tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/liberty-university-52864/articlesLiberty University – The Conversation2021-06-15T12:23:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1594112021-06-15T12:23:51Z2021-06-15T12:23:51ZWhat a Title IX lawsuit might mean for religious universities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406213/original/file-20210614-130393-umkkxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C24%2C5414%2C3579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A recent lawsuit has charged the U.S. Department of Education as being complicit in the abuse of LGBTQ students.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SupremeCourtLGBTRights/fd2b0fc395af4776a84bcc5c998ad6bd/photo?Query=lgbt%20AND%20university&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=97&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Religious Exemption Accountability Project, or REAP, filed a <a href="https://www.thereap.org/lawsuit">class action lawsuit</a> on March 26, 2021, charging that the U.S. Department of Education was complicit “in the abuses that thousands of LGBTQ+ students endured at taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities.” </p>
<p>According to the suit, those abuses include “conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and health care, sexual and physical abuse and harassment.” The abuses also include the “less visible, but no less damaging, consequences of institutionalized shame, fear, anxiety, and loneliness.”</p>
<p>REAP – an organization that aims for “<a href="https://www.thereap.org/about-us">a world where LGBTQ students on all campuses are treated equally</a>” – holds the Department of Education culpable, arguing that, under the federal civil rights law Title IX, it is obligated “to protect sexual and gender minority students at taxpayer-funded” schools, including “private and religious educational institutions.” </p>
<p>The lawsuit’s <a href="https://www.thereap.org/">33 plaintiffs</a> include students and alumni from 25 colleges. Most of these schools – including Liberty University and Baylor University – are evangelical, but the list also includes one Mormon and one Seventh-Day Adventist university. </p>
<p>Indeed, the implications of the lawsuit extend to the <a href="https://www.thereap.org/">more than 200 religious schools that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation</a>. In 2018 these schools <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/christian-colleges-lawsuit-lgbtq-equality-act/2021/03/29/39343620-90af-11eb-9668-89be11273c09_story.html">received US$4.2 billion in federal aid</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/righting-america-creation-museum">scholars who write extensively</a> on evangelicalism from <a href="https://rightingamerica.net/the-racm-blog-2/about/">historical and rhetorical perspectives</a>, we argue that, whether or not it succeeds, this lawsuit poses a serious challenge to these religious schools.</p>
<h2>Holding on to values</h2>
<p>Historian <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/tlel/faculty-and-staff/profile.html?id=alaats">Adam Laats</a> argued in his 2008 book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fundamentalist-u-9780190665623?cc=us&lang=en&">Fundamentalist U</a> that evangelical colleges are forever engaged in a balancing act. </p>
<p>They have had to convince accrediting bodies, faculty, and students that they are legitimate and welcoming institutions of higher education. At the same time, as Laats says, they “have had to demonstrate to a skeptical evangelical public” – alumni, pastors, parachurch leaders and donors – that they are holding fast to the “spiritual and cultural imperatives that set them apart.”</p>
<p>These imperatives differ from school to school, but they can include both doctrinal commitments and lifestyle restrictions. For example, faculty are often required to affirm that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fundamentalism-turns-100-a-landmark-for-the-christian-right-123651">Bible is inerrant</a>, that is, without error and factually true in all that it teaches. For another example, students and staff at many of these institutions are required to agree that they will not consume alcoholic beverages. </p>
<p>And as Laats points out, these schools are obliged to prop up the idea that those “imperatives” are eternal and unchanging.</p>
<h2>Racial issues and change</h2>
<p>But it turns out that evangelical imperatives are subject to forces of change. Take, for example, the matter of race.</p>
<p>In the mid-20th century, administrators at many of these schools insisted that their policies of racial segregation were <a href="https://rightingamerica.net/the-perilous-challenge-of-keeping-evangelical-colleges-safely-orthodox/">biblically grounded and central to the Christian faith</a>. Not coincidentally, at mid-century segregation was part of mainstream American culture, including higher education.</p>
