samsnewsletter.doc is a collection of thoughts about feelings and feelings about thoughts. The newsletter is free, but I’d be honored if you shared it with a friend or two. Enjoy!
Trigger Warning: This newsletter contains a story about xenophobia and islamophobia.
“If you’re going to go to Liberty, you at least need to read a Wikipedia article about Jerry Falwell.” My mom said this to me during our conversation where I told her I wanted to go to Liberty. It seemed my parents, people at my church, and the less conservative people in my life were surprised at my interest in Liberty, and many of them warned me to do my research before attending the school. To be honest, I didn’t know who Jerry Falwell was before attending Liberty. And when I read through his Wikipedia page, I was a bit surprised at what I found. I knew Falwell and Liberty were quite conservative, but was shocked at the racism, homophobia, and sexism that riddled Falwell’s career and Liberty’s legacy. However, it was easy to pass that off as something that happened in the past and had changed. Falwell had died in 2007, and I figured the university had progressed since his death. My hope was that his son, who was now the school’s president, was different from his father. Falwell Jr. would be better than Falwell Sr., right?
I arrived at Liberty in August of 2015. I drove down with Jordan, one of my best friends from high school, who would be one of my roommates during my first year. As we drove onto campus, I already felt a sense of relief that I never had at Cincinnati. I was approaching this new place with a friend, which would reduce the loneliness one can feel in the first few weeks at a new school. Within a day or so I was easily making friends with other people on my hall. There were a good number of guys who were sophomores and had lived on the same hall the year before, and many of them came by to introduce themselves. I couldn’t remember one time while at Cincinnati that anyone ever came into my dorm room to introduce themselves, so this already made me feel like I might fit in more here.
And then, of course, there was Paige. Although we’d been dating for almost a year at that point, Paige and I had never lived in the same place. Having the opportunity to live close to Paige was a huge draw of going to Liberty. To make it even better, our dorms were literally right next to each other. At Liberty, they divide dorms along the gender binary, so living across the sidewalk from Paige was as good as it could get on campus. Paige and I spent our first semester eating almost every meal together, attending our Old Testament class together, and driving around town just to get the chance to be alone together for a while. It was the classic honeymoon phase of our dating relationship and we wanted to spend as much time as possible together. I wonder sometimes how much of the euphoria of being in the same place as Paige blinded me to some of the negatives of the school earlier on.
If it isn’t clear, my focus at the beginning of school was on making friends and being close to my girlfriend. I remember being a bit embarrassed about this, feeling like maybe I should care more about the academics of the school I was attending and thinking about my future, but the reality is that my priorities were in my relationships. I think this is somewhat typical for people at this age. When people ask me retrospectively, “Why would you go there?” it always feels as if it’s under the assumption that I knew it would be so oppressive or that its academics would be so abysmal. It’s not to say that I wasn’t concerned about these things, but I didn’t have the tools at the time to determine the merits of any school outside of its ability to give me a place to build friendships. College is advertised to juniors and seniors in high school as an experience just as much as an education, and I was keen on getting a good experience.
As I talked about in my last post, I went to Liberty looking for friendships where I could openly reflect on the morality and merit of my life choices and hear similar reflections from others. Liberty offered a seemingly perfect environment for me to find these friends. This kind of confessional, self-reflective life was what a life on campus at Liberty was meant for. Living on campus meant you were required to attend Convocation, Liberty’s chapel service, three times a week. On Wednesday nights, students could attend what was called Campus Community, which was essentially another church service. Campus Community was required if you were on hall leadership, which I was. Hall leadership didn’t just consist of RAs, but also of SLCs (Spiritual Life Coaches) and PGLs (Prayer Group Leaders). I was a PGL, which meant that after Campus Community every Wednesday I led a group of around five students on the hall in a small group. Ideally, every student, including those in leadership, would meet with someone in hall leadership every couple weeks to build an intentional friendship/mentorship. These were called “accountabilities.” Events like Convocation, Campus Community, and even the local churches we all attended on Sundays gave students content to reflect on while interactions like prayer groups and accountabilities provided a space to constructively talk through these reflections. Between all of these various events and meetings there was no shortage of opportunity to reflect openly with others while living on campus.
But this hyper-reflective atmosphere was not contained within the scheduled and structured events at Liberty. It was pretty typical to stay up with dorm mates until late at night talking through a theological or moral concept. While hiking in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains on the weekend, my friends and I would discuss how we saw God in our lives and challenge each other to be more and more “authentic” and “real” with each other. I remember a time specifically when I went on a trip with some friends from school to Yosemite National Park. We were stuck in a snowstorm on a long drive home after a day of hiking in the park. At one point, I mentioned that I didn’t consider myself an evangelical anymore and we proceeded to have a three hour conversation about why I made the claim and if it was even true. In retrospect, the conversation sounds funny to me, but in the moment it seemed of the utmost importance.
