Dr. Falwell is depicted as a false Fundamentalist seeking to please his hardline Baptist wife! He allegedly pretended to believe general Fundamentalist values to keep peace at home. Thus, Dr. Falwell didn’t really believe the values he preached at Thomas Road Baptist Church and on national television. Moreover, Jerry Sr. knew he could not build a large university espousing liberal or loosey-goosey Evangelical positions, so he assumed biblical or Fundamentalist positions. Therefore, according to his wayward son, Jerry Sr. was a very successful hypocrite.

That is asinine, abominable, and far from accurate. It is also tommyrot, baloney, balderdash, and a very generous portion of hogwash. Moreover, even if it were true, why would a son purposefully try to destroy his father’s reputation? After all, Jerry Sr. gave Junior life, but also a very gracious childhood and when grown, a substantial position and financial security. Junior is not only an ingrate but a perfect example of a religious jerk.

Jerry Sr. was a faithful, strong yet gentle leader of his home, church, and Liberty University, as those who knew him better than I will contend. We know his egg-sucking son is attempting damage control since his life has been out of control for decades. The thought of Jerry Sr. permitting his wife to determine what he preached and to order him around is supercilious.

I believe the article dipped into viciousness and a defamatory attack on Dr. Falwell when it alleged: “Looking back, Jerry said his dad adopted militant stands against drinking and homosexuality to prove to his wife that he would be a conservative Christian. ‘My mother was the only reason my dad became puritanical,’ Jerry said. Jerry said his dad also knew that there was a lucrative market for such beliefs. ‘He became a different person to build a church and a school,’ Jerry said.”

How silly for him to make such a charge that Dr. Falwell taught what he did, not because it was biblical, but to satisfy his wife! Moreover, he became a Fundamentalist not because that is what Christians are supposed to be, but he knew it would be easier to sell than Liberalism or soft Evangelicalism.

First, that is an assessment by a disgraced son who has proved to be a scoundrel, a liar, a fornicator, a drunk, a hypocrite, etc., who is trying to find some redemption, not at the cross of Christ, but in the court of public opinion. Jerry Jr. said that being on the receiving end of Evangelicals’ scorn has turned him away from that movement. He said he believes in Christ, but not the church. But then he has another problem since Christ is head of the church, having died for it. No one can declare to be a Christian and disavow the true church, but the weekly gatherings of many religious people worldwide are another matter. Many of them are poor examples of a failing, cheap, three-ring religious circus.

Most churches are contemptible since falsehood is always repulsive.

Jerry Sr. made some mistakes, as even his beloved church members admit. In 1985, I heard him say, during his original announcement, that his highest goal was to have 50,000 students on Liberty Mountain. Goals are good, but the goal should have been qualified not to compromise to reach his desirable result. That was one of Dr. Falwell’s worse mistakes and some of his future decisions were corrupted by that faulty goal.

Most of my disagreements with Dr. Falwell were with his university decisions and some of his association with religious lunatics. With his supreme goal in mind, he began to appeal to an ever-expanding student pool. Not only Baptists were sought, and not only Baptist professors were hired. The narrow door was expanded to include almost any student, even homosexuals. Moreover, he hired non-Fundamentalist professors with a Ph.D. to satisfy the secular accreditation agency.

It is always organizational suicide when a Christian association permits, for whatever reason, a secular agency to sit in judgment on its purpose, policies, people, or program.

Few church people understand the problem with Christian schools that seek secular accreditation. Accreditation is always deadly to any school, as a cursory look at history will prove. I opposed these major compromises without breaking fellowship with Jerry. He didn’t lose any sleep because we disagreed since his gracious (often too gracious) attitude was very accommodating.

In 1987, he showed an eagerness to meet his goal of 50,000 students when he courted the PTL crowd following the sex scandal involving Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker. He actively sought to do a “friendly” takeover of the PTL Network. The PTL people are fine individuals but not Baptists.

I disagreed later when Liberty became a Southern Baptist-approved school in 1999 which opened the door for conservative Baptists who disapproved of the lethal liberalism in the SBC.

Furthermore, I disagreed with many of the Liberty student rules that were far too loose, in my opinion.

My other differences with Dr. Falwell are debatable. Accepting $3.5 million in 1994 from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s organization can be hotly debated.

Of course, no one questions Junior’s ability, but it seems everyone questions his discretion, honesty, morality, etc. Jerry admitted to Vanity Fair that he drank a few beers while a student at Liberty and his dad should have expelled him if he was informed.

