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!
About two weeks before Donald Trump was scheduled to come speak at a Liberty Convocation, the Secret Service granted him security. We received an email in advance letting us know that there would be long waits to get into Convocation and that there would be two other sites to watch Trump’s speech on a livestream. Administration offered students the option to skip this Convocation with no penalty. Still, Paige, myself, and some of the people from my hall got in line early on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January 2016 to see Trump’s speech.
I remember us thinking of it as a funny joke. We didn’t think Trump had a chance as he was still trailing some other Republican candidates, so we figured we’d go watch the theatrics to say we had seen it in person and then go on with our lives. In many ways, that’s kind of how it ended up. Paige and I always reminisce on how Trump’s speech that day was distinctly hilarious to us. We laughed so much. Trump has quite a personality, and it seemed just a funny performance at the time with little consequence. One of the moments that made me laugh the most was when Trump said, “You all might know I’ve written a book called The Art of The Deal.” Some people applauded. “Yeah, see? You know my book! Who here has read my book?” Literally two or three people in a crowd of nearly 10,000 raised their hands, and Trump responded, “Exactly! Everyone here has read my book!” Everyone erupted in laughter. At that point, Trump’s continual fudging of the numbers, half truths, and even full on lies seemed to just be part of the joke. They held no real power. At least we thought they didn’t.
But something larger happened to the Liberty community that day. First, I think some people were truly convinced by Trump. His charisma won them over, and Trump seemed to spend a lot of time at the Convocation worshipping the students and our school. He appealed to the Christian religion and even more specifically to evangelicals (despite reportedly walking off stage and saying to his team “I can’t believe people actually believe that bullshit”). Even more, I think some people just liked how crazy he seemed. They wanted something interesting. A vast majority of students at Liberty are white and many of them come from wealthy backgrounds. Politics had never had much of a consequence in their lives up until that point, so they saw it more as a game than a structure that had significant material impact on others.
There was, however, an even more significant shift during the Trump Convocation. Before Trump came out to speak, Jerry Falwell Jr. came onto stage to introduce him. Typically David Nasser would introduce most of the speakers unless the speaker was incredibly high profile or had a personal connection to another person in the administration, but this time Jerry did the introduction. What we all probably expected to be a couple minute introduction ended up being in excess of 12 minutes long. Jerry did the work to paint what he believed to be an incredible narrative of Trump as both a savvy businessman but also a benevolent public figure. Jerry offered anecdotes about how Trump had given money to those in need and even went as far to compare him to Jerry’s father, saying that the two would be great friends if Falwell Sr. had still been alive. As the introduction went on, it became clear that this wasn’t just a speaker introduction, but a blessing. Trump had come to a holy temple of evangelicalism, and the presiding leader had offered his blessing. It wasn’t technically an endorsement-- although it would be soon-- because making an endorsement from this particular stage would put the school’s non-profit status at risk, but there were no laws against offering blessings to political candidates. (I wrote a paper on this a while ago. If you’re interested and want to read more, let me know and I’ll send you the paper!)
What made this such a significant shift was that Jerry became one of the first prominent voices in evangelicalism to officially speak so favorably of Trump. While Trump’s speech was funny and full of jokes, Jerry’s introduction was serious and sincere. It was clear that he took Trump seriously, and he encouraged others to do the same. Jerry’s official endorsement of Trump, which came a few weeks later, seemed targeted more toward the entirety of American conservative Christianity. But his introduction and blessing of Trump at Convocation was a speech targeted toward the Liberty University community. He was, in many ways, preparing us for what would come over the course of the rest of the 2016 presidential race. He would be supporting Trump with his full force, and we should expect to see more Trump supporters in Convocation, more positive talk about Trump around campus, and more vigor to Make America Great Again than we had ever seen on campus. If this was his message, he absolutely followed through with it. Trump’s Convocation set into motion a new moment at Liberty. It was one that could have been predicted after moments such as Jerry’s comments about the San Bernardino shooting, but one I’m not sure many of us realized would come with such a heavy force.
It was clear in many ways that Jerry’s endorsement of Trump in late January was pretty well received by much of the community at Liberty. Even more, those who didn’t approve mostly kept quiet instead of speaking out against it. There were moments of small protest and resistance, such as a student protest led by Eli McGowan and Josh McMillion during Donald Trump’s MLK Day Convocation, but nothing had concretely organized in response to Falwell and other administrators. Instead, it was pretty common among those who disagreed with Falwell’s approach in the Liberty community to voice their disagreements in private conversations but never speak to any reporters or make public statements of dissent. However, one key Liberty figure walked out on a limb to voice disagreement with Falwell’s endorsement. Mark DeMoss was the chair of the Liberty Board of Trustees’ Executive Committee, and in the Spring of 2016 he made public comment that he believed Falwell’s endorsement of Trump would reflect poorly upon evangelicals, and implied that it could ultimately be bad for Liberty’s image. This was a big deal considering that DeMoss held the second most powerful role at Liberty, and arguably the only role within the entire organization that had any power to hold the school’s president accountable. Within a few weeks of his comments, DeMoss was forced to resign from his position on Liberty’s Board.
