ONTD Original - Scandals in the Evangelical Church
Guess What? Divinity School is back in session, jackals!
After some more evangelical deconstruction, therapy and self-care, this bitch is back to expose the fuckery that is the White Christian Evangelical plague upon the world. And who better to expose than piece of shit, Pat Robertson's fav running buddy via a special request. Since there's been more than a few scandals in the church of late and we're coming up to the worst of the silly-season American Presidential Election cycle, focusing on one of the reasons we're here is a good choice. I hope this lives up to expectations.
Welcome to the
Buckle up sistren, there's fuckery to uncover
The basis of this series are my own experiences with living in a Fundamental Christian/Born-Again household until I was in my 30s (when I escaped--I'm not even lying about that), I pulled many of these off the top of my head and then filled in memory with research that sent me down a path of recollections I would much rather forget, BELIEVE ME. Remember, you are not forced to read....but I do hope you learn.
Chapter 1: Hillsong | Chapter 2: James Dobson/Focus on the Family/Family Research Council/Family Talk | Chapter 3 - Part 1: Quiverfull/The Duggars/19 and Counting • Part 2 | Chapter 4: Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker/PTL | Chapter 5: What is a denomination ANYWAY? *disclaimer, I fucked up a lot of info in this so if you hate it, I don't blame you.
Chapter 6: Jerry Falwell/Liberty University/Jerry Falwell Jr
Denomination: Baptist
The Background: Jerry Laymon Falwell, Sr. was born to a relatively non-religious family in Lynchburg, VA in 1933 along with twin brother Gene. His father, Carey, was an agnostic bootlegger who died of cirrhosis (after shooting his brother dead); his grandfather was a flat out atheist.
Jerry didn't fall far from the family tree. He was constantly in trouble and part of a gang in his hometown of Fairview Heights, VA as the 'Wall Gang' due to hanging out on a low, concrete wall outside of the Pickerel Café and getting into shenanigans.
Falwell was a good enough athlete in school to consider a professional baseball career but somehow, Jerry "found God" while deciding to court Macel Pate, whom he met during her time as a piano player at the Park Avenue Baptist Church in 1949. He followed her to the Baptist Bible College in Springfield, MO. Not necessarily because he felt some kind of calling and wanted to preach The Word of God. Nope. He was just THAT enamored with Macel that he wanted to get between her and the fiancé she had at the time.
In order to facilitate that, in 1956, a 22 year-old Jerry started the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a congregation of thirty-five people. The first official services were held in an old warehouse but soon moved to a new auditorium that held 1000 people on the land that would eventually become the center of the Falwell ministry. Falwell began broadcasting his sermons on the radio with a program called the Old-Time Gospel Hour. Six months later after the OTGH's first radio broadcast, the program began appearing on a local television network and eventually it went into national and international syndication. At one point The Old-Time Gospel Hour claimed more than 50 million regular viewers.
Apparently, Marcel was dutifully impressed with Jerry's endeavors in holiness and they eventually married in April of 1958. Over the course of their marriage they had three children: Jerry Jr., Jonathan and Jeannie.
In 1967, Falwell ministry started the preK-12th grade school The Lynchburg Christian Academy for parents to brainwash educate their children with Biblically based material. And also to keep their lily white children away from the dirty Negroes. Because of course it was an all-white school at founding.
In 1971, Falwell started Lynchburg Bible College, a private evangelical-based college for the LCA students to continue their higher education goals, again with an evangelical (WHITE) based background. He raised the money for LBC by selling bonds to investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was none too happy about this, and investigated Falwell for selling his unsecured church bonds to the tune of $6.5 million tax-free dollars raised. Sadly the SEC lost their case in 1973 and was forced to apologize to Falwell and his church since there was no 'intentional wrongdoing' in their sales.
For those who don't know, a solid chunk of the institutions of higher learning in the US started with affiliations to a major denomination. (Boston College is Catholic, Boston University is Methodist, Harvard was originally a school of divinity, etc. etc. etc.) Many of those schools are now fully secular; some like Southern Methodist University, Pepperdine and Brigham Young University continue to lean into their religious foundations. Besides offering undergraduate majors for divinity, religion and other aspects of religious service, many of them have some variant of religious requirements on campus, which could include honor codes that involve not partaking in certain secular activities (dancing, movies, etc.) or attending campus-wide services either once a week or daily.
