Did you read the very interesting comments that the Rev. Jonathan Falwell made in this fall’s first campus-wide convocation last week at Liberty University?
This was, of course, the first symbolic gathering of this kind after the scandalous fall of Jerry Falwell Jr., as Liberty’s president. So this was a logical event for reporters to stream online. Well, it was a logical reporting decision for journalists who are interested in Liberty’s future, as well as the Jerry Jr. scandal and its potential impact on Donald Trump.
If you want to read the Jonathan Falwell comments, just about the only place to find them is The Washington Post, which continues to cover the scandal’s higher education angle — specifically Christian higher-education — with a strong team of religion-beat pros and an education-beat specialist. The contents of their latest must-read story — “After Jerry Falwell Jr.’s departure, Liberty University faces questions about faith, power, accountability” — show the journalistic wisdom of this approach.
After noting a short plug for Jerry Falwell Jr., and his role as the builder of the current campus, the acting president — the Rev. Jerry Prevo of Alaska — pledged that Liberty’s remaining leaders are committed to the school’s spiritual and academic mission. That set up this:
Then Jonathan Falwell, pastor of the Liberty-affiliated Thomas Road Baptist Church, spoke. He did not mention his brother by name. But he told his audience, in Lynchburg, Va., and around the globe: “So many times we see Christians that are more focused on building their own brand than they are about building the kingdom of God.”
There are a lot of universities out there, Jonathan Falwell said, but Liberty is different: It was built to change the world with the gospel. He urged students to be faithful, trust God and avoid temptation.
Some students who heard the two men said the convocation highlighted a key tension at their school. They felt that Prevo was elevating the former president because of his transformation of the university and that Jonathan Falwell was elevating the Christian values they shared.
“I thought Jonathan Falwell, without being too explicit about it … he definitely kind of took Jerry to task,” said Eli Best, a junior from Alexandria. “But he did it in a way that took us all to task. It was very relevant.”
That set up the thesis statement for the piece, which shows precisely why this angle in the Liberty University crisis is a national story that journalists in many other North American zip codes should cover.
Yes, this language almost veers into analysis territory. However, the reporting in the story backs it up — especially with the solid collection of “experts” who are quoted by name. The thesis:
Falwell’s departure leaves Liberty at a turning point: Will the school continue its huge success as measured by size, assets and political clout? Or will it return to the more rigorously religious priority of its revered televangelist founder, Jerry Falwell Sr.?
The question resonates far beyond campus. Some experts say it speaks to a challenge for religious schools as they seek to balance a highly competitive marketplace with their core values.
This is what I was talking about last week in the post and “Crossroads” podcast that ran with this headline: “Steamy Jerry Falwell Jr., story will get lots of ink: But what happens now at Liberty University?” As I stated near the top:
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.
Is the Falwell-Trump story important? Of course it is.
Falwell played a huuuuge role — for reasons that remain mysterious and deserve continued investigation — in helping Trump build an early base with some white evangelicals. That helped Trump find the 30-40% of voters that he needed to compete, and then win, in the ridiculously large pack of Republican candidates in the primaries.
But the Liberty story is important in ways that will affect newsrooms in many zip codes all across America — wherever religious colleges and universities are struggling to pay their bills while remaining loyal to the missions and pew-based constituencies that brought them into being. The coronavirus crisis caused this showdown to arrive early, two or three years ahead of a looming decline in potential students — after the Millennial generation bulge in recruiting numbers.
The Post report also noted another important story linked to Liberty, as an institution. For years, your GetReligionistas have been noting how hard it is for journalists to cover independent evangelical and fundamentalist megachurches, schools and parachurch institutions that have few if any ties to denominational leaders or bodies of believers with a specific set of doctrines and traditions.
With that in mind, read this:
Perry Glanzer, a Baylor University education professor, said one of the big trends of this era is the rise of conservative, charismatic or fundamentalist schools that had been started by a pastor or personality and turned into something much bigger. Liberty is in this group, Glanzer wrote in an email, along with Oral Roberts University and Regent University. Many of their graduates have gone on to careers in the U.S. Capitol, on Wall Street or in the entertainment industry.
Albert Mohler, theologian and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the business model that allowed Liberty to explode with growth could make it harder to preserve Falwell Sr.’s conservative-Christianity-first model. Although Liberty is a private university, it relies heavily on funding that flows through federal student aid programs, public money that comes with requirements to avoid discrimination. In the most recent school year, federal data shows, the government disbursed more than $750 million in grants and loans to help students pay to attend Liberty, putting the school ahead of most others in total government loan volume.
Lots of freedom, lots of personal charisma and lots of government money. That’s a heady combination, when combined with structures that offer next to zero oversight from experienced leaders in a denomination or faith tradition.
This is a must-read story. I hope journalists elsewhere will pay attention to it.