The case of Mark DeMoss sent a clear message from Jerry to the entire community that dissent was not welcome in the community. Jerry would play hardball and others in leadership, particularly Nasser, would then come in and mediate the conflict by saying that we needed to remain united in Christ above everything else. The implication was that if you expressed an opinion contrary to the most powerful people in the community, you were an agent of division. I personally was incredibly frustrated by the DeMoss story, but mostly felt powerless to change it. The story was a disagreement between two very high ranking members of the community, and it seemed unlikely that a student or two could create any sort of meaningful noise around the issue.
There was, however, a student on my hall who felt he had to speak up. That student was Dustin Wahl, who we all call Toph because of his incredible resemblance to the actor Topher Grace. Toph was a politically savvy government student who had been freshman class president the year before. He was funny and full of personality, but clearly took himself more seriously than anyone else on the hall. Toph was the guy on the hall that we’d ask questions of any time we talked about how something in politics worked or what history some political ideas had. He was always vehemently against Trump and the growing evangelical support of Trump, and I remember him being inspired by DeMoss’ comments. In the wake of DeMoss’ forced resignation, Toph drafted a petition expressing disappointment in Falwell for disciplining someone for speaking out on a campus that purported itself as one of the best campuses in the country for free speech. I signed the petition, but didn’t do much else to help share it around. Ultimately, the petition didn’t gain the traction Toph had hoped, but it was an inspiring move that I took notice of. While it often felt like no one wanted to speak out about how the culture of Liberty seemed to be changing rapidly in front of our eyes, both DeMoss and Toph had taken steps to critique Jerry publicly.
As that semester continued, Convocation continually moved away from featuring pastors and other spiritual leaders and focusing more on explicitly political speakers. These speakers might be politicians, business leaders who were going on speaking tours for Trump, or even some other religious leaders who were talking about the importance of this moment in history to elect the leader God had chosen. It felt like a constant barrage of pro-Trump propaganda. Because of its history as the foundation of the Moral Majority, there was always a bit of politics in the air at Liberty. It wasn’t abnormal to discuss politics or hear little political comments here and there from professors and staff around campus. After all, Liberty had coined itself as being “politically incorrect since 1971.” And yet it was also an intensely spiritual place. As I explained in my last post, Liberty had Convocations, spiritual leadership on each residence hall, and each class was infused with some sort of spiritual component. Most of the time a class would require some sort of “biblical application” section of an essay while other classes were just bible classes that were required for every student.
As a student stuck in this environment, it became quite difficult to compartmentalize the spiritual teachings from the political propaganda. The lines I had created in my mind between politics and spirituality began to blur. While by this point my politics were firmly left of center, I always had felt that I could find common ground with conservative Christians because of our shared faith. But as the political melded with the spiritual, it became apparent to me that the common ground I once thought I shared was falling out from under me. Before the election was at its height, I was already questioning how conservative evangelicalism didn’t stand up to the morals it preached. I had seen a lack of attention to the poor and oppressed from these groups, and Liberty continued to affirm my hunches that there was a lot more investment in white, patriarchal systems of power than there were to radical expressions of love and solidarity with the oppressed. I have always been someone who has asked questions in public, so to speak, and throughout the years have had many people in conservative groups challenge and discourage both my approach and my conclusions. Many of these interactions left me hurt, confused, and thinking that maybe I was heading in a direction toward immorality or unrighteousness. It became a psychological game of whether or not I was moving away from God. And what felt so significant about the election was that these people (many of whom were parents of friends) who had made me feel so marginalized and unrighteous at such a young age were the same people who were now defending a corrupt playboy as God’s choice for president.
This dissonance was another domino in what I now understand as my crisis of faith in college. While I can now look back on it with clarity, my crisis of faith felt like a deafening siren growing closer and getting louder, making it difficult to hear and interpret my own thoughts and feelings on the lines between politics, spirituality, and relationships. It was so difficult to think clearly because of the way my experiences at Liberty during the election would collide with my past experiences in conservative Christian circles. As more evangelical leaders came out in vocal support of Trump while others remained reticent to rebuke their colleagues’ support of him, I began to see more clearly that I was not at home among these people. While I had once been able to feel unity among these people, my relationship to conservative evangelicalism was ripping apart at the seams. This ripping apart was a slow and painful process throughout the spring and summer with every new endorsement from another white Christian man.