Maybe this sounds like sensory overload, but I absolutely loved it for the first few months. Even if I disagreed with some of the pastors who came to speak at Convocation, I was just thrilled to have something to discuss with friends who were interested in talking about it. And while many of my friends came from different theological backgrounds, I found many of them to be much more open and willing to listen than some of the people from the hyper-conservative groups I had spent time around in high school. To this day, I’m still really close with a lot of the guys I lived with on the hall, and I feel it's important to clarify that the oppression I will talk about later has nothing to do with my friends on my hall. What I’m hoping to highlight here is how Liberty curated a culture of self-reflectivity on campus, which allowed me to quickly get into deep conversations with new friends who I found myself living with. In many ways, I think this lifestyle was positive for a short season. But while I loved this in the early months of attending Liberty, it would soon become a shroud that I wanted to shake off.
Within the first few days on campus, freshmen and transfer students were required to attend a new student orientation in the Vines Center, which is the arena where Convocation was held and where indoor sports teams played. I went to this event with my friends Jordan, my roommate, and Caleb, a friend who would soon become one of my closest friends at school. The event kicked off like most Liberty events-- with a large band playing contemporary worship music. Campus Band, a student led band, played at this event as well as at pretty much every other Convocation event. I was pretty quickly struck by how talented the band was and also how cool each member looked. While at this point I scoffed at some of the tropes of evangelical culture, worship music was an area that I still loved deeply and was always affected by. This short worship session made me thrilled to be at the school knowing that I would get to participate in this kind of worship so often.
After worship, a man came out on stage and prayed before introducing himself. He was dressed in skinny jeans, sneakers, and a cool graphic t-shirt. His name was David Nasser, and he was the campus pastor and head over the department of spiritual development for the school. Most students referred to him as “Nasser” while the more traditional students would called him “Pastor David.” As part of his welcome, Nasser made it clear that his role was to pastor the community, and that he genuinely wanted to make himself accessible to every student. While saying this, a slide came up on the big LED screen behind him with a phone number. Nasser asked everyone to get their phones out and put his number in their phones so that we could call or text him if we ever needed anything. I was genuinely impressed that he would give his phone number to every student on campus, and I saw this move as a sign of incredible authenticity. I had heard Nasser was newer to campus, and I imagined after that orientation that he would play an important role in making the campus less legalistic and tied down by the legacy of Jerry Falwell Sr. I implicitly accepted an idea that was being put forth in this event: because people dressed cool and sang current worship music they were more open minded to changing the ways of the past. I believed that a “cool” aesthetic was a direct statement of where one stood on some important issues.
The Convocations that followed from this event continued to build on my assumption. I found myself so much more open to the words of pastors and Christian leaders who came on stage dressed in hip clothes than I did in older white men who came on stage wearing suits. I accepted that this was a good metric for who I could trust and who I should be weary of. I knew some of the past of Liberty still lurked behind corners, and I wanted to keep an eye out for that, but I found myself increasingly optimistic that this place was growing and becoming a place more like Jesus and less like Jerry Falwell Sr.
This assumption about aesthetics was not clear to me at the time, but was instead something I accepted subconsciously. I probably could have told you that the assumption existed, but I wasn’t quite aware of how strongly I bought into it. As I’ve reflected back on my time at Liberty, I’ve realized that a lot of other students bought into this assumption as well. Nasser himself told me at one point that students were more interested in aesthetics than values of justice and equality, but that’s a story for another newsletter. My point is, I got caught up early on in the sights and sounds of Liberty and thought that maybe my assumption had been right about Falwell Jr. being better than his father. The rules never felt overly restricting to me, and I wasn’t noticing constant bigotry everywhere I turned. It was easy enough to dismiss any off-color comment as something particular to the individual rather than systemic. And Falwell Jr. himself didn’t seem to have much of a personality at all. He was rarely seen on stage, and if he ever made an announcement at Convocation it was usually a brief administrative note about how he was giving us a day off of school or encouraging us to show up to a football game. For the first semester at Liberty, Jerry (that’s what we called him) was just an awkward uncle who would stumble through his words and look like he wanted off stage as soon as possible. He seemed harmless.
