It’s a bit odd to come back to a project that you almost finished so many months later to finish it, but I do feel like I owe it to myself (and maybe to you) to put to bed this very odd story once and for all. I graduated with my Master’s last week from the University of Chicago Divinity School, which means now Liberty doesn’t get the top spot on my resume or CV anymore. It’s something I’ve wished for since the day I graduated from Liberty. So if you’ll humor me, I’d like to share a few final reflections about the end of my time at Liberty:
The Final Semester
My last semester at Liberty was a race between my burnout and my desire to feel like I made some sort of impact at the school. Between the incident with Johnathan Martin and my conversation with David Nasser in the fall semester of my senior year (read the story here), I entered my final semester more cynical and exhausted than ever. At the outset of my work to advocate for change at Liberty during my sophomore year, I held a deep belief that true Christianity looked significantly different from the actions of the university and its leaders. But after contending with the institution and individuals for the past two years, I had begun to wonder what “true Christianity” really was and if I wanted anything to do with it. In an environment as all-encompassing as Liberty, it can be easy to become disoriented when you are trying to stand on your own set of ideas that are separate from the university. And it can be easy to conflate Christianity in its entirety with the leaders of the university because they are the only ones you are ever exposed to. In a way, it began to feel as if I was in a house that had caught on fire and, over the years, smoke had begun to enter my lungs slowly, making it hard to keep focused on where I was, what the exit strategy was, and who I needed to save on my way out.
Caleb’s campaign
Two significant moments marked my final semester at Liberty. First was the campaign for Student Body President. Up to this point, I was never involved in student government at Liberty. From my perspective, Falwell, Nasser, and the rest of the administration had too tight a grip on the university to truly allow any students to have an impact from within the institution. So it’s a testament to how much I believed in Caleb Fitzpatrick that I took him up on his offer to be a campaign advisor and communications strategist for his campaign for student body president. Caleb has the poise and eloquence needed in politics, but those qualities are not core to who he is. His convictions are his true center, and I felt like that was exactly the kind of person who needed to be student body president at Liberty.
Along with believing in Caleb, I believed in the strategy behind his campaign. While Caleb ran on a progressive set of values I believed in– from advocating for the school to care better for its surrounding city community to emphasizing the importance of diversity and inclusion on campus– he also emphasized to his strategy team that he was willing to put his job on the line to speak out against Falwell if and when the time came. One thing we could rely on was that Falwell would say or do something morally repugnant in public over the course of the next school year. If Caleb was fired for speaking out against Falwell in this case, the result might be even better in mobilizing students to organize and speak out against Falwell’s dictatorial and abusive leadership style.
Caleb ultimately did not win the campaign, but the volunteer community he created through his campaign produced some of the greatest moments of solidarity I ever felt at Liberty. We often held strategy meetings in Toph and I’s apartment, filling the room with over 20 people who were frustrated with how things were being run at the school and genuinely wanted to change things. It was maybe the first time where I began to understand the power of collectivity in the face of a corrupt power. The energy in these meetings was always filled with some sort of anticipation of what we might be able to do if we just continued to work together and strategize how we could fit more and more people into our living room.
On the final night before voting day, Caleb and his running mate, Esther, held a party in the basement of the student center. I remember this night so vividly because it was the full culmination of our work to produce some collective body. But the party wasn’t filled with conversations about strategy and messaging– that was all in place. Instead, everyone was just there to enjoy each other. People were letting loose in ways they usually wouldn’t around other students for fear they would be judged. The room was made safe by the people who filled it up despite the fact that the room was owned by the university. This was a moment of collective power where we made safe a space that often blocked and barred us and our friends. While the results the next day reminded us of how significant the opposition was, I have so often come back to this moment in my mind as one of the most joyful I had while at Liberty.
Red Letter Revival
The second significant moment of my final semester was the Red Letter Revival. In January of 2018, just at the beginning of my final semester, I received a phone call from Shane Claiborne. Shane is an author, an activist, and the co-founder of the Red Letter Christians. Red Letter Christians is an evangelical-adjacent organization that places a strong focus on making real the themes of justice laid out in the Bible. Shane and other Red Letter Christian leaders had been vocally critical of Falwell and his alliance with Trump over the years, and many of them felt that there was a need to make a concerted and collective effort to speak against Falwell through some type of event. This is when Shane and other leaders from Red Letter Christians had the idea to host an old school revival in Lynchburg. When Shane called me, he asked if I would be interested in helping to plan the revival while also providing insights into the culture of the student body, the administration, and any other information that might help plan the event in a way that would actually speak to the issues in Lynchburg.