This dissonance became even more exacerbated when my closest mentor, Craig, suddenly died of a pulmonary embolism in August a week before school started again. Craig was someone who I became close with in high school when I began questioning the theological and ethical foundations of conservative evangelicalism. He was a person who listened well and always made me feel less alone as I would question the foundational beliefs of my upbringing. Every time I visited home during college, I would make sure to get a meal with Craig so we could talk for hours about the state of Christianity, politics, and society. Grieving his death alongside the increased political tension in Lynchburg was incredibly difficult and often made me feel a loneliness that left me more helpless than motivated to try and cause any sort of change.
As I entered my junior year at Liberty, many of the people on the hall moved off campus into separate apartments. I moved in with Toph and our friend Ben. We were all relieved to be off campus so that we could finally begin our adult lives, not held down by curfews or gender-specific living spaces. Moving off campus also meant we weren’t obligated to attend Convocation. Overall, the freedom we experienced off campus was a breath of fresh air, especially as the campus continued to feel more and more like a Trump campaign facility. In many ways, I had hoped moving off campus would allow me to disengage from campus culture, and I had no plans of getting involved in any type of action or organization in regards to speaking out against Falwell’s political parade. However, as the election closed in and the famous Access Hollywood tape was released of Trump talking about sexually assaulting women, it began to feel irresponsible to simply turn my gaze away from how Falwell was continually evangelizing and excusing Trump’s behavior.
Over the first few months of living off campus, Toph and I would often stay up late talking about how embarrassing it was to have a school president campaigning so hard for Trump. It made us nervous as we discussed the possibility of how it might affect our job prospects out of college when people might see Liberty on our resumes. Just that summer, I worked for a company where during the interview my manager raised her eyebrows at Liberty and later told me she didn’t want to hire me at first because it was on my resume. The more we interacted with people from outside Liberty who knew about our school because it had been in the news a lot recently, the more we were motivated to take action against Falwell.
When the Access Hollywood tapes came out, Falwell dismissed critiques of Trump by saying the tapes were over a decade old and it was just “locker room talk.” While I had grown used to hearing preposterous justifications of Trump from evangelicals at this point, I thought these tapes would lead evangelical leaders to take back their endorsements. However, so many of the most adamant supporters of Trump seemed to double down as a result of these tapes in their advocacy of Trump as the right choice for president. I spent weeks in a full rage, and often found it hard to engage on campus knowing that so many of the faculty, students, and administrators were regularly repeating the words of their school’s president to justify Trump’s misogynistic and violent comments. Toph was equally upset and decided it was time to write a formal statement against Trump and Falwell’s endorsement of Trump with the option of allowing others to sign the statement. He drafted a statement titled “Liberty United Against Trump” and began distributing it to his classmates and also to a few news outlets. It was clear that part of the strategy needed to be taking it to the news because that was the terrain Falwell was working on as well.
While I wanted to be involved, I was at a wedding in Texas the weekend that Liberty United Against Trump was released, so I was observing from afar. I hoped that the statement would pick up some traction, but my expectations were low. That is, until Toph texted me that some significant reporters on Twitter had shared the statement and requests for interviews were beginning to come in. By the time I returned to Liberty, Toph, Caleb Fitzpatrick, and a few others were consistently scheduling interviews and talking with reporters, and the statement garnered over 2,000 signatures. I was ecstatic and suddenly filled with a bit of hope. Maybe there was a group of people on campus who wanted to seriously create some change, and maybe Falwell would listen to the voices and change his ways. Furthermore, I had hope that the Access Hollywood tapes and subsequent flood of women who came forward with stories about various levels of sexual assault and harassment from Trump would end his chances at the presidency.
However, Falwell’s first public comment in the news was a condescending statement about how he was proud of his students for speaking out but that they would understand better when they got a bit older. And this was just the beginning for both Falwell and Trump. On November 8, I woke up and said to Toph, “Are you ready to elect the first woman president in the United States?” He laughed and looked at me nervously saying, “I don’t want to jinx anything. I’ve looked at every reasonable outcome, and there really seems to be almost no possibility for Trump to win. But I’m still so nervous.” I’m no politics buff like Toph, so I decided to remain optimistic. I put on a shirt that my friend Brenn made for me that said “Make Empathy Great Again,” and I wore it to campus with a smirk on my face because I was certain my team would be the victor. Caleb, Toph, Paige, Brenn, and I all went to an election returns watch party on campus just to see how a group of Trump supporters would deal with their loss. While at the party, Florida began to turn in Trump’s favor. All of a sudden, things were starting to look a bit concerning. With every bit of excitement growing in the room, we were all getting more and more uncomfortable, so we decided to retreat to Paige and Brenn’s place to watch the rest of the returns. Shortly thereafter it seemed like Trump had it in the bag, but we didn’t call it quits until around 2 a.m. Around that time, John Podesta from Hillary Clinton’s campaign came onto the screen and said they wouldn’t go down without a fight. It was our only glimmer of hope, but I think by that time we all had accepted that it was probably over.
