Lynchburg, Virginia: Liberty University and MAGA-fication of Electoral Politics in Lynchburg and Central Virginia

Part Eight of Blue City Warrior Visits Red America: In Search of Us

This is the seventh part of my series Blue City Warrior Visits Red America: In Search of Us. Go HERE to read the Blue City Warrior opening essay. Please subscribe to follow my journey!

The second stop on my campaign-year journeys to red places had me traveling to Lynchburg, Virginia, located in the heart of traditionally conservative Central Virginia. Not having spent any significant time in former slave states, I was interested in how the legacy of American slavery, Jim Crow, and Virginians’ stiff resistance to expanding civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s might still be evident in the city today.

But the main reason Lynchburg made the list is that it is the home of Liberty University, the largest private evangelical Christian university in the country. It was founded in 1971 by televangelist and Moral Majority founder and political crusader Jerry Falwell with the mission to “Train Champions for Christ”. It is about 180 degrees away from my blue bubble, and thus a great destination for this inquiry. Unlike Tulsa, where I wanted to explore the impact of the history of racial violence on the city, with Lynchburg, I was interested in exploring the impact of Liberty’s “Bastion of the Christian Right” on the city’s politics and culture.