Throughout the planning process of the revival, I found myself hoping that so many students would show up. I wanted them to show up to an event that they would never get at a place like Liberty. I knew the event would have musicians, poets, and pastors who had messages that deeply challenged the lives of all people involved with Liberty. While I always felt an ambivalence toward naming the event a revival, I did hope that people would show up and be changed. And yet, it became apparent as the event neared that not many students or Liberty affiliated people would be showing up. Liberty’s most famous professor, Karen Swallow Prior, had been subtly critical of Falwell and Trump in the past, but even she discouraged the event on Twitter by saying that Shane and the Red Letter Christians were only being inflammatory. Other students who had expressed concerns about Falwell also seemed nervous about attending such an event. Even if everyone was technically allowed to go, it felt transgressive to attend an event filled with activists who wanted to speak out strongly against the school.
Although I was fully supportive of the event, I even found myself wanting to shy away from actions that might incite and increase tensions. Before the event, Shane had publicly stated that he wanted to hold a prayer walk through campus with the attendees of the event. In planning this portion of the event, Shane sent a private email to Falwell asking him to join the prayer walk. After receiving no response, Shane tweeted to Falwell a screenshot of his original email to ask him to join the walk. Shortly after tweeting this, the Liberty Police Department sent Shane a restriction notice–the same one they served Jonathan Martin–stating that if Shane came on campus he would be subject to a $2,000 fine and jail time. Despite receiving the restriction notice, Shane still felt compelled to carry out some type of action on or very close to campus. In a brief meeting we held just before the event started, Shane, myself, and a few other leaders discussed possible strategies of what we could do. One of the ideas was for the non-Liberty affiliated people to serve communion to Liberty students across the property line. In retrospect, I think this is a kick ass idea. But in the moment, I was so afraid of what might happen. I strongly suggested we think of a different plan that was less aggressive because I felt that inciting this tension would only make Liberty students, faculty, and staff see this event as nothing more than rabble rousing. Because of my advice, we decided only to write prayers down and deliver them to Falwell’s office. And while this was certainly something, I feel now that there needs to be escalation in places like Liberty. Maybe students won’t always be in favor of such actions, but progress is not made only when everyone is persuaded through calculated reasoning. These kinds of escalations have produced significant change throughout history.
Despite my regrets about this incident, the event itself was incredibly refreshing to me. Less than 20 students showed up throughout the weekend, but that didn’t even matter to me while the event was going on. All that mattered was that there was a group of passionate and dedicated people on stage who were saying things I had felt and said for years. It was refreshing that I could hear the words spoken from someone else’s mouth, and it was motivating to hear people speak those words with such power. For whatever Christianity is left in me today, I think it was saved during that event. Up until then, I had bought the lie that Liberty sold, which is to say that the form of True Christianity was the one I would find on Liberty’s Convocation stage. But the revival gave me another stage to learn from, filled with people who also followed Jesus but did so in a way that was dedicated to justice and equality rather than a hyper-fixation on morality and success.
I bring these final two examples up to show that there were glimmers of hope at the end of my time at Liberty. It’s hard to describe the burn out I felt in these months. I remember a conversation I had with my brother where he told me that he could hear how poorly I was doing and was concerned about me. This was jarring to me considering how I had often been a generally positive person in the past. So while I bring these stories up to talk about a few moments of joy, it would be inaccurate to say the entirety of the end of my time at Liberty was filled with this. Instead, it was more often characterized by frustrating conversations and the constant feeling of hitting a wall without making any progress on campus or even in my own life. I wanted out of the hell hole, and graduation day couldn’t come fast enough.
Graduation Weekend
While it should have felt like victory, my graduation weekend felt strained and exhausting. As much of the weather tends to be in the Lynchburg spring, the weekend was rainy. The rain set the mood perfectly for how I felt throughout the weekend. My brother and parents came into town, and I can name at least three different moments during the weekend where I had a full on mental breakdown in front of them. While I’m certain it wasn’t enjoyable for my family, having them there was a balm. I was able to reflect honestly with them about my experience at Liberty and how it felt to be leaving. In many ways, I was leaving the school just the same as I had found it. Maybe I had impacted a few people, but the institution remained firmly planted, and for that I had many regrets. I felt like I had gone ten rounds with the place and only Liberty had landed any major blows to me while the school walked off unaffected.
