Pastor Says He Was Ejected From Liberty U.’s Campus for Criticizing Falwell

Jonathan Martin, an author and evangelical pastor, says he was told to leave the campus of Liberty University or be arrested on Monday night. And he asserts he was later removed because of his critical remarks about the evangelical institution’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr.

Mr. Martin had criticized Mr. Falwell on Twitter for his coments in a recent interview with Breitbart. In subsequent posts, Mr. Martin said he was organizing a “peaceful action” to demonstrate that “this toxic hybrid of nationalism & religion from President Falwell does not reflect the student body or faculty as a whole.”

On Tuesday night, after Mr. Martin attended a concert on the Virginia campus, police officers confronted him and told him that if he didn’t leave, he would be arrested, Mr. Martin said on Twitter. “This was evidently in response to my strong criticism” of Mr. Falwell’s alignment with Stephen K. Bannon, the former strategist for Mr. Trump whose efforts Mr. Falwell said he supported in the Breitbart article, Mr. Martin wrote.

According to Mr. Martin’s Twitter feed, he was planning to lead a prayer event in front of a campus library on Tuesday morning.

In an interview with The News & Advance, a newspaper in Lynchburg, Va., Mr. Falwell said Mr. Martin was just seeking attention. “He wanted to showboat; he wanted to get some attention,” Mr. Falwell said. “If we allowed him to come on campus and protest uninvited, then the next group that comes in might be a violent group, and we’ve seen recently what that can lead to,” he said, apparently referring to violent clashes in August between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va.

Mr. Falwell also pointed out that Liberty is a private university. “It’s a private school, it’s private property, go somewhere else to protest,” he told the newspaper.

Mr. Martin countered on Twitter that the encounter demonstrated Mr. Falwell’s lack of commitment to free speech. “What does it mean for a college administration to be this afraid of free speech?” he tweeted. “What precisely is [Mr. Falwell] afraid of?”

Some students and faculty members have voiced displeasure with Mr. Falwell’s association with the president. Dozens of alumni said in August that they planned to return their diplomas over Mr. Falwell’s defense of President Trump.

Mr. Falwell is the president’s closest ally in academe. The Liberty president often appears as surrogate for President Trump on news programs, and he said earlier this year that he’d been tapped to lead a federal task force on higher ed (his role in that group is still hazy).

Andy Thomason oversees breaking-news coverage. Send him a tip at andy.thomason@chronicle.com. And follow him on Twitter @arthomason.