An Evangelical Battle of the Generations: To
Embrace Trump or Not?
As Liberty University plots its post-Falwell future,
young people want to steer clear of politics. The trustees aren’t buying it.
By MAGGIE
SEVERNS
06/01/2021
04:30 AM EDT
For years,
there was an adage around Liberty University that if God split Jerry Falwell in
half, you would have his sons Jerry and Jonathan.
Jerry Jr.
inherited his father’s desire to be a force in American politics, and his post
as Liberty University president, while Jonathan inherited his father’s gift for
evangelical uplift and became pastor of his church.
Now, 14
years after Jerry Falwell Sr. died and nine months after Jerry Jr. was ousted
in a scandal, Liberty is enmeshed in a debate that could have profound
implications for the nation’s religious right: Whether it should keep nurturing
Jerry Jr.’s focus on politics and maintain its high-flying role in the
Republican Party, or begin to change its culture and back away from politics,
an approach increasingly favored by younger evangelicals.
As part of
their discussions, the Liberty trustees are considering naming Jonathan Falwell
as the university’s chancellor—an important and highly symbolic post—in order
to maintain the Falwell family connection but not their political baggage,
according to people familiar with the deliberations.
Donald
Trump looms large over the university’s dilemma. Jerry Jr. shocked many in the
religious right with his early endorsement of Trump over many Republicans with
far greater evangelical ties; during Trump’s presidency, Jerry Jr. spent
university funds on ads and programs that highlighted Trump and his followers.
But Jonathan has been far cooler toward Trump. And in the wake of Jerry Jr.’s
ouster, some in the Liberty community question whether the university would do
better to concentrate on its religious values rather than casting its lot with
the former president.
Liberty’s
ultimate path will influence the greater evangelical world, which is having its
own reckoning with the post-Trump Republican Party. With more than 100,000
students, Liberty has long been one of a small handful of top cultural
institutions for evangelicals, its board studded with famed pastors and
movement leaders. Observers believe that even a small change in direction at
Liberty could signal shifting winds among one of Republicans’ most important
voting blocs.
“Liberty
University is a reflection of evangelicalism at large. Good, and bad, and
everything,” said Karen Swallow Prior, a professor at Liberty for 21 years
before leaving in 2020. “There’s a battle going on between the pro-Trump,
pro-conspiracy theory, anti-vaccine crowd and Christians who might or might not
have some overlap with those things, but who care most about the ministry.”
Since Jerry
Jr. was pushed out of Liberty’s leadership last August, after claiming he was
being blackmailed by a former pool attendant who had an affair with his wife,
the university’s seven-member trustee executive committee has been struggling
to determine how to take the university forward, according to interviews with
more than 15 current and former Liberty students, faculty members,
administrators and trustees. A Liberty spokesperson did not respond to
questions from POLITICO for this story.
The members
of the executive committee are all older conservatives who tend to be
enthusiastic Trump supporters themselves. In Jerry Jr.’s absence, the board has
made several key decisions that have served to keep Liberty aligned with the
GOP, while at the same time elevating leaders who have the strong religious
focus that Jerry Jr. lacked.
In April,
the trustees replaced their acting chairman, Allen McFarland, the first Black
person to serve as Liberty board chairman, who had an interest in increasing
tolerance and diversity at Liberty. He was replaced with Tim Lee, a pugnacious
pro-Trump pastor.
Lee—who
also refers to himself as “Marine Tim Lee” and “Evangelist Tim Lee”—recently
took to task a former Democratic operative who tweeted about how thrilled he
was to be getting the Covid vaccine, for example. “Did not quite anticipate the
wave of euphoria and emotion that comes with that first shot” of the Covid
vaccine, the operative said.
But as Lee
and others have taken increasing control of the school, a growing chorus of
campus critics has been calling on the trustees to enact greater reforms, and
they appear to be listening. A week before they took their strongest step yet
to distance themselves from Jerry Jr., suing him for failing to reveal the
alleged blackmail scheme, they designated Jonathan Falwell as campus pastor.