[Full disclosure: I attended a Christian college called The King's College. It was located in Briarcliff Manor, NY in the 80s and 90s and is now located in Manhattan. Study of The Bible was a required class all four years, as was daily chapel services and signing an honor code that stated I wouldn't attend R-rated movies, go dancing, drink, smoke or engage in premarital sex while attending TKC--within a 250-mile radius of campus. (They were at least realistic.)]
Lynchburg was, naturally, affiliated with Falwell's Thomas Road congregation. Complaints about the original name (Lynchberg?) caused Falwell and co-founder Elmer Townes to change the school's name to Liberty University in 1976 as a play off the bicentennial celebrations in the US that year. (Lynchburg Christian Academy didn't become Liberty Christian Academy until after the school moved campuses closer to Liberty U in 2005)
Falwell encouraged white evangelically minded parents to send their children to his campus to be molded into future right wing politicians, ministers and leaders. It was a "pro-whitefamily, pro-whiteAmerican", anti LGTBQ+, anti-reproductive rights, racist and misogynistic institution---and still is to this day. (One of my high school classmate's daughter is attending there. I openly cringed when she told me this. There are better schools with music programs than this place, baby girl.)
The Scandals: The biggest thing Falwell, Sr. is known for is codifying the 'masculine Christianity' of the 40s and 50s into the 'Moral Majority' that began to openly influence the Republican Party. The shift of American religion moving to the ultra-right and into a political force can be partially traced back to this movement, endorsed by Falwell in the 1950s and 1960s. He used his Thomas Rd pulpit, LCA and Liberty University to create an army of suited and skirted religious White conservatives whose sole purpose was to return the United States to being the 'shining city on a hill' the Founding Fathers* intended.
[*The Founding Fathers (Washington, Adams, Hancock, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, etc. etc. etc.) were primarily deists, Masons and NOTHING that they are portrayed as being in elementary/secondary school social studies. I make it a point to throw this fact into the face of every person who tries to tell me that the USA is a 'Christian Nation'. Kick rocks, bitches, church for Ben Franklin was wandering the woods buck naked because God was everywhere and the Puritans came to the 'New World' because they WANTED to be able to persecute other religions that weren't as 'pure' as theirs, aka 'the shining city on a hill'. Fuck you.]
The entire purpose of this movement was to fight the sea change happening in the country at the time: expanded civil rights for Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians, Indigenous peoples, women and the LGBTQIA+ communities. But, as per its bigoted founder, only properly vetted religious Evangelical conservatives were allowed: no Catholics, Jews, Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons need apply to any Liberty U or Thomas Road focused institutions.
During the 1980s, armed with the large mailing lists from the Thomas Road Congregation, Liberty University alumni and the Old Time Gospel Hour listeners, Falwell tapped into the growing number of 'religiously conservative' Americans who felt betrayed by the Democratic Party's support of the Civil Rights Movement and pushed them not only into voting Republican, but running for political office as Republicans themselves. This was a drastic departure from the past, where the Southern Baptist church distinctly separated politics from church doctrine in the vein of oh I don't know THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE IN THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION.
Falwell, Pat Robertson, along with other religious evangelical leaders moved to knit church and state together so irrevocably that today, they're practically indistinct in the Republican Party.
Throwing their backing and money towards Republican Ronald Reagan instead of actual Christian and decent human being President Jimmy Carter (he supported desegregation and treating the gays like human beings, the dirty liberal) and other carefully curated candidates, the Moral Majority became THE right-wing kingmaker and focal point of the Reagan '80s, now lauded as 'the golden era' of Republican politics. [OP note: It most certainly was not. Not by a long shot.]
Jerry with his hand-picked mouthpiece Ronald Reagan
Thanks to the Moral Majority, AIDS was ignored as a health crisis until the mid-to-late 90s, the Equal Rights Amendment was binned, expansion of gay rights weren't even discussed, and the framework of Republican bigotry that has resulted in the modern era's defanging of the Voting Rights Act, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the tightening of ID requirements for voting were all laid.
[Just a small note here: Ronald and Nancy Reagan were actors. The Reagans were FRIENDS of Rock Hudson. When Rock came out as not only gay but suffering from AIDS, he asked them for help in getting into the only hospital at the time that could help him in France. Did they? I think you know the answer to that. My father distilled his hatred of Reagan into me and I am my father's daughter. Reagan was a grade A, B & C piece of shit.]
Jerry Falwell was also active in bringing down other evangelicals who were a direct threat to the power of his own ministry, culminating in the 1987 ousting of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker from PTL/Heritage USA.
It did give us this gem of Jerry Falwell going down a waterslide [He should have drowned then. I'm just saying. YOU'RE ALL THINKING IT YOU KNOW YOU ARE.]