The next morning, Toph, Toph’s girlfriend at the time, Paige, and myself all sat on our couch watching Hillary make her concession speech. We all felt sick to our stomachs while watching the speech. This outcome was a complete shock. How could so many people still vote for a man who said the kinds of things that had been on the Access Hollywood tapes? How could a man run on essentially zero policy proposals and be elected to the highest office in the U.S.? It seemed like an even more wild joke than anything we had seen on VEEP or House of Cards. As the week went on, exit polling data was released that said 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. This felt like utter betrayal from everything we had learned as children. We were supposed to love everyone, put others before ourselves, and look out for the widow and the orphan. Trump was the antithesis of this person, and yet so many of our friends, our parents, and our communities had forsaken their purported values to buy into a new set of values including self-preservation, a persecution complex, and shifting the facts to accomplish greater success.
That morning, we were getting texts from friends all over the country about how their cities or towns were somber and quiet that day, but we knew the energy at Liberty would be the complete opposite. We chose to skip classes and instead spent hours talking through what kinds of implications this election would have on our future. Of course there would be seismic shifts in Washington and in state houses across the country, but we also wondered what might change at Liberty. We had expected that the defeat would return Liberty back to focusing on spirituality and academics, with a few comments here and there from Falwell about politics. But this felt like it was setting up for something different. As I’ve alluded to in previous posts, I didn’t realize at the time how endemic these politics were to every part of Liberty. I thought there might be hope to extract these politics from the culture, but what I would soon realize is that this element of the school and of Falwell was not extractable. It was the very DNA of the place we lived in. The more I realized this, the more claustrophobic I felt. It felt helpless. What could I do? What was I going to do?
One final note on the election. As I’ll explain in a later story, Liberty’s student culture had essentially no organization around activism and advocacy on campus when I got there. Whatever was built while we were there was built from the ground up. To speak out against a school’s administration in an organized fashion takes an incredible amount of work that I didn’t know how to do, and I often wish that there had been something built before I got there that I could have participated in during the election. I often felt frustrated and ready to engage in some way, but I didn’t always know where to plug in and how to spend my energy in the most productive way. Liberty United Against Trump was the first step in getting the ears of journalists and helping other students to pay attention to the important issues, but that didn’t happen until less than a month from the election. The election was not a moment where robust student dissent was happening, but rather became the impetus for many of us to finally engage in some sort of work on campus. I sometimes wonder how an organized student group could have done some important work during the election of reminding the public that not every student at Liberty was spoken for by Jerry and that we could have created a more engaged community in general through dissent and debate. But instead, Jerry was able to easily use his power to shift the culture in mere months to be a place where conservative politics reigned as the dominant gospel for the school. Maybe this was somewhat true before, but now it was clear as day. And after the election, it was evident that he would only continue this shift unless others in the community did what they could to put barriers in front of him. So that’s what we tried to do.
The Weekly Syllabus
Kelly Lee Owens - This weekend I went to the Pitchfork Music Festival and it reawakened so much for me. I have missed being around live music. Kelly Lee Owens was the first artist we saw and it truly blew my mind. She’s a DJ whose recordings are great but is other worldly in concert. Consider this me putting her on your radar so you can see her the next time she’s in your city.
Silk Chiffon by MUNA (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) - This song is pure light and freedom, and it’s a great gateway into MUNA if you don’t listen to them. I also love the music video but I’m just linking the song because Larissa told me she didn’t like the song until she listened without the video. I’m trying to be all things for all people over here.
Dilate Your Heart by Ross Gay - This is an album of Ross Gay reading his poetry with some incredible music in the background. It’s something I often listen to in the morning if I need something really centering and hopeful. Ross Gay is such an incredible poet and you could listen to the same poem 50 times and always get something new from it.
The Tip Jar
I’ve never wanted to make my newsletter something that would only be accessible for people who paid for it. Honestly, I want as many people to read it as possible, and that’s the most important thing to me. That being said, these newsletters take some significant labor. So I thought I’d set up a digital tip jar if you want to buy me a coffee or a cocktail. Here’s the link to my ko-fi where you can tip!
That’s all for this week! Until next time.
- Sam