Liberty University after 14 years: Watching my Alma Mater Spawn Evangelical Trumpism

Rebekah Ricksecker coaching and representing Liberty University at a track meet in 2018. Photo courtesy of Ricksecker.

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(OPINION) Today, when people ask me where I went to college and I say “Liberty University,” I watch as they lower their eyes and try to think of something polite to say. After the inevitable pause, they usually respond with something like: “oh!” or “wow – what was that like?” or even – “wait…you went to the school that endorsed Trump?” If they don’t say it aloud, the look on their faces does. 

For me, there’s no hiding my affiliation with Liberty University. I attended LU for my undergraduate degree from 2005-2009, earned a Master’s in English between 2009-2011 and then stayed for seven more years to coach NCAA Division I Track & Field and Cross Country.   

I’m a Liberty Girl through and through. I was there when Jerry Falwell Sr. was still alive, and I heard Jerry Jr.’s first address to the student body. As a student-athlete, I proudly wore the red-white-and-blue LIBERTY uniform as I competed in races around the country. During my eight-year tenure as coach, I spoke to hundreds of high school recruits about how incredible Liberty is, signing dozens of them to the athletic program. 

It was at the very beginning of my college experience, during my freshmen year in 2005, that the construction crews rolled onto university grounds to begin a major campus revitalization initiative. Cranes pierced the skyline; wrecking balls slammed into old brick buildings; Jeffersonian-columned edifices inched upwards from their foundations in the red-clay mud.

The crews never left. They simply migrated from one site to another. As students, we got used to inventing detours to our classes to avoid the yellow caution tape that edged the grassy perimeters all over campus. I watched as Liberty transformed, bit by bit, over the next 15 years. For those of us at the university during that period, the changes day-to-day were nearly imperceptible. But when students graduated and came back to visit as alumni, they said: “Everything’s so different! I barely recognize the place.” Touring their alma mater after being gone just two or three years, many of them got lost. And we would chuckle together in my new office at the indoor track, marveling at the changes.

In the same way that the physical campus changed – gradually but also dramatically – the ideology of the school began shifting, bit by bit, when Jerry Falwell Jr. became president.

I can see, now, how Liberty University represents a microcosm of evangelical Christianity in America.

‘Training Champions for Christ’

The truth is, I loved my time at Liberty. I loved the professors and the class discussions and the campus-wide inside jokes. I loved the energy that crackled in the air everywhere on campus: waves of students bustling through the tunnel between classes, the block parties, the lunch-time karaoke, the Saturday night concerts, the fireworks, the old-fashioned red truck that gave away free popcorn during finals week. I loved the sunsets over the Blue Ridge Mountains and the year-round ski slope and the 65 miles of running trails.

But the reason I chose the school was because of its emphasis on spirituality. It permeated every part of campus life – the classes, the Tuesday night prayer groups and even the athletics program. At 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the entire student body gathered at Convocation, which was essentially an hour-long chapel service. We worshipped together; then we listened to a sermon. While Jerry Falwell Sr. was alive, politicians spoke sometimes. Mostly, though, the school brought in dynamic, and specifically Christian, speakers: authors, artists, singers, biblical translators and pastors. The politicians and conservative commentators came occasionally rather than regularly, and they were usually allotted only a few minutes between the worship service and the sermon. Politics were not the main event; the “real” message of the morning was the spiritual address. 

When I was a senior in high school, the recruiting letter I received from the Head Track Coach at Liberty said: “Our goal is to one day win an NCAA Division I Track & Field Championship.” I was astounded by the audacity of that statement. Raised in a conservative Christian family, I had decided early in my high school years that I wanted to attend a religious college. I liked to study and run, and I figured that if I went anywhere else, I’d be spending weekends alone while everyone else partied. Isn’t that the main thing that happened at non-religious colleges? Although I had visited half a dozen other Christian schools, Liberty was different. The founder’s vision permeated every aspect of the university: “If it’s Christian, it ought to be better.” Not second-best. Not almost-as-good. Better. Jerry Falwell Sr. dreamed that Liberty would be for evangelicals what Notre Dame is for Catholics and what Brigham Young is for Mormons – the pinnacle of excellence. When I read that recruiting letter and visited the campus, I decided that I wanted to be a part of that vision. 

