The College Fix

Media outlets consider his lack of faith irrelevant to evangelical university story

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.’s close association with President Trump and repeated defenses of him, including after Trump’s response to the Charlottesville protests, have caused a fair amount of consternation within evangelical circles.

Some graduates of the deeply conservative evangelical school founded by his father, Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, are even planning to send back their diplomas, according to NPR.

Who is this brave evangelical leading the charge against a Christian leader who compromises his faith to condone Trump? Someone who doesn’t believe in God:

Chris Gaumer, a former Student Government Association president and 2006 graduate, said it was a simple decision.

“I’m sending my diploma back because the president of the United States is defending Nazis and white supremacists,” Gaumer said. “And in defending the president’s comments, Jerry Falwell Jr. is making himself and, it seems to me, the university he represents, complicit.”

NPR reporter Sarah McCammon (or her editor) apparently didn’t consider it worth telling the Morning Edition audience Sunday that Gaumer is not a typical Liberty graduate, as evidenced by his Twitter profile.

You also wouldn’t know that Gaumer is an “agnostic” and “democrat” – who says the school’s Center for Creation Studies is justification alone for Liberty grads to return their degrees – by reading a similar New York Times story that identifies Gaumer as the assistant director of the MFA program at Randolph College, which is near Liberty. (His Facebook profile also identifies him as “progressive,” an atypical political orientation at Liberty.)

Gaumer and the other organizers, Georgia Hamann and Bethany Hannah, control the membership of a closed Facebook group called Return Your Diploma to LU. It also denounces Falwell for not condemning Trump’s “anti-LGBTQIA,” “ableism” and “nationalism” views:

By September 5, 2017 we will each return our diplomas (via USPS or otherwise) to the office of Jerry Falwell Jr. with letters expressing our reasons for revoking all support, and send a copy to Falwell’s office, and a copy to the president of the Board of Trustees.

Though it boasts 335 members, the Times said some of them were “journalists reporting on the protest,” and on Sunday Hamann estimated conservatively that 50 were planning to send their diplomas back.

For context, Liberty graduated 2,700 residential students and 15,300 online students just this spring.

To obtain access to the closed group, would-be members must give their affiliation with Liberty and explain why they want to join and whether they agree to “respect the wishes of this group with regard to minimal privacy?” Its description asks journalists to “please request to quote/attribute anything you see posted in this group.”

The College Fix was quickly approved Monday afternoon, by which time several reporters for mainstream outlets had already requested interviews with group members.

Falwell Jr. appeared on Fox News host Todd Starnes’ show today to respond to Liberty graduates who are “playing politics with their diploma.”

https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/status/899666987697270784

https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/status/899668669470560257

Read the NPR and Times reports.

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