Liberty’s reformers are now pushing for Jonathan to assume an even bigger
leadership role at Liberty and help transform the university into a more
genteel place. That would mean halting the university’s uncritical embrace of
Trump’s party. Today’s GOP, they allege, simply does not represent Christian
values.
Matt
Morris, a Liberty student from Northern Virginia who recently launched a viral
petition against a pro-Trump think tank at Liberty, said he would like it to be
a place where “the focus isn’t necessarily the conservative values, but more
the biblical values that are part of the school.”
“Shoving
politics down people’s throats is not the way Falwell Sr. went about it,”
Morris added.
Dumping one
Falwell, hiring another
On April
16, Liberty announced that the 70-year-old Lee, a double amputee Vietnam
veteran who has preached for over 40 years, would be its new trustee chairman.
Lee had been a longtime Liberty trustee and member of the executive committee.
The previous day, the university had filed a lawsuit against Jerry Jr., ending
a perplexing period in which the former president had tweeted his presence on
campus and claimed in a POLITICO interview that he was on great terms with the
same trustees who ousted him. The executive committee decided to file the
lawsuit without telling the rest of the board members, some of whom learned of
the decision through news reports the day before a spring board meeting, two
people who discussed the incident with Liberty board members told POLITICO.
But
Liberty’s board did not strip the Falwell family from Liberty altogether.
Jonathan, the board had already announced, would take the role of campus
pastor. Behind the scenes, there were also conversations about elevating
Jonathan to the currently unfilled post of chancellor later this year,
according to two people who have discussed the issue with Liberty board
members.
Giving
Jonathan a prominent position shows the university is still invested in the
Falwell family’s legacy. And while his role of campus pastor is somewhat
limited in scope, becoming chancellor would make Falwell one of the main
stewards of the university and give him a role in hiring Liberty’s next
president, too.
At 54, the
red-haired Jonathan is younger than both Lee and interim president Jerry Prevo,
who is 76, as well as many Liberty board members. Jonathan is telegenic and
preaches at a quick clip, sometimes dressed in a chic plaid blazer or, as
during a speech last fall at Liberty, while wearing black sneakers that
appeared to be Allbirds, the favorite shoes of employees at Silicon Valley
startups.
Most
important for those who would like to see change at Liberty, Jonathan did not
embrace Trump when his brother became an enthusiastic supporter in 2016. At the
time, Jerry Jr. told POLITICO that Jonathan likely “isn’t crazy about [him]
endorsing Trump,” but that his brother hadn’t said anything negative to him
about it. Jonathan, declining to speak directly about the election, said at the
time, “I’m less interested in that, and more interested in the Gospel.”
That’s not
to say that Jonathan, who did not respond to interview requests, is not a
conservative. He has spoken out on social issues including gay marriage, which
he said would never be allowed at the family’s Thomas Roads Baptist Church. And
he voted in the 2016 and 2020 elections, records show.
But
Jonathan has not shared his brother and father’s affection for the
rough-and-tumble of national politics, or in becoming a national figure at all.
When he traveled with his father, Jonathan usually opted to bring a camera,
staying behind the lens and shooting thousands of photos of the celebrities and
political leaders who coalesced around his father.
Most
significantly, Jonathan’s friends and supporters say they feel he would be content
providing spiritual guidance to Liberty while letting others manage the
university’s administration. If Jonathan were to become chancellor, Liberty
would hire a separate president to administer the university, people familiar
with the conversations say. It is not clear which post—president or
chancellor—would be the top job, or if Jonathan would be Liberty’s sole public
face, like his brother and father before him.
Jerry Sr.
always wanted Jonathan to play a large role at Liberty, and making him chancellor
would restore his father’s vision, many people in the Liberty community said.
Back in 2006, after two stints at the hospital, Jerry Sr. embarked on
succession planning at the university and ministry that had become his life’s
biggest achievements. Falwell Sr. had known for years that he wanted Jonathan
to lead his church and Jerry Jr. to lead Liberty after he died, and each son
had taken a job at his biggest legacy institutions. But Falwell Sr. wanted
additional structure, which included naming Jonathan as Liberty’s executive
vice president of spiritual life.