Despite his divisive public persona, Jerry Falwell Sr. connected with his students in a way unique for university presidents. For those of us living inside the “Liberty Bubble,” Dr. Falwell was like our boisterous and beloved grandfather, and he seemed to be everywhere on campus all the time. He crowd-surfed at football games, always in his black suit and red tie; he cut the net from the basketball hoop after a big win to deafening cheers. He remembered our names after we met him only once. He gave us rides around campus in his black Suburban, honking his horn and driving up on the sidewalk to scare us as we walked by. We loved it. Whenever he addressed us at convocation, we chanted, “Jerry… Jerry… Jerry!” louder and louder until he laughed and told us to quiet down. Liberty students were called “Jerry’s Kids,” and that label felt right. 

As Jerry’s Kids, we either didn’t pay much attention to what was happening outside of the Bubble, or we assumed that his more offensive public statements were probably just soundbites being taken out of context by the media. The side of Jerry Falwell Sr. that we saw was that of a visionary, of someone who wanted each of his students to accomplish something just as significant as he had. Since founding the school in 1971, he addressed the student body every Wednesday morning at Convocation. He said every single one of us should have a BHAG – a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal.” He reminded us over and over again: “Work as hard as you can, as if it all depended on you; pray as hard as you can, as if it all depended on God.” He waved his arm in the air, indicating that the existence of Liberty University was proof of that philosophy. A mere 30 years ago, our beautiful, sprawling, state-of-the-art campus had been nothing but a forest on the mountain. He used to walk circles around that mountain for hours, the dead leaves and twigs snapping under his shoes, praying that God would enable him to build a world-renowned Christian university. 

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I really understood the impact that Falwell’s Moral Majority had on American culture. Now that I’m in my thirties, my mental discomfort continues to grow about some of the ways that Jerry Falwell Sr. represented Christianity to the world.  

But from listening to him speak for two-years-worth of Wednesdays, here’s the thing that I will always believe about Jerry Falwell Sr.: he wholeheartedly, passionately, believed in his vision. And that vision was centered upon a deep desire to positively impact the nation, as well as the world, for Christ. He saw politics as a tool to extend Christian influence. But for him, politics was just that – a tool.  

Whether or not he pursued his goals in the right way, and whether or not his version of Christianity and specific methods of promoting it were counterproductive to representing Christ accurately and effectively to the world at large, may be up for debate and the subject for a different essay. But I do believe that everything that he did was in pursuit of his singular aim to “Train Champions for Christ,” in the best way that he knew how.  

The rise of Jerry Falwell Jr.

During the last week of my sophomore year, from my second-story dorm window on The Hill, I watched the flashing lights of an ambulance as it pulled up between the dorms and the Chancellor’s Office.

Later that day, in the library studying for final exams, I heard a chorus of whispers surrounding me:

“Dr. Falwell is dead.”                         

Impossible. We had just seen him at Convocation, and his booming voice still reverberated in our minds. I Googled his name, and every major news network had his headshot photo beneath the headline “Breaking News.”

Dr. Falwell’s last two sermons were entitled “On Finishing Well” and “God’s Servant is Indestructible Until He Has Finished the Work God has Called Him to Do.” His words seemed prophetic, now.

That Tuesday in May of 2007, the entire student body walked in shock – like 10,000 zombies – from every corner of campus, congregating at Thomas Road Baptist Church.

We didn’t know what else to do. We couldn’t imagine the university without his daily, larger-than-life presence.

Even before the funeral, it was announced that Dr. Falwell’s two major roles would be divided between his two sons. Jonathan would be the senior pastor of the church that his father had founded, and Jerry Jr. would take over the university. Jerry Falwell Sr. had had two distinct and very public attributes. He was a pastor – warm, caring, inspiring. An orator. What we Christians call “a shepherd.” But he was also a businessman – a dreamer willing to go to nearly any length to make sure his vision was accomplished.

