The ouster of Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. over allegations of sexual misconduct and other behavior that falls short of the university’s code of conduct — not to mention Scripture — is another in a long list of object lessons each generation of Christians seems to have to learn anew.

In our 1999 book, “Blinded by Might: Why the Religious Right Can’t Save America,” the late Dr. Edward Dobson and I — he a former dean of students at Liberty and me for a brief time vice president of Moral Majority — warned about the dangers we had observed when Christian leaders get too close to politicians who often use people of faith to hide or excuse an earthly agenda and cloak their own moral shortcomings.

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Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ new book “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States” (HarperCollins/Zondervan).

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