Evangelical students reject Trump at conservative United States campus
- by Grant Boone
- in Sports
- — Oct 15, 2016
Dustin Wahl, executive director of the Liberty University group, Liberty United Against Trump, said Trump's lewd comments pushed him to finally speak out. And maligning others and bragging about sin are "the very things that we as Christians ought to oppose", it said.
Libertarian presidential candidate and former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson will speak at Liberty University's Convocation next Monday.
Voters have seen the change in Trump, Falwell continued, saying he's seen it personally. "I'm convinced he's a Christian". Instead of resistance or condemnation from my professors, I was encouraged by them. That was before he posed with Trump in the casino magnate's office in June, both men grinning and giving a thumbs-up with a framed copy of Trump's 1990 Playboy cover in the background. On the contrary, I would argue that many-though not all-of the students on campus have been inspired to make their own political beliefs known since the endorsement, regardless of whom they support.
"It was completely out of order". And like I said, it's - Jesus was accused of being a friend of sinners and when he was here on earth and it is not up to us to forgive. "We've all done things we wish we hadn't".
Now, some students at Liberty are publicly expressing dismay over what they see as a minimization of the matter.
"Any faculty or staff member at Liberty would be terminated for such comments, and yet when Donald Trump makes them, President Falwell rushes eagerly to his defense - taking the name "Liberty University" with him", the letter continued.
Allegations of sexual assault, like those leveled against Trump, are not "a shoulder-shrugging issue", the statement reads, but rather "an atrocity which plagues college campuses across America, including our own".
"It is not enough to criticize these kinds of comments".
The Republican nominee's supporters apparently do not care if the man they want to elect as their next president has groped women on airplanes, kissed them without their consent, or made sexual remarks about a 10-year-old girl - they just want to make America great again, and they want Trump to do it.
Falwell shared a story about a time when he was working as an attorney in 1989, and work was being done on refinancing for the university through a Little Rock, Arkansas law firm, and they brought along the Rose Law firm, while Clinton, Vince Foster and others were still associated with it.
"We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell's endorsement and are exhausted of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history", according to a tweet from the group's social media coordinator Tyler McNally.
"We are not proclaiming our opposition to Donald Trump out of bitterness, but out of a desire to regain the integrity of our school", it advised.
"While our president Jerry Falwell Jr. tours the country championing the log in his eye", the letter continues, "we want the world to know how many students oppose him". We don't want to champion Donald Trump; we want only to be champions for Christ.
"I am proud of these few students for speaking their minds, but I'm afraid the statement is incoherent and false", he said in a statement.
"I am not "touring the country" or associating Liberty University with any candidate", Falwell Jr. told the Post. Deploying the biblical parable of the beam and the mote, the group suggested that conservative Evangelicals like Falwell who justified support for Trump by pointing to Hillary Clinton's flaws or ideological positions were betraying their primary responsibility to steer clear of a politician "who is actively promoting the very things that we as Christians ought to oppose".
Asked how he can be sure so many Liberty students will vote for Trump in November, given how poorly the real estate mogul performed in the school's district during the primary, Heaphy told TheBlaze that an "overwhelmingly large number of students identify as Republicans" and will vote for Trump for the sole goal of blocking Clinton, the Democratic nominee, from becoming president.
The piece details a long list of reasons Christians should be troubled to support Hillary Clinton - the power to appoint liberal judges to the Supreme Court, the e-mail controversy, her overall penchant secrecy among other concerns.