The Vanity Fair article deals with Junior and his wife Becki’s meeting, mating, and marriage. “They fell in love. Becki dropped out of Liberty after her freshman year and got a waitressing job in Lynchburg. She stayed with Jerry in Charlottesville on her days off.” Jerry was in law school at the University of Virginia.

If words still mean what they used to mean, Jerry Junior was a fornicator while in graduate school at the University of Virginia. His church was obligated to bring him up for disciplinary action to restore him to proper godly living if and when they were aware of his actions. His church failed him and disregarded biblical teaching. His dad was his pastor at the time, and if Jerry did not seek to bring Junior under church discipline, he failed his son in that regard. If Junior had left the church membership, then his dad should have (and possibly tried) to discipline his adult, rebellious son.

I have written about various Jerry Falwell Junior’s scandals here, here, here, and here

Jerry said, “I became a true Christian in college,” but that didn’t mean he had to follow the evangelical rules. “After all, Jesus was a rule breaker too.” Evidently, Jerry did not know Christ kept biblical rules—all of them, but He did disregard some man-made rules.

Jerry is quoted as saying, “Organized religion says you have to earn your way to heaven. What Jesus said was, ‘You just have to believe,’” That is correct as far as it goes. Following one’s personal salvation experience, he is expected to live what he possesses. Jerry Junior never did that. He was a hypocrite while young, a hypocrite in middle age, and probably will die a hypocrite.

Junior is obviously a certified jerk.

The people who refuse to make any judgments will accuse me of being unloving, which is a sin; however, no one knows my motives. Love always deals in truth, never falsehood. Jerry Jr. has proved by his words and lifestyle to be a hypocrite. And frankly, a blatant hypocrite.

Although I hope not, even pray that he does not die in his present condition, that is his decision. He can’t blame that on daddy, and it is a sure thing that he won’t get to Heaven because of his name, lineage, education, baptism, or because he finished the work his father started.

Some of us will question Jerry’s salvation since Christians should live clean, dedicated lives rather than give ammunition for the enemies to use against us. As others, seeking to justify evil actions, Junior will say the Bible records major leaders who did terrible acts, such as King David. However, while David committed adultery, he did not live in adultery, and he came broken-hearted before God and wept copious tears in repentance.

Even if one is stupid enough to discount every other charge against Jerry Jr., he is obviously without discretion, which indicates immaturity. As president of the number one Christian university in the world with student behavior rules, he posted a photo on Instagram of himself with his arm around a pregnant woman with his and her shorts unzipped, and stomach exposed. He was holding what seemed to be an alcoholic drink. Becki and daughter Caroline were horrified and told him to “take it down.” But Jerry “didn’t see the big deal.”

He couldn’t see because he was blind.

Compromising photos that Jerry had taken years earlier showed Becki posing topless on a tractor, but Jerry said, “We were just playing around.” Such an attitude shows shallowness or stupidity or maybe he thought he was special.

Maybe I was wrong to call Jerry a jerk.

Make that a double jerk.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 20 books, the most recent, Reflections of a Lifetime Fundamentalist: No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets! The eBook is available at Amazon.com for $4.99. Other titles at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don  Boys, Ph.D., and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles and click here to support  his work with a donation.)

However, we don’t have to look in the past or to secular universities to prove the deleterious effects of school accreditation. Simply look at the present. Look what accreditation has done and is doing to Wheaton College, Moody, Cedarville University, Grace Seminary, Tennessee Temple University, and to a lesser extent Bryan College, Dallas Seminary, and others.

Gordon College, near Boston, is now on the defense being attacked by their regional accreditation association. Of course, accreditation alone is not the culprit; however, it is the accreditation mentality of being approved that is driving change–for the worse– in all schools.

America’s early Christian schools boasted scholarly, saintly, sober professors who pumped knowledge and tried to impart character into very young students. A young teen seeking enrollment at Columbia (then King’s) as a freshman had to translate the first three of Tully’s Select Orations from Latin to Greek and translate the first ten chapters of John’s Gospel from Greek to English! Note that was to enroll!

The only accreditation the early schools had was the quality of students they thrust out after a rigorous exposure to some of the greatest minds in America. Then came the do-gooders who thought they had a divine mandate to control everything to “guarantee” quality education. So the restrictions came and the quality plummeted.