<p>But as the rhetoric of the civil rights movement became increasingly compelling, administrators at evangelical schools cautiously moved away from their racist practices. By the 1970s, things had changed to the point that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fundamentalist-u-9780190665623?cc=us&lang=en&">racial segregation no longer rose to the status</a> of an evangelical “imperative.” </p>
<p>Of course, there were a few religious schools – including <a href="https://rightingamerica.net/the-reap-lawsuit-an-apocalyptic-moment-for-evangelical-colleges/">Bob Jones University</a> in Greenville, South Carolina – that continued to practice racial discrimination and got away with it because of the religious exemption that they claimed. All that changed in 1983 when the Supreme Court ruled, in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1982/81-3">Bob Jones University v. United States</a>, that BJU “did not get to maintain its tax-exempt status due to an interracial dating ban – a policy the university claimed was based in its sincerely held religious beliefs.” </p>
<p>The Court’s decision meant that BJU and similar schools had to make a choice. They could keep racist policies like the ban on interracial dating, or abandon them and retain their tax-exempt status as educational institutions. While BJU held firm for a while, by 2000 <a href="https://multiracial.com/index.php/2000/04/01/dances-with-compromise-the-bob-jones-university-twist/">it had abandoned its interracial dating ban</a>. </p>
<h2>Push for and resistance to change</h2>
<p>REAP is leaning on the Court’s decision v. Bob Jones University as a legal precedent for its <a href="https://www.thereap.org/lawsuit">lawsuit</a>. And this lawsuit comes at a challenging moment for evangelical schools that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.eiu.edu/polisci/faculty.php/hendrickson.php?id=rpburge&subcat=">political scientist Ryan Burge</a> has noted – <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/08/07/on-lgbt-and-womens-equality-stark-statistical-reality-is-coming-for-white-evangelicals/">drawing upon data</a> from the General Social Survey – in 2008 just 1 in 3 white evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 35 believed that same-sex couples should have the right to be married. <a href="https://religioninpublic.blog/2019/12/17/what-turned-the-tide-on-gay-marriage/">But by 2018</a>, it found that “nearly 65% of evangelicals between 18 and 35 [supported] same-sex marriage,” a change in keeping with the dramatic change in opinion in the broader culture. </p>
<p>In response, administrators at many evangelical schools have recently adopted a conciliatory rhetoric for LGBTQ students and their sympathetic allies on and off campus. As Shane Windmeyer, co-founder of <a href="https://www.campuspride.org/about/">Campus Pride</a>, a national organization devoted to working to create a safer college environment for LGBTQ students, <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/lgbtq-students-christian-colleges-face-204717244.html">has recently observed</a>, most Christian colleges now “want to cloud this issue and come off as supportive [of LGBTQ students] because they know it’ll impact recruitment and admissions.” </p>
<p>But at most of these colleges, this conciliatory rhetoric <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/lgbtq-students-christian-colleges-face-204717244.html">has not translated</a> into scrapping policies that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. And there is a reason for this. As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/taking-america-back-for-god-9780190057886?prevNumResPerPage=100&prevSortField=6&view=Standard&resultsPerPage=100&sortField=6&type=listing&start=3700&lang=en&cc=us">several</a> <a href="https://rightingamerica.net/god-hates-westboro-baptist-church-american-nationalism-and-the-religious-right/">scholars</a>, <a href="https://rightingamerica.net/books/righting-america-at-the-creation-museum/">including us</a>, have amply documented, opposition to homosexuality is central to the Christian right, which is dominated by evangelicals and which has framed the push for LGBTQ rights as an attack on faithful Christians. </p>
<h2>‘The great sorting’</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cross erected on Candlers Mountain overlooking Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406260/original/file-20210614-72954-r9ey4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some administrators and faculty at evangelical colleges see discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as being at odds with their Christian commitments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BoomingLiberty/088f1362cdfb4eb2bcde9aec0d5d7c71/photo?Query=liberty%20AND%20university&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=634&currentItemNo=44">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Evangelical colleges <a href="https://rightingamerica.net/facing-the-apocalypse-the-reap-lawsuit-and-moderate-evangelical-universities/">have had to play to two very different audiences</a> when it comes to the matter of sexual orientation and gender identity. Folks in both audiences are paying close attention to the REAP lawsuit. Their responses indicate that “the two-audiences” strategy may no longer be tenable.</p>
