Shane Claiborne is not an imposing presence. A Christian pacifist, he’s known within evangelical circles for his opposition to the death penalty, for his embrace of immigrants and refugees, and for helping found an intentional community in Philadelphia called the Simple Way. He’s a regular visitor to Christian college campuses. On Friday, Claiborne, working alongside a prominent roster of Christian leaders that included the Rev. William J. Barber, held a revival in Lynchburg, Virginia. Lynchburg being the home of Liberty University, Claiborne reached out to Liberty’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to invite him to come pray with fellow Christians. But this weekend, Claiborne reported that Falwell had refused his invitation. Further, Liberty’s campus police department threatened him with arrest if he set a toe on campus.

What’s so dangerous about a Christian pacifist? Claiborne did not come to Lynchburg to burn the Falwell family’s city upon a hill. In fact, he shares a number of positions with Liberty’s leadership, including on abortion. It appears that Falwell’s objection to Claiborne stems from the latter’s commitment to non-violence; he is set to publish a new book making the Christian case for gun control. Pacifism, as Relevant magazine recently noted, does not feature prominently in Falwell’s Christianity. He opened a shooting range on campus and once told students, “If more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those (radicalized) Muslims before they walked in.”

The no-platforming of Shane Claiborne inspired no outrage outside the evangelical world. There were no columns about it in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or New York magazine. Bill Maher has not invited dissenting students onto his television show, even though they exist. Erin Covey, a Liberty journalism major, told Religion News Service on Saturday that Falwell himself blocked her from covering Claiborne’s revival for the student newspaper. “I do think that currently the level of oversight we have does make it difficult to pursue the accurate journalism that we’re taught in classes,” she told RNS.

There are important differences between the no-platforming of controversial speakers at secular universities and the wholesale suppression of speech at Christian universities, starting with the latter’s competing claim of freedom of religion. But Falwell’s actions violate the purpose of even a Christian university, which retains a mission to develop the intellect. There is a free speech crisis on campus, but it’s not at Yale or Middlebury. It’s at Liberty University and schools like it.

Liberty isn’t the first Christian college to ban Shane Claiborne. My alma mater, Cedarville University in Ohio, committed a similar act in 2008. Administrators rescinded Claiborne’s speaking invitation after a clutch of fundamentalist bloggers complained that his presence on campus was further evidence that the school had drifted from its conservative identity. I understood this to be a facetious claim at the time: Cedarville, as I knew it, restricted student dress, speech, and religious expression. Students couldn’t wear jeans to class. Male students couldn’t let their hair grow past a certain length, and we could only attend churches belonging to certain denominations. Cedarville was conservative enough.