This Friday the Thirteenth Might Be the Unluckiest Day for Jerry Falwell Jr.

Jerry Falwell Jr. with his behavioral model.
Photo by Shealah Craighead/Wikimedia Commons

What's happening up at Liberty University today in Virginia? A student protest, that's what. Organizers are saying that if even 60 students show up, it'll be a massive show of resistance to a school president increasingly exposed for evident corruption of Christian principles, a kind of religious strong-man who has ruthlessly suppressed dissent on his campus in the past.

The students are reacting to a blistering investigative piece published by Politico on Monday of this week. That, plus what has been passed around on campus in the form of hot rumors for years about Falwell's behavior (including sexual pole-vaulting and authoritarianism). The students organizing today's protest "have seen a shift in the student body against Falwell that hasn’t been seen in the school’s recent history. 'The mood is changing from "We wish Jerry would keep quiet" to "We wish we had better representation for our school,' " [one of the student leaders] said. 'Jerry doesn’t have our best interests at heart. He doesn’t share Liberty’s mission statement to train champions for Christ.' ”

The article about the protest published by the Religion News Service prompted me to go back and find the Politico article that sparked it, and it's a doozie:

More than two dozen current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell ... don’t think he’s the right man to lead Liberty University or serve as a figurehead in the Christian conservative movement....

...they depicted how Falwell and his wife, Becki, consolidated power at Liberty University and how Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains. Among the previously unreported revelations are Falwell’s decision to hire his son Trey’s company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell’s advocacy for loans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell’s awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends.

“We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,” said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty’s finances. “We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

My concern now shifts to Falwell's local Gestapo -- the Liberty University Police. Will they shut down the student protest? How many will show up and be brave? We'll be looking for news about this during the rest of today and into tomorrow.

Footnote: One of the best things about the Religion News article is that it was written by Will Young, the former student editor of the Liberty University newspaper whom Falwell censored. We wrote about Will back in July -- "Surviving Liberty University (and finding liberty)."

UPDATE
Look like more than 60 students to you?

Surviving Liberty University (and finding liberty)

Will E. Young,
from his Twitter feed

I've just been reading Will E. Young's account of struggling for press freedom at Liberty University -- "Inside Liberty University's 'Culture of Fear': How Jerry Falwell Jr. Silences Students and Professors Who Reject His Pro-Trump Politics." Young was the student editor in chief of The Champion, the student weekly newspaper on campus, during the time Liberty's president, Jerry Falwell Jr., began promoting and defending Donald J. Trump.

Will Young was trying to learn how to be an investigative reporter and soon learned that he couldn't investigate Liberty University nor any of Falwell's friends (including a local member of the Virginia House of Delegates). After two of his fellow editors on the paper were fired for trying to report on a group critical of Falwell, the Red Letter Christians, who had planned a Lynchburg rally to oppose Falwell's "toxic evangelicalism," Will Young himself resigned in protest. He would be the last student editor of the paper, because soon after that the Falwell admin seized complete control of the paper and turned it into an official house organ.

[Background on Red Letter Christians, which organized even before the rise of Trump to counter the politicizing of Christianity, here and here.]

Young, who's become an editorial assistant at Sojourners, writes: "I’m realizing the extent to which I internalized the fear tactics; I still sometimes self-censor my thoughts and writing. How can a college education stifle your freedom of thought? When people ask me if I regret going to Liberty, as many do, I usually pause. I don’t know."

The long piece Young wrote is new insight into the culture of Trump acquiescence among otherwise good Christian believers. It made me reevaluate my own history, because, O my brethren, I attended a Southern Baptist College in West Texas and had a wholly different experience with free thought and dissent.

I had to attend mandatory "chapel" services three times a week (at Liberty University, it's only twice a week). I had to take a required course in Bible and religion. I had to check in and out of my men's dorm, and women could not under any circumstances be out of their dorms past 10:30 p.m. Any form of alcohol was strictly verboten.

Yet I felt very free there and got a good education, especially in the humanities. It was a classic education, and my professors inspired inquisitiveness. My favorite history professor would declare in class with a wink that there were certain books we probably shouldn't read, like Voltaire's Candide. I promptly went looking for Candide and immediately found a paperback copy in the college's own bookstore. He also put me onto The Decameron, and I happily read the raciest parts to my dorm mates, and they happily listened.

I got into Sartre and Camus and the French existentialists, and in a reading group founded by my journalism professor, I wanted to read John Updike's Rabbit, Run, which was making literary news at the time, and we did read it and no one complained to the thought police.

I worked on the student newspaper, and when a group of my guy friends wanted to start a fraternity -- which were banned on our little campus -- I wrote a strongly worded editorial defending their right, and no one called me on the carpet. The guys started their fraternity. I now feel extremely dubious about carrying the torch of freedom for Chi Omicron, but we've all got to start somewhere.