<p>See, for example, <a href="https://spu.edu/about-spu/our-history">Seattle Pacific University</a>, an evangelical school founded in 1891 and <a href="https://fmcusa.org/ministries/educational-institutions">affiliated with the Free Methodist Church</a>. On April 19 of this year, <a href="https://julieroys.com/seattle-pacific-university-faculty-vote-no-confidence-board-lgbtq-exclusion/?mc_cid=b29535dac7&mc_eid=33988b2f02">72% of the faculty</a> supported a vote of no confidence in its board of trustees. This came after the trustees refused to revise a policy that forbids the hiring of LGBTQ individuals and refused to modify SPU’s <a href="https://spu.edu/about-spu/spu-facts/statement-on-human-sexuality">statement on human sexuality</a> which stipulates that the only allowable expression of sexuality is “in the context of the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.” </p>
<p>Adding to the pressure is the announcement that “<a href="https://julieroys.com/seattle-pacific-university-faculty-vote-no-confidence-board-lgbtq-exclusion/">the students and alumni are planning a campaign to discourage donations</a> to the school and … decrease enrollment at the school.” </p>
<p>In a subsequent article in the Roys Report, a Christian media outlet that reported the development, several commentators indicated <a href="https://julieroys.com/seattle-pacific-university-faculty-vote-no-confidence-board-lgbtq-exclusion/#comment-90705">a very strong opposition</a> to any effort to end SPU’s discriminatory policies. As one person noted: “I am sorry to hear this once Biblical school has hired so many woke Professors.” Another said: “God hates all things LGBTQ.” A third person observed: “I am a Christian and lifelong resident of the Seattle area. I say good for the SPU Board but sad they have so many faculty with debased minds.” </p>
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<p>As <a href="https://albertmohler.com/2021/03/31/briefing-3-31-21">Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler</a> has put it, “we are about to see a great sorting where we’re going to find out where every institution stands, and it’s not going to come with the filing of this lawsuit. It’s going to come when the moment that the federal government says … ‘You can have the federally supported student aid support … or you can have your convictions. Choose ye this day.’”</p>
<p>This comes from a hard-line fundamentalist. On the other hand, there are administrators and faculty at evangelical colleges who see discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as being at odds with their Christian commitments. For them, the choice is whether to accept financial donations from the segment of their constituency opposed to LGBTQ rights, or go with their convictions.</p>
<p>There are indications that the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/162696/religious-freedom-lgbtq-equality-act-biden">Biden administration is seeking a compromise</a> with these schools that claim a religious exemption that gives them the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity. But whether or not the REAP lawsuit is successful, religious colleges and universities in the U.S. will keep getting pressed to take a stand on the status of LGBTQ students on their campuses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A recent Title IX lawsuit alleges discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation at religious schools. Two scholars argue that this might be a pivotal moment.William Trollinger, Professor of History, University of DaytonSusan L Trollinger, Professor of English, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1450182020-08-26T12:21:25Z2020-08-26T12:21:25ZWhat the Falwell saga tells us about evangelicals and gender roles<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354639/original/file-20200825-20-1w8z6ht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C34%2C4608%2C3322&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Falwell from grace for Jerry and Becki?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/liberty-university-president-jerry-falwell-jr-and-becki-news-photo/1133910752?adppopup=true">Ethan Miller/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jerry Falwell Jr. may well be wishing that a <a href="https://twitter.com/RobDownenChron/status/1290134409757130754/photo/1">photo with his underwear showing</a> and his arm around the waist of a woman not his wife was the worst of his problems.</p>
<p>That snapshot kick-started a round of speculation into the prominent evangelical leader’s personal life that <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/08/24/jerry-falwell-resigns-liberty-university-alleged-affair-trump-pool-attendant/">has cost him his job</a>. On Aug. 25, Falwell confirmed that he <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/25/us/jerry-falwell-jr-liberty-university-resignation/index.html">has resigned</a> his presidency at Liberty University.</p>
<p>His resignation comes after <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/24/jerry-falwell-resigns-liberty-university-401122">allegations in multiple news outlets</a> that Falwell and his wife, Becki, were both <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-falwell-relationship/">engaged in a seven-year sexual relationship</a> with a young man named Giancarlo Granda.</p>
