The last time former Liberty University president Jerry Falwell’s name appeared in this space was January 2017, when he was being vetted for a senior staff position with the president he helped elect.
Although a match never materialized, the Trump campaign and administration would be forever in Falwell’s debt. In tandem with Franklin Graham and a virtual army of other influential neo-evangelical pastors, Falwell helped deliver the white evangelical vote by a margin of 78-21 percent.
Falwell had been among the earliest of Trump’s high-profile supporters, quick to come to his rescue as accusations of sexual harassment and illegal business practices began to cloud his candidate’s chances.
Falwell was once again at Trump’s side in early 2018, as former adult film star Stormy Daniels described a 2006 extramarital affair with Trump, including a payoff for remaining silent; and in a CNN interview from later that year, Falwell swept aside questions about Trump’s capacity for honest regret in the wake of the accusations, defending him on the grounds we’re all sinners, we all make mistakes.
Call it Karma or just plain weird, Falwell has since been revealed for flaws strikingly similar to those of the man he helped install in the White House. Two months after accusations surfaced alleging a long-term sexual relationship involving Falwell, his wife and a former pool attendant, the details are still in dispute among the three.
But whatever the particulars, the damage to Falwell’s career, reputation and person have been dire: he resigned his posts (president and chancellor) at Liberty in August, then made a failed attempt to regain his job; a number of conservative evangelical radio hosts, bloggers and editors began flocking to his defense, but Falwell’s stock in that community no doubt continues to fall; and emergency calls placed from his home a week after the story went public indicated Falwell was found outside his home, intoxicated and bleeding.
Were these Falwell’s only tragic but utterly human tumbles from grace, chances are time, talk therapy and a good lawyer would put him on course for a resurrected image a la Jim and Tammy Baker, Jimmy Swaggert or Ted Haggard. But Falwell’s troubles extend far beyond sex scandals or contract disputes over his Liberty severance package.
Even before news of the sexual relationship broke, Falwell was suspicioned to be using his positions to leverage several shady business arrangements. Starting in 2001 and continuing through at least 2017, property records show a pattern: setting up private companies to buy university land for his own commercial development; paying immediate family members and spouses working at Liberty in a manner that violates the school’s nonprofit status; spearheading the building of a $2 million tunnel linking the campus with a shopping plaza Falwell co-owns. The list goes on.
Meanwhile Liberty is left to pick up the pieces. An interim president has been installed, and an outside forensic firm has been hired to investigate the transactions.
To date Falwell is still tweaking his version of the sexual affair, and denying any financial wrongdoing. In a September phone call to a Reuters reporter, Falwell said he welcomes the investigation. He (not for the first time) made sure to disparage the media: “I welcome it because it will prove that all you guys are liars. You got nothing.”
It’s to no one’s benefit if Falwell is convicted in the papers. His life has obviously been a hot mess for years, but if that alone were grounds for criminal action, a goodly portion of the populace would be behind bars right now.
Yet the parallels between Trump and allegations against one of his most loyal religious allies - sex scandals, illegal financial dealings, and victimhood at the hand of a biased press - are obvious, even a little creepy.
At least for the time being, one of them is no longer a factor in American politics. And pray God, the other will follow suit come November.
Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2020
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