Grace College couldn't handle a new professor who separated his theology from his political views

May 14, 2024

A professor at a Christian college was fired for old social media posts in which he expressed support for LGBTQ rights, condemned racism, and called out conservative figureheads for being “fascist.” After right-wing provocateurs shared screenshots of what Matthew Warner had posted, the first-year communications professor was terminated after a mere four months on the job.

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All of this happened at Grace College and Theological Seminary in Indiana. Warner told Religion News Service’s Kathryn Post that, despite a massive pay cut, he took the job because he admired his future colleagues and agreed with the Christian school’s “lifestyle commitment” for faculty members that forbids “homosexual behavior” and insists marriage is “between one man and one woman.” (None of that was new for him given that he graduated from Liberty University.)

In his mind, there was no discrepancy when it came to holding conservative beliefs about sex and gender and supporting civil rights for LGBTQ people. There was no cognitive dissonance in believing abortion is a sin while also supporting public policy that gives people bodily autonomy. You can believe the Bible is inspired by God and accept the scientific realities of the universe. Plenty of Christians fall into that category no matter how many fundamentalists insist it’s intellectually dishonest.

What Warner didn’t realize was that getting hired didn’t mean he was actually a professor yet—or that conservative activists would try to get him fired for holding those progressive views.

In October of 2023, Perpetually Angry Mom Monica Boyer called on the school to “fire this professor IMMEDIATELY” over a post in which Warner said “I support gay marriage” and that “opposing it is bigotry.”

The same day Boyer posted her screed, Evan Kilgore, a former student and employee at Grace College (who also worked for right-wing Turning Point USA), shared a similar post with even more screenshots of Warner’s posts.

Those posts included statements like “Tucker Carlson is fascist,” argued that Christians should care about the treatment of immigrants a lot more than gay marriage, mentioned his pronouns, rejected complementarianism, and criticized Donald Trump. One of Warner’s tweets said, “If one more Christian preacher repeats the talking points of GOP strategists I’m going to scream.” Another pointed out that a “pro-life movement that emphasizes legal and political influence does not produce pro-life outcomes.” (He’s right! Anti-abortion policies pushed by conservatives are literally hurting women.)

Still, Kilgore couldn’t imagine someone with those views could be in charge of a classroom at a Christian college:

Ask yourself, do these views align with the integrity of Biblical principles you'd like potentially taught to your young, impressionable child? Will these views be implicitly, or explicitly taught in the classroom? Are these the views you believe Grace College should bolster and platform? Can a professor with this strong of a clearly radicalized ideological hatred of Right-Wing political views truly be an unbiased voice of Christian theology in a young person's life? Is this the heritage and legacy you believe Grace should be known for? At what point does exposing young individuals to those whom hold these harsh views clash with the mission of the institution? Is this the type of rhetoric you'd like to see spoken by those teaching young Christians, fresh out of their parent's nest, and digesting new worldviews? There are many questions to be asked.

To be clear, he’s referring to a hypothetical 18-year-old student as a “young, impressionable child” who is, apparently for the first time in his or her life, “digesting new worldviews.” Conservative Christians treat their own people like toddlers because that’s where their minds are at.

But none of that should have mattered. There was no evidence that Warner was letting any of his personal beliefs interfere with the job he was assigned to do. No one was complaining about his teaching style or arguing that he was opposing the school’s mission. In fact, his performance reviews and student evaluations were excellent! The critics were mad about old tweets even though Warner agreed with their theology. That didn’t matter because these people think being a True Christian™ means accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior… and believing that gay people have cooties, and voting for Trump and his acolytes, and spreading misinformation if it furthers your cause.

And the idiots running the school fell for it.

It says a lot about their hiring process that no one seemed to notice any of this when they brought him onto the faculty. But the administration soon informed Warner that he wasn’t really part of the team yet and that he probably wouldn’t be anytime soon.

Warner proactively met with supervisors as Boyer’s repeated demands gained traction among her nearly 8,000 Facebook followers. But initial conversations weren’t reassuring. [Grace College president Drew] Flamm and [Norm] Bakhit, the chief human resources officer, told Warner he wasn’t yet a faculty member because the board hadn’t ratified him. Now, the board was considering voting against Warner’s ratification, a move that would end his employment.

…

“They’ve created a caricature of me based on taking a very small number of social media posts out of context,” Warner said. “I was treated from the beginning as a threat or liability. And nobody at any time had a conversation with me about what I believe, or what I’m willing to do to support the college.”

