When I set out to write about Christian universities in America a few months ago, I took my time with it. It’s a hefty subject and going on offense against Christian institutions is no small matter.
I strive to approach these matters with humility rather than hubris, and I often tend to resist these kinds of topics at first because I don’t want to ruffle the wrong feathers. And yet, feather-ruffling in and of itself is not inherently wrong. Sometimes, feathers must be ruffled, if only to rouse American Christians from their seemingly endless stasis of maintaining what I consider to be a paralyzing status quo.
I have often ascertained that while American public schools are primarily training children to march to the rhythm of a statist drum, I believe it is in the universities where kids’ secular and anti-American worldviews are cemented. College is the ultimate consummation of years of K-12 educational preparation and subsequent worldview confirmation for many kids.
College is expensive, time-consuming, and expected. It is the predictable next step for many High School graduates, and while there are positive aspects to working toward a college degree, for the Christian parent…there may be more detracting factors than not.
Setting aside secularism for a moment
For the purposes of this article, I am setting aside what we know about secular universities and focusing solely on colleges and universities who have established themselves as Christian educational institutions. This is an important distinction to make because a Christian school distinguishes themselves from the secular educational plateau by the values and Biblical classes that they purport to teach. Christians schools teach from a Biblical worldview, and in doing so, that worldview should permeate every subject, whether it’s history, English, or science.
A quick Google search will instantly reveal endless lists of the top 20 to 50 Christian colleges and universities in the United States, presenting a picture of quintessential Americana: God-fearing educational institutions safely training our beloved children to love and fear the Lord while simultaneously providing them with a high-quality, rock-solid education.
The question, however, is whether this picture of Americana is true – and whether Christian schools today are as committed to teaching truth and preaching the Gospel as they are to acquiescing to the ever-encroaching demands of a politically-correct and morally-defunct culture.
When Christians aren’t really Christians
One of the most popular and well-known universities in Christian culture is Indiana Wesleyan University. Yet cracks begin to appear in the veneer of their dedication to truth, and there is no crack as deep or as dark as the one placed there in the case of former student Micah Sample.
Sample tells the story of how a simple Facebook post decrying “woke” posters on campus led to him being pressured by the school to “repent” of his conservative values in 2017. Sample was expelled from the honor society and targeted by the school with progressive “equity reports” in retaliation for his refusal to apologize for his conservative beliefs – which were ironically aligned with Biblical teaching.
Sample was so struck with the unflinching politically-correct attitude of the school’s leadership that he went on to become the editor of Wokepedia, an educational resource that exposes Marxist-laced churches, schools and organizations.
Sample’s story, however, is hardly an isolated event.
I spoke with a student who previously attended a satellite campus of Moody Bible Institute in Spokane, Washington. This student anonymously informed me that during their time on campus, one specific professor in 2014 would take the entire class to seminars at a secular university to “push” ideas of “white privilege on us.”
“He was the head of the student life and was in the process of finishing his doctorate,” the former student told me. “…His dissertation regarded white privilege. I felt very uncomfortable and confused by what he was trying to accomplish during these specific times.”
They added, “Looking back, I see that he was tilling the soil and planting the seeds of CRT and BLM and so many other agendas to around 60 young adults pursuing full time careers in ministry.”
But the buck doesn’t stop there.
In California, Christian Fresno Pacific University’s website includes robust information on “diversity, equity and inclusion.” They acknowledge the CRT-based theory of “systemic racism” by stating, “Dismantling systemic racism and injustice will be a long and difficult journey.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, FPU seems to pay little to no heed to recycling cultural symbolism to appeal to a younger generation, plastering a picture of collectively raised fists beneath an image promoting “Women’s History Month,” for example. The raised fist has been historically symbolic of communism, socialism, and various other social movements.
Even less of a surprise is Fresno Pacific’s association with the Mennonite Central Committee – once a bastion of relief and advocacy for many in need, now a seemingly relentless agenda-pushing machine. One blog post as far back as 2016 on their official website includes a snapshot of a picture that reads, “For I was hungry…thirsty…a stranger and you DEPORTED ME.”
