Pensacola Christian ‘Cult’: inside the college shaping America’s private school curriculum

Lone Star Live/February 12, 2025

By Emily Topping

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 Abeka, 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.

One graduate of PCC, who was previously homeschooled using Abeka curriculum, says that after leaving the school in 2018, she had to “entirely relearn American history.”

“I was told the Trail of Tears was a great missionary effort and a lot of Indians got saved. Then, learning about the Civil Rights movement, I was told MLK was a communist,” says 27-year-old Cherie, who has requested to only use her first name. “They’re very ‘Christian-Nationalist America can do no wrong.’”

The most pervasive belief she’s had to unlearn, however, is the idea that “the outside world are the meanest, most evil people,” she says.

Across the country, a growing Christian fundamentalist movement has shifted its focus toward public education, urging parents to “take back your kids,” writes William Wolfe, a former Trump adviser and founder of the Center for Baptist Leadership. In a 2022 op-ed for the Christian Post, he implores: “God gave them to you — not the government.”

This messaging comes as several states consider reshaping education policy, including Texas, where last week the state Senate passed a bill that would offer public tax dollars for families to use on homeschooling or accredited private school tuition.

For families and educators who believe all knowledge should be “biblically-based,” schools like Pensacola Christian College aren’t cults, but models for the future.

The Pensacola Commandments

Cherie graduated from Pensacola more than six years ago, but her first “infraction” rings fresh in her mind.

The former student says she was walking into the campus basketball stadium during her first week of classes, wearing a T-shirt and a knee-length pencil skirt, when she felt a hand grip her arm. A staff member stood inches from her face, visibly angry, she says.

“What are you doing? I was calling you,” Cherie recalls the woman saying. “Your skirt is so tight; you’re causing men to stumble. And now you’re going to get in trouble for an attitude because you were ignoring me.”

The woman wrote down her ID number, then told her she’d be meeting with “Student Life” later that week to discuss her inappropriate behavior, before storming off.

This was the first time a faculty member yelled at Cherie, but certainly not the last. For the next four years, she would navigate a minefield of unrelenting control, which she describes as “psychological warfare.”

“I didn’t realize that with the rules, you’re literally on guard and stressed out 24/7, because everyone is always looking at what you’re wearing, or what you’re saying. It’s constant adrenaline,” she says.

Although Cherie left the school in 2018, its regulations have remained largely the same. (Except for one notable amendment, adopted three months ago, which now grants women the right to wear pants after 4:45 p.m. The rest of the time, modest skirts are required.)

The rest of the 2025 Pensacola Christian College Student Handbook describes an extraordinarily strict environment:

• Music in the style of contemporary Christian, country, jazz, rock, rap, R&B or pop is prohibited and may not be listened to on or off campus. (Classical, “patriotic” and marching band music is okay.)

• Students may only watch movies rated G or PG. (Even then, one former student says he was reported for owning a copy of “How To Train Your Dragon.”)

• Students must remain inside their rooms with the lights off after 11 p.m. during the week, and midnight on the weekends. They may not leave the room until 5:30 a.m. (Students say that staff members can enter rooms at any time without warning. Daily room checks are performed each morning and night.)

The school operates under a “demerit” system, in which infractions are tallied up using points. Students who reach 75 demerits in a semester are suspended, and those who reach 100 are typically expelled.

Level 1 offenses, resulting in 10 to 25 demerits, include dress code violations, listening to unapproved music, and simply the “failure to follow directive.” Level 2 and 3 offenses, worth up to 75 demerits, include “dishonesty,” using curse words, and going off-campus with someone of the opposite sex without a chaperone.

Of Pensacola’s extensive rules, the ones dealing with male-female relationships seem to be monitored the closest. According to the school, these guidelines are “designed to guard purity and maintain a Christian testimony on and off campus.”

Physical contact between men and women, including non-students, is forbidden — including hugs, hand-shakes and high-fives. Men and women may not be seen together behind buildings, in parking lots, or in any other secluded areas.

Despite the fact that PCC is nearly 20 miles from the closest beach, its faculty has designated one section of the public coastline the “men’s beach” and other the “women’s.” Not only are residence halls divided by gender, but so are all stairwells and elevators.

“We keep them separate for safety reasons,” a PCC staff member named John said from a male-only elevator in November. “It gets pretty packed in between classes; I know I wouldn’t want my daughter alone in an elevator with a bunch of guys.”