<h2>‘Not involved’</h2>
<p>Granda told Reuters that the sexual relationship involved both Falwells. He claims he had sex with Becki while <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-falwell-relationship-exclusive/exclusive-business-partner-of-falwells-says-he-had-long-affair-with-evangelical-power-couple-idUSKBN25K1ZO">Jerry Falwell watched from the corner of the room</a>. Jerry Falwell Jr. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/24/jerry-falwell-resigns-liberty-university-401122">disputes</a> the allegations. In a <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/exclusive-falwell-says-fatal-attraction-threat-led-to-depression">statement to the Washington Examiner</a>, Falwell said: “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved.” </p>
<p>In other words, it’s Becki’s fault.</p>
<p>From my vantage point <a href="https://www.avila.edu/academics/schools-colleges/college-of-liberal-arts-social-sciences/humanities/religious-studies-and-philosophy/faculty-3/faculty-dr-leslie-dorrough-smith">as a scholar who studies religion and gender</a>, this comment from Falwell is revealing.</p>
<p>How male public figures react to a sex scandal can be a very complex process. In trying to preserve what is left of their reputations, my <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/compromising-positions-9780190924072?cc=us&lang=en&">research</a> indicates that they will often attempt to prove that they remain a “real man” – both a loving, devoted husband and a strong, virile leader. This behavior makes sense when one understands the conservative Christian gender roles that inspire them. </p>
<p>Under <a href="https://ebooks.faithlife.com/product/23330/the-act-of-marriage-the-beauty-of-sexual-love">conservative Christian gender norms</a>, men are described not only as naturally sexual, but also as divinely designed to be far more sexual than women. In fact, male sexuality is often depicted as <a href="https://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/marriage-as-a-feminist-institution/">out of control</a>. The <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/saving-sex-9780199942251?q=amy%20derogatis&lang=en&cc=us">point of marriage</a>, many evangelicals claim, is to harness that male sexuality so that it is productive rather than wild and unbounded. </p>
<p>This view of marriage may strike many as archaic, but these ideas nevertheless permeate part of American culture – one can see it in the “boys will be boys” <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-boys-will-be-boys-is-an-unscientific-excuse-for-assault">defense of bad male behavior</a>.</p>
<p>Such ideas also strongly <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/compromising-positions-9780190924072?cc=us&lang=en&">influence</a> how large swaths of the public tend to view sex scandals. Generally speaking, while the public holds the offending politician responsible, they are also often eager to condemn other figures who were involved for leading him astray.</p>
<p>More specifically, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/compromising-positions-9780190924072?cc=us&lang=en&#:%7E:text=In%20Compromising%20Positions%2C%20Leslie%20Dorrough,the%20discovery%20of%20sexual%20misconduct.">my research</a> shows that women who are in any way associated with sex scandals are much more likely to be demonized or blamed for the sexual incident in question. Even when they are the innocent party, <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5026C">they can be portrayed</a> as power-hungry strategists who stayed in a bad marriage to elevate themselves or enablers who give all women a bad name by sticking up for another adulterer.</p>
<p>And as scholar <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/saving-sex-9780199942251?cc=us&lang=en&">Amy DeRogatis</a> has shown, if a woman is sexual outside of marriage, she is often described by evangelicals as compromising the “gift” of her sexuality intended for her husband. Giving her sexuality to someone else sacrifices her future capacity for intimacy, it is argued. </p>
<p>At the same time, some <a href="https://www.christianbook.com/more-headaches-enjoying-sex-intimacy-marriage/julianna-slattery/9781589975385/pd/5011433">evangelicals</a> claim that a wide number of marital problems stem from the fact that women do not provide their husbands with enough sex.</p>
<p>In this particular subculture, everything from men’s self-esteem to their job performance can be linked to the frequency and quality of their sexual encounters. In this way of thinking, when men have problems, their wives’ sexual attitudes and behaviors are often to blame.</p>
<h2>Demonization of women</h2>
<p>Negative stereotypes often extend to all women involved in a sex scandal, no matter whether any sexual contact actually happened nor whether the act in question was consensual. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/paula-jones-to-penthouse-the-right-used-me">Paula Jones</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/us/anita-hill-women-power.html">Anita Hill</a> both claimed to have been the victims of sexual harassment, at the hands of Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas, respectively. </p>
