Hopeful for a new day at LU

“Because of that hope, this morning I made my first donation to Liberty as an alumnus. I designated my gift for the School of Divinity. It was a small donation. It’s not even a drop in the bucket for a school with the resource of LU. But I love Liberty University. I will be praying for the trustees as they begin the process of identifying the next President of Liberty University.” - SBC Voices

Discussion

Hopeful for LU. Also made a small donation, as the post author suggested. I hope LU will chart a course that is less political and more principled. What the country needs is more principles not more partisanship.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Liberty University’s problems go much deeper than Falwell. If you have ever watched one of their Convocations on cable or satellite, you know what I mean.

Wally Morris

Charity Baptist Church

Huntington, IN

amomentofcharity.blogspot.com

Don’t have a lot of extra sheckels, let alone for Liberty, but I’m praying they fix their systems. Regarding the payout, I don’t know that they could deny the $8 million in retirement—that’s basically deferred compensation—without a battle royale that would cost them far more than that amount, and it’s a huge ethical issue. You want your employer to confiscate your pension or 401k based on something you did? Me either.

The $2.5 million severance is pretty much what they are paying to make him go away without a big legal fight as well that would cost far more as well—it’s about the same amount that MSU paid LouAnna Simon to go away after the Nassar scandal, in which she was involved. I would agree that sometimes executive pay is excessive, but that’s a much bigger question than Falwell.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

When a scandal hits a ministry, the ministry can do one of two things:

1. Just try to move on as fast as possible, or

2. Move on only after the band aid has been pulled off and as much sin as can be found it is dealt with.

If a ministry doesn’t do the latter, it fails to bring God’s righteousness to bear on sinful situations. What about the two other men with whom the Falwell’s had strange financial dealings? Were they victims of the Falwell’s prurient desires? Becki spoke to the young man in Florida (“He likes to watch”) as if this was something they did. Are there other people, other similar scandals, did their sick behavior ever involve Liberty students?

Seems like Liberty just wants to move on, but they need to learn from the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal, if they don’t do a deep dive investigation into the Falwells now to uncover any sexual and financial improprieties that can be found, they will regret it later.

a school founded by Jerry Falwell, with his son as his replacement, is going to publicly crucify Jr for his sins. Ain’t gonna happen. Jr claims he did nothing wrong. That’s because he is, and apparently always was, unrepentant. For the school to do what you say, Jonathan Charles, would be an enormous legal battle that would drag the name of the school in the mud for months, if not years, where they would have to hunt down his sins to justify firing him for cause. No one does that in “big money” world, because it costs more than you gain in so many ways.

At this point, the Liberty/Falwell scandal is at about the same point as the Larry Nassar/MSU/USAGymnastics scandal when Rachael Denhollander went public with the Indianapolis Star; if there are other participants or victims, they are likely to start speaking up now.

Hopefully it’s just a few horrible decisions by one or both of the Falwells, but the nature of the allegations—large payments to one person who wasn’t really qualified to run that business (and the numbers show that lack of qualification) and wasn’t running it at all Biblically, and more or less forcing herself on a fellow band member of her son’s—suggest a degree of predatory behavior that is not usually restricted to one or two victims.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.