“After my
serious health challenges in early 2005, I determined that, at age 73, I must
put in place an organizational structure which will assure business stability
and spiritual perpetuity to a far larger and rapidly growing LU, even after I
am gone,” Falwell wrote in explaining the changes in October 2006, according to
an email that was later submitted to Liberty’s board by one of Falwell Sr.’s
deputies, Ron Godwin, and subsequently posted online by Save71, a pro-reform
alumni organization.
“Preserving
the ‘Spiritual Life’ of Liberty is my foremost concern,” Falwell wrote, and
“the defining of Jonathan’s post is pivotal to maintaining the doctrinal
integrity of this institution and of my personal legacy.”
But
Jonathan’s tenure at Liberty proved to be short-lived. Falwell Sr. died of a
heart attack the following May. Jonathan took over Thomas Roads Baptist Church,
and Jerry Jr. began leading Liberty. Jonathan helped direct the campus church
and run Liberty’s convocation program, which invites high-profile outside
religious leaders and politicians to speak on campus.
But
Jonathan’s presence on campus seemed to undermine his older brother, two former
Liberty employees told POLITICO. Jonathan—who had already been preaching at the
church for multiple years—was better known in evangelical circles than Jerry
Jr., who had held an administrative job at Liberty for years before his father
passed away.
“It’s as if
Jerry felt like he had to consolidate his influence, because people were
looking at Jonathan as a leader the way his dad was,” said one former Liberty
employee.
Within a
few years, Jonathan stopped appearing often on Liberty’s campus. His hours
plummeted, from an average of 23 hours per week of Liberty work in the year
after his father’s death to nine hours per week four years later, according to
Liberty tax filings. (Former employees say Jonathan spent far fewer hours
around campus, and pulled back from his role sooner.) And while he maintained
his seat on Liberty’s board he rarely spoke up in meetings, perhaps fearful of
contradicting his brother, according to people who have witnessed Liberty board
meetings.
Jonathan
and Jerry Jr. did not have a particularly close relationship, two people who
know both brothers said. One issue on which the brothers did not align was on
how fully to embrace Trump. And Jonathan has made it clear that he has some
very different views from the former president‘s. The day after the 2017 “Unite
the Right” white supremacist march in Charlottesville, which Trump notably
failed to condemn, Jonathan Falwell delivered a blazing sermon condemning
racism and the rising alt-right.
Standing a
mere 60 miles from Charlottesville with a Bible in one hand, Falwell told the
congregation, “I hope that you were saddened, I hope you were sickened by what
you saw.”
“Some
people call it the alt-right, some people call it white supremacy or white
nationalism. They may want to call it, you know, neo-Nazis or they may want to
call it KKK,” Jonathan said. “The one thing that I know is that God calls it
sin. Racism is against God’s word, it is wrong every single time.”
The
following Sunday, Jerry Jr. sat down with veteran journalist Martha Raddatz on
“This Week,” a top Sunday morning news program. Pressed by Raddatz, Jerry Jr.
denounced racism but defended Trump’s response to the event, including his
statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the rally.
“He has
inside information that I don't have,” Falwell told Raddatz. “I don't know if
there were historical purists [at the Charlottesville protest] who were trying
to preserve some statues. I don't know.”
By 1979, he
and his circle of televangelists had achieved their own kind of rock star
status. Falwell was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and
his sermons were broadcast on hundreds of television and radio stations across
the country. He toured with a band often composed of Liberty students, flanked
by local politicians and church leaders at each stop.
That May,
Falwell—who long had considered entering politics but hesitated to do so —
gathered a group of conservative consultants and religious leaders at his
office in Lynchburg to discuss the need for a return to morality in American
life. The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision granting women the right to terminate their
pregnancies, in particular, had bothered Falwell, as had federal requirements
of school desegregation, rising drug and alcohol abuse, and the increasing
availability of pornography. “The American family was being threatened as never
before in the history of the nation,” he later wrote in his autobiography.
Falwell had
for years railed against these evils. After the meeting in Lynchburg, he did
something different: He co-founded the Moral Majority, a mass political and
voter registration effort that would soon be credited with uniting the
Christian right and helping deliver a landslide victory for Republican Ronald
Reagan over the evangelical Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Within
three years, according to Falwell, the organization had amassed a $10 million
annual budget.
