It will not surprise readers that this week’s “Crossroads” podcast is about the Jerry Falwell Jr., scandal at Liberty University (click here to tune that in). However, I hope that this podcast focuses on a different angle of the crisis than what most news consumers are seeing in print and on television.
From my perspective, there are two important stories unfolding here — not one scandal. How journalists cover these stories will, in large part, be based on whether they only care about Falwell the celebrity (and Donald Trump, of course), as opposed to what went wrong at Liberty University and what the school could become in the future.
So what happens next? What happens with the scandals surrounding Falwell and his wife Becki? This is where I see so many parallels to the Jim and Tammy Bakker PTL scandal in the 1980s. All week long I’ve been having flashbacks to the many telephone calls I received at The Charlotte News (RIP) from alleged insiders wanting to share dirt about the Bakker’s financial and sexual misadventures.
As it turned out, one anonymous caller was telling the truth, or a small part of it. That caller was the bisexual Rev. John Wesley Fletcher, who was doing his best to crash the Bakker empire. Fletcher was telling part of the truth about Jim Bakker, while conveniently editing out his own sins in that torrid melodrama.
What did I learn from the PTL scandal that is relevant here?
The accusers on both siders were hiding crucial information, while sharing some information that was accurate. I think that’s true with the Falwell scandal, as well. Meanwhile, it helps to remember that Falwell is a lawyer, not a minister. I suspect that he knows most of the evidence that accuser Giancarlo Granda has in hand. So reporters need to watch carefully: Do either of these men actually want a day in court? Who wants to testify under oath and endure the rigors of the legal discover process?
The other crucial question, of course, is this: What did leaders of the Liberty board of trustees know and when did they know it?
This is a stunningly complex set of stories. It’s interesting that, in the mainstream coverage, the Washington Post pointed to almost all of the crucial issues on Monday night in an understated and solid early story.
By the way, please note that the Post has religion-beat pros and a higher-education specialist working on this mega-story. Attention managers of other elite newsrooms: Go thou and do likewise.
Here are two crucial passages, in terms of tone and content:
Falwell, a real estate developer who became a passionate defender of President Trump, took over the Christian university his father helped found to evangelize the world in 2007. His leadership dramatically increased the school’s growth and clout, but critics increasingly worried he had lost sight of the university’s spiritual mission.
Those critics included many Liberty supporters and insiders. What were they telling trustees privately, in addition to their public statements?
Then there is the saga of the pool boy.
Opposition to his presidency had been growing but came to a dramatic head after two new reports about a young man Falwell and his wife befriended at a Florida pool, went into business with and who allegedly was sexually connected to the couple. One report painted Falwell as the victim of an obsessive affair, the other as an eager participant manipulating a naive young man. On Monday night, Falwell said that a Reuters report, which described him as having watched his wife having sex with another man, is false.
Note that Falwell told CBS News that “90%” of the Reuters report is false. Is that accurate, or merely another chance to blame his wife for their downfall? Again, who is willing to take this to court and tell their story under oath?
This brings me to the topic that we focused on in this “Crossroads” episode — the future of Liberty.
Liberty is, as Christian colleges go, a large school with quite a few resources in terms of campus facilities and money in the bank. However, it’s clout has, primarily, been in the world of independent evangelical and fundamentalist churches — not in mainstream evangelicalism.
Based on my experiences, the journalists who are pointing to Liberty as one of America’s most influential evangelical universities have no idea what they are talking about. You want influence? What would be moderately progressive Wheaton College and Calvin University — not Liberty.
But what could Liberty become — post-Jerry Falwell Jr.? What happens to the school now?
First of all, I think it would be a good idea — a radical one, I admit — for the entire board of trustees to resign, after creating a crisis committee of experienced Liberty leaders, alumni, faculty, loyal critics and outside experts on Christian higher education (consider this list). This new body would select a board and, thus, the next president. It wouldn’t hurt to ask someone like former Liberty professor Karen Swallow Prior to suggest a few names for that crisis committee.