That is until an early December morning at Convocation. After a normal Convocation program of worship, a speaker, and a few transitions from Nasser, Jerry came onto the stage to make an announcement. Jerry said the school was beginning construction on a gun range that would be located on Liberty Mountain (a mountain right off campus that Liberty owned and housed a variety of recreational facilities at). As part of this announcement, Jerry mentioned the school’s strong commitment to expressing our Second Amendment rights, and reiterating the school’s gun policies (students at Liberty were allowed to have guns in dorm rooms with the proper gun safes and could carry on campus with a Concealed Carry permit).
This announcement came on the heels of the San Bernardino shooting, and Jerry began sliding into a small political rant by saying, “It just blows my mind that the president of the United States [says] that the answer to circumstances like that is more gun control.” I was already annoyed that Liberty would lean so hard into enabling guns all around campus, and a gun range seemed to only make it worse, but the political rant seemed completely unnecessary to me.
But Jerry knew who he was talking to. His comments gained continual applause, and the crowd seemed to be egging his rant along. Jerry then mentioned that if anyone in the area of the shooting had “what I have in my back pocket right now…” and then gestured behind his suit coat. The speech had gone from announcement to performance, and the crowd had gone from excited applause to “oohs” and “ahs” at how Jerry dared to push the boundaries. I was sitting next to Paige and a few of my friends on the hall. We had been giggling most of the way, passing Jerry off as the awkward uncle we saw him to be, but some of us turned to more concerned expressions as he continued.
Gassed up with the room astir, Jerry then said what would make hundreds of news headlines within the day: “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them.” The room erupted as Jerry came to the climax of his performance. I remember looking around the room quickly to see everyone’s reactions. I saw some students stand up and cheer with incredulous but ecstatic looks. Others giggled to each other, clearly not offended but rather laughing in vindication. Meanwhile, others looked shocked and confused, angry at what was obviously an incredibly insensitive, racist, bigoted comment Jerry just made. I wasn’t sure how to respond other than to sit in shock and continue looking around me to see people’s reactions. While in some sense my first thought was, “What the fuck?” my second thought was, “Wait, do my fellow students really agree with this? Is this a fringe opinion or something widely held here?” I wanted to hold onto the idea that this extreme opinion held by Jerry was just something personal to him, but the applause around me made it hard to argue that this opinion wasn’t built into the structures of the arena we sat in.
Jerry quickly finished by encouraging students to take the Concealed Carry class on campus and then dismissed everyone, but no one heard him because everyone was already discussing the show we’d just seen on stage from Jerry. It was all anyone could talk about for the next few days on campus. The cafeteria was filled with conversation about it. Our hall stayed up late multiple nights in a row discussing it. Some professors even made comments toward it. The opinions were diverse, but the majority of them were somewhat sympathetic to Jerry even if they disapproved of his choice of words. It was clear that defending the political position toward the Second Amendment superseded a critique of islamophobia.
This moment was a turning point for me. All of a sudden the spaces of self-reflectivity that seemed mostly concerned with the individuals around me began to expand into conversations about how we all reflected and conceived of public life, and I began to realize just how different I saw things from many of the people around me. This also ruined my hope that Falwell Jr. was better than his dad. The glee in Jerry’s face as he carried out his performance of bigotry on stage felt so filled with hatred, and it seemed to reveal a part of him I had not yet seen. Over the second half of my first year, these feelings and experiences would only multiply as the presidential election grew closer and Jerry Falwell Jr. made a presidential endorsement that shocked many. What was truly changing for me was realizing that the spotted moments of bigotry I had seen on campus in my first semester were beginning to connect into a constellation. I was seeing Liberty for what it was-- as a place systemically drenched in white supremacy and patriarchy.
The Weekly Syllabus
Beloved by Toni Morrison: Can’t believe I never read this until now. I finished it while on vacation and truly loved it so much. It’s haunting and beautiful and an essential read. Thanks to Jenn for letting me borrow her copy.
Follow Hunter Harris on Twitter: I’ve had this conversation with three friends in the last two weeks so it feels necessary at this point to share it here. She is so funny and a delightful culture writer. She will cleanse your Twitter feed from the constant white guy politics.
The Sopranos on HBO: I know, I’m just recommending the classics at this point. But if you’re my age, you were too young to catch the Sopranos on the first go round. Consider this the voice of the Spirit urging you to watch this show. Maybe the best television I’ve seen since Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and Mad Men. Thanks to Miller for telling me to watch this.
Maintenance Phase: An amazing podcast that looks into the wellness industry and debunks trash science and health fads. Unfortunately for my problematic fave Gwyneth Paltrow, Goop Labs does not come out of this podcast alive. Thank you to Brenn for introducing this to me.
family ties by Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar: This video is incredible and Kendrick Lamar continues to stop me in my tracks. Thanks to the five people who sent me this video saying, “Have you seen this yet?”