A decade
later, the Moral Majority disbanded. But evangelical voters remain politically
engaged, thanks in no small part to Jerry Sr. Eight years after he passed away,
his son Jerry Jr. would make another deeply consequential decision to inject
himself into national politics, endorsing Trump for president shortly before
the caucuses in Iowa, a state with a large evangelical population.
Trump,
Falwell said in his announcement, “is a successful executive and entrepreneur,
a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness
again.”
To some at
Liberty, it seemed that Jerry Jr., after succeeding in vastly improving
Liberty’s financial situation, felt ready to assert the kind of national
influence his father once had. But the choice of Trump stunned many
evangelicals, some of whom had longstanding relationships with Trump’s rivals
for the GOP nomination.
“The late
Dr. Jerry Falwell Sr. would be rolling over in his grave if he knew the son who
bore his name had endorsed the most immoral and ungodly man to ever run for
President of the United States,” John Stemberger, president of the evangelical
Florida Family Policy Council, said the day Falwell Jr. announced his
endorsement.
Nonetheless,
the backing of Falwell helped Trump gain a share of the evangelical vote while
securing a string of primary victories over his more religious counterparts,
including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who had gone so far as to announce his
presidential bid at Liberty. Ultimately, 80 percent of white evangelicals voted
for Trump in the 2016 general election, according to exit polls. In 2020, most
white evangelicals—somewhere between 76 and 81 percent—voted for Trump a second
time.
But polling
also tells a second story, one that is troubling church leaders. Since 2008,
the share of white evangelical Protestants as part of the population has been
on a sharp decline, from 21 percent to 15 percent of the population now. The
decline is unusually steep among organized religions.
And while
fewer people identify as evangelical, the median age of a white evangelical
person in America has gone up, from 50 to 56 years old.
“They’re
losing people in the under-50 category,” said Robert Jones, CEO of the Public
Religion Research Institute. And focus groups and research have shown that
people who have left the church say they were turned off by its overt
partisanship.
“People who
came of age when the Christian right movement was ascendant, what they saw of
Christianity was this hard-edge, anti-gay, partisan politics. And I think it was
something that just didn’t resonate with that generation’s values and what they
thought religion ought to be about,” Jones said.
A growing
number of Liberty students, faculty and alumni feel that way, and are becoming
vocal about what they see as overt partisanship at the university.
Last
summer, a wave of Black faculty and students, including Liberty’s diversity
director, announced plans to resign or transfer schools after Jerry Jr. posted
a tweet about mask mandates that invoked Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s
blackface scandal that Jerry Jr. said was intended to be facetious. Chelsea
Andrews, a Liberty alumni who was senior class in 2015, has called for Liberty
to take a stronger stance against sexual misconduct and recently assembled
dozens of signatures on a letter urging Liberty to investigate Jerry Jr.’s
alleged sexual misconduct while he was university president. Other alumni have
formed a nonprofit, Save71, to focus on lobbying for reforming the school.
An
on-campus think tank started by Jerry Jr. has become a particular flashpoint
for reformers. The so-called Falkirk Center—named after Jerry Jr. and GOP
activist Charlie Kirk—hired fellows including Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis and
spent money on advertising featuring Republican candidates on Facebook,
POLITICO reported last year. One spot showed Trump, his hands joined in prayer,
with the words, “Pray For Our President.”
In
December, both Liberty’s current student body president and vice president
tweeted that they thought Falkirk Center was overtly partisan and un-Christian
in its tone.
“We have
had dozens of conversations with students who are embarrassed to claim the name
of our school due to the rhetoric that comes from this center,” wrote Constance
Schneider, the student body president.
Their
tweets led Morris, a rising sophomore, to wonder if many other Liberty students
were similarly irked by the Falkirk Center. He typed up a petition, titled
“Liberty United Against Falkirk,” on a Google form shortly before Christmas.
“This
petition has been created to show those outside Liberty that we will not be
silent about the damage being done to our school's reputation by several
un-Christlike people,” the petition read. “We don’t want to be soldiers in a
culture war; we want only to be champions for Christ.”