<p>In the case of both women, elaborate sexual stories <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jul-03-cl-18003-story.html">were concocted</a> by critics of all political stripes. These stories were then adopted more broadly by the general public to portray them as immoral women who must have been at least partially responsible for the sexualized encounters they experienced with two prominent figures. </p>
<p>The case of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/fashion/david-petraeus-paula-broadwell-scandal-affair.html">Paula Broadwell</a> is also instructive. Broadwell was the lover of Gen. David Petraeus, one-time director of the CIA. While both Broadwell and Petraeus admitted to a consensual affair while married to other people, Broadwell’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/opinions/broadwell-petraeus-double-standard-drexler/index.html">ethics</a> were called into question in a way that Petraeus did not experience. </p>
<p>In short, there is a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/compromising-positions-9780190924072?cc=us&lang=en&">pattern</a> in American culture of finding fault with the woman in a sex scandal. Falwell’s response falls in line with this pattern.</p>
<p>But there is another aspect of Granda’s allegations that deserves attention when looking at the response to the scandal. In Granda’s telling – again, which has been denied by Jerry Falwell – the evangelical leader watched the sexual encounters between Granda and Becki but did not actively participate. </p>
<p>As scholar <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305799695_Scandal_in_the_Age_of_Sexting">Joshua Gamson</a> has shown, men whose sexual violations do not involve actual intercourse – for example sexting, as in the case with disgraced New York politician <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/nyregion/anthony-weiner-prison-release.html">Anthony Weiner</a> – are often portrayed as less masculine, even silly, for failing to “do the deed.” </p>
<h2>Chance of redemption?</h2>
<p>What we are watching play out before us with the Falwells is a study of conservative gender norms. </p>
<p>If Falwell can convincingly argue that the fault lies entirely with his wife, then this well-worn story might give him the chance to redeem himself at some point in the future. After all, in this version of events, he can maintain the appearance of a loving husband and father who has some integrity.</p>
<p>On the other hand, being the man who “watched from the corner of the room” fulfills neither the devoted family man role nor that of the virile, powerful husband. If this is the narrative that is ultimately adopted, then the path back to redemption in the eyes of the evangelical public is harder to imagine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leslie Dorrough Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The response to the sex scandal that led to Jerry Falwell Jr. resigning as president of Liberty University falls into a gendered pattern often seen among evangelicals.Leslie Dorrough Smith, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program, Avila UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941612018-04-25T10:49:41Z2018-04-25T10:49:41ZWhy this conservative bastion chose a liberal evangelical icon for its commencement speech<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216182/original/file-20180424-57591-zn0pk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter will give this year's commencement address at Liberty University.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Amis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a move that might surprise some, the conservative evangelical Liberty University has chosen the <a href="http://www.liberty.edu/news/index.cfm?PID=18495&MID=259608">liberal evangelical icon Jimmy Carter</a> to give its commencement speech this year. Based on <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fundamentalist-u-9780190665623?cc=us&lang=en&">my research into the history of evangelical higher education</a>, however, the move makes perfect sense: The long-standing dream of conservative evangelical universities like Liberty is to be more than a niche school. </p>
<h2>The GOP love affair with Liberty</h2>
<p>Liberty’s roots go back to the fundamentalist movement, <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230623729">a conservative interdenominational evangelical protest that began in the 1920s</a>. In that era, fundamentalists hoped to cleanse their churches of liberalism and public schools of evolution. In recent years, many former fundamentalists prefer other labels, such as “conservative evangelical” or simply “Christian.” Liberty has often taken the lead as <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2015/0425/Liberty-University-The-rise-of-a-really-big-conservative-college">the movement’s public face</a>. </p>
<p>Conservative politicians have rushed to flatter Liberty’s conservative vision.