“But don’t worry,” he added, ”all the guys here are great.”

Grace Dalton says she once snuck off campus and drove all the way to a shopping mall in Alabama with a boy she liked, just so the pair could hold hands. As they wandered through the stores, she was acutely aware of anyone standing too closely: The couple might have been followed.

Pensacola staff have been known to catch students in the act miles away from the school, at McDonald’s or a public beach, to deliver infractions.

For Dalton, the levels of control felt antithetical to her faith.

“Humans want to be loved and love each other,” Dalton says. “And also, the Bible talks about how powerful love is. So it’s kind of interesting that it’s taken away from you there.”

The guardians of purity

The college’s refusal to acknowledge sex outside of the framework of “purity” is not only harmful, but dangerous, according to former students.

In 2014, a PCC graduate named Samantha Field published a blog post alleging that the administration had repeatedly brushed students’ sexual abuse reports under the rug. She cited the testimony of three anonymous former students, one male and two female, who all say they were either expelled or suspended after reporting their rapes.

The Pensacola News Journal conducted separate interviews with two of the sources, confirming “their full names, documentation of their enrollment at PCC and detailed accounts of their time at the college.”

In a followup interview with VICE, Field shared her own experience in reporting her rape to a school counselor. “I was trying to tell her that my boyfriend had raped me, and her reaction was to tell me that I needed to repent for my sins and not worry about my rapist’s sins,” she said.

Faculty at Pensacola Christian College denied these allegations as “unfounded,” and said the school was “being harassed and victimized through recent online accounts.”

The statement said that an “exhaustive review” of their own records showed no report of the incidents, and that no student had ever been expelled “for being a victim of rape or any other crime.”

Because the school doesn’t participate in federal student aid programs, it is not required to comply with Title IX or the Jeanne Cleary Act, which mandate that universities report data on sexual assaults and other crimes.

The school’s website states that “counselors are equipped to provide biblical guidance” — but some PCC students say that guidance is hollow.

Dalton says that last year, she reached out to a school counselor after “feeling guilty” about a romantic relationship, only to be brushed aside.

“I went there because I just needed somebody to talk to. I was just so desperate for help,” she says. “And I was like, ‘This is a waste of time.’ She’s just doing the same thing that she does with every student: Just spitting out Bible verses.”

Faculty have even used those Bible verses to bar non-students from their campus.

In 2023, the school abruptly canceled a performance by an all-male British a cappella ensemble after finding out that one of the singers was gay. The group, who had previously performed worship music at the college, wrote on social media, “We are deeply saddened that our concert at Pensacola Christian College was cancelled at two hours’ notice.”

The college said they prevented the performance after learning that “one of the artists openly maintained a lifestyle that contradicts Scripture,” adding that the artists were “treated with dignity and respect when informed of the cancellation.”

Although Cherie’s husband left Pensacola several years before, he finds the incident unsurprising. Despite being straight, the former student says that during his junior year, he received a series of threatening anonymous letters on his dorm bed, accusing him of being gay. The handwritten notes said “I hate you,” and told him to get off campus.

“Obviously it’s not something that I’m going to report to the school, because I’m not going to be like, ‘Hey, school, somebody’s saying I’m gay,’” he explains. “Because they’re going to be like, ‘Well, are you? Are you?’”

As with so many other times at PCC, there was nothing to be done, and no one to report to. He knew the rules.

Besides, he says, having grown up under the same “conservative, evangelical homeschool” beliefs, he wasn’t hopeful for change.

A ‘biblically-based’ curriculum

Like any successful business, Pensacola Christian College has two important things: a diversified portfolio and a loyal fan base. The school’s ultra-successful textbook company helps to not only fund life on campus, but to funnel students into their evangelical curriculum from an early age.

Using profits from Abeka, the university is able to subsidize costs, offering one of the cheapest tuitions in the state. While undergrads only pay an estimated yearly fee of roughly $16,000 for tuition, books, and room and board, PCC says the actual cost is much higher — nearly $30,000 a head.

The school is willing to front the bill, according to their website, to help fulfill the mission of “training Christian leaders to influence the world for Christ.” All four former students interviewed by LoneStarLive.com cited the cheap cost of tuition as their No. 1 reason for attendance.