In reality, the weekend would kick off what became a grieving process that took me almost two years to work through. People often think of a graduation as a milestone moment of overcoming a difficult challenge. And while I knew I was done and had come to the end of my time at Liberty, it did not feel like running confidently across a finish line. Instead, to come back to the analogy of the burning home, I felt I was crawling out of a dangerous place. The analogy actually came to me in a conversation I had with my parents that weekend when my dad said that he was surprised I wasn’t more happy to be done. I told him I was certainly glad to be done, but was also keenly aware that this place had had an intense impact on me, and the impact wasn’t good. I felt exhausted, depressed, angry, and confused. Maybe I could be happy to be done, but I could feel the effects of such a place on my body. If the house was burning and I had been in it for a long time, I wouldn’t be able to walk out happy just because I had exited. If I was lucky, I would be able to stumble out the door and try to get myself to a place of recovery quickly. As I talked about this, my brother and parents seemed to really understand what I was saying and were incredibly caring throughout the weekend. Looking back, I realize they were the first line of care I received at the beginning of the recovery process. I am so grateful for that, and I’m also keenly aware that many other people who left Liberty in a similar state did not have their families to go back to for care.
Closure
This is the last installment of this story. I’ve been somewhat plagued by a desire to write this story for the better part of four years, but haven’t found the words until now. As I approached writing this story, I did so with the hope of gaining some sort of closure with this short but significant episode of my life. Over the past few months, I’ve found myself straining to finish the story. Sometimes I have chalked it up to being busy with grad school, which is true but only seems to tell half the story. In reality, I think truly putting an end to the story feels quite heavy for me. As I left Liberty, I truly wanted to put the experience behind me and move on. I wanted to forget those years and begin a new life in a place that I felt more at home in. And yet, I also found myself continually defining myself through the lens of my time at Liberty: I was the kid who went to that crazy school, and, boy, did I have stories. I found myself talking it up in job interviews to make sure the interviewers didn’t think I identified with the university. I even decided to pursue a master’s degree in religious studies because I felt I had so many questions that needed answers after my experience at Liberty. So despite all my griping about wanting to forget about it, I had made Liberty a central part of my identity. Maybe even more than a normal student who greatly enjoyed their time there.
But it’s finally time to end the story and move on. There’s no way for me to cut it out of my life, and I don’t think of closure as synonymous with erasure. Instead, I think closure is coming to terms with the fact that this story really was significant and greatly shaped me. I made some of my greatest friends at Liberty, learned so much about myself and those around me, and began to notice a set of questions that continue to inspire the way I move in the world. And yet, closure is also the recognition that this one episode in the broader series of life isn’t the whole story. It’s not even necessarily the most important episode. It’s just easy to mistake the significance of such a time when you don’t have any distance from it.
So here I am. Four years after graduating, finally putting the finishing touches on this story and getting ready to put it away. My days are filled with much more happiness and freedom than the ones I spent at Liberty. Even my back pain has decreased as I’ve let go of the hold Liberty, and evangelicalism with it, have had on me. If leaving Liberty felt like walking out of a burning house, I now feel like my lungs have recovered. Of course, like many injuries, there are moments where my body reminds me of the struggle it went through for a time. I still get anxiety walking into an evangelical church and my voice begins to shake when I tiptoe anywhere close to debate with other evangelical christians. But I do feel more confident and stable again.
If these stories have meant anything to anyone, I hope they have communicated to those who have been hurt by the church that the pain might not last forever if you can get out of the house. You do not need to save the house. It’s just another piece of property. But if you can save yourself, you might be able to talk about it someday. I’m not claiming a universal story here, and I don’t think I can say that everyone can get past their trauma no matter what it is. I don’t know what it’s like to live every trauma– I only know my own. That being said, we’ve spent far too much time in religious communities trying to put out the fires in order to save the houses and far too little time trying to save the people in the houses. And the result, over and over again, is the continued suffering of those inside the houses. I have not written these stories to end with solutions. That is not my wheelhouse anymore. I simply want to let others know that it’s okay to leave if that’s what you need. As far as my story goes, it’s one about a school that shook me enough to make me leave the house. And while it was painful in the moment, I’m so glad I did.
The Syllabus
Bo Burnham's Inside and "White Liberal Performative Art" - I’ve been watching some video essays on YouTube and found this one really interesting. Maybe it’s because I love Bo Burnham’s special a lot, but I think the creator does a fantastic job breaking things down in a really generative way. If you have video essay recommendations, please please send them! I find the medium really exciting.
A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib - My friend Jenn let me borrow this collection of essays written by a fellow Ohioan. The essays in the book weave together such complexity in a really intimate way. There is an essay toward the end on softness and masculinity that moved me so much. Even if you don’t read the whole book, go find a corner in a bookstore and read the essay on softness.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore on The Dig - This podcast episode is a very in-depth and helpful conversation from a group of prison abolitionists on how we might understand the current state of the Prison Industrial Complex and what that says about the broader political and economic moment.
Break Me Open by S. Carey - Sean Carey is far better known for his role in the band Bon Iver than his solo project, but this album is a reminder of how great he is on his own. Can’t recommend him or this album enough, especially on a rainy day.