Students Protest Liberty University President's Statement that He Will Raise His Granddaughter as a Girl

Liberty University has long been on a slippery slide of compromise that began under founder Jerry Falwell’s leadership. His compromise started with small steps, as it always does, but the Word of God warns that “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (1 Co. 5:6; Gal. 5:9). The latest evidence of the school’s spiritual decline came last week with the protest by some 30 students of the president’s announcement that he and his wife are raising their granddaughter “as a girl.” Speaking to a satellite Conservative Political Action Conference event that also featured Donald Trump, Jr., Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s wife, Becki, said, “She’s our granddaughter, and we’re raising her as a girl. We’re not letting her have a choice. God makes the choice of what the babies are going to be and God decided she would be a girl.” Jerry Falwell, Jr. voiced his agreement (“Liberty University students,” Washington Examiner, Mar. 13, 2019). This innocuous, common sense statement was ridiculously marked as “hate speech” by a clique of Liberty students who staged a day-long protest on campus. Signs included “Hate is a choice, being transgender is not.” Protester Elizabeth Axley, a sophomore, identified herself as “bisexual.” Caleb Fitzpatrick, a senior, said, “Hopefully we can create an environment where comments like Friday’s aren’t welcome and aren’t normal.” Obviously these people do not embrace freedom of speech and freedom of religion. When the late Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty, started down the path of pragmatic compromise in the 1980s by renouncing biblical separatism, forming an ecumenical political action organization, and seeking the world’s accreditation, he would not have dreamed that the day would come when students at his Christian college would be so unbiblical in their thinking. His efforts to form a “moral majority” to save America did not save the nation, but it did destroy a church and college. It can also be said that his example contributed to the destruction of the biblical character of an entire group of churches, the Baptist Bible Fellowship International (BBFI). In the 1980s, BBFI president Victor Sears boldly warned, “Dr. Falwell is not basically a fundamental Baptist but is a New Evangelical in the same compromising vein as Dr. Billy Graham. If we keep following the road paved by Falwellism, we will lose our identity completely as old-fashioned, Bible-believing separatists” (Calvary Contender, June 15, 1987). That has come to pass. See “Jerry Falwell: the Billy Graham of Independent Baptists,” and “Baptist Bible Fellowship International’s Road to Emerging.”

​(Friday Church News Notes, March 22, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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