The Generational War Among Evangelicals

The number of Americans identifying as evangelical Christians continues to drop with the exodus strongest among the youngest generations, some 40% of whom have walked away from organized religion.  Last year the Southern Baptist Convention saw the largest decline in membership ever.  Evangelicals' slavish support of Donald Trump - a man who embodies everything a true Christian should disavow - has only accelerated the phenomenon and has caused many younger evangelicals to call for the severing of evangelicals' lockstep allegiance to the Republican Party.  A long piece in Politico looks at the ongoing war for the soul of the evangelical movement with focus on Liberty University located in Lynchburg, Virginia - which along with Regent University I view as a blight on Virginia -  where students are increasingly at odds with the university's ties to the GOP and Trump in particular. Here are article highlights:

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.

“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.

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.

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.”

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.

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. . . . . 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. . . . . 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.

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 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.

“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. . . . . Other alumni have formed a nonprofit, Save71, to focus on lobbying for reforming the school.

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.

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.”