In 2017, for example, President Trump offered a rousing commencement speech to his evangelical fans at Liberty. As they ventured out of Lynchburg, Virginia, <a href="http://time.com/4778240/donald-trump-liberty-university-speech-transcript/">Trump told Liberty grads</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I know that each of you will be a warrior for the truth, will be a warrior for our country and for your family. I know that each of you will do what is right, not what is the easy way, and that you will be true to yourself and your country and your beliefs.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It wasn’t only President Trump who told the Liberty community what it wanted to hear. In the run-up to the 2016 elections, all the major GOP candidates made an appearance at Liberty. Sen. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/us/politics/ted-cruz-2016-presidential-race.html">Ted Cruz announced his candidacy there</a>. Gov. Jeb Bush gave the 2015 commencement speech, <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/jeb-bush-at-liberty-university-commencement-442640451512">praising Liberty’s</a> “seven thousand acres of shared conviction.”</p>
<p>Indeed, this love affair between Liberty University and GOP presidential hopefuls has a long history. Back in 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan traveled to Lynchburg to preach to the conservative choir. The president of Liberty at the time told his campus Reagan represented the “principles which have made America great.”</p>
<h2>The fundamentalist vision for higher education</h2>
<p>Given this long, close relationship between conservative politicians and this conservative religious school, why would today’s leaders invite President Jimmy Carter?</p>
<p>Put simply, the dream of Liberty and its family of institutions has always been bigger than the GOP. For almost a century now, as I describe in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fundamentalist-u-9780190665623?cc=us&lang=en&">my recent book</a>, conservative evangelical academics have yearned to do more than shelter students from secular academic trends. They have hoped to reclaim their spot as the academic trend-makers. They have dreamed of creating a conservative alternative network of religious colleges and universities that could reclaim its role as the brains and conscience of the entire nation. </p>
<p>Almost a hundred years ago, Dean Lowell Coate of Marion College in Indiana pleaded with his fellow conservative evangelical academics to forge a new type of college. </p>
<p>Mainstream institutions, Coate lamented in August 1923 in the pages of the Moody Bible Institute Monthly, had fallen prey to the siren song of “evolution, destructive criticism, and liberalism.” Leading mainstream colleges, Coate warned, had foolishly abandoned Christian thinking in favor of new fads in science and scholarship. They had adopted uncritically a new, liberal approach to biblical hermeneutics.</p>
<p>What America needed, Coate believed, was a new, superior system of higher education, one that would “ignore the whole worldly system, and organize courses independent of the world’s stereotyped curricula, engage the strongest conservative scholarship in America, raise the educational standard above the present unchristian philosophy, stablish [sic] it upon ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints,’ and then challenge the world to meet the new scholarship.” </p>
<h2>The Harvard of the Christian world</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216183/original/file-20180424-57604-uxwxuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216183/original/file-20180424-57604-uxwxuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216183/original/file-20180424-57604-uxwxuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216183/original/file-20180424-57604-uxwxuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216183/original/file-20180424-57604-uxwxuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216183/original/file-20180424-57604-uxwxuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216183/original/file-20180424-57604-uxwxuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Entrance to Jerry Falwell Library on Liberty University’s campus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/12326606@N03/34892529135">Murat Tanyel</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Long before Jerry Falwell Sr. opened Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971 – today’s Liberty University – evangelical academics heeded Coate’s call. Institutions such as Wheaton College in Illinois, Bob Jones University in South Carolina, Biola University in California, Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and many others created a new network of conservative religious colleges and universities.</p>
