Jerry Falwell Jr.

Jerry Falwell Jr. inherited the presidency of Liberty University upon his father's death on May 15, 2007, and over the following thirteen years converted it from a mid-sized regional Baptist institution into a multi-billion-dollar educational empire — and into the clearest institutional expression of the merger between evangelical Christianity and Trumpist nationalism. When Falwell Jr. took over, Liberty enrolled approximately 27,000 students. By 2016, that number had grown to over 110,000, with roughly 95,000 studying online. Liberty's online program, LU Online, became the primary engine of growth and revenue. The university's net assets grew from $259 million in 2007 to over $2.5 billion by 2020, making it one of the wealthiest private universities in the United States. This financial transformation gave Liberty — and by extension its president — enormous political leverage. Falwell Jr.'s most consequential act was his January 26, 2016 endorsement of Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, delivered at a critical moment before the Iowa caucuses. As the son of the Moral Majority's founder and president of the nation's largest evangelical university, Falwell's imprimatur was a signal to white evangelical voters that Trump — a thrice-married casino owner with no credible evangelical biography — was an acceptable vessel for Christian nationalist political goals. Falwell stayed loyal through the release of the 'Access Hollywood' tape in October 2016, providing cover when other evangelical leaders wavered. Scholars of religion widely credit this endorsement with cementing Trump's dominance among white evangelicals. Under Falwell Jr., Liberty served the institutional function his father had envisioned but lacked the resources to fully realize: a pipeline producing graduates formed entirely within conservative Christian nationalist assumptions, channeled into law, politics, media, and ministry. Liberty's law school, Helms School of Government, and numerous graduate programs were explicitly designed to place graduates in positions of cultural and political influence. Falwell Jr. resigned on August 25, 2020, following the publication of accounts of a sexual arrangement involving his wife Becki and a business associate — an arrangement Falwell had denied participating in beyond a voyeuristic role. The Liberty University board accepted his resignation. Liberty subsequently sued him for $40 million for breach of fiduciary duty; the case settled in 2024 with Liberty paying Falwell $15.3 million. The scandal did not diminish Liberty's institutional reach or its political alignment with Trumpist evangelicalism.

Documented themes

• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy
• education
• trump

Connections from Jerry Falwell Jr.

• promoted → Liberty University (2016) — On January 26, 2016, Falwell Jr. endorsed Donald Trump for the Republican nomination — the first major evangelical institutional leader to do so. He deployed Liberty University's platform, prestige, and symbolic weight as son of the Moral Majority's founder to signal to white evangelical voters that Trump was an acceptable vehicle for Christian nationalist political goals. This endorsement is widely credited by scholars as pivotal in cementing Trump's evangelical coalition.
• promoted → Liberty University (2007) — Falwell Jr. became Liberty's president upon his father's death in May 2007 and transformed it from a 27,000-student regional university ($259M assets) into the world's largest Christian university by enrollment (110,000+ students, $2.5B+ assets) through explosive online program growth. He resigned in August 2020 amid sexual scandal.
• influenced → Jerry Falwell Sr. (2007) — Upon Jerry Falwell Sr.'s death on May 15, 2007, Falwell Jr. assumed the presidency of Liberty University and custodianship of his father's Religious Right brand. He leveraged both to build a financial empire and, crucially, to deploy the Falwell name's evangelical credibility in service of Trumpist nationalism — a political turn his father's fundamentalist separatism would likely not have taken.
• opposed → Christianity Today Editorial (2019) — Jerry Falwell Jr. responded to the Christianity Today editorial by tweeting that it proved 'that this whole impeachment thing is really a coordinated attack by the religious left' and calling for CT's evangelical credentials to be questioned. His response was revealing: where Galli had made a theological argument about presidential character, Falwell reframed it as a political attack by political enemies. This was the movement's standard translation — moral criticism became political warfare, and the critic became an enemy rather than a conscience. Falwell's framing was widely adopted by the nearly 200 evangelical leaders who signed an open letter to CT defending Trump in the editorial's wake.

Sources

• Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 249–265
• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 44–50
• Billion-Dollar Blessings — ProPublica (2021)
• Jerry Falwell, Sin and Scandal at Liberty University — Rolling Stone (2020)