They Kept the Name and Lost the Mission

More than one in seven Christian colleges in America have documented ties to the abortion industry — and the number has been rising every year since Roe fell. This isn't drift. It's what happens when institutions stop forming the people inside them.

A name on a building is not a conviction.

That distinction — obvious when stated plainly — is something Christian families, donors, alumni, and pastors across America are being forced to reckon with right now. Because a new report makes clear that the name "Christian" on a college or university no longer means what many people assumed it meant.

What Happened

In January 2026, Students for Life of America's Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement released the findings of its annual Christian Schools Project — a methodical review of 725 colleges and universities affiliated with Christ-centered denominations across the United States.

The findings are not ambiguous.

More than one in seven Christian colleges and universities — 114 institutions — maintain documented ties to the abortion industry. Not buried in policy documents. On their public websites. As listed health resources. As recommended internship opportunities. As course materials. As career guidance for students trying to figure out their future.

Total infractions documented: 533. An increase of 115% from the prior year.

The most striking detail is the timing. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — the pro-life movement's most significant legal victory in fifty years — support for Planned Parenthood among Christian colleges has increased by nearly 20%. The schools didn't hold the line after Dobbs. They moved closer to the abortion industry.

Why It Matters

This touches every Christian family with a college-age student, every alumnus who has written a check, every donor who believed their investment was going toward something that shared their values, and every pastor whose congregants are asking where to send their children.

The core question this report forces into the open: Can an institution bearing the name of Christ be trusted to form students in the values it publicly claims to hold — and if not, who is responsible for the gap?

What's Really Going On

The easy read on this story is that it's about abortion. It isn't — or at least, it isn't only.

Abortion is the presenting symptom. The underlying condition is something that has been spreading through American institutions for decades: the quiet displacement of founding conviction by the surrounding culture. It has a name. Institutional capture. And it doesn't work the way most people imagine.

It doesn't arrive as a hostile takeover. There's no moment where someone storms the admissions office and announces the mission has changed. It moves through small decisions made by people who were never formed to hold the line in the first place — the faculty hire who seemed qualified, the student resource page updated by a well-meaning staff member, the career development office that added Planned Parenthood because someone asked and no one said no.

The report's own findings confirm this. In some cases, university administrations were genuinely shocked to discover what was on their own websites. At Saint Elizabeth University, the administration issued an apology and cut all ties immediately. They hadn't chosen this. No one had. It had simply accumulated in the absence of vigilance.

But the more revealing responses came from schools that knew and didn't act. At Otterbein University, administration told Students for Life they simply could not remove Planned Parenthood from their resources — without explanation. At St. John Fisher University, a faculty member responded by defending Planned Parenthood as medically sound. These schools didn't drift accidentally. They drifted deliberately, by people who had already decided the founding mission wasn't worth defending.

Here is what makes the post-Dobbs acceleration so significant: the moment the cultural pressure intensified — the moment holding the line became genuinely costly — is precisely when the gap between name and conviction became visible. Institutions with formed people held. Institutions without them bent. That is not a coincidence. That is the test.

This pattern is not unique to Christian higher education. It is the same mechanism that has operated in school boards, in media institutions, in corporate boardrooms, in government agencies, in mainline denominations. Fill an institution with people who were never formed to defend its founding mission, apply sufficient cultural pressure, and wait. The name outlasts the substance — often by decades.

The question is never really about the institution. It is always about the people inside it.

What Should Be Done

The good news embedded in this report is that pressure works. Fifty ties between Christian schools and the abortion industry were severed during the 2024-2025 school year alone — not because administrations suddenly discovered their conscience, but because parents, alumni, and donors made their concerns known in specific, documented, persistent ways.

That is the model. And it is available to anyone.

Primary action: Look up your school. The full 2025 Christian Schools Project report — with grades for every surveyed institution from A-plus to F — is publicly available at instituteforprolifeadvancement.org/christianschools. Before you write another check, before you encourage another student, know where your school actually stands.

Three supporting moves:

• Write a letter. Not a social media post — a letter. A personal note from an alumnus who references their giving history lands differently than a form email. Be specific about what you found. Be civil. Be clear about what you expect.
• Bring it to your church. The families in your congregation are making college decisions right now. This information belongs in that conversation — not just in the comment section of a news article.
• Put your support behind the schools holding the line. Benedictine College, Liberty University, Abilene Christian University, and others earned A-plus grades by actively standing for life and promoting pregnancy resources. Faithfulness deserves support.

A Closing Charge

Institutions don't reclaim themselves. They never have. What turns a drifting institution around is always the same thing — people who care enough to show up, name what they see, and refuse to pretend the name on the building is sufficient. That responsibility belongs to alumni, donors, parents, and pastors. It belongs to you.

The Guardians' Cross exists because we believe the people willing to do that work are already out there — sitting in the pews, writing the checks, raising the students. They just need to know what they're looking at. That's what we're here for.

Want to Go Deeper?

2025 Christian Schools Project Report — Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement. The full findings, school grades, and methodology. Start here.

The Death of the Grown-Up — Diana West. A diagnosis of how institutions lose the capacity to transmit values across generations — and what that failure costs a civilization.

Amusing Ourselves to Death — Neil Postman. The formation crisis in American institutions didn't begin with politics. It began with the slow displacement of substance by image. Postman saw it coming forty years ago.