More than
400 students and alumni signed Morris’ petition—far more than he’d anticipated.
Not long afterward, Liberty’s board changed the name of the Falkirk Center to
the Standing for Freedom Center and cut ties with Kirk. (Kirk was on a one-year
contract, Liberty’s communications director told the New York Times, that the
university opted to not renew.)
Morris said
he sees the student response as a sign of where an increasing number of
students want the university to go.
“I want to
pursue the more biblical and moral way of going about things as Christians,”
Morris said in an interview. “Honestly, I see that becoming more and more the
nature of the student body, but not necessarily the school itself.”
Conservatives
still call the shots
There’s
another possibility for Liberty University’s future, one in which Liberty keeps
embracing the Republican Party and finds a new university president—perhaps
even a politician—whose views closely resemble those of the executive
committee. In that case, the university could continue to be a uniting force
between evangelicals and the Republican Party, driving voters to Trump or
whoever emerges in his place in 2024. Rather than fretting about un-Christian
rhetoric, Liberty could embrace its role in today’s culture wars, which have
roots in some of the issues that prompted Jerry Sr. to co-found the Moral Majority.
In the days
after Jerry Jr. resigned at Liberty, rumors were rampant around the Lynchburg
campus that former Vice President Mike Pence would take the role as Liberty
president. Others have hoped Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and former
pastor who currently serves as a fellow at the Standing for Freedom Center,
would want it.
Liberty’s
board is not close to hiring a new president, and will probably wait until it
has finished investigating Jerry Jr. before doing so, people familiar with the
discussions said.
This new
era could well be more conservative. While Jerry Jr. relished being a
high-flying player in Republican politics, he was not especially dogmatic in
his rhetoric or strict in his social views. He relaxed campus rules that rang
of his father’s Christian conservatism, lifting the requirement that men wear
ties to class and allowing faculty to drink alcohol.
Falwell
even underscored his focus on business over religion in a 2019 tweet, writing,
“I have never been a minister. UVA-trained lawyer and commercial real estate
developer for 20 yrs. Univ president for the last 12 years.” Liberty’s
“faculty, students and campus pastor” are what keep the university spiritually
strong, Falwell tweeted.
The people
who make up the Liberty board’s executive committee today are more doctrinaire
than Jerry Jr. in both their religion and their politics. They include Lee, who
recently declared on Twitter that “Liberalism causes brain damage,” and Prevo,
who recently hired a friend from his former ministry who until earlier this
year was chairman of the Alaska State Republican Party to assume a senior role as
a Liberty administrator.
While Jerry
Jr. took steps to quiet dissent against Trump on campus, Prevo is now fighting
a battle against wokeness. Liberty parted ways with its previous campus pastor,
David Nasser, after he denounced Jerry Jr. last fall and, in a particularly
controversial moment, attended a student rally billed as a “Black Lives Matter”
event.
Nasser ran
the program that invited Jeh Johnson, former President Barack Obama’s secretary
of Homeland Security, to speak at one of Liberty’s biweekly student
convocations, but video of Johnson’s remarks was removed from the Liberty
website after he gave a speech that promoted tolerance and honest leadership.
And while
Liberty has renamed the Falkirk Center, the center is still mired in Republican
politics. It parted ways with Kirk and Ellis but brought on a new crop of
fellows that includes Huckabee and former Trump administration Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo, who is thought to be mulling a White House run himself. It’s
unclear, critics say, whether the center plans to change its approach or simply
its name.
Liberty’s
most fervent critics say the entire board—including Jonathan Falwell, Lee and
Prevo — are part of the problem and should consider resigning. For years, the
board failed to address longstanding rumors that Jerry Jr. was mismanaging the
university’s finances in a way that rewarded his friends and family, and
behaving inappropriately in his personal relationships, they note.
“It’s the
hens guarding the hen house,” said a former Liberty University administrator.
“I’m sure they think this suit against Jerry demonstrates they’re serious about
cleaning up a mess, but it was late, and that’s not how you clean up a mess
from previous years.”
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