The one time I remember the college administration trying to squelch strong student juices was over the insurgency of a charismatic group -- and naturally, I went to their meetings too, because I always jumped into anything new and dangerous. In those prayer-and-praise meetings we were being encouraged to go around the church, especially the church hierarchy, to have tongues of fire to denounce hypocrisy where we saw it, so naturally we were a threat to the established order of things.

My favorite literature professor admonished his students to "keep the windows of your soul wide open so that the light shines in from many different directions." That's what I did through four years, sampling every philosophy, every viewpoint, every radical departure that crossed my path, and I'm so thankful I had a safe environment to do it. No Jerry Falwell Jr. No attempt to bend religion and thought to satisfy the veering path of an unprincipled national political figure.

I don't know what that Baptist college is like now. I hope it hasn't become "Liberty-ized." But the example of Will E. Young, and my own experience, makes me believe that freedom of thought has a way of breaking out in the most unlikely places and under the most adverse circumstances. I cling to that belief in this dark time.

Blessed Be the Astroturfers!

What's not to enjoy about the following fable? It's got illegal Trump campaign funds. It's got Michael Cohen, Trump's crooked fixer, going into business with Christian operatives at super-Christian Liberty University, first to make himself into a sex symbol and then to make Trump into The Answer. Yum. Failure and hypocrisy on a Biblical scale.

John Gauger

No one has been a bigger Trump supporter and apologist than Jerry Falwell Jr. He's practically turned Liberty University into a neon runway for Trump. Back in the olden times when they were good fellas, employer/employee locked in a pact of mutual protection, Trump's lawyer and right-hand man Michael Cohen accompanied Trump to Lynchburg on his very first visit there in 2012. Cohen, as Trump's mouth, naturally met Liberty's chief information officer, one John Gauger, who was also a young tech hotshot (supposedly) who was also verbally ambitious to get into the politics game. The Wall St. Journal broke the story (behind a paywall, so I'm relying on 2nd-hand replays) that Cohen and Gauger kept in touch for the next six years, with Cohen ever dangling the prospect of big money in a build-up to a Trump presidential campaign.

Cohen was slow to deliver, and first he tested Gauger's talents. Cohen wanted a dummy Twitter account, Women For Cohen (no, seriously), where various professional women publicly celebrated how sexy and irresistible Michael Cohen was, and possibly the greatest legal mind in New Yawk City, all of which was actually written by a female friend of Gauger (presumably also employed by Liberty University?). Apparently, Gauger did alright because Cohen wanted him for another job. It was 2015, the run-up to the 2016 primaries.

Someone who thinks like Cohen, abetted by someone who operates like Gauger -- well the bright idea was bound to pop up: Why not rig a couple of CNBC on-line polls to show how popular Trump was? Russian-style social media manipulation before anyone knew about Russian-style social media manipulation. Gauger was more than game.

So Cohen made an oral contract [cough] to pay Gauger $50,000 to write computer programs that would vote automatically over and over, simulating the on-line popularity of one Donald J. Trump. First, in 2014 it was a poll for America's "top business leaders" (Trump didn't make the top 50) and then a poll on who ought to run for president. Trump got 5% of that vote. Gauger's tech savvy turned out to be an illusion. And so was the $50,000. Gauger showed up in person at Trump Tower to be paid, and Cohen (should have) said, "You gotta be kidding me!" But Cohen did pay him off -- $12,000 and change, in cash, in "a blue Walmart bag," which also contained (you couldn't make this up) a boxing glove once owned by a famous Brazilian athlete. (Did Cohen know Gauger was somehow a fan, or what? What's the market in Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter memorabilia?) Anyway, that bag o' cash presumably broke at least two campaign finance laws, and Cohen has incidentally confirmed Gauger's account on Twitter (natch) and said he did all at Trump's direction and for Trump's sole benefit.

(Cohen later made up for stiffing Gauger by giving him work for another client, the chief executive of CareOne Management LLC, a New Jersey assisted-living company that had given Cohen a consulting contract. Gauger created "a positive media presence" for the CEO. Don't know how successful he was or how much he got paid.)

Cherry on This Sundae
Jerry Falwell Jr. is proudly bragging about the entrepreneurial ambition of his chief information officer. He issued an official response to the Wall Street Journal article: "John Gauger is one example among many outstanding LU employees who have made great contributions in their official roles and also enjoyed success as independent entrepreneurs, allowing them to enhance their capabilities and generate more revenue for their families while allowing the University to retain them on our team."

Falwell was getting ahead of the question ... What's an employee of Liberty University doing moonlighting for the Trump campaign? And completely ignoring the other question: What's a born-again employee of Liberty University doing committing internet fraud?

