Has this theologically conservative Christian university gone woke? A student’s perspective
Opinion-Editorial | By Easton Martin | February 11, 2026
It is difficult to hear people describe your university as a “joke.”
Charlie Kirk, a man whose work and life I have the utmost respect for, once warned parents against sending their children to Biola.
In a conversation between Kirk and a woman whose grandchild attended Biola, the woman said that her granddaughter was an avid socialist. His conclusion was that Biola has effectively abandoned its Christian identity, calling the university “a joke” and claiming that they “haven’t been Christian in a long time”.
I love Charlie: I loved what he did and what he stood for, but I can’t be afraid to call balls and strikes. I think he was wrong.
More recently, Biola professor and ethicist Scott Rae has been in hot water for his comments regarding Christians attending gay weddings.
As an evangelical, I recognize that many parents feel anxious sending a student to college. Many colleges and universities have become a breeding ground for leftism, socialism, and Marxism. We are all well aware of the stereotype (let’s be honest, reality) of the cage-stage freshman communist atheist. Those two things really worked well in the USSR, didn’t they? Anyway, there is a pervasive hope that raising children in the church and sending them to a conservative Christian institution guarantees their spiritual safety.
Consequently, Scott Rae’s controversial opinion elicits a strong reaction. In situations like this, we as evangelical, conservative Christians feel betrayed and often react with a desire to burn the institution down.
However, I write this as a current Bible, Theology, and Apologetics student at Biola to suggest that the rumors of Biola’s death have been exaggerated. We must distinguish between a university that has abandoned the faith and one that is struggling to apply it within a hostile culture.
If we want to have an honest conversation, we must examine the facts without flinching. The controversy surrounding Dr. Scott Rae serves as a prime opportunity for this. His suggestion that Christians might agree to disagree on same-sex marriage in the public square for the sake of hospitality was, in my view, deeply misguided. This appears to be a case of winsome Christianity overextending itself, where the desire to “maintain a seat at the table” so to speak, compromises the message we are supposed to deliver.
Much of the recent criticism from the last year or so has focused on a university club known as “The Dwelling.” This group operated as a confidential support network for students navigating same-sex attraction, with the stated goal of providing a safe environment for difficult conversations. However, the controversy arose when leaked information suggested the group lacked sufficient oversight. Many onlookers rightfully worried that this privacy allowed for the promotion of unbiblical identities and affirming theology under the guise of student support.
I am relieved that the administration made the difficult decision to permanently close the group this past semester. I do believe that this action demonstrates a willingness to correct course on their part.
Regarding the Scott Rae controversy, we must remember that a single professor’s poor opinion does not define an entire university. If one were to ask a thousand Christian professors every conceivable theological question, the majority would eventually provide an answer that some find objectionable. This reality does not necessarily indicate a systemic “liberal” infiltration but rather the complexity of academic discourse. The assumption that any disagreement makes a professor an enemy or a secret leftist is unhelpful.
I genuinely do not think that Biola has been wokeified. Indeed, my experience within the Bible and Theology departments has been quite the opposite. My lectures, reading materials, and textbooks have remained straightforwardly and rigorously conservative. I have even encountered professors whose theological positions are even more conservative than my own. I don’t see students being indoctrinated, but rather being taught to think critically.
Now, with that being said, Biola has no doubt had its faults and follies. Especially around 2020 around Covid, the death of Geroge Floyd, and the immense cultural pressure of wokeness, mistakes were made. I won’t discuss it at length, as many have already given this a fairly in depth examination, but suffice it to say I do think the University has had its share of mistakes.
When talk was going on last year surrounding whether or not Biola had gone woke, comments were made (even from Biola professors) regarding some drift in the Sociology department. I haven’t taken any sociology courses at Biola, and therefore cannot say for certain whether or not the department is woke, but I do find the testimony of that professor to be believable.
Even amid those mistakes, I think Biola’s core dedication to the gospel and mission of providing a comprehensive Christian education remain.
When certain overzealous critics argue that Biola creates socialists, liberals, or progressives, they often rely on a correlation fallacy. A student reading Marx in a political science class and subsequently adopting socialism does not prove the syllabus is at fault (just a hypothetical example). Young adults are capable of making poor decisions, perhaps even likely to do so, regardless of their education. Our purpose here is to learn how to defeat these ideas rather than pretending they do not exist.
My concern is that our rush to “purify” our institutions might lead to their destruction if not done rightly.
There is a vocal contingent demanding immediate termination for any faculty member who steps out of line, similar to the approach taken at Palm Beach Atlantic University in the Joeckel v. PBA case. It seems that PBA didn’t do everything right in the case, causing it to be a bit messy. The fact is, universities are unfortunately complex legal entities that must navigate donor interests, accreditation, and potential lawsuits.
Furthermore, universities have faced significant external threats. A recent report by the American Principles Project detailed how the Biden Department of Justice had disproportionately targeted Christian universities. The government was recently seeking reasons to dismantle schools just like ours.
Biola is certainly not perfect, and we should not pretend otherwise. We should expect conservatism from our conservative universities and demand accountability when they err. I think we indeed should try to root out woke ideology, we should expect biblical principles to be the norm, and we shouldn’t overlook compromise.
However, I believe we can lower the temperature of this debate. We can address these issues without assuming the absolute worst about the institution.
I don’t want to silence people who criticize the university, and I don’t want to hide the issues that Biola has had or does have. I think that as Christians, we can do better in trying to root out these issues and call attention to them, rather than just being heresy hunters at the slightest sniff of wokeness.