I’m no scientist, but it seems to me that, somehow, Jerry Falwell Sr.’s DNA was split exactly evenly between his two sons.  

At first, we wondered which of the Falwell sons would become the spiritual figurehead of the school. Would it be the pastor, or would it be the chancellor, Jerry Sr.’s namesake?

The first distinct memory I have of Jerry Falwell Jr. after he became president was at a Convocation service. That morning – from the same podium that his father and countless other spiritual leaders had preached – Jerry Jr. didn’t give us a sermon but an announcement.

He proudly told us that Playboy magazine had just published the list of the “Top Ten Hottest College Girls in the Nation” and that the Liberty University women had made the cut.

Some students cheered; some students chuckled; all of us scratched our heads. That was the moment we realized that things were going to be different around LU.  

After Junior’s infamous Playboy announcement, we weren’t sure that we wanted to hear Jerry Jr. preach any sermons to us. And, thankfully, he didn’t try. Whenever Junior addressed us at Convocation, it was only to make announcements or to introduce guest speakers. He clearly felt uncomfortable in the spotlight, nervous every time he had a microphone in his hand. He lacked the natural rapport with students that had come so easily to his father. Still, we encouraged him on the occasions that he did address us, chanting “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” as he walked up to the stage, just as we had for Senior. We loved him because we loved his father. 

Still, we whispered that Junior would never have the charisma, the presence, nor the cultural influence that his father had garnered.

The media was no longer interested in the world’s largest evangelical university.

Jerry Jr. never did claim to be a pastor. He emphasized that he was a businessman. But we were still disappointed with his lack of spiritual leadership. Especially when he said things that seemed increasingly antithetical to our Christian faith. I don’t exactly remember when it happened, but we stopped chanting his name when he walked up to the podium. Over the months, then years, our respect for him slowly eroded.

If Jerry Sr. felt like our grandfather, Jerry Jr. started to feel like a nearly-absentee relative who occasionally shows up for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, like that kooky uncle whom you could always count on to say something ridiculous but harmless. We learned to shrug it off. We would either laugh or cringe or roll our eyes, and then move on with our lives, promptly forgetting whatever off-the-wall comment he had made.

We stopped equating the morality of the leader of the school with the mission of the school. With Junior in charge – shy, inarticulate, and not seeking the spotlight – the media no longer seemed to care about what was happening on Liberty Mountain, and Liberty felt even more like a Bubble than ever. It felt like we were the Christian version of Las Vegas: what happens at Liberty, stays at Liberty. We learned to ignore Jerry Jr.’s comments. We excused them. Besides, we were too busy trying to win championships for the school to really pay that much attention. Everyone at Liberty was busy doing something; we were the “world’s most exciting university,” after all.  

The lack of spiritual leadership and character from our president didn’t seem all that important. We had plenty of other godly leaders on campus whom we respected. And besides, what did it matter? The school began thriving financially.

Explosive Growth

When Jerry, Jr. took over, the number and scope of campus construction projects exploded. It was a wonderful time to be a coach there. In the athletics department, we got everything we asked for: a brand new $30 million hydraulically-banked indoor track. Underwater treadmills. A track-team-only weight room lined with so many squat racks that you had to squint to see the other end. Our athletic facilities rivaled the facilities of the Power Five, SEC and Pac-12 schools. National-level meets were putting in bids to rent our facilities. The financial success of the university spoke for itself, and recruiting higher-level athletes became easier every year. Over the phone I told recruits, “Just visit Liberty and see it for yourself.”