Today’s Christian universities think they will be an exception but the historical scenario is playing out in front of our eyes. With regional accreditation has come the demand that professors hold a Ph.D. from various schools, not schools in agreement with the hiring institution. Note that Baptist schools have professors trained at outrageously liberal universities and seminaries. Of course, schools are not permitted to teach the truth about creation/evolution in their science classes.

Student personal requirements were deep-sixed so tobacco, booze, gambling, dancing, piercings, etc., are permitted while required chapel, godly living, church attendance, and weekly Christian service are proscribed. In fact, such things are considered antiquated, even appalling.

Charges have circulated for months that Gordon College was under the gun of regulators from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC); nevertheless, Gordon’s spokesman says that accreditation is not in question: “Contrary to recent media reports, Gordon’s accreditation is not in jeopardy, as its admission and employment policies have always been in full compliance with the NEASC Standards for Accreditation….”

However, Barbara Brittingham, president of the NEASC’s higher education commission told the Boston Business Journal, that the school’s current “Life and Conduct Statement” which bans Gordon community members from “sexual relations outside marriage” and “homosexual practice,” may be “inconsistent with the commission’s standards.”

Brittingham told me that she knows of no college that has refused to capitulate to an accreditation association’s demand for an atmosphere that is friendly to fornicators and homosexuals, and using the First Amendment as their reason. Does that mean all other Christian colleges have eliminated their “no fornication, no homosexuality” rule? Or does it mean they are still under the radar?

Opposition to Gordon’s policy on sex also comes from students, faculty, alumni and local residents who have signed an online petition to remove the words “homosexual practice” from the school’s list of forbidden activities. About half of the 1100 signatures are alumni and 200 are faculty and staff! One does not need a doctorate in education to know that Gordon is in deep doo doo when such a high percent of workers support the LGBTQ position!

I’m afraid the young president, Michael Lindsay, is on his way out if he does not capitulate to the perversion-is-okay crowd. He should keep his eyes open for specials from U-Haul.

Furthermore, it is folly to permit students, faculty, alumni, and local residents to set standards for a Christian school! Local residents! Yeah, hey everyone, let’s vote on what is right and wrong!

However, Bible truth is not decided by a majority vote. God is a benevolent dictator and He does not allow a deciding vote–only a choice between obedience and disobedience.

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”

If one is going into a profession that requires an accredited degree, a student can go to an unaccredited college for undergraduate work then get an advanced degree from an accredited school that would accept his undergraduate work. Accreditation does not equal quality.

One thing parents should not do is bankrupt their family to pay for an overpriced education that probably won’t produce a good return on their investment. A huge number of parents have robbed their retirement plans to pay extortion (tuition) at second rate universities–even Ivy League universities. That is not kindness and responsible parenting–it’s called stupidity.

If a student wants to attend an expensive school, he can work a couple years before enrolling as they do in Europe. Or he can do what my wife and I did: work and attend college at the same time. My father wanted me to attend a state university and promised “not to send me a dollar” if I went to a Christian school. He kept his word. That was before Dad was a Christian and much later he trusted Christ and had a change of heart and life. I mean he really had a change of heart. He became a new person and totally supported my work, but by that time I had long finished my training.

During my college days in Chicago I worked as a painter, chauffer (in Chicago!), pumped gas, and parked cars on the glitzy Gold Coast where I rubbed elbows with Chicago’s rich and famous as well as the infamous. After marriage, I sacked groceries and carried them out for shoppers for .98 cents an hour while attending another college in Chattanooga. Yes, it was very difficult to work full time and carry a full college load, but it was worth it and I didn’t borrow a dollar or receive any grants.

Six million college graduates are now living with their parents (something I predicted in 1999) because they cannot find a job. (I understand that they lie in bed “looking up at faded Obama posters” while listening to an over-the-hill Barbara Streisand sing, “Happy Days are Here Again.”) Often those young people refuse to work at anything if it is not in their area of training or the salary is “beneath” them, so they sit at home mooching off their parents. Not in this household!

Often students graduate with a degree in literature (and don’t even have to read Shakespeare!), anthropology, medieval art, etc., and discover that while those are interesting subjects, they are not in demand. To make a good living, one must possess the skills that are wanted: business, computer, math, science, law (no, we have enough lawyers), etc.

About 40,000 Ph.D.’s are awarded each year while only 337 were awarded in 1903. At the University of Georgia, a Ph.D. candidate in creative writing can submit poems instead of a dissertation! And at the University of Michigan you can get a Ph.D. in literature without reading Shakespeare! Say what?

