What is there to say about the mainstream press coverage of the Jerry Falwell, Jr., soap opera?
For several years now, he has, along with a few other pastors and activists, been treated as the face of evangelicalism. This is interesting, since this Falwell’s Liberty University has rarely played a major role in evangelical life in America — other than through waves of coverage in the mainstream press.
In this way, he can be seen as the successor of both his father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and the Rev. Pat Robertson. He’s famous because he is famous and, most of the time, his actions fit the popular press narrative of crazy evangelicals storming out of the backwoods to threaten the blue American way of life.
In recent years, Falwell has constantly been in the press for one reason — his embrace of Donald Trump. Falwell has made as many mistakes, in this role, as a man can possibly make.
So this brings us to That Photo and this Washington Post headline, chosen from the blitz of stories in the American press as a whole: “Jerry Falwell Jr., a prominent evangelical supporter of Trump, on indefinite leave of absence from Liberty U.”
It’s a fine story and the key details are all in there — in terms of focusing on Falwell and Trump. Here is a key passage:
Since taking over as president of the school in 2007, Falwell has vastly expanded the size and scope of the university co-founded by his father, the televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., in 1971. It is now one of the largest private online universities in the country. The school claims to have more than 100,000 students, including about 16,000 who study on its Lynchburg, Va., campus.
The school’s chapel has also become a pilgrimage site for many politicians, particularly GOP presidential contenders hoping to woo Christian conservatives.
Falwell was one of the first high-profile leaders in the evangelical world to endorse Trump in 2016. A former chairman of Liberty’s executive committee, Mark DeMoss, resigned over the endorsement, saying Trump’s insult-laden presidential campaign was a flagrant rejection of the values that Falwell Sr. espoused and that Liberty aims to promote. …
In an interview with The Post last year, Falwell said there was nothing Trump could do that would endanger his support or that of other conservative Christian leaders. “I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country,” he said.
I want to focus on one word — “particularly” — in the reference to Liberty serving as a “pilgrimage site for many politicians, particularly GOP presidential contenders.”
This is true. But other interesting politicos have visited the campus and have received polite or even warm welcomes.
Perhaps the most symbolic event was the Sen. Bernie Sanders lecture in the fall of 2015. If you read into the fine details of that visit, you will find out that it provoked lots of constructive academic discussions involving faculty and students.
For me, the 2018 commencement address by former President Jimmy Carter was even more interesting. The Falwells and Carter share some history, to say the least, and not all of it is bad. Carter knew how to address the Liberty crowd and he was treated with dignity and even affection (click here for my “On Religion” column about that event).
My point: In both cases, there was more to Liberty — the academic community — than the personality and actions of Falwell.
For most of the evangelicals I follow online, the fall of Falwell is a tragic story about Liberty University, as a Christian community, as well as Falwell the politico.
You see, I don’t think you can understand Liberty without knowing that it’s the university that welcomed Carter as well as Trump. Try to imagine a flagship liberal school rolling out a red carpet for, oh, former President George W. Bush?
I have decades of experience in Christian higher education, as a student and as a professor. I know that these colleges and universities and not perfect places. But they are, as a rule, solid schools that have their strengths and weaknesses. There are excellent faculty members in these communities, doing their best. Most truly believe in the missions of their schools and the doctrines on which they are built.
With that in mind, read these passages from a new David French essay at The Dispatch: “The Decline and Fall of Jerry Falwell.” French is a #NeverTrump man, but he has also spend years defending the rights of Christian colleges. He knows presidents and other leaders on lots of these campuses.
… Jerry Falwell … was blazing a new trail. He was living his sin out loud, careening from controversy to controversy even as his students and faculty lived under the traditional, strict moral rules of Christian education. In response, Falwell didn’t bother pretending to be a spiritual leader. Instead, his argument was the higher education equivalent of “scoreboard!” His success excused his sin.
Let’s keep reading, a few lines later:
… These presidents — including men I know — without fail believe their highest calling isn’t raising money or building an athletic program, but rather demonstrating (as best they can) Christlike servant leadership for students, faculty, and staff and preserving the spiritual integrity of their institutions from the top-down. They understand that in God’s economy, faithfulness trumps endowment.
But for too long, in Liberty’s economy, that priority was in doubt. To be clear, thousands of members of the Liberty community were living faithful lives. But the person at the pinnacle of the university found himself lurching from scandal to scandal.
It’s easy to get inoculated against outrageous public conduct in the age of Trump, but even by the new standards, Falwell’s public conduct was simply extraordinary for a Christian leader.
In other words, Falwell was attacking Liberty, the Christian community, on multiple levels.
In other words, future stories about this tragedy need to probe into the strengths and weaknesses of Liberty, as seen through the eyes of people who love the campus and what it teaches, at its best. Here is a helpful passage from a report (“Why that Falwell Jr. yacht photo finally led to his departure from Liberty University“) by Ruth Graham at Slate. She will soon, of course, be at The New York Times.
Students on Liberty’s campus are forbidden from drinking alcohol, and are instructed to dress modestly. A poster on Reddit compiled Falwell Jr.’s potential violations in the yacht photograph and an accompanying video, and calculated that a student captured in the same scene could have accrued more than $9,000 in school fines and 900 hours of required service, and possible expulsion.
Faculty and alumni who have been critical of the school’s direction under Falwell Jr. were both shocked and gratified by the news of his leave of absence. “For at least a decade, Liberty’s faculty have labored under Falwell’s increasingly autocratic leadership and been shamed by his public behavior besides,” said Marybeth Davis Baggett, who taught English at Liberty for 17 years and resigned this spring after publishing an op-ed calling for Falwell Jr.’s removal based on his handling of the coronavirus crisis. “One man cannot act this way without many enablers, and any meaningful reform of the school will require a thorough and brutally honest inquiry into the LU culture.”
Some journalists will be tempted, of course, to frame this story as the story of a school that needs to modernize or veer into some form of progressive evangelicalism. That isn’t what the Falwell critics are saying, at least not the ones who love Liberty U.
Falwell, you see, is not the ultimate buttoned-down evangelical. Many would say that he has become a kind of unbuttoned heretic.