And it wasn’t just athletics. We had an increasingly breath-taking campus: state-of-the-art facilities for every major; a massive new library with beautiful glass walls and a fancy robotic-arm book-retrieval system; and a year-round snowboarding facility and ski lodge called Snowflex, complete with antlers on the wall and bear-skin rugs. We had a new Law School and Business School and Musical Performance Hall and Osteopathic Medical School, nestled on top of the mountain. It was all a part of Junior’s $500 million campus revitalization initiative. More than once, I became disoriented giving tours to recruits because of how quickly the campus was changing. Entire hallways and classrooms and food courts shifted from one month to the next, like a continually changing state-of-the-art maze. Recruits, many of them only visiting LU as a favor to (or mandate from) their parents – athletes who had initially despised the idea of competing for Liberty – would now enthusiastically sign National Letters of Intent after touring the campus. During their daughters’ or sons’ recruiting visits, parents always asked me the same question: “Where is the money coming from for all of this?” And I told them: Jerry Jr. had increased our online program to nearly 100,000 students, and all of the profits were being poured into the campus facility improvements. A coaching friend of mine from a different college in the area told me I should never have any problems recruiting, since, after all, I worked at “a friggin’ theme park!”     

It seemed like Junior was carrying out his father’s vision for Liberty.

However, to many of us who had been at LU since before Jerry Jr.’s tenure, we felt an ideological shift slowly occurring at the school, seeping through our collective consciousness as the months and years progressed. “Training Champions for Christ” was still our official slogan, but we sensed that the administration didn’t care about the second half of the phrase quite as much as they used to anymore. We were shifting more and more toward a glorification of materialism and wealth and power and prestige. And away from our previous emphasis on the Christ-like values of servanthood and morality and humility.    

But did it really matter? How much did the words and the character of our president really matter as long as his actions and policies were helping the school?

“Training Champions for Christ” was slowly becoming our brand, rather than our mission.

The infamous endorsement

And then, 2016 happened.

Nearly all of the Republican presidential candidates, plus Bernie Sanders, visited Liberty University that election season.  

As evangelicals, we loved Ted Cruz. We loved Ben Carson. We loved Marco Rubio. We even loved Bernie Sanders.

“I would never vote for him,” we whispered, “but he may have been my favorite person of the whole bunch!” many of us confided to each other afterwards. 

The candidate we didn’t love was Donald Trump, who came to LU twice. His second visit was on MLK Day, and Liberty students protested outside of the Vines Center. Still, we attended that Convocation in record numbers, not just because it was mandatory, but because we were curious. Before his first visit, we speculated whether someone with the morality of Donald Trump should have even been invited to address us. Did he deserve to be given a microphone at a spiritual gathering like Convocation? We wondered how he would attempt to connect to a packed auditorium of 10,000+ Christians. Even though Convocation was not officially a chapel service, and we knew that non-Christians were invited to speak at times, we still were surprised at the effusiveness of Jerry Junior’s introduction of Donald Trump.  

But Trump clearly wanted to connect with us. He even told us that he was a – wait for it –  “Christian…a real Christian!” After the speech, we said, “Does he even know what that means?” When Trump quoted a Bible verse found in “Two Corinthians,” we chuckled, shook our heads, and said to one another, “At least he tried.”

After the parade of politicians passed through, we felt sure that Jerry Junior would ultimately endorse Ted Cruz, who had officially announced his presidential campaign a few months earlier at Convocation, fully expecting Jerry Junior’s eventual endorsement. After all, he had the support of the larger evangelical community at that time.

But, on Jan. 25, 2016, Jerry Jr. officially endorsed Donald Trump for the office of President of the United States.

At Liberty University, we were shocked.

“Donald Trump?” we said to one another.

Of all the candidates we had heard speak… of all the moral, respectable, intelligent candidates on the Republican ticket…. our president – the president of the world’s largest evangelical Christian university – had endorsed Trump? It couldn’t be true.  

But suddenly, after an eight-year hibernation, the name “Jerry Falwell” was back in the news. Every major media network published Jerry Falwell Jr.’s endorsement.

