“Every human being is a sinner. We are all imperfect, we are all defective, and we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.”
When Jerry Falwell Jr., the evangelical leader of the US, president of the country’s premier conservative Christian university and close associate of Donald Trump, told me this in his spacious office in Lynchburg, Virginia, almost two years ago , it was in response to a question about the morale of the American president.
But after a turbulent week in which his status as a bookkeeper for Christian law collapsed and burned, Falwell may reflect on his own shortcomings and imperfections, and hope that redemption does not come too soon.
The disappointing end to his career as president of Liberty University, with his annual salary of $ 1 million and use of a private jet, could also mean that his influence on the political choices of white evangelicals in the US is just weeks before a knife-edge presidential election.
The essential elements of his downfall are disputed, but they focus on his wife’s adultery, his alleged voyeurism, her lover’s alleged attempted extortion, and an Instagram photo of Falwell’s unzip pants. At heart, he said, was “a fatal attraction-type situation” – a reference to the 1987 Oscar-nominated psychosexual thriller starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close.
On Sunday night, Falwell issued a 1,200-word statement to the Washington Examiner, revealing that he had experienced depression and extreme weight loss as a result of alleged threats by his wife’s lover to expose her affair unless money was handed over.
It was a pre-emptive strike. Falwell knew that Giancarlo Granda, a former pool manager with whom the Falwells started a business, was ready to go public about his relationship with Falwell’s wife, Becki.
In an explosive interview with Reuters news agency, published on Monday, Granda said: “Becki and I have developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room.” The meetings, over a period of six years, would have taken place “several times a year” in hotels in New York and Miami, and the house of Falwells in Virginia.
Granda was a 20-year-old pool manager at a Miami hotel when he met the Falwells in 2012. Without naming him, Falwell said in his statement: “During a vacation more than eight years ago, Becki and I met an ambitious young man. who worked at our hotel and saved his money to go to school … We were impressed by his initiative to present a local opportunity for real estate.
“My family members eventually made an investment in a local property, took him into the deal because he could play an active role in managing it, and became close to him and his family.”
That closeness extended to an “indecent personal relationship” between Becki and “this person,” Falwell said; “Something I was not involved with.” He was worried about learning the affair, but “Becki and I forgave each other”.
The couple sought to distance themselves from Granda, but he “became increasingly angry and upset”, and eventually threatened to make the affair public “unless we agreed to pay him substantial sums of money”. Granda denied the claim.
Falwell added: “It was like living on a roller coaster … We did our best to respectfully unravel this situation of ‘fatal attraction’ to protect our family and the university.”
Granda’s version is somewhat different. He claimed that the couple targeted him even though he was a willing participant. “Whether it was immaturity, naivety, instability, or a combination of them, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells probably discovered when deciding I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” he told Reuters.
The controversial accounts of sexual assault came just weeks after Falwell was asked by the Liberty University board to take indefinite leave of his position as president amid a furore over a photo posted on Instagram that took him on board of a yacht song with his pants unpacked and his arm around his wife’s assistant. His actions were “all in good spirits,” he later said.
On Monday, when allegations of hypocrisy surfaced, Falwell’s position at Liberty became untenable. In quick succession, he told the university board that he was standing, then reversed the step and finally sent a letter of resignation late in the evening. On Tuesday, the Liberty board confirmed that Falwell was gone – with a $ 10.5 million (£ 8 million) layoff package.
Falwell’s alleged behavior was in stark contrast to the strict code of conduct that students at Liberty are required to follow. Classes begin with prayers, alcohol is prohibited on campus, dormitories are strictly separated, students are subject to an exit traffic, and “modest” dress is required. Three times a week, students attend “Convocation,” a powerful mix of evangelical worship and political rally.
The university’s “code of honor” states, “Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a naturally-born woman are not permitted at Liberty.” Prospective faculty members are checked for their conservative theological views.
When I spent several days on campus in 2018, students were polite, helpful, and overwhelmingly pro-Trump, but some were uneasy about Falwell’s leadership and enthusiasm for the U.S. president. A few talks about “toxic Christianity” – stubbornly dismissed as a “liberal” concept by Falwell when I was called to his office to meet him and Becki.
As the first evangelical leader Trump endorsed in 2016, Falwell is often accused of helping deliver 81% of white Christian evangelical voters to the rebellious Republican candidate. Two years ago, he told me that Trump was a “good moral person” and an example to the nation, and that he had been talking to the president “all the time.”
Four decades earlier, Falwell’s father, the television personality Jerry Falwell Sr., had launched the Moral Majority, which mobilized Christians as a political force for Republican law. Liberty University was another of Falwell Sr.’s projects, founded with a mission to train “champions of Christ.”
In 2007, when Falwell Jr. took over the university leadership, it was on the verge of financial disaster. Now it has more than 100,000 students enrolled on campus and online, $ 1.7 billion in donations and gross assets of $ 3 billion, and it is a beacon for conservative Christianity.
Whether Liberty will flourish without Falwell remains to be seen. On Tuesday, Allen McFarland, the council’s acting chairman, said the university’s future was “very clear and in the capable hands of leaders who are committed to being good stewards of what the Lord has entrusted”.
A second question is whether Falwell’s downfall will have an impact on Trump’s white evangelical base. According to Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, the influence of Falwell is overrated.
“It simply came to our notice then. “Trump has built relationships with the evangelical base and the religious justice leadership in Washington, and they see him as their savior – God’s hand is on him, he has come to save America at this critical moment,” she said.
“His approval ratings among white evangelists may have been a little offensive about his presidency, but more than 80% will still likely vote for him.”
As for Falwell, he said this week the “trauma of this experience has brought us to a very challenging point in our lives, but we are strong, our faith in Christ is greater than ever, and … we will get through this”. He asked the audience to pray for him.
