Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. A few weeks ago, Trinity Christian College announced it would be closing its doors after the spring 2026 semester. The Chicagoland School had served the Dutch Reformed community and others for about 70 years, had a strong nursing program, and gave a priority to the Christian worldview. Back in 2023, Trinity International University, the other Trinity in Chicago, announced that its undergraduate program would be moved online with no residential option offered.
Its grad school, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, announced it would fold into another seminary in Vancouver. Also, in July, the King's College in New York, which had been struggling for quite a while, announced it would permanently close. And many observers predict we should expect more announcements like these in the weeks and months to come. Institutions of higher education face a perfect storm of factors. Enrollments have not kept up with expectations, leaving high debt and empty buildings.
During COVID, students, staff, and administrators got used to Zoom classes, especially how moving online avoids the trouble of feeding, housing, and entertaining students. And of course, there are too many educators now more interested in creating activists than educating students. What's long been an endemic reality at secular schools is also the case at many once faithful Christian institutions that have fallen captive to the critical theory mood that pervades the rest of academic culture.
So why should Christian parents spend thousands on an education that has so-called progressed? Beyond biblical authority and historic Christian morality, when the education offered is basically indistinguishable from cheaper secular options. Many parents have simply learned the hard way about mission drift at Christian colleges. Though hard to accept, and certainly not necessarily the case with the colleges that I've already mentioned, The closure of some schools is an overdue blessing. Too many ostensibly Christian schools are basically institutional versions of Christian merch.
no different than regular T shirts, but with a few Jesus words pressed on them. If Christian schools do not offer anything unique, then there's really no point in having Christian schools in the first place. This is a crisis that's also an opportunity. And the church has always been an innovative and redemptive force in education for the glory of God and the life of the world. The church values learning because of what it knows about God, about his world, and about his image bearers.
The entire Western educational system is in fact rooted in practices and customs that flow from the ideals and beliefs of Christianity. And these same ideals can now animate new opportunities for educational excellence. After all, the contemporary educational system is certainly struggling as well. We can neither abandon education nor can we compromise with this failed system. Instead, Christians should offer something better.
What C.S. Lewis wrote about books and got in the dock applies just as much to higher education. Quote, What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way around. Our faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism.
But if whenever we read an elementary book on geology, botany, politics, or astronomy, we found its implications were Hindu, that could shake us. And it's not the books written in direct defense of materialism that make modern man a materialist. It's the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, the It's not books on Christianity that would really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap, popular introduction to some science, The best work on the market was always by a Christian.
Our challenge and our opportunity is simply to do things well, to be better. What if, whenever a watching world was looking for a place to send their kids for an education or find their employees, the best option on the market was always a Christian college? Instead of fearing that these closures are the end of an era, believers should see this as a chance for another start, clearing out the things that have failed while building on what made Christian education great to begin with. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr.
Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources to live like a Christian today, go to breakpoint.org. Hi, breakpoint listeners. Time is running out to save up to 50% on registration for the 2026 Colson Center National Conference, happening May 29th to 31st, 2026.
Be sure to sign up before November 29th to take advantage of early bird pricing. You can secure your seat now at ColsonConference.org. And we're excited to announce that both Carl Truman and Frank Turek are joining our fantastic speaker lineup for the conference. They'll help us consider the theme, you are here, thinking about what it looks like to step into our calling as God's people in this time and place. We hope to see you there.
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