Hello. Hello,

welcome to Straightwide American Jesus.

My name is Brad Unishi, Associate Professor Religious Studies at Skidmore College.

It is the second week of August, and despite the disaster timeline that we are living

through, there is one story that we just have to talk about.

Last week, Jerry Falwell Jr. was put on indefinite leave from Liberty University following the posting on

Instagram of pictures and video of a party that took place on a yacht. In one of the pictures,

Jerry Falwell Jr. is posing with a young woman.

She, we now know, is the assistant to his wife, Becky. And he has his arm around her waist.

He's holding what by all account seems to be a glass of

alcohol and they both have their pants unzipped showing their underwear. It seems as

if there was a context or a theme to the party that explains why they would have posed this way.

But the larger sort of issue here is that this picture and the video associated with it led to Jerry Falwell being asked or maybe not even asked but put on

indefinite leave from Liberty. Just to give you some context, Liberty University is the largest Christian University in the country.

It enrolls about 15,000 students on campus and has about 100,000 people enrolled in online

programs. It has incredible influence in the evangelical world and it was of course

started by Jerry Falwell Sr. Many of you will know that Jerry Falwell Sr. is a seminal figure in the rise of the religious right.

He was a big part of the push for evangelicals, the vote for Reagan over Carter in 76.

He started the moral majority in 1979 and up until his death in the mid aots he was a kind of figurehead for the religious right and its rise to prominence in American politics.

Jerry Falwell Jr took over the Liberty University when his father passed and then, there have been numerous scandals surrounding him.

Most recently, there's been a scandal involving the loning or giving

of over a million dollars to a pool boy that he and his wife had met on a trip or on a vacation.

...