…

… After four months on the job, Warner was informed by the school’s president, Drew Flamm, that the board had “come to the conclusion that we don’t think it works out to move forward,” according to a recording obtained by Religion News Service.

Warner tried to put up a fight. Within weeks of those social media posts, the school said he could voluntarily resign or go through a kind of re-education camp to “restore trust.” (The latter option never really came to fruition.) By December, the board voted to get rid of him and Warner was offered $60,000 to leave quietly on his own… as long as he signed a non-disclosure agreement. He rejected the offer.

That’s why Religion News Service can tell his story, which is backed up by recordings of his meetings with the administration.

Warner also tried to file a formal grievance, saying the school violated its own policies by removing him from the faculty, but Flamm, the school’s president, was the judge and jury for that grievance. Predictably, he dismissed it.

None of this is surprising. You can’t work at a conservative Christian school and expect that they’re going to treat you with dignity. Their leaders and donors have made it very clear over the years that they expect everyone they employ to fall in line with their beliefs when it comes to Culture War issues—and those always take precedence over theological disagreements. It’s entirely possible that a professor could get in more trouble for voting for a Democrat than for denying Young Earth Creationism.

Ironically, the school’s Lifestyle contract also says, “We make use of biblically-based practices such as arbitration, mediation, grace, restoration, forgiveness, and redemption to live at peace with each other.” It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone in power that the school’s leaders rejected all of that when dealing with Warner. They targeted him as soon as those (defensible!) tweets came to light. They caved in to a right-wing mob.

And this is what everyone should expect! People who land on Grace’s payroll or pay the school tuition aren’t signing up to be challenged or become a colleague to the most influential academics in the country. They’re just hoping to remain in a right-wing bubble for a few more years. When a professor breaks that mold, parents are bound to complain, and administrators are bound to take the parents’ side because those are the people who pay the bills.

It also raises all kinds of concerns about what the rules actually are.

How are faculty members supposed to know what’s okay and not okay when criticizing conservatives and their talking points is deemed inappropriate? It’s not like any of that is forbidden in the school’s contract. That means everyone is walking on thin ice:

“It feels like it’s only a matter of time before I or anyone else cross an invisible line we didn’t know was there, and are determined to not be ‘missionally aligned,’” one Grace College employee told RNS.

Writing at Patheos, Fred Clark spells out the consequences of these made-up rules at Christian schools:

… then the rules change. There’s no official announcement of this, but suddenly everyone just kind of realizes that a new unwritten rule exists and a new invisible line has been drawn. Some trustee or big donor gets a bee in their bonnet about Obamacare and suddenly opposition to contraception is a new mandatory stance. Vaccination is now “controversial.” Climate change has become such a third rail that you’re not sure if you can safely talk about energy efficiency. A student asks you if you think that Black lives matter and rather than saying what any decent person would obviously and always say — “Of course!” — you worry it’s a trap. You realize you can’t be sure what the new rules are today and you have no way of knowing what new rules might arise tomorrow. 

The people in charge always add to their list of unwritten rules, and everyone’s a target based on prior and future actions. Why would anyone want to work there? What sort of message does that send to students? Expand your mind… but not that much! OR ELSE!

You would think the people at Grace College would’ve learned their lesson by now because it’s not the first time there’s been a clash involving faculty members.

In 2017, the marketing department at the school announced that it would be “wrap day.” So students were served lettuce wraps in the cafeteria… and a handful of faculty members thought it would be hilarious if they posed as rappers for an album cover, leading to this jaw-dropping display of caucacity:

The guy on the bottom left? That’s Evan Kilgore, one of the instigators of the current witch hunt against Warner. He and two other guys in that picture were fired over the incident, which made headlines for being so racially insensitive.

The photo shows Kilgore and four other employees, all white, dressed as rappers. One man appears to be wearing an Afro wig. Kilgore has "Thug Life" written on his knuckles and a fake teardrop tattoo. Another employee wears a backward baseball cap and shows a fake tattoo. Most are showing fake gang signs. "N.G.A." appears in the top left corner. 

It’s no wonder that Kilgore—like so many people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions and choose instead to double down on whatever they did—has since become a right-wing commentator. (Historian John Fea points out that his old bio on Talking Points USA’s website said he “began sharing his views on Twitter in 2017 after getting ‘canceled’ from his marketing job by the woke outrage mob.&rdquo Kilgore now collaborates with and supports white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

If the school is taking direction from that guy, while getting rid of a professor who made the mistake of showing compassion, understanding, and a desire for social justice, it’s clear Grace College hasn’t learned a damn thing. It makes a diploma from that school even less useful for students who should be embarrassed to tell people where they studied.