Most American schools of “higher learning” are monuments to bingeing, bureaucracies, buffoonery, bullying, and sports, the only thing in which they excel–often at the expense of education.
The loonies at the University of Wisconsin are teaching that it is “unfair” to be white as if we had anything to do with it. Whites cannot see racism when it takes place. Of course, that’s what the race hustlers, Jackson, Sharpton, and Obama have been saying for years.

Occidental College (where our sitting President attended!) offers a course in “Stupidity,” which compares the American presidency to the offensive cartoon television show, “Beavis and Butthead.” I feel many quips coming over me in waves, but I’d better stop.

Evidently the squirrels haven’t gathered all the nuts yet. There are plenty of them running our institutions of higher education, a misnomer these days.

Copyright 2013, Don Boys, Ph.D.

Cedarville University is in trouble, but then, we have known that for years. The school had an auspicious beginning in 1953 with the General Association of Regular Baptists (GARB), a group that has stood for biblical truth and ecclesiastical separation from its inception. However, in 2006, the GARB severed association with the university because of the school’s flirting with the inclusive Southern Baptist Convention.

The school has confused many with its interdenominational drift and permitting professors to attend non-Baptist churches even though they signed a Baptist doctrinal statement. Informed people have known for a long time that the University had broken from its Baptist moorings and was drifting rather swiftly with the tide toward mainstream evangelicalism.

There were concerns also about some theological problems at the college. One criticism of Cedarville is their insistence on “certainty” of Bible doctrine instead of the mere assurance of their beliefs. Some of the loosey-goosey faculty declares certainty of doctrine to be arrogance while the true Baptists considered the loosey-goosey crowd as heretics. I stand with the true Baptists.

As of October, 2012 the school lost its president and a vice president resigned after the school was accused of “moving toward a more robust and moderate evangelicalism.” Ten or more professors have felt the call elsewhere since 2007! Two professors were fired in 2007 allegedly because they were too conservative and their firing took place about four months after they signed up to teach another year! They were also challenging some of the more liberal professors during their classes. Additional liberal professors were hired only adding gasoline to the fire. One protest group charges, “The university is moving back toward conservative fundamentalism.” Gasp! It seems that the university is going in opposite directions at the same time!

The charge of moving back to its Fundamentalist roots would be news to those who read the school newspaper arguing that “there was nothing wrong with homosexuality,” and suggesting that “abortion wasn’t a black and white issue.” Also the invitation of a “Christian social activist” who has ties to the Emergent Church to speak on campus added more confusion. Inviting religious gadfly, Jim Wallis to speak didn’t add to the school’s Fundamentalist bona fides. And it didn’t help when they booked the Michael Moore documentary to be aired on campus in 2009. Then the president threw more gasoline on the fire when he put out his Recommended Book List with Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren, New Age guru James Redfield, and Philip Yancey on the list! No, not indications of moving toward fundamentalism!

It is charged by some that the school’s trustees are trying to move the Fundamentalist Baptist institution back toward its roots instead of rushing into the Emerging Church Movement. However, Cedarville “isn’t moving anywhere,” said board chairman Lorne Scharnburg, emphasizing that the Ohio school is an independent Baptist university. “We’re staying where we’ve always been,” declared Scharnburg. Not exactly true since Cedarville has been sipping the New Evangelical Kool-Aid for over a decade.

The two fired professors were given contracts and then fired after a three-day visit of a North Central Accreditation team. Can’t have a dust-up with the snoops on campus. The American Association of University Professors, a nearly100-year old national faculty advocacy group with 45,000 members, got involved and is investigating the firing of one of the professors. Cedarville has declined to cooperate with them. In my opinion, the AAUP never should have been involved; however, there is that always present desire for acceptability–hence, accreditation and affiliation.

No Christian can be pleased with trouble in Christian institutions and no one can defend lying, mistreatment, intrigue, suing other Christians, heresy, etc. Cedarville is one of many examples of some of the problems when a Christian institution (at any level) goes to a secular group for approval, licensure, commissioning, accreditation, etc. God has warned us about joining up with the world. Furthermore, can two walk together unless they are agreed? No secular organization can understand spiritual and doctrinal decisions and should therefore have no authority over churches and Christian schools.

Christian schools do not need the organizational stamp of approval from secular or governmental organizations. It is the kiss of death.