The post was written by Tammy Alexander, the senior legislative associate for domestic affairs for MCC at the U.S. Washington Office. She claims that illegal immigrants are subjected to fear and oppression in the United States and slams “anti-immigrant legislation under the guise of enhancing public safety.” She pushes a clear open-borders agenda and attempts to use the Bible to back up her beliefs (Exodus 12:49), while simultaneously failing to acknowledge that illegal migrants are here in violation of our laws – and many who cross the border are human traffickers, cartel members, coyotes, and drug runners.
Even this one small example of the leftist agenda threaded through Fresno Pacific University seems to signal their disturbing solidarity with it.
Evangelist Trevor Loudon has correctly pointed out in the past that much of today’s seminaries in Christian universities preach 90 percent Gospel and 10 percent Marxism. In fact, he also rightly observed that communism is little more than the scientific application of Satanism – and what we are seeing in today’s Christian universities is a result of a slow, methodical, and patient application of a watered-down and abhorrently twisted version of what God’s love is supposed to look like.
In my own experience, having attended Grand Canyon University of Arizona (which is ranked highly on many lists of purported “Christian” universities), I have witnessed multiple instances of troubling curriculum and teaching points:
· The BLM power fist used on their official social media account to celebrate Black History Month,
· Teaching reconciliation between Christians and the LGBTQ+ community in a conflict negotiation class, resulting in a highly dubious methodology that puts Bible-believing Christians in the position of feeling “wrong” for believing that God can be both loving toward the LGBTQ culture but also expressly condemning it as sin,
· A teacher encouraging the class to engage in a long-winded history of gender identity and how gender-fluid, bisexual, and cross-dressing individuals have been overlooked in our history books,
· Gender inequality and the so-called gender pay gap,
· Secular textbooks that present often lopsided perspectives on history, such as presenting Karl Marx as a mere philosopher and intellectual, rather than an occultist whose God-hating and dogmatically anti-Semitic views have resulted in the deaths of millions of people.
It begs the question: what, exactly, are we paying for when we send our kids to the supposed safe and secure environment of a “Christian” school? Keep in mind, of course, that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of students who have experienced “wokeness” on college campuses. Granted, the word “woke” has been overused as of late, but the connotation remains accurate: “woke” is just a word for progressivism and socialist doctrine.
It signals the act of bending the knee to the social justice priests and priestesses who demand total and undying loyalty to corrupted ideas of tolerance and acceptance of every debased and depraved ideology under the sun, whether it’s teaching schoolchildren about transsexuality in elementary school classrooms or forcing female athletes to shower alongside men who claim to be women.
The world we live in today exists in all its confusion and backwardness largely because we, as parents, hand over the keys to our children’s heart and souls to schools. We trust a Christian university to teach our children and instead, they poison the well. They push the agenda. They take the government money and in return, they tow the line.
Christians are not Christians just because they say they are. Critical Race Theory’s buzzwords like “equity” (there is a big difference between equity and equality!), “inclusion” and “systemic racism” is just one way to identify where a school likely will end up in the culture war.
There are good professors and there are bad professors. There are professors who preach the Bible and there are professors who are hellbent on pushing a Marxist version of Jesus onto students and poisoning the next generation of church leaders.
This article is not meant to make anyone angry but rather to inspire you to do some digging. Is the Christian university that you attended as college student as solid as you think it is? Is it worth the money to send your child there, just so that they can be handily beat over the head with communist symbolism and Marxist theology? Has your church been supporting a Christian school that has sold out to the social justice mob? Are they taking money from the government in exchange for something valuable?
As a culture, America stands on the very precipice of a great decision: sink or swim? Our society and our institutions that were once so deeply trusted are being routinely destroyed before our eyes, and in that process, Americans are beginning to wonder what can be known to be true and solid and unwavering.
Our churches have a chance to revolutionize their purpose in our country – and so do our Christian universities. Don’t forget that even our most esteemed secular universities today, like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, were once extremely religious Christian schools.
Can America ever return to days of having trusted Christian universities where kids can go and receive a quality education rooted in authentic Biblical truth and common sense?
Time will tell, but until then, know thy enemy…and know thy “Christian” schools.
Resources:
“Wokepedia is an ongoing project of the Enemies Within: The Church article team to provide an educational resource about the adherents of woke ideologies who are attempting to subvert the American Church. As we gather new information, we will continuously update this site with new articles and profiles.”