Falwell spearheaded the demonization of any faith system that was not Evangelical White-endorsed Christianity, along with people like the aforementioned Robertson, Oral Roberts and Robert Tilton, and blamed the 'moral depravity' of the US for causing God to use 'Muslim terrorists' to strike down the 'idol' of the World Trade Centers in NY on 9/11/2001.
He was the founder of the urban legend that Teletubbies character 'Tinky Winky' was clearly a 'homosexual' (yes, you will always hear evangelicals referring to members of the LGBTQ+ community as 'the gays' or 'the homosexuals') because it was purple, had a triangle on its head and carried a red handbag. [I wish I was kidding. I am most certainly not.]
He declared in 1999 that the AntiChrist (the ultimate Big Bad of the Bible) was coming "and of course, he'll be Jewish", then tried to get out of the outrage by stating he was only quoting Scripture. [No, Reader. He most certainly was NOT. Well, he WAS, but considering that the Bible that most of us read now had a metric ton of hateful bullshit inserted into it in 1946, it's not a reliable source.]
He had a few court cases over the years, one of the most famous being against Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, one of the most notable of the nudie mags of the 60s, 70s and 80s, over a fake ad in the magazine claiming that Falwell lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse while he was drunk. Falwell sued for libel and won $200,000. Flynt appealed and took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, who struck down the lower courts rulings, stating the First Amendment prohibited public figures from collecting damages for emotional distress caused by parody in the press.
Falwell also sued a former classmate of his, Jerry Sloan. In 1984, Sloan and Falwell were participating in a debate in Sacramento, CA. Falwell tried to deny that he called the Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination that was accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, "brute beasts" and "a vile and Satanic system" that "one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven".
Sloan said he had receipts in the form of a tape of Falwell saying exactly that. Falwell offered Sloan $5,000 if he produced it. When Sloan did show up with said receipts, SURPRISE SURPRISE, Falwell refused to pay. Sloan sued and won his $5,000, which he then used to create the Lambda Community Center in Sacramento. Falwell got in his feels and appealed the ruling stating that the judge in the case, who just happened to be Jewish, was prejudiced against him. He lost that case too, and was forced to pay another $2,875 in sanctions and court fees.
Falwell also liked to sue anyone who owned the domain name jerryfalwell.com and posted articles and information against Falwell and his organizations with trademark infringement on said domain...or any domain, really.
Not surprisingly, Jerry Sr. was a big ol' stinking hypocrite. He might have preached fire, brimstone and that everyone was going to hell, but before 'drank' was a thing, Jerry Sr was dowing bottles of Nyquil behind the wifey's back. 'Baptist Wine', he called it, according to son Jerry, Jr. Both sons have said in several interviews that the whole reason his father got involved with the church was to prove to his wife Macel that he was a good enough man for her.
[Let's, for a millisecond, ignore the fact that Falwell STALKED this woman to her religious school to encourage her to break up with her fiancé to marry HIM.]
According to Jerry Falwell himself, HE DIDN'T BELIEVE A WORD OF WHAT HE WAS PREACHING, he was doing it all to impress Macel into first marrying him and then staying with him. YMMV, I think that part of him started believing his own hype but him starting off to get Marcel to like him? I kinda believe that. Which makes all of it? That. Much. Worse.
Current Ministry: Falwell Sr. passed away in 2007 from an apparent heart attack. [He was found slumped over his office desk at Liberty University. Rest in Piss.] He is interred on the grounds of Liberty University in a memorial garden with an eternal flame over his gravesite. Students are encouraged to visit and meditate on the life lessons of Rev. Falwell and his teachings (gross). His wife Macel passed away in 2015 and was buried next to him.
Falwell's daughter Jeannie is a surgeon; she was one of the first female graduates from Liberty to attend med school. As of my research today she is the Chief of Surgery at the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center.
Younger son Jonathan became the senior pastor at the Thomas Street Baptist Church after his father's death; he is a graduate of Liberty University and holds his Juris Doctor from the Taft Law School, which is an unaccredited institution. Jonathan has focused his efforts mostly on growing Thomas Street and planting new evangelical churches through the Liberty Church Network in partnership with the Timothy Initiative.
He has been the campus pastor at Liberty University since 2021 and in March of 2023, he was named as Liberty University's third Chancellor, after his father and older brother, Jerry Jr. He serves alongside Dr. Dondi Costin, retired US Air Force Major General, named as the new President starting with the 2023-2024 school year.
As for Falwell's eldest son, Jerry Jr.---well he got himself in a bit of a pickle.
