Pensacola Christian ‘Cult’: inside the college shaping America’s private school curriculum
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At first glance, Pensacola Christian College looks like any other small school on the Florida Panhandle. Except all of the women are wearing knee-length skirts.
No one is playing music and no couples are holding hands, because touching a member of the opposite sex — even their arm — might get you kicked out. The grounds are pristine, because walking on the grass is strictly prohibited.
For more than 4,500 adult students at Pensacola Christian College, the watchful eye of the administration is nearly as omnipotent as the God they worship.
At 10 a.m. on a fall Friday, the campus is completely silent as the entire student body gathers in the auditorium for church.
There, visiting pastor Steve DeFord is preaching to the congregation, sharing that God told him his life’s purpose was to convert Native Americans to Christianity. He also warns them about the dangers of public education.
“When I was in third or fourth grade, I would have been considered illiterate,” he says. “A product of public school.” According to former students at PCC, a fear of public education is part of the curriculum.
“The place is a cult. And it’s like no one is talking about it,” says 21-year-old ex-student Grace Dalton, who withdrew from the school nine months ago.
While the idea that college campuses have become hotbeds of “indoctrination” is at the epicenter of America’s latest culture war, it seems that schools like Pensacola have managed to slip under the radar. At this private Florida college, students are told what to wear, how to speak, what time to go to bed and even, according to some alumni, how to vote.
Even more worrying to some experts is the nationwide popularity of the school’s evangelical curriculum: Under the name fund, the university is the world’s leading Christian textbook publisher, used by private schools and homeschool families across the country.
An analysis by Huffington Post found that among private institutions, Abeka was the most popular textbook source, used in about 27% of non-Catholic Christian schools, many of which can be found in Texas.
Content retrieved from: https://www.lonestarlive.com/news/2025/02/pensacola-christian-cult-inside-the-college-shaping-americas-private-school-curriculum.html.
