.”

Never mind that the crucial states that gave Trump the presidency — especially in the Midwest — are heavily Catholic and usually (think Ohio) are won by the candidate who wins the Sunday-morning Catholic swing vote.


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Friday Five: Jarrid Wilson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Wedgwood Baptist anniversary, Ostling on Godbeat

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Welcome to the published-later-in-the-day-than-usual edition of Friday Five.

I’m on a reporting trip to Tennessee with my regular job, and GetReligion Editor Terry Mattingly graciously gave me extra time to write this.

After that brief intro, let’s dive right into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: This is the story that I just can’t get out of my mind: the death of pastor, author and mental health advocate Jarrid Wilson by suicide.

In a post Thursday, tmatt delved into Religion News Service’s initial coverage of the tragedy. Look for much more discussion in a post Saturday related to GR’s weekly podcast.

2. Most popular GetReligion post: My post declaring that “Sorry, but Politico's long exposé on Jerry Falwell Jr. lacks adequate named sources to be taken seriously” was our No. 1 analysis of the week.


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Falwell Jr., Liberty University share GetReligion's post on Politico story — but did they actually read it?

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Another bizarre twist in the Jerry Falwell Jr. story came Tuesday when the Liberty University president accused former board members and employees of an “attempted coup.”

That claim came a day after a long, negative Politico piece on Falwell quoted two dozen anonymous sources characterized as “current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell.”

How bad are things for Falwell and Liberty?

Well, both of their official Twitter accounts tweeted my GetReligion post from Monday in which I declared, “Sorry, but Politico's long exposé on Jerry Falwell Jr. lacks adequate named sources to be taken seriously.”

If you missed that post, you really should read it before finishing this one. What I am about to say will make much more sense with that background in mind. Also, that post has generated a lot of good discussion along with a few typical troll comments from people who obviously didn’t take time to read what I wrote.

Of course, a few folks on Twitter (here and here, for example) asked if Falwell and Liberty actually read what I wrote.

After all, my post was no fan letter to Falwell.


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Sorry, but Politico's long exposé on Jerry Falwell Jr. lacks adequate named sources to be taken seriously

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Undoubtedly, many critics of Jerry Falwell Jr. will love Politico’s long takedown of the controversial Liberty University president.

On Twitter, Jonathan Merritt, for example, called the piece published today a “blistering investigative report” for which the author should win an award.

“It's impossible to pick just one thing to highlight in this … cascade of scoops,” said Ruth Graham.

I’m no Falwell fan myself, and I’d be inclined to agree with the tweets above, except for one major, glaring concern: The writer relies almost entirely on anonymous sources.

“‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’,” screams Politico’s headline. “Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence.”

But they don’t really break their silence — in terms of going on the record and criticizing Falwell.

Politico sets the scene like this:

At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public.

“When he does stupid stuff, people will mention it to others they consider confidants and not keep it totally secret,” a trusted adviser to Falwell, the school’s president and chancellor, told me. “But they won’t rat him out.”

That’s beginning to change.

Over the past year, Falwell, a prominent evangelical leader and supporter of President Donald Trump, has come under increasing scrutiny. News outlets have reported on business deals by Liberty University benefiting Falwell’s friends. Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen claimed that he had helped Falwell clean up racy “personal” photographs.

Based on scores of new interviews and documents obtained for this article, concerns about Falwell’s behavior go well beyond that—and it’s causing longtime, loyal Liberty University officials to rapidly lose faith in him.

More than two dozen current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell spoke to me or provided documents for this article, opening up—for the first time at an institution so intimately associated with the Falwell family—about what they’ve experienced and why they don’t think he’s the right man to lead Liberty University or serve as a figurehead in the Christian conservative movement.

That’s a lot of sources, yes. But they’d have much more credibility if they had names attached to them. On-the-record sources with names attached have more skin in the game than those granted carte blanche to say whatever they want without their names attached. That’s basic Journalism 101 reality.


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