Even so, we weren’t falling for the charade. Our parents had raised us to vote with our consciences, to vote for family values, to vote for morality. We were kids when Bill Clinton was impeached, and we had been taught by our families and churches throughout our entire lives that someone with the morality of a Bill Clinton didn’t deserve to occupy the White House. Certainly, the evangelicals wouldn’t support a sexist, racist, power-hungry candidate like Donald Trump, would they? A candidate that appeared to be the antithesis of the Christianity we all professed? Even though the president of our university had endorsed Trump, we didn’t take his endorsement seriously. After all, we had stopped respecting Jerry Junior’s opinions years ago.

“Surely no one else in the evangelical world would be swayed by Jerry, Jr.’s endorsement,” we said.

But we were wrong.

“Surely no other evangelical Christian leaders would also endorse Trump,” we said.

We were wrong.

“Surely, the evangelical world would understand that Jerry Jr. isn’t his father,” we said.

We were wrong about that, too.

At Liberty University, we knew better. A few weeks after Jerry Junior aligned himself with Donald Trump, LU set up voting booths in the Vines Center, the same auditorium where convocation is held. On March 1, we voted. And the Liberty University precinct results came back as 44% for Marco Rubio, 33% for Ted Cruz and 8% for Trump.

“The rest of evangelical Christian America would come to the same conclusion as us,” we said. “Surely they wouldn’t fall for Jerry Junior’s endorsement.”  

The endorsement had come just days before the Iowa caucus, and Trump was ecstatic: "It is truly an honor to receive Jerry's endorsement," he said. "Not only is he a high-quality person, with a wonderful family, whom I have great respect for — I also consider him a very good friend and his support means so much to me.” 

And suddenly, as Trump began gaining national momentum, more evangelical leaders joined Jerry Jr. and endorsed him too. I will always wonder why. Perhaps it was because evangelical leaders had respected Jerry Falwell Sr., and now they were willing to give credence to the son who shared his name.  Or maybe they just realized that the cause of conservative politics might be best served if they endorsed Trump too. And so they hopped onto the evangelical Trump Train that Jerry had built – leaders like James Dobson, John Hagee and Franklin Graham. Leaders whom we had respected.

Still, not everyone joined. The same day that Jerry Jr. officially endorsed Trump, his brother Jonathon Falwell issued the following statement: “As a pastor of a local church attended by people of different political parties and persuasions, I have made it my practice not to endorse political candidates. I do not believe it is my responsibility to point people to a candidate but rather to point people to Jesus Christ as the ultimate and only hope… In every election cycle, I strongly urge our church members […] to make sure they vote for a person of character, moral leadership and who most closely aligns with their beliefs and values.” Jonathon’s statement was published by the local news. But it was his brother who held the national microphone.

In a stronger admonition to Christians, Max Lucado challenged the Christian community in an open letter published by the Washington Post in 2016: “I’m a pastor. I don’t endorse candidates… But I am protective of the Christian faith. If a public personality calls on Christ one day and calls someone a ‘bimbo’ the next, is something not awry? And to do so, not once, but repeatedly? Unrepentantly? Unapologetically?”

It wasn’t enough. The Trump Train was already rolling. The American evangelical Christian community, which had initially put Trump at the bottom of the list of all the Republican candidates, now began supporting him in higher and higher numbers, until his support grew to over 80% of White evangelicals.

“How did this happen?” we asked each other at Liberty University.

Then we realized that it had already happened in our own little universe months before the 2016 election. Years, perhaps. Somewhere, sometime, our gatherings had begun to feel like a circus of Republicanism under the guise of Christianity, like political rallies instead of church services.

It happened at Liberty when politics officially became King over spirituality.  When we started to use “Christianity” as a marketing tool, as our brand. And we started to forget what the core of Christianity even meant. It started with our president, when we used the Christian label to further a different agenda, all in the name of prestige. Power.

I’ve heard that if you put a live lobster in boiling water, it will thrash around violently, desperate to crawl out of the pot. You need to hold it down with tongs or a lid to prevent it from escaping. But if you put it in cold water first, then it will stay – comfortable and content as the water becomes lukewarm, and then hot. That’s how it felt at Liberty University. We were happy. Comfortable. Content. And we were winning. Between 2008 and 2016, we barely noticed the temperature rising. We noticed after it was too late.