Although the college doesn’t specifically mention where the money comes from, one only needs to look at a school map to find the cash cow: The largest building on the PCC campus is the Abeka Distribution Center.

There, student workers further slash their tuition by manning the final step of the assembly line, packaging and distributing textbooks, which “educate over 1 million students every year,” according to the Abeka website.

The contents of those textbooks have caused historians to sound alarm bells.

In one Abeka text designed for 11th graders, the authors say Native Americans “forsook” God, choosing to worship “things they couldn’t understand, like thunder, wind, fire and sun” instead.

“Because superstition kept the Native Americans from working together to develop the land in which they lived, America would remain an untamed wilderness until the Europeans arrived,” the book reads.

In more recent history, Abeka authors blame President Barack Obama for inciting a period of “cultural decay,” writing that during his administration, “race relations declined” and Americans “began to stress tolerance toward the sin of homosexuality.”

Another section describes Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. “When a woman made uncorroborated claims of sexual assault against Judge Kavanaugh from over thirty years prior, the Democrats treated him as if he were already proven guilty,” the textbook reads.

Historians warn that the popularity of Abeka’s curriculum reflects a growing trend of Christian nationalism in the United States.

“[These textbooks] create such a potent justification of American nationalism as ‘godly’ and as any opponent of the United States that they can identify as ‘ungodly,’” says Kathleen Wellman, a history professor at Southern Methodist University and author of “Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters.”

“They want to write all secularism out of American history,” she says.

Wellman’s book focuses on the contents of three prominent Christian publishers: Bob Jones University, Accelerated Christian Education and Abeka Books. She began her research in 2014, while preparing to testify in front of the Texas State Board of Education, as members convened to discuss the standards for future social studies textbooks.

Many of the standards insisted on historical inaccuracies, Wellman says, like the role of Moses in the founding documents.

“I couldn’t figure out where anyone could have gotten these really weird ideas,” she says. “Then I sort of tried to start looking for sources for them — and I found these Christian curricula."

What she discovered inside the pages of Abeka textbooks, and the other two publishers, horrified her.

“A lot of them were completely ahistoric, and very sort of centered on a bizarre view of history and bizarre view of Christianity,” she says. “They’re explicitly racist and they’re explicitly misogynistic.”

Representatives from Abeka and Pensacola Christian College did not respond to requests for comment.

Since she published “Hijacking History” in 2021, Wellman says the version of history depicted in Abeka books has entered the mainstream.

“I mean, honestly, when this was published, I was aware of how it was influencing high school education. I didn’t see it overtly asserted in the public sphere the way it is now all the time,” she told LoneStarLive.com.

In Texas, the list of private schools utilizing this curriculum includes Heritage Christian Academy in Haslet, Victory Christian Academy in Decatur, and Stonegate Christian Academy in Irving.

The number of homeschool families using these textbooks is harder to quantify. The state of Texas is one of 11 nationwide that do not require families to register their homeschooled children in any capacity.

Freedom from fundamentalism

For students who have spent their entire lives under the Abeka curriculum — or only four years under Pensacola Christian College — graduation can feel like the entrance to a new world.

Since withdrawing from the college, Dalton says she is finally able to attend church in her home state again, free from the weight of fear.

“I truly do believe that (PCC) is worshiping a different God,” she says. “It doesn’t bring glory to God. It brings glory to themselves.”

More than six years after graduating from PCC, Cherie now calls herself a “progressive Christian.” Since earning her degree in 2018, she has begun to publicly share stories from a life spent under the thumb of extremism.

Using the TikTok handle “CanceledChristian,” Cherie has amassed a following of over 140,000. Her most popular videos, like the one titled “Things my Fundamentalist college did that should be illegal,” have more than a million views.

Still, the 21-year-old says she sometimes wakes in a cold, nightmare-ish sweat — having dreamt she was back on campus.

At first, Cherie says “deconstructing” from her former way of life felt like relief. She began wearing the clothes she liked and listening to secular music. She started reading the news, even from sources she’d been taught were “evil.” She began to reconsider her beliefs on issues like sexuality, race relations and women’s rights.

But as time goes on, and the years place more distance between her home on the East Coast and that pristinely maintained campus on the shores of Western Florida, a more pervasive emotion rises to the surface: “I often feel angry. I feel lied to.”