Now, someone needs to consider how Liberty’s fallen president assumed his totalitarian role on campus.
I have a journalist friend who, for several decades, has had good cause to pay close attention to the leaders of Christian colleges and universities. This reporter once told me that there are three different kinds of presidents at these schools.
(1) The super-pastor who represents the school’s core supporters — usually in a religious denomination — while seeking new students and funds. This kind of president needs a strong provost to serve as an academic leader.
(2) The super-provost who serves as the academic visionary of a well-established school. This president needs a strong financial vice president to raise money and handle finances.
(3) The true entrepreneur-builder who drives a period of strong growth and change. This person must have a strong board of trustees that helps control this growth, while guarding the school’s identity and maintaining the trust of core supporters.
Clearly, Falwell, Jr., was a classic example of this third kind of president. Did the trustees play their role when dealing with this kind of president?
I am also fascinated with this question: What kind of churches actually support Liberty? The school has some late-in-the-game Southern Baptist ties, but it is not — no way — a Southern Baptist university. It was, once again, founded as an independent Baptist school and has always been a rogue elephant in the china closet of Christian higher education.
Will the leaders of Liberty reach out to other Christian colleges, universities and seminaries for advice and leadership? If I was covering this story, I would look for signs of that happening, while watching this zip code.
In conclusion, let me recommend two essential think pieces linked to all of this.
First there is this piece at The Dispatch by religious-liberty expert David French: “The Decline and Fall of Jerry Falwell.” Here is a long, but crucial, passage:
I attended an Evangelical college (and loved it), and I’ve worked for Evangelical institutions. There is one thing you’ll always find — a tension between the incredible aspirational ideals of Christian behavior and the messy sinfulness of all men, including Christians. We aspire to holiness, yet we can never come close to perfection
In high-functioning Christian organizations, the institution attempts to resolve that tension by defaulting toward seeking to uphold the aspirations — and the higher the position and the greater the responsibility, the more the aspiration controls. There are higher expectations for presidents than members of the faculty, and members of the faculty live with greater expectations than students. …
For several years, however, Liberty flipped this script. The president lived life with greater freedom than his students or his faculty. The message sent was distinctly unbiblical — that some Christian leaders can discard integrity provided their other qualifications, from family name to fund-raising prowess, provided sufficient additional benefit.
I also recommend this New York Times op-ed by Kaitlyn Schiess, a Liberty graduate who now attends Dallas Theological Seminary, a very conservative school. The headline: “What Jerry Falwell Jr. Taught Me at Liberty University — Here’s how a Christian education can go wrong.”
It’s hard to know what to quote here, since there is so much to ponder. This long passage will have to do:
There is a long history in Christian education that focuses on the formation of the affections, alongside the training of the intellect. This reflects one of the religion’s foremost insights about human nature. Augustine famously wrote, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” That is, humans navigate our way through the world via the things we love — the stories about the world that captivate us, the desires that motivate us, the material or spiritual goods that attract us — and we need guidance to make sure that the things we love are ordered beneath our ultimate love of God. Christians have often described sin as misdirected love — loving the wrong things or loving the right things in the wrong way.
Christian education, then, has historically focused not merely on delivering the right information, but also on giving students the tools — music, prayer, storytelling — to shape our loves. Yet evangelicals — and Liberty, in particular — have often neglected this focus, falsely believing that if we know the right information, we will act rightly. What we’re seeing in Mr. Falwell now are the consequences of that neglect. How does a man who knows all the right answers come to do so much wrong? By underestimating the power of the loves in our lives — in this case, political power — to shape our actions and alter our moral commitments.
At Liberty, our minds may have been receiving correct content, but our hearts were being trained to love wrongly: to love political power, physical security and economic prosperity as higher goods than they are. The leaders of the university may have believed that we could be immersed in the stories and values of the Republican Party while maintaining any theological truths incompatible with them, but the power of our affective education was stronger.
So what happens next to Liberty University, with its fine campus, financial resources, vague denominational ties and leaderless campus community?
That’s an important news story, even if Trump isn’t a key player in that drama.
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