Losing a home

Evangelicals put Trump in office so we could use him as our puppet. We said: “Although Trump isn’t one of us, it’s okay –  because he supports us.”

Perhaps the thing that we didn’t account for was, somewhere along the way, we became his puppet too. To the perspective of those outside of the Christian community, we have become a representation of the decidedly non-Christlike attributes of arrogance, greed and the thirst for power.  

And now that Trump is out, I’m not sure that Christian Nationalism feels too different.

It’s one reason why young people are leaving the faith in droves. For many, there’s an irreconcilable cognitive dissonance between the Christianity of our youth and the Christianity we see modeled today. And it’s also why American Christianity has become so distasteful to those outside of it.

And I think that we – those of us who are Christians, and those of us who believe that Christians ought to do our best to embody the characteristics of Christ –  really ought to think about that. 

At Liberty University, the Hancock Welcome Center is one of the most beautiful buildings on campus. Completed in 2012, the visitor’s center has tall Jeffersonian-style columns, a domed roof and large windows allowing sunlight to stream inside with a breath-taking view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As a coach, it’s where I told high school athletes and their parents to meet me so that they would have a great first impression of the school. The white marble floors are so shiny that your shoes squeak with every step, and spiral staircases loop around the inside perimeter up to the dome. It’s where Jerry Jr. and Becki Falwell hosted Christmas parties every year, and a sparkling 30-foot-tall Christmas tree reminiscent of the Rockefeller Center Tree in New York reached up to the dome.

The old building that had previously been in that spot while I was an undergraduate student was also called Hancock. It was a humble brick building in the shape of a plain rectangular box. It’s where my teammates and I met for practice every day, in the front lobby with the green-carpeted split stairway. I spent countless hours in the old Hancock – hanging out in my coaches’ offices upstairs, working out in the weight room downstairs, sneaking in 20-minute power naps between classes on the lumpy futon in the secret locker room. At night, my three best friends and I sometimes crawled up onto the flat roof. We laid on our stomachs under the stars, people-watching the unsuspecting students below. We shared deep conversations and nibbled on snacks until it was time to hustle back to our dorms for midnight curfew.  

One day, while walking on the sidewalk, I was shocked to watch a wrecking ball swing in the air and then slam into the building. I watched the bricks shatter and crumble. The wrecking ball swung again and again. I stood there alone, on the concrete, and I couldn’t stop the tears. I finally had to leave because I couldn’t bear to continue watching the building that I loved so much crumble to the ground.

When the new Hancock was finished the next year, no one ever said they missed the Old Hancock. The new one was infinitely more prestigious. But I missed the old one.  

When I talk to some of my peers about the era we now live in – this era of Christian Nationalism, the intermingling of religion with this kind of politics – we talk of how we feel like we’ve lost something, something that we feel deep in our core.

I think a lot of us feel a little like I felt the day I watched my old Hancock building crumble to the ground. It feels like losing home.

Sometimes, now, I ask myself what I am.

And I think I’m still an evangelical. I believe the same theology I’ve always believed. But now, I’m ashamed to call myself one in public because of the connotations that burden the label more than ever. If I say I’m an evangelical to my friends and colleagues outside of the church, they will think I believe things that I don’t. And I’m not sure what to do about that.

I didn’t want to leave Liberty. Coaching the women’s distance squad felt like a dream job; I loved my athletes like they were family. I had poured nearly a decade and a half into the athletics program, as both an athlete and then as a coach. More than anything, my greatest career goal was to bring the Liberty women’s distance team to the NCAA Division I National Cross Country Championship. Every day, I made dozens of small decisions centered on getting closer to that goal. Both my personal and my professional life revolved around it.  My career goals became an obsession.

Billy Graham once said that “a coach will impact more people in one year than the average person will in an entire lifetime.” I took that quote to heart. To me, my athletes were like my family, and I would have done anything for them.