Jerry Jr.: God Forbid:
Jerry Jr. graduated from Liberty University in 1984 with a BA in History and religious studies, then got his law degree (Juris Doctor) from the University of VA in 1987. He then went right back to Liberty University, where between 1987 to 2007 he served both in his own private legal practice and in various roles at Liberty and its associated organization, including as legal counsel and on the Board of Trustees. After his father's death, he became the head of Liberty University.
All this was laid out by Jerry Sr. before this death. Jerry Jr. was considered to be more ambitious and aggressive than his younger brother, which would serve Jr. well in raising money for Liberty U's endowment fund, recruiting brainwashers faculty, staff and poor unfortunate souls students.
[Again, I have bias. There ARE decent educators who are actual Christian people and do not subscribe to the shit doctrine of the majority of Evangelical Christianity. They are very few and very far between, and usually at smaller religious based schools or toiling away in the public school system. Monster schools like Liberty, Oral Roberts, Messiah, Wheaton, Houghton, etc. etc. are mostly full of wackadoodles. Especially at those first two. My former 'alma mater' of King's College has fallen on hard times and lost their accreditation in New York State. GOOD, because Dinesh D'Souza was their president when they reformed so fuck them, I hope they can't get their accreditation back and go away forever.]
As seems to be a recurring theme in these sort of stories, Jerry Jr. brought the university he ran under public scrutiny due to his strict authoritative control over employees AND students, the rabid spending, the blatant nepotism in regards to Falwell-owned/adjacent businesses and organizations in regards to investment in Liberty and his wife Becki (who has no professional experience in higher education) having more and more say in school policies and curriculum, as well as Jerry Jr.'s son Jerry Falwell III (aka Trey) being named as Vice-President of University Operations. He also GAVE the university's athletic facilities to his personal trainer then had Liberty pay said trainer $650,000 to lease it back to Liberty for nine years.
Unlike brother Jonathan, who openly denounced Donnie ThinSkin from the pulpit, Jerry Jr. was an avid supporter of Do**ld Tr*mp, began to openly sell MAGA-themed merchandise in the University bookstore and censored students who were openly against Trump on campus.
In other words, he was just a complete TREAT.
In 2020, a photo of Falwell with his pants undone and his arm around a woman who was not his wife was posted to Jerry Jr.'s Instagram.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
Then came the news that Jerry Jr. and Becki had been involved in a long time throuple with a man named Giancarlo Granda, who at the time they met in 2012 was a poolboy at the famous Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami, FL.
Giancarlo Granda (.l), Becki Falwell (c), Jerry Falwell Jr. (r.)
More leaks followed, like:
The fall came rapidly, as more and more shady dealings from the Falwells' business pursuits and their personal sexual exploits came to light. Many staff and faculty members began to openly speak out against the Falwells, finally able to do so without fear of losing their jobs. (As in many Evangelical secondary educational organizations, tenure is NOT a thing).
By August 25, 2020, Jerry Falwell Jr. had been forced to resign as President and Chancellor of Liberty University. The lawsuits continued however and Granda, who had been cut off from his powerful couple since 2018, began to fight back by talking to reporters. Liberty University sued the Falwells based on the yearslong affair, because their personal actions defamed and harmed the school's reputation.
Not that it has caused a seachange of openness at the Falwell Sr. founded school. The draconian moral clauses of the handbook are still in place; sexual assault and harassment are impossible to report, as the victims are usually the ones placed in blame and expelled from the school. The university was strongly hit by COVID, as many of the ultra-conservative officials did not believe in shut-downs, masking or vaccines. In 2021, COVID was still running rampant on campus, with nearly 600 cases logged in compared to cases in the 30-50s on surrounding Virginia campuses.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
disclaimer: I do believe in a higher power out there in the cosmos (I choose to call it 'God', you good sistren can call it whatever it is you want to). Be a good person. Treat others how you want to be treated. DO NOT LET SOME FLASHY ASS GUY ON THE TV/RADIO TELL YOU WHAT TO BELIEVE. Or one who stands in front of you in a pulpit on Sundays either. The best lesson I got out of my years of Christian captivity (oop, education) was the one that my mother really didn't want me to have: QUESTION EVERYTHING. The Bible is a book, claiming to be the Word of God but written and compiled by FALLIBLE HUMAN MEN. It has been messed with multiple times and fashioned to fit what a small group of people (predominately white men) WANTED it to say. You're allowed to challenge it. As a matter of fact, it's your duty to.
tl;dr: Matthew 7: 3-5
Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye...