Is Liberty University Going Woke?

Conversations That Matter

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I have to say that I've seen fear, indifference, and racism like I've never seen before in the last few months.

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Some of those who have shown me a lot of fear, or maybe even shown me a little bit of racism, or maybe even shown me indifference, have been people who claim to be

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Christians. Welcome once again to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. As you can see behind me, I'm in a different location than I usually film in.

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I'm traveling right now. You'll have to forgive me. I don't have my equipment, my audio and video stuff, so you have my little pixelated webcam image here and my internal microphone on my laptop.

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We do have some important things to talk about, so it'll only be this episode and maybe one other episode that I'll do this way, and then

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I should be back with my normal equipment. We're going to talk about Liberty University.

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That's a question that keeps coming up, especially lately since Jerry Falwell Jr. has left the school.

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Are they going woke? Are they going social justice? It's the largest Christian university. What does this mean? I mean, they've been a force for conservative politics on some level.

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I would quibble a little bit with that analysis, just because Jerry Falwell Jr., I think he was a Republican. He supported Republican politicians.

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Was he always conservative? I can give you examples of where he wasn't. But yes, he definitely supported the

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Republican Party. And now that he's gone, what does this mean for the university? There's been some developments that seem to indicate a change on some level in regard to the political direction, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that.

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But all that to say, I'm just thankful for all of you who continue to watch and support.

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I'm traveling right now because of you, honestly, because I do care about the church.

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I care about all those who contact me and have a lot of questions, have sometimes heartbreaking stories, and I'm with the

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Enemies Within the Church guys this week. We're doing some research. We're doing some filming. I'm trying to assist where I can, because we want to explain what's happening in the church.

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We want to interpret it. So many people out there see what's happening, and they don't know how to make sense of it.

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So we're trying to help with that. And so I'm going to give you a little update on that real quick.

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I had a conversation with the director a few weeks ago, and I encouraged him, you know, we need to come out with something, something before the election, because a lot of people, you know, they're listening to their pastors, their denominations, associations, et cetera, and they need to know that there's possibility of compromise.

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They need to be discerning Christians when they even listen to the leaders that they've trusted for years, because there are forces in the church, in evangelical institutions, that are honestly deceiving spirits, in my opinion.

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They're attempting to get evangelicals to think in anti -biblical, ethical ways.

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And so we need to be ready for it. We need to talk about it, I think, before the election, because it's not just about the presidency.

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There's a lot of other elections. There's local elections, there's state elections, and people need to be thinking biblically about it.

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And so what's going to happen is, because COVID -19 delayed travel, because of travel restrictions for the project doing the filming in Europe they needed to do, they're going to do that next year, come out with Enemies Within the

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Church Part Two, which is more global and probably focused more on solutions.

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I know there'll be some of that in this film, but they're going to come out with an Enemies Within the Church Part One before the election this year.

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And that's going to be really the Marxist infiltration in America.

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And I sat down, I looked at some documents that I've never seen before.

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They haven't seen the light of day, as far as I can tell. And they're pretty, let's just say there's some revelations coming out in the film, some things you might have suspected, but now there's solid proof for them.

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So that's happening and that's all exciting.

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Hopefully that's going to be something that helps you make sense of what's happening around you in your church and your denomination.

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Something else to help you is a book that I wrote called Social Justice Goes to Church, the New Left and the

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Modern American Evangelicalism coming out October 6th. You can pre -order on Amazon now. You should probably order two of them at least.

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I mean, really, you should order three, but at least two. You can get one for yourself, get one for your pastor, and then the theology or history nerd in your life.

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It is a history. It is a historical treatment and analysis. The left loves to control things through analysis.

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They define the terms, they study the issue, they create a million academic documents about a given topic and try to bury conservatives because they're well -funded.

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They have the numbers as far as people that are capable of writing something academic and they have the money to do it with really.

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And so you'll see like treatments of the religious right coming out almost every year, critical treatments against the religious right.

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There's really nothing analyzing the religious left. There's been, I mean, there's two books

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I can talk about in recent years that have been sort of going in that direction, but they're very, they're not, they're praising the religious left.

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They're written from people that agree with the religious left, which is fine. You know, I found some very beneficial information in some of that, but nothing that really puts them under the microscope and analyzes them critically.

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And so I've attempted to do that and I've attempted to do it with some sources that you probably aren't familiar with, haven't seen.

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We're starting in the early or the late 1960s, progressing through the modern period and showing all the connections.

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And if you want to know the apologetic value of this, this is what it is. And I've said this before on this podcast, but Marxists who don't think they're

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Marxists are very sensitive when you call them Marxists. And one of the reasons for that is because they didn't learn their

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Marxism from Karl Marx. They're downstream from Karl Marx. It's not about Karl Marx.

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It's about a utopian scheme, ripping down hierarchies, redistribution of power and privilege and money and et cetera, whatever else you can redistribute for an egalitarian utopia of some kind, some kind of an egalitarian achievement.

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And of course, Karl Marx, you know, they stem out of Karl Marx. But most of the people today, like take your

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Russell Moore, for instance, he's not going to Karl Marx and saying, oh, I like Karl Marx. He's going to someone who went to someone who went to someone who went to Marx.

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There's a trajectory. There's an ancestry to this. And so here's the apologetic value. Someone says, well, it's not

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Marxism. Stop calling the social justice evangelicals Marxists. You can hand them this book and say, well, these are the roots and it's all documented.

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So that's really what I want to convey. And I hope it helps you, even if it's for that reason alone.

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Let's get to the topic at hand here. Let's talk about what's going on at Liberty University because it is important.

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This is a topic that, you know,

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I mean, if Liberty University goes woke, what is there in the evangelical world that's left?

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I mean, it's all going to be John MacArthur and, you know, Grace Community Church, Master's Seminary, Master's College.

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I mean, and I wouldn't even say those are bastions at all of religious rights, anything, but they're not crazy social justice.

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Right. And that list of institutions that aren't crazy social justice is just getting more narrow and more narrow.

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So some things to keep in mind as we go through this. Number one, Liberty University is very big.

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OK, I'll probably reiterate that at the end. Liberty University is very, very big. So you can go to one department and it can be totally different in another department.

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It's like a whole other world, a whole other school. And so when people go to Liberty, I often ask, well, what are you studying?

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Why? Why are you going to Liberty? And I can evaluate sometimes whether it's a good choice to go to Liberty based on that, because some programs are better than others.

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Now, that provides some encouragement, just because if one area is going social justice or being compromised, it doesn't mean that it's all being compromised.

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All right. And it does take time. You have to replace professors. It's not like a Southeastern where it's so small that the administration can really keep tabs on everything very well.

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And there's more of a centralized control because of that. And there's more accountability and more things stick out more.

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It's, you know, the percentage of the professors that are on the social justice track can dominate more easier with lower numbers because it's a smaller school.

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Right. Liberty is huge. It's a city in and of itself. Right. So keep that in mind first.

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Just because one department or one area goes social justice doesn't mean that if you're if you're thinking of sending your son or your daughter to Liberty doesn't mean in that department you're sending them to, it's going to be totally compromised.

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But what you should expect is at a school that size, you're going to have all sorts of opinions. You're going, yeah, you're social justice warriors at Liberty.

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There have been. But it doesn't mean that everyone's like that. It's big enough.

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You're going to find people that agree with you. You're going to find camaraderie somewhere. The other thing to realize is that they're in a very transitional stage and a very, how do you put this, unstable and instability,

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I would say. There's a lot of that. I mean, everyone has that because of COVID in a way. But it feels weird on campus.

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It's probably about 50 percent capacity. And it's just different.

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They don't have all the activities necessarily that they've had. They've they've had to change.

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It's just a different campus in many ways. But I think the Jerry Falwell Jr. situation looms heavy.

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And I'll tell you the reason it looms heavy. It's not because of Jerry Falwell Jr. in every way. It's because of the way that this whole thing went down.

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The way the situation developed, it was very embarrassing, not just for Jerry Falwell, but for certain individuals at the school and really the school in general.

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Why wasn't this taken care of within the school? And you say, well, this wasn't known. Well, the problem is there's all sorts of rumors on campus going around.

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Students know about this, especially the second to fourth year students. They know that and they've known for a long time about these rumors and financial issues, substance issues, the pool boy story.

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These things have been kind of they you hear them here and there. If you're a student there and sometimes professors, sometimes people in the administration will hint at things they suspect or they know something, but it's not you know, they can't fully disclose all of it.

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Well, now that this is all just the laundries being aired outside for everyone to see, people are wondering, well, if you knew something, why didn't you do something about it?

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And this has been one of my to add my own commentary to it. One of my complaints or my the things that concerns me about just Christianity in general, but culture also to take a more broad view,

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I guess, where are the men? I just don't see it. I don't see men with spines and chests.

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Most of them, even at the institution I came from before Liberty, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, they're very weak.

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The ones who disagree with what's going on, they're not going to raise a stink about it. Their job depends on it. And some of them think that's the honorable thing to do is just to do their job and not to say anything.

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But when good men do nothing, this is kind of what happens. And there is a sense among many students that people did know people that there were individuals at the school, probably not the board, because the board flies in for what once a year and they're there two days and they fly out.

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The current president, acting president, Jerry Prevost from Alaska. He doesn't know about Liberty University necessarily, intimately aware.

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He's he's coming in from somewhere else. So it's not him. It's not the board. It's people who have been there.

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It's David Nassar. It's people like him. And I think David Nassar is aware of it. I'll show you a clip to demonstrate that.

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But David Nassar, just for those who don't know, he basically owns the chapel now. He runs chapel and he and it seems almost like he's using it.

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And things that are things are happening now at Liberty University that probably would not have happened under Jerry Falwell.

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But here's another thing to keep in mind, because there's such a disgust over what Jerry Falwell Jr. has done.

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There's kind of a wholesale rejection of him. There's a distancing and there's an attempt to just cast overboard anything affiliated with him.

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And that includes his reputation as a conservative on the political spectrum.

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Now, he was like I said, he's more of a Republican, definitely a Republican. I would quibble with whether he was was he really conservative in every way?

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Not not consistently, but he supported the Republican Party. And so and, you know, there are some things that maybe merit some criticism.

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He turned their their convocations, which were more like chapel services, into more political events.

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So that was really that's part of his legacy. But but he did be probably not not out of probably an intimate awareness with the woke movement, but probably just because he liked the

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Republican Party. It kind of kept the woke movement at bay to some extent. Well, that check is gone.

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And so we're seeing the effects of that now. So let's talk about it. Let's see. What am

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I talking about? What kind of effects? Well, here's an email that went out to the nursing school at Liberty University.

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And it's to the freshmen coming into the program from the dean, Shanna Akers.

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And she invites the students to a book club that's held or hosted by Shannon Carroll, who's administrative assistant.

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The book club is called the Heart of Racial Justice. Now, Capstone Report put out some information about this this morning and showed some of the troubling things from the book.

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It's your standard social justice fair. But, you know, it's Christianized social justice. Well, I want to show you just one thing.

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Here's one of the authors, Brenda Salter McNeill. Right. I didn't have to look very far at all. I didn't even look into Rick Richardson, the other author.

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You can see The Forge by John Perkins. I've been doing a lot of research on him today. Some of his radical comments from the 70s, his three

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Rs, relocation, reconciliation and redistribution. That redistribution is used by Tim Keller in Generous Justice.

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That was John Perkins idea. And the crew was at Crew Urban Project Los Angeles uses the three

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Rs as well. But so he so, you know, if he's writing the intro, the forward to this book, you know, it's probably going to be on the social justice side.

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Brenda Salter McNeill, though, I mean, look at some of her tweets here, you know, tweets about white privilege.

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She's got tweets about intersectionality from sojourners even. She she posted something about intersectionality, reconciliation, colonialism, the white savior complex from Jim Wallace's organization.

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Right. There's your your 1970s progressive evangelical. Hashtag white fragility on a

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Huffington Post piece. Intersectionality flow charts. She's got, you know, talks about that quite a bit.

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Talks about Obama in a very partisan way. Loves Obama. She's going to miss him. Can't believe all the racial stress that he had to endure as president.

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And then, you know, with Donald Trump, you look up what she says about Trump. It's hypocrisy and immoral behavior.

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And, you know, he disparaged Elijah Cummings district so terribly. Trump's the villain.

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Obama's the good guy. Now, you might think, well, hold on a minute. You know, what about, you know, all the problems with Obama?

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Abortion being maybe the top of that list because, you know, that's murder. Well, look at what she says about abortion.

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She says history teaches the net impact of culture wars, not the end of abortion. It has been the reversal of civil rights protections.

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The Brett Kavanaugh nomination follows suit. People of color and minorities are at risk and hashtag hit pause on culture wars.

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Now, this is being taught now at being taught not in an official capacity, but at a study.

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That's for all the new nursing students. It's being taught at the university founded by Mr.

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Culture Wars himself, Jerry Falwell, Sr. I mean, this is the guy that started the religious right, essentially.

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And now they're they're using a book by someone who wants to hit pause on the culture wars. And why?

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Well, they didn't end abortion. You know, we need to oppose Brett Kavanaugh because it's been the reversal of civil rights protections.

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So she's attributing the culture wars to the reversal of civil rights protections. Now, where is she getting her information?

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The link she puts here is the Freedom Road Socialists. It's a communist front group. This woman is radical.

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She's she's a radical. She's she's certainly a progressive. There's no doubt about that. And and this is the author of the book.

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And so there's parents who are concerned about this. You know, their kids are coming to Liberty. Oh, what's this?

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They want to study. They want to be a nurse. Why? Why in the world would they have to go through any of this? This has nothing to do with that.

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You know, they would expect it's a Christian university. Why not a Bible study? But things are changing on some level.

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Now, I'm going to provide some encouragement for you. But look, things are changing on some level. And this is just general culture wide.

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You're going to have to prepare your kids for this. You have to do that, have some hard conversations as a parent. And it's going to be tough.

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September 8th, they had the well, someone had, I guess, these Twitter handles,

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Students at Liberty. That's what's provided here is contact info. They did a Black Lives Matter event.

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And there's the Black Fists, the Black Panther Fists. You think any of these students know the origin of that symbol? It's a revolutionary symbol.

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Anyway, so justice for us. And and they're going to do a

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Black Lives Matter protest. And of course, you know, this is not affiliated with the organization itself.

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That was made clear by the Liberty University newspaper. But it's it's it's from a student initiative called

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Justice for Us. But of course, this is part of the movement. They're using the symbols, using the language.

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Another thing that happened, this is a workshop, an unconscious bias workshop. Now, I don't really know what happened here, but I know that there were many parents who were very concerned.

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It says, are you dissatisfied with your misperceptions? Maybe the status quo. Develop a deep awareness of various unconscious biases and how they influence service and relationships.

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Unconscious biases will be addressed from the levels of self -awareness, pure awareness and community awareness. Now, doesn't give you a lot of information.

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What does that mean? Well, oftentimes we hear this language. It's, you know, your your cultural things.

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It could even be, you know, the kind of music you listen to or the way you view certain things, the way you talk or, you know, there's some kind of hidden racism deep within you or sexism or homophobia or bigotry of some kind.

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And and you need something like this to draw it out, you know, to show you that, oh, you were really a bigot.

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Now, look, do people have things they do out of habit that are insensitive? Yeah. You know, so there may be some legitimacy to that.

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I don't really know. But it's I haven't seen anything like this before. Nothing like this has been brought to my attention.

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This looks to be like something new. Now, maybe it might not be new. Maybe it's just being maybe people are calling attention to it now just because of the whole situation with 2020 and how crazy it's gotten and people are now noticing, hey, wait a minute, that sounds a lot like those sensitivity trainings that, you know, work in my job that I had to go through.

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And it was totally woke, you know, could be. I don't know. Speculation really is to say what this was all about.

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But but it's definitely something we're looking into if anyone had access to that stuff.

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But here's some other things that that aren't speculation. These are these are things that these are just happening in real time.

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You have David Nassar hosting. Was it last week, I think, or a week and a half ago? Andy Stanley, who just bashed

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John MacArthur for meeting, says the New Testament doesn't command us to meet. We don't have to meet in the Bible, really.

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And David Nassar does not correct him. And one thing I'll note, you know, David Nassar is someone I haven't listened to a lot, but I did a little bit today.

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And my goodness, just I don't I mean,

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I I don't know the man. So given the benefit of the doubt, his heart is hopefully for the students and wants to serve the

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Lord. But, man, he says some really just sloppy things, you know, talking about things like, you know, if you're hurting,

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God's hurting. If well, what scripture is that from? You know, very, very human centric, anthropocentric.

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He said he said something in one of the things I was listening to about how, you know, all God's children.

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And it wasn't talking about Christians. It was talking about just different ethnicities. And just, you know, is it wrong that it's just not clear?

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It's not concise. It's just I'm not sure exactly how he got to where he is leading the chapel services for the whole university.

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But but he is and he has I mean, he can pretty much do what he wants at this point.

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Here is a a screenshot from or it's some pictures from a conversation that happened on the 9th.

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And it's students who are two black students talking to him about basically the black experience and what it's like to be black at Liberty University and those kinds of things.

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Well, this is this is standpoint epistemology. You don't even have to hear what they're saying to know that because the expertise is not that they've studied an issue.

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And it's not about objective truth or it's not about they have insights into the Bible about this.

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It's it's completely based on this notion that because they have a certain skin color, they have a certain level of oppression.

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They have a knowledge that others do not have access to. And so they're the experts by and those who and the ones that should be teaching about this.

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Others should be listening if they're not of that same ethnic makeup. And we've seen this all over the place.

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I've pointed it out. Churches are doing this all over the place. If you see this happening at your church, you need to talk to your pastor. You need to ask him, well, what about the word of God?

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Why not? Is the word of God sufficient? Someone who just knows about the word of God, can they teach it?

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Or, you know, why do we have to have these these diverse perspectives, quote unquote? What is it that they know?

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What knowledge do they have access to? And if your pastor goes down the road of, well, they have experience and stuff as well, does experience give you special insights into truth that others don't have and specifically experience of oppression?

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Does that give you a moral authority to speak about what is right and wrong because of an experience?

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And these are good questions to ask, to probe, to find out.

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Do you believe truth is objective or do you believe that there are different epistemic islands, people that because of their level of oppression or because of the social group they belong to, they have special access to truth, which

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Vodibachan calls ethnic Gnosticism. So I'm going to I'm going to play you some clips from that.

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Actually, let's do that right now. I'm going to play you some clips and see what you think. This summer, in the middle of a pandemic, we as a nation found ourselves obviously heartbroken and outraged by what we witnessed in the horrific, heartbreaking deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Officer David Dorn, Breonna Taylor and many others.

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This was certainly not the first time that we'd seen an African -American killed way too young, way too early.

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We are the people of God. If we don't step in against equality, then who's going to do that?

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I have to say that I've seen fear, indifference and racism like I've never seen before in the last few months.

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I also, by the way, have seen courageous, outspoken people like I've never seen before as well.

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Some of those that who have shown me a lot of fear or maybe even shown me a little bit of racism or maybe even shown me indifference have been people who claim to be

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Christians. We're going to have to extend a lot of grace and patience to each other. We're going to have to hear from outside voices this semester that maybe come in for Convo or lectures and have a lot of patience because some of them are going to say things that we just simply don't agree with.

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So the organization I'm not going to align with personally, but that declaration, Black Lives Matter, that statement is certainly true.

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And if it's important that it's said to someone who as an African -American, as an American, was for years and years not allowed to vote, for years and years not allowed to have property in their name because of the color of their skin, for years and years not given, afforded to them education and other things that were just given to other people that were a different color, surely if that's important to someone, then

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I have to find a way to to communicate it. And if that statement is important for my brother or my sister,

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I will walk into that statement with them. What advice would you give, you know,

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Diallo, like maybe an incoming African -American student who might be one of five or six on his hall or her hall, or what advice also then would you give to maybe a non -African -American student who's coming in and is curious and interested in being a part of the solution or or maybe like different levels of life?

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What are some pieces of advice you'd give your classmates? Yeah, I would say for incoming African -Americans,

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I feel like this is the first year I can really say that there is change that's happening, you know, as in clubs, as in organizations, as an

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OSD, like we're actually coming to the table and we're finding solutions and we're trying to make it a better place and support.

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And so I would tell them that don't come in here, you know, with the stereotypes that Liberty might have or like what you might see on a post.

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Come in here and realize that there are clubs here for you. There are faculty that are here for you. And not saying that there won't be an experience that might happen, but there will be instead of you and your roommate going back and forth and it's just you guys are at odds, there will be leadership that will be there to reconcile that conversation and bring restoration with it.

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And there's also people that you can go to and say, hey, this is a case that I'm dealing with, like Office of Equity and Inclusion and say, this is what

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I'm dealing with. What should I do? And which is a young office. Yes. It's two years old.

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Yeah. And so I just think just coming out that mindset of that there's support for me here makes it comfortable because anywhere you go, you're not going to avoid racism.

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But it's just how it's handled. And so Liberty does a really good job of handling it. And I'm seeing how like the steps that we've been going to really handle it better.

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Yeah. I would say with the white students and non -black students, just come here with an open mind and listen.

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I think the most frustrating part being on my freshman year was just people would reject like my testimony.

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And it just kind of made me say. What do you mean by reject? So if I said this happened to me, if I said, yeah, like I've been stereotyped and profiled.

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You're telling your story. Yeah. Telling my story. And they say, well, I don't see that. So I don't believe it. And it's to me,

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I feel like when it comes to race, that's something that we do a lot. And even with like sex trafficking, I would never go up to a sex trafficking survivor and say,

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I don't see it happening. So I don't believe your story is right. You know, you come in, come in listening and saying, like,

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I don't see that. But like, what can I learn from this experience? And even if you're at odds with that story, like reconcile and pray and say, like,

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Lord, like help me understand, help me to discern what's happening right now. And so I think the biggest thing is just to listen, just to understand.

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Don't come in there trying to respond, like really just discern and like come with an open view.

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College is all about learning different cultures. And so this is the opportunity we can do it. So come on your hauls and instead of being defensive from where you come from, just listen to what the person saying.

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Well, we've responded to many of these things extensively in other videos, so I'm not going to go over all of it, but it's the same basic narrative, right?

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There's racism and injustice is part of the fabric of America. The Black Lives Matter slogan is good, but the organization isn't.

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We need to listen, which means there's a sense there's almost a sense of moral superiority if you if you listen because you're showing empathy.

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And and in reality, this isn't as complex and intricate as David Nassar wants to make it.

30:42

It's actually fairly simple. There's a Marxist revolution going on. There's a lot of Marxist front groups that are funding this.

30:52

There's there's an effort to destabilize the civilization itself, rip down hierarchies.

30:59

We have violence going on in places like Chicago, Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland. Over the weekend, we saw it in Syracuse and there's many other cities.

31:10

Many other people have died than the ones he mentioned. And but but it's interesting he mentions

31:16

David Dorn. I don't know if that's a safety measure or not. To say, hey, it's not we're not just mentioning the those who have died from, you know, quote unquote, police brutality.

31:28

But the language he uses is all it's injustice and racism that caused this.

31:34

So it's it doesn't fit the David Dorn narrative. It's the narrative that he's tapping into is the same narrative

31:41

CNN is tapping into that is these isolated events are the result of systemic injustice.

31:47

And and without studying the whole event and knowing exactly what happened and what led to these altercations, it's just using assumptions to build a narrative, a link in a chain that is supposed to prove somehow that there's systemic racism going on.

32:05

And that's the pretext for all this violence. And I've gone through the numbers with you. It's just simply not true that it's a lie.

32:12

The whole thing is a lie from the beginning. Now, are there other things, other barriers and barriers in this country that existed for black people in the past, not just black people, but all sorts of immigrant groups and not just even immigrant groups, various groups of Native American, Native American tribes, et cetera, that were here?

32:30

Yeah, that's absolutely true. It doesn't mean that everything in the new left critique is true about it.

32:36

Sometimes it's exaggerated. Sometimes things are left out that shouldn't be. But yeah, there were barriers. Absolutely.

32:42

Are those barriers still in effect? No, not really. You either show the law or you show the people specifically that are promoting those barriers and you solve the problem.

32:54

But that's not what they want to do. They want to they want to accuse an invisible privilege of some kind, an invisible systemic injustice of some kind as being present in these institutions.

33:04

And it's just so bad. You just got to rip down the hierarchies. I mean, that's they're just beyond redemption.

33:11

And David Nassar, he should know better. He really should. But he's promoting the same, unfortunately, the same talking points, the same new left critique of America as if we're in 1860 or 1960, not 2020.

33:31

And this is just it's a continuation on. It's an insinuation that we're just continuing on these same kinds of injustices.

33:39

And that's what led to the deaths of these individuals. And so we're going to get behind the slogan of Black Lives Matter.

33:48

But so we're getting behind the movement to some extent, but not the organization, which I pointed out before.

33:53

This is just denying authorial intent. The organization is the one that came up with the slogan and the movement.

33:59

And there's a reason we should probably start asking the question, why is it that you go to their website and find all these objectionable things?

34:06

Could it be that perhaps the same logic they're using when it comes to, quote unquote, race, they're also applying to the family and these other these other hierarchies they want to rip down?

34:18

They want a village model instead of a family model. Could it be that their thinking is actually more consistent than the

34:24

Christians who want to cherry pick from them? And of course, we need to listen. We need to listen.

34:29

And that comes back to, in some ways, the standpoint of epistemology. If you don't have the oppression, if you're white, if you don't have the experience, then you have nothing to say, nothing to contribute.

34:43

You're outside looking in because you cannot possibly empathize.

34:48

But then we're called to empathize because listening is empathizing. So it's it's full of contradictions.

34:56

It's full of problems. And David Nasser is now promoting this to the the folks at Liberty University, the students there.

35:05

Now, I want to to to start giving you some hope at this point, because you might think, wow, things aren't going too well at Liberty University.

35:15

Here's some things that I want you to consider. The Falkirk Institute is at Liberty University. It is more of a politically right,

35:22

I guess, think tank organization. It's new. I think it's still sort of developing into whatever it's going to be.

35:29

But but it hasn't had a chance to even do much. I mean, what is the Falkirk Center done or produced?

35:35

You probably can't think of anything if you even know who the Falkirk Center is. So it's very new and politically conservative.

35:44

And I even know of some of the people that are there that I think are pretty good. And it's it's now under attack, essentially.

35:54

I'll show you one example of that. Karen Swallow Pryor, who used to be a professor there. She's at Southeastern now, which fits her much better.

36:01

But she repost this message from the Falkirk Center, which is essentially just it's just a student basically saying we should engage culture.

36:11

I mean, which was the title of Karen Swallow Pryor's last book. He's not saying anything even politically really right in that.

36:17

Just it's pretty benign. It's interesting she picked that because you probably can't pick anything.

36:24

You can't point to anything at Falkirk. But listen to what she says. Listen to how disgusting this is.

36:30

In grace and love. OK, so this is she's covering herself. My motives are grace and love. I beg liberty to defund and close

36:38

Falkirk Center so as not to keep more shame on the name of Christ. I beg you. She's very serious, begging twice and to defund and close

36:48

Falkirk Center. Why? There's no reason here other than because it'll bring shame on the name of Christ.

36:55

That is disgusting. You have no, no reason to say that. It'll just bring shame on the name of Christ.

37:02

You're just going to tweet that out there. Why would it bring shame on the name of Christ? But she says actually more shame, more shame.

37:10

Right. So she's tapping into something that's already happened. The shame that Jerry Falwell Jr. brought. Jerry Falwell Jr.'s

37:16

not a pastor. It was known to people. I've explained this in another podcast. It was known to the people that were more in the know at Liberty University that, yeah, he probably wasn't a

37:26

Christian. I was hearing that a long time before any of these allegations were authenticated, even though the allegations themselves were even rumors that were going around.

37:39

But Jerry Falwell Jr. was because of the reputation of his father and because he did lead the largest

37:45

Christian university. It did bring shame on the name of Christ. There's no doubt about that. But she's trying to connect that with the

37:54

Falkirk Center somehow. Well, how is that? Did the Falkirk Center do some of the same actions that Jerry Falwell was doing?

38:03

No, there's no evidence for that. So why is she saying this? Is it that being politically conservative is just as bad as substance abuse and, you know, having sexual relationship with someone outside of the bonds of wedlock and financial issues?

38:20

And I mean, really? Because we're dealing with different weights and measures, if that's the case.

38:26

I like to go back to what the Lord actually says is wrong and is sinful. And Karen Swallow Pryor is not doing it here.

38:32

But this is a rallying cry. This is this is politics, guys. She's not tweeting this because she's just felt like it on a whim.

38:44

Now, there's strategy to this and everything that's going on. So so pay attention to that.

38:50

Now, the hope in that doesn't sound very hopeful is Falkirk Center is actually still there.

38:57

And the board, these are guys who fly in for two days a year. They're not, you know, they're not in the know about,

39:09

I think, all of the things that happening at the university. And I haven't heard anything about Falkirk being in trouble.

39:14

So pray for them. If you want to see, you know, political conservatism and, you know, really

39:22

Christianity, the foundation for the worldview that gave us political conservatism.

39:28

If you want to see that still exist in a Christian institution, then pray for the Falkirk Center. But but they are still there.

39:35

So it's not like all of Liberty is going this direction. We have we have a few people.

39:41

We have a few students. Right. This we have the nursing department is doing this study. Right. That's that's what we have.

39:49

So I wouldn't write off the entire school right away and say that's, you know, if you start hearing from the president, the new president of the school starts defending all these things, well, then then you're going to that's a different story.

40:02

You know, if you start seeing these in other departments, if you start at Falkirk Center is, in fact, defunded and closed, well, then you know that there's something going on.

40:12

But those things haven't all happened yet. But you can guarantee I can guarantee you the left in Christianity is making moves towards those things and they are not wasting any time doing it.

40:22

And neither should we. Neither should we. If you're a parent and you have a student there, if you're a student who's at Liberty University, then then get involved with a group on social media or start one yourself.

40:35

To start combating these things, start keeping track of this stuff, you know, make your voice heard, file complaints, send emails to the administration if you have a problem with something.

40:47

I mean, you know, really, you know, become the watchdog here. They're going to listen to that. They want they want to make sure that it's a it's a place that parents want to send their kids.

40:57

And so it's it's up to you guys. And I know you don't always want to hear that, you know, I can't do all that for you.

41:03

But but that is something that that you can do. And and I'm doing my part by by just showing you, trying to show you what's going on now.

41:13

So something else I want to show you in this kind of in my mind, bring some encouragement. Watch this clip from I believe this was a chapel message from like two days ago or so.

41:24

But this is David Nasser. Watch this clip. It's a little lengthy, but I think it's very telling.

41:29

If there are two things that I look back on that I would if I could do again, right off the bat, like looking and evaluating my heart,

41:38

I would go back on and I'll just be honest is when a year about a little bit over a year ago, when

41:46

Chief Hinckley, there was an article that came out about about an email about Chief Hinckley and he was called something that was just rude.

41:54

When that happened, I went to the person who had made that claim, you know, who like that that email had been leaked, who called

42:02

Chief Hinckley something rude. And I said, I feel like that was a public shaming. And the right thing to do is to have a public apology.

42:10

He's owed that. And that person said, I've already talked to him one on one. I'm not going to do the public apology.

42:18

And I went to Chief and I said, I want you to know that my daughter's coming here next year and I trust you as our chief of police.

42:26

You're awesome. You're a godly man. I trust you. I'm sorry. That was that was out there for everybody to read about.

42:32

And he said, man, thank you. That means a lot to me. And and I told him I said I've confronted that person who said said this about you.

42:39

And I asked him to do it. And they said they've already come to you. He said they did come to me. I look back on that and I should have used my voice to stand in front of the student body and I should have like admonished him.

42:52

And I should have been outspoken about that. The other one was this summer when three of my

42:58

African -American staff members that work with us in OSD walked out of the university as employees.

43:06

I should have publicly stood with them louder. And I look back on that and I have a regret on that.

43:13

And I'm planning on having meetings with those those former employees so that I can apologize to them firsthand.

43:19

But I'm sure there might be more as I look back. But I think a lot of times people saw something and they were like, well, why didn't

43:26

David say something? And it was like we did. And I'll just I'll just say this to you. Most of the time when we went to someone or someone came to me, we found resolve.

43:36

A lot of times it was like, hey, and then that didn't happen again or something got fixed. A lot of times that person did move to to accountable action, including my former boss, you know, our former president here.

43:50

I can't tell you how often I would go to him and have a very practical conversation about something that I felt like was not the best play or was was not the right thing to say.

43:58

And he just he literally would say, you're right. And then it wouldn't happen again. Like, so we actually found resolve all the time.

44:06

There was a there's a practicality about it. There was a kindness in him that I think is still there. And I can't tell you how often

44:12

I would go to him and say something. And most of our conversations, by the way, weren't confrontation. Most of them were like, we've got a student who needs a scholarship.

44:18

Can we help this student stay around? And he always would step into that or or, hey, we're trying to figure out what's this about this guest.

44:24

And so in that relationship, there was definitely moments when I was going straight to him and maybe somebody was saying, why aren't you out loud about it?

44:31

Because that's just not how I use social media personally. And also, I had access to go to that person.

44:37

But I'm just being honest to say I look back and I think I should have stood in front of everybody at convocation and I should have been out loud for Chief Hinckley at that moment.

44:48

By the way, I told him that two Sundays ago at Thomas Road again. I said, God's just really brought that up. He was like, give me a hug.

44:54

It's OK, buddy, you know. And then he's so gracious. And then I owe

44:59

Donald, I owe Thomas on my staff that I should have stood up louder for them.

45:06

You know, I should have said, you know what? They have a legitimate reason that they're walking away and it's not

45:11

OK with me. And I wish I could go back and vocalize that, you know, but I didn't, you know.

45:19

And so, yeah, that's at least two things. And I think as we as we all look from it and we learn from it, there'll be probably more things

45:25

I need to repent of. OK, the body language, the hesitation, the unwillingness to say

45:32

Jerry Falwell's name, the focus on himself.

45:38

I mean, right after this, he keeps talking about himself and then he talks about how, you know, he doesn't believe in focusing on himself.

45:47

So it was interesting. But all those things tell you something. He's nervous.

45:54

He's nervous. And he knows what I said at the beginning of this video, that there are students who are wondering.

46:00

So you were close with Jerry Falwell and somewhat of a spiritual mentor to us and to him.

46:08

So where's the give? Why? Why didn't you? I mean, you should have known him well enough to know you heard the same rumors

46:15

I think we heard. Right. Did you confront him? What? And he doesn't answer all that.

46:22

He tells you instead what he does is he he tells you about things that he can't change at this point.

46:28

Things that and honestly, interesting things like he should have supported the the black staff members who walked out like.

46:43

I'm not I'm going to kind of sidestep that whole issue just because it's not it's not worth it for me to to analyze that it would take me a little too long.

46:53

But I just challenge you to think about this on the. On the moral scale, what is more serious, the personal failures of Jerry Falwell or that situation?

47:07

I mean, that situation plays to the woke crowd, but what I mean, the moral failures of Jerry Falwell are what the students are wondering whether David Nassar knew about and whether he confronted or tried to guide

47:20

Jerry Falwell in any kind of way. And they don't have answers to those things. And Nassar is visibly nervous because he knows his association.

47:29

He knows that on some level he he covered for Falwell or to put it maybe in a different way, because maybe he wouldn't want me to put it that way.

47:41

At the very least, he failed to stand up to Falwell. And that's how he's trying to portray himself.

47:49

But it's it's it's an apology. It's it's a repentance. But it's not there's something about it.

47:56

There's something about it that's off. You know, in a normal repentance, your real genuine repentance, a sorrow that you would have is it's just such a sorrow over sin and the fact that it offends

48:10

God. And and there's just there's no defense of yourself. It's just, you know, this is

48:17

I this is what I did before the Lord and I'm guilty before him. And, you know, you know,

48:23

I'm so thankful for Jesus Christ and the fact that he's forgiven me. But I need to apologize to you because I've wronged you as well.

48:31

And I hope you can forgive me. And and, you know, I just we pray for Jerry Falwell, name him by name.

48:39

We pray for him because it's a warning to all of us about sin.

48:44

And yeah, it is. I mean, I'm enraged that he would do this, not because it offends you all and it offends me, but more so because it offends the

48:54

Lord. And he is supposed to represent the Lord. And I mean, this this kind of apology is so it's so focused on David Nasser.

49:03

It's a justifying apology is what it is. That's what that's how it comes across.

49:09

So he's nervous. And he, as far as I can tell, that's if you wanted to identify one figure on campus who seems to be giving any kind of cover for the social justice movement right now would be

49:25

David Nasser. And and it sounds like he knows he knows on some level there's a mistrust of him or there may be things coming out about him.

49:40

And he wants to get ahead of that. His days may be numbered. I don't know.

49:45

I'm not saying that in any official capacity. I haven't heard anything from anyone telling me, oh, we got dirt on David Nasser.

49:51

We're going to get rid of him. And I'm not saying to hope for that. But what I'm saying is that those are the actions of someone who does not sound confident in their position.

50:03

And so here's what I want to ask you to do. Please pray for Liberty University. And I mean, really pray for Liberty University.

50:12

Pray that the Lord would raise up leaders, real men, real leaders. Real women even who are professors there.

50:22

And and but but but specifically men in the administration who can lead this university and exemplify a true godly character, because that has not been around for years now.

50:36

And and it needs to to be reinstituted. Pray for I don't even know what to say about David Nasser.

50:44

I don't know. Like I said, I'm watching his videos. I'm like, how did this guy get to the position he's in? I don't even know if he should be doing what he's doing, regardless of the social justice stuff.

50:54

But, you know, I have no ill will towards the guy. But but I just would pray, honestly, this is how

51:00

I would pray. I just pray that the Lord would raise up someone to really spiritually lead the students, whatever that means, because they need it.

51:06

They need real spiritual leaders. I'm familiar enough with Lynchburg to know that it is

51:12

Bible Belt. You'd think there'd be all these great churches around. It's not like that. If there's there's a whole lot of churches.

51:19

Yes. How many of them are really solid, Berean, doctrinally sound, you know, just good, solid churches where the people love the

51:31

Lord, they're humble, they're there for serving him, for their for the kingdom there. It's you know, there's not a long list.

51:38

So my encouragement would be just to just to pray for this university. It's a big ship.

51:44

It's an expensive ship. And in the past, there's been some very good things we can say about Liberty University.

51:51

It's flawed, just like any human institution. But it's been a good counterweight to the social justice movement.

51:59

And we'd like to see it continue to be that. So that's my update.

52:05

That's somewhat of an encouraging ending, I guess. I would just exercise discernment.

52:12

If you're thinking of sending your kids there, if you're a parent and if you're a student looking at places to go,

52:17

I would exercise discernment. Like I've always said, I think the history department there for the most part has been excellent.

52:22

The professors that I knew there were very good, top notch professors.

52:27

I can't speak for every department, but there are still some some very good people doing good work at Liberty University in various areas.

52:37

And so it's not a foregone conclusion and a lost cause. At least at this point, it may become that way.

52:44

I don't know. But it hasn't been that long that the social justice movement has been progressing.

52:51

And yes, it's aggressive like any aggressive cancer, but it doesn't it doesn't have to continue.

52:59

So I appreciate you listening. And hopefully I'll get at least one or two more podcasts out by the end of the week.

53:06

We'll see. And that's not a guarantee. I'm not sure exactly what will happen. A lot going on.