Stories about the goings on at the conservative and evangelical Liberty University are leaking out to the public ….
They are NOT good stories….
At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public.
“When he does stupid stuff, people will mention it to others they consider confidants and not keep it totally secret,” a trusted adviser to Falwell, the school’s president and chancellor, told me. “But they won’t rat him out.”
That’s beginning to change.
Over the past year, Falwell, a prominent evangelical leader and supporter of President Donald Trump, has come under increasing scrutiny. News outlets have reported on business deals by Liberty University benefiting Falwell’s friends. Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen claimed that he had helped Falwell clean up racy “personal” photographs.
Based on scores of new interviews and documents obtained for this article, concerns about Falwell’s behavior go well beyond that—and it’s causing longtime, loyal Liberty University officials to rapidly lose faith in him.
More than two dozen current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell spoke to me or provided documents for this article, opening up—for the first time at an institution so intimately associated with the Falwell family—about what they’ve experienced and why they don’t think he’s the right man to lead Liberty University or serve as a figurehead in the Christian conservative movement.
In interviews over the past eight months, 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.”
Liberty employees detailed other instances of Falwell’s behavior that they see as falling short of the standard of conduct they expect from conservative Christian leaders, from partying at nightclubs, to graphically discussing his sex life with employees, to electioneering that makes uneasy even those who fondly remember the heyday of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the school’s founder and Falwell Jr.’s father, and his Moral Majority….
image….relevantmagazine.com
This is a walking advertisement for why these businesses,masquerading as churches, ought to be paying taxes like everybody else.
If you have HBO I suggest watching the new series “The Righteous Gemstones”.
It’s a hilarious takedown of megachurches and religious dynasties like the Falwells and Grahams.
This is definitely a pattern, where the father establishes a charismatic denomination and draws on the faith and generosity of hundreds of thousands of simple, humble believers — who really need that money for their own needs or their family’s — a denomination which is then inherited by far less dedicated and less qualified prodigal entitled children with their own (over-indulged or over-repressed) weaknesses, frailties and vices.
Cf. Robert Schuller and his son (the Crystal Cathedral was sold to the Roman Catholic Church), Herbert W. Armstrong and his son Ted (Ambassador College’s campus sold after the college failed), and Scientology.
At least SOME people ARE speaking out….