Jerry Falwell Jr. had long made a point of emphasizing that he was not trying to be a moral leader. He made crude jokes, insulted fellow Christians and was photographed partying on yachts and in nightclubs. But he rarely apologized or expressed regret. “I have never been a minister,” he explained on Twitter last year. He liked to tell reporters that Jesus did not tell Caesar how to run Rome.
That was always an unusual stance for the head of a distinctly evangelical institution. But Mr. Falwell pulled it off until recently, coasting by on a combination of success — Liberty’s endowment grew to $1.6 billion under his watch — and good will engendered by lingering institutional fondness for his father, who founded the school and was both a minister and an administrator.
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