LYNCHBURG, Va. — Students at Liberty University gave Texas Sen. Ted Cruz a rousing response to his remarks Monday when he declared his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election.
Liberty’s Vines Center was packed with students and press on Monday as Cruz focused his remarks on his faith.
“When I was three, my father decided to leave my mother and me. We were living in Calgary at the time, he got on a plane and he flew back to Texas, and he decided he didn’t want to be married anymore and he didn’t want to be a father to his three-year-old son,” he said. “And yet when he was in Houston, a friend, a colleague from the oil and gas business invited him to a Bible study, invited him to Clay Road Baptist.”
“And God transformed his heart,” he explained. “And he drove to the airport, he bought a plane ticket, and he flew back to be with my mother and me.”
It's just the stage light, folks. Seriously. #cruzspeech pic.twitter.com/UrYhdYSUNF
— Kerry Picket (@KerryPicket) March 23, 2015
Cruz added, “There are people who wonder if faith is real. I can tell you, in my family there’s not a second of doubt, because were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been saved and I would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the household.”
For students, attendance at the gathering was mandatory. A Liberty University freshman named Jonathan told The Daily Caller he thought the speech “was amazing.”
“I thought it was absolutely on point. I think the only thing that could make this better is for Rand Paul to be his running mate,” he said.
J.C., a junior, however, viewed the speech as “just politics.”
“I think it was really good. It focused on the Lord and the family. That’s what’s important to me. I’ll back him 100 percent,” Mary Boyett, a junior, told TheDC. “Anyone that’s going to focus on the Lord — focus on the important things — like the sanctity of human life, that’s what I’m going to go after. I’m not up to date on all the candidates, but after listening to that I would totally vote for him because that’s what’s important to me and that’s what I’m going to back.”
Liberty University, a Christian educational institution founded by Jerry Falwell, is the largest private, non-profit four-year college in the country. The school is also the country’s fifth largest university as well as largest Christian university in the world.