<p>As I found in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fundamentalist-u-9780190665623?cc=us&lang=en&">my research</a>, the fundamentalist college network wanted to do more than just protect students from trends in secular schools. It wanted to create a better system of higher education, without being secular or skeptical. It wanted to be more than the religious wing of one political party; it planned to be the religious voice of the nation. </p>
<p>For instance, when fundamentalists took over the struggling Des Moines University in 1927, leaders bragged that the revived school would be more than just a fundamentalist hothouse. <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0668.htm">William Bell Riley</a> – a Minneapolis leader who hoped to bring all American fundamentalists under his purview – praised Des Moines in the December 1927 issue of his Christian Fundamentalist magazine as a “strictly fundamentalist University” that welcomed students of all backgrounds, including Catholic and Jewish students.</p>
<p>Des Moines University soon gave up its fundamentalist ambitions, but other fundamentalist colleges thrived. The goal was always the same: to create a secure fundamentalist home for college students, while still earning the respect of the wider world. </p>
<p>By the time Liberty University joined the family, the impulse was even stronger. As Liberty President Pierre Guillermin explained to a journalist for the Liberty Baptist College newsletter in 1982, the goal of his new institution was to be “the Notre Dame of the Christian world athletically and the Harvard of the Christian world academically.” </p>
<h2>Getting closer to its dream?</h2>
<p>Back then, Guillermin’s boast seemed hard to believe. These days, however, things are different. With <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/liberty-university-online-jerry-falwell-jr">over $2 billion in net assets earned from lucrative online programs</a>, today’s President Jerry Falwell Jr. has chosen to invest in traditional brick-and-mortar campus facilities.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216184/original/file-20180424-57578-1dvymge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216184/original/file-20180424-57578-1dvymge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216184/original/file-20180424-57578-1dvymge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216184/original/file-20180424-57578-1dvymge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216184/original/file-20180424-57578-1dvymge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216184/original/file-20180424-57578-1dvymge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216184/original/file-20180424-57578-1dvymge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at Liberty University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Steve Helber</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He has encouraged faculty to write for broad public audiences, recruited top athletes, and lured celebrity speakers of all political backgrounds. For example, when Liberty’s English professor <a href="http://www.liberty.edu/academics/arts-sciences/english/?PID=7627">Karen Swallow Prior</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/karen-swallow-prior/">regularly contributes to The Atlantic magazine</a> or when <a href="https://www.si.com/college-football/2017/09/03/liberty-cancels-classes-after-baylor-win">Liberty beats Baylor in football</a> or when <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/14/bernie-sanders-liberty-university-speech-annotated/?utm_term=.fd3c6a249bc7">Sen. Bernie Sanders agrees to speak on campus</a>, it seems as if Liberty’s dream is that much closer to reality. The vision has always been to be more than just a conservative safe space. The goal is to be America’s Christian university.</p>
<p>When President Carter – long the personification of liberal evangelical politics – joins President Trump in sending Liberty graduates off into the world, evangelical higher education moves nearer to its dearest wish. By hosting liberal presidents as well as conservatives, Liberty can claim to be a real leader in religion, education and politics, not just an angry collection of people with right-wing beliefs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Laats received funding from Spencer Foundation.</span></em></p>Although the choice of liberal icon Jimmy Carter as commencement speaker at Liberty University might be surprising, an expert explains why this fits in with the dream of conservative schools.Adam Laats, Professor of Education and History (by courtesy), Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.