My mind, whether awake or asleep, was constantly inundated with thoughts about how to advocate for my athletes and how to help them run faster. While driving my car, I daydreamed about training plans. I fell asleep thinking about injury-prevention routines. At night, I dreamt about 10k’s under the stadium lights and about conference championship meets. Sometimes I had nightmares about my athletes missing their races, or that they flopped in a big race because they had tanked up on hamburgers at the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way there. And every morning, I woke up to half a dozen text messages from my athletes. Liberty Athletics was my world.

I was certainly never the perfect coach, nowhere near it. But I gave it everything I had. I coached the women’s team for eight years, and the men’s team for two.  But as the years went on, it became more difficult to recruit with a clear conscience. It was harder and harder to defend the president of our university. It was harder to say, “This is what Christianity looks like.” Sometimes, I looked at Jerry Jr.’s Twitter account, or I would catch his interviews in the media. And I would feel sick.  

The faculty and staff and Liberty were put into an impossible position. Stay, and be complicit to the way our president was representing Christianity to the world? Try to make change from within? Risk being fired for speaking up? Leave in protest?  

Eventually, I resigned.

I had been (half-heartedly) thinking about leaving Liberty for a year before I actually did. I had been growing more and more uncomfortable with the talking head of Jerry Falwell Jr. in the media as he increasingly defined the school and evangelical Christianity to the world outside of Liberty.  

It wasn’t easy finding another job. During the interview process, I was told, “You’re the most qualified candidate for this position.” But then later they would say, “So you work for Jerry Jr., eh?” And then I wouldn’t get the job. 

When I met the coach who would become my replacement during the interview process, I told her that this group of distance runners was the best group of athletes any coach could ever hope to work with. And then I excused myself so I could lock myself in the bathroom and cry.

The falling tower

It was rumored that Jerry Jr. couldn’t stand that Liberty didn’t own the tallest building in Lynchburg. And so, he built the Freedom Tower. Erected in 2018, the new seminary stood 275 ft. and 17 stories high. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Jerry Jr. said: “[The] Freedom Tower will be a testament to our heritage as a Christian university and will really make a statement to everyone for years to come about what the school is all about.” Meanwhile, by the very next school year, Liberty administration quietly terminated one-fifth of the full-time faculty at the School of Divinity. 

Whenever I drive past the Tower, rising tall above the landscape, piercing the sky and the famous Blue Ridge Mountain sunsets, I do not think of the school’s spiritual legacy; I think of the Tower of Babel. The quintessential biblical example of pride, the builders of that structure said: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). 

I take Jerry Jr.’s character and behavior personally – and not just because he was the president of my alma mater. I take his actions and public statements personally because, to many, he became the face of American evangelical Christianity. He has used the name of Christ to further his own brand, a brand that prioritizes politics, money and power. The third of the Ten Commandments says that we are not to take the Name of the Lord our God in vain. And using his Name to build an empire centered on political power seems like an egregious breaking of the third commandment to me.   

In many ways, Liberty University is a microcosm of Christian Nationalism in America in that, too often, we’ve traded meaningful spirituality for wealth, power and prestige in the form of materialism, towers and white houses. 

But, we must ask ourselves, at what cost? 

An American voter may have, perhaps, supported Trump because of his economic policies. Or because of his pro-life stance, or because he’s a good businessman. Every Trump voter has their reasons.

But to support Trump as a Christian –  to publicly and effusively embrace Trumpism, or to say he is a representation of Christianity – that has become a deep wound to the cause of Christianity. It’s a wound that I believe will take generations to heal.

Over the past four years, Christians have enjoyed greater religious liberty. We’ve gotten conservative judges appointed. We enjoyed a booming economy before the pandemic. We slowed the pro-abortion agenda. But – we may have also turned an entire generation away from the gospel. For those of us who are Christians, we must sincerely ask ourselves the question: was it worth it?

Rebekah Ricksecker is a faculty member at Sweet Briar College and an MFA creative writing student at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va.