Blessed Are Those Who Keep Their Mouths Shut About Trump

Jonathan Martin

Last night on the Liberty University campus in Lynchburg, Va., evangelical leader Jonathan Martin was planning to hold a prayer meeting with some students who believe that Jesus Christ is a better role model than Donald J. Trump.

Instead of leading a prayer meeting, Rev. Martin got marched off campus by armed college police who told him that if he ever returned, he'd be arrested.

Martin has been critical of school president Jerry Falwell Jr. for his idolatry of Trump. He's been critical of Trump for his unchristian behavior and opinions. He's been critical of Steve Bannon as the king of lies and the creator of “the darkest contours of Trumpism.”

“What does it mean for a college administration to be this afraid of free speech? What precisely do they fear?” Martin wrote on Instagram. ”[Jerry Falwell] openly encourages his students to carry guns, but fears public prayer from Christians who openly embrace nonviolence.”

“This confirms everything I’ve heard about the authoritarianism of Falwell, who, like the president for whom he serves as a full-time apologist, does not easily tolerate robust dissent,” Martin wrote.

Martin is a Southerner living now in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has a B.A. from Gardner Webb University in North Carolina, an M.A. from the Pentecostal Theological Seminary, and a ThM from Duke. He's what the kids at Liberty University might call "a righteous dude," unlike the president of that place. (JonathanMartin.com)

Who's the Coolest, Freedom-of-Speech Dude on the Planet? Not Jerry Falwell Jr.

Jerry Falwell Jr.

So this happened in Lynchburg, Virginia, at Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Liberty University.

Falwell became by last summer one of the holiest of Donald Trump's holy choir of evangelical supporters. He spoke on the Donald's behalf at the Republican National Convention.

Then he leaped to Donald's defense after the "grab her by the pussy" videotape. "We've all sinned, blah blah Praise God blah," Falwell said, which didn't in any way impress the actually strait-laced students at his own university.

The strait-laced students began circulating a letter condemning Falwell as a … well, ginormous hypocrite. So Falwell took the opportunity to get all self-righteously self-congratulatory, saying, "It is a testament to the fact that Liberty University promotes the free expression of ideas unlike many major universities where political correctness prevents conservative students from speaking out.”

Yeah, right. Today, news broke that a sports writer for the Liberty University school newspaper had his column spiked -- it won't see print at Liberty University -- by none other than that self-congratulatory prophet of free expression, one Jerry Falwell Jr., because said column by said sports writer expressed the earned experience that he had never in his several years of hearing sexual braggadocio in lockerrooms heard a fellow athlete brag about sexually assaulting women.

That student's revealing piece of prose may not have made it into the Liberty University newspaper, but The Daily Beast has printed the entire text.

Chinos Turneth Away Wrath

Blessed are the flip-flops, for they shall loosen the dress code.

Big news at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

All hail the late, great senior Falwell:

Falwell's son, Jerry Falwell Jr., succeeded his father as the university's chancellor. He noted in the same interview that as a result of the senior Falwell's mobilization of conservative Christian voters, now "every politician has to include this voting bloc" in campaign strategies.

The author might have gone even further. Jerry Falwell Sr. really single-handedly oversaw the cooptation of American evangelical religion by the millionaire-driven corporate subversion of American democracy. The fat cats never had it so good until religion became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.

False Lips at Liberty University

Jerry Falwell's Liberty University has formed a committee to investigate the truthfulness of the head of its theological seminary, one Ergun Caner, who apparently has made quite the name for himself masquerading for American fundamentalists as a former jihadist and "terrorist" whom Jesus saved and then installed in a high-paying job at the United States' holiest institution of higher learning.

To Jerry Falwell Junior's great chagrin, it was bloggers, the spawn of Satan, who began punching holes in Caner's fake biography.

But when less Satanic Southern Baptist bloggers start writing stuff like this, you know you're in trouble:

He never came to America "via Beirut and Cairo." He has never been trained as a fundamentalist Muslim. He has never been a jihadist. He has never debated top Muslim scholars, in Nebraska or anywhere else. It is impossible for any of us to understand why someone would fabricate or embellish his past, but there's a great deal of money to be made selling books and DVDs about Islam in post 9/11 [America]. Who's a better expert on the subject than a radical jihadist who has converted to faith in Jesus Christ, right?

It can't do Liberty University's reputation among the Brethren much good to have a publicly exposed Giant Liar in charge of training its preachers.

Liberty!

Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., has revoked its recognition of the College Democrats because the club endorses Democratic candidates, who are (obviously) baby-killers and devil-worshippers.

The club's president received the news via e-mail from Liberty University's vice president of student affairs. The club, which was officially sanctioned just last October, was ordered to stop using the university's name, to hold no meetings on campus, and to stop advertising events.

That same VP for student affairs then told the local Lynchburg newspaper, "We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech."

BWAA-HA-HA-HA.