A look into a local private college reveals the deeper nature of American conservative Christianity.
Growing up in Overland Park, I would often drive north on Metcalf for haircuts, dinner plans, access to the highway, and other such menial suburban affairs. As I passed 74th street, I would often look to my right and see the sign for Kansas Christian College. I always noticed it, but be it because I was driving or was preoccupied with something else, I never bothered to look deeper into the unassuming school.
Recently, as my family and I were on our way to a concert in Northeast KC, I decided to finally visit the school’s website. What I found made my deep dive well worth it.
What KCC Appears To Be
Kansas Christian College (KCC) is a private Christian school, founded as Kansas City College and Bible School in 1938 in Kansas City, MO. In 1941, the school purchased land from the J.C. Nichols Investment Company on the site of the former Uhls Sanitarium, which itself holds a bizarre story of murder, nepotism, and financial crimes. The school expanded in the 1960s, separating the college from what would become the Overland Christian School (OCS), today a preK-12 institution, while continuing to share a campus to this day. KCC’s part of the campus remains small, being made up of only 7 buildings. Both institutions are also affiliated with the Church of God (Holiness) (COGH), which “is an association of autonomous congregations originating in the 19th century that has historically aligned with the conservative holiness movement of Methodism,” particularly Wesleyanism.
Students at KCC, which tend to number around 150 at any given time, can choose from a number of degree programs, including undergraduate degrees in business, psychology, education, and various ministry-focused fields. KCC has also recently started offering online associates, bachelors, and masters degree programs.
The institution is accredited by the Association for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), which describes itself as “advancing Biblical higher education for Kingdom impact.” Gregory S. Baylor, a member of the ABHE’s Board of Directors, is also Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian organization known most for fighting against LGBTQ+ rights and abortion access. The ABHE also “includes in its standards various constrictions on its academic freedom requirement,” with each college president under ABHE being required to “commit to ABHE Tenets of Faith” annually.
What KCC Says KCC Is
When browsing KCC’s website, a common theme quickly emerges. KCC says that their mission is “to develop servant-leaders who know God, who have a passion for holiness of heart, and who are inspired and prepared for a lifetime of learning and Kingdom service.” Their institutional goals are that graduates “can articulate a biblical worldview, can articulate the meaning and practical expressions of the holiness of the heart, are equipped with practical tools for ministry, are equipped for further study, [and] have deepened passion for disciplines of spiritual development.” Their number one reason listed to attend KCC is that it provides a “Christ-centered Bible-based education.” The top of their Student Development page says that “student life is Christian in character.” This pattern continues pretty much everywhere else you look. If you weren’t sure about whether or not Kansas Christian College was Christian, this ought to have dispelled your doubts.
Looking deeper, though, there are some key phrases in these seemingly self-descriptive statements that I think are important to define in order to better understand what these strings of Christ-filled buzzwords actually mean.
“Kingdom service” refers to “serving God and the interest of His kingdom in his lifestyle.” In that way, “Kingdom service” is not merely being a good person in the name of or service of God, but is adhering to a lifestyle that will prepare you to be a part of God’s Kingdom. In other words, it is living in a way that is submissive to God’s will in order to get into heaven. A related term, Kingdom impact, shows up on the ABHE landing page and refers to facilitating “good outcomes that conform with God’s redemptive plans to renew our fallen world.” In this way, these ideas are not merely reserved for personal conduct to redeem one’s self, but also for advancing God’s will to reshape the world, free from blasphemy and sin; it entails creating God’s Kingdom on Earth.
“Holiness of heart” refers to a personal state of acting, thinking, and behaving in a manner in line with God’s teachings. Particularly in this Wesleyan-aligned context, “holiness of the heart and life, or personal and social holiness,” entails living a perfect, pure life, including spreading this lifestyle and message to others. For the Holiness tradition, this entails modesty and perfection in heart, mind, soul, body, and actions.
A “biblical worldview” can refer to most any interpretation of the world from the lens of the teachings of the Bible. As such, what exactly it looks like to have a “biblical worldview” depends on how one interprets the bible; there is not only one way to have such a worldview. Thus, to provide a “Bible-based education” or to live in a way that is “Christian in character” derives from a given particular Christian ideology based on a corresponding interpretation of religious teachings and textual interpretations.
More than just a series of Jesus-y buzzwords, then, these statements from KCC hold meaning beyond the repeated assurance that they are, indeed, Christian. In positioning their mission, goals, and selling points from this specific Bible-first angle, the sell for KCC ceases to be simply that they are Christian; it becomes that they are a particular type of Christian, an American conservative Christian, with accompanying worldviews, interpretations, and expectations for its adherents. Here, those adherents are the faculty, staff, and students of Kansas Christian College.
What the Demographics Say KCC Is
It is no stretch to call a college of 150 students and a small handful of buildings exceptionally small. Still, at this tiny school, the demographics of the student population tell some interesting stories about the institution, its goals, and its shortcomings.
If I were to ask you to picture the type of students who attend KCC, I would expect you might picture a horde of white men, perhaps resembling me but with even worse fashion sense. Indeed, the man-to-woman ratio of students at KCC is a staggering 71% to 29%, making over two-thirds of the students male.
Shockingly, however, white students do not make up the majority of students at KCC. They don’t even make up the plurality. Only 27% of KCC students – just over a quarter – are white. The largest ethnic/racial group represented at KCC is actually Black people, with them comprising 38% of the student body – over a third. Latinae people are the third-most represented at 14% – around a seventh. Also quite surprisingly, 11% of students are listed as “non-resident alien[s].” Why does this demography look the way it does?
For the racial diversity and representation, a big part of the answer is sports.
In the MLB, only 6% of players are Black. In NCAA schools, it's 5%. Excluding HBCUs, it’s 3%. At KCC, it’s a third. The KCC Falcons established their D-II baseball team in 2016, and from there, they began to intentionally focus their recruitment efforts on inner-city Kansas City and its resident Black population. Coach Tony Hurla has made this a deliberate effort, and even though the Falcons have only seen moderate competitive success thus far, he hopes baseball can teach important life lessons to his players.
KCC athletics, affiliated with the Association of Christian College Athletes and the National Christian College Athletics Association, now includes basketball, softball, tennis, golf, and volleyball. Even with multi-sport athletes, to field ten teams across seven sports, with a student body of 150 or so, you would need something like 2 in 5 students to be athletes. Indeed, athletics has become a focal point of KCC’s recruiting in recent years, with Rev. Chad Pollard, President of KCC, noting that “the addition of athletics is part of the school’s strategy for attracting more metro students to the college for their post-high school educations.”
For “non-resident alien[s],” the answer is probably international students.
While international students make up around 6% of the student population at US universities, they contribute around 28% of the revenue for public institutions. Even for private schools like KCC, though, international students can be massive sources of revenue. Whether it be through online programs or visa-holding “aliens” on campus, more full tuition-paying students is good news for any school’s bottom line, especially for tiny schools like KCC. In fact, KCC is so interested in bringing in international students, they are willing to accept Duolingo as valid evidence of English proficiency.
While there are only about a dozen and a half international students at KCC, being about 11% of the student population, that’s nearly double the averages, nationally and at KU. What exactly attracts international students to KCC is unclear, be it athletics, connection with the COGH, its particular Christian programming, its mission trips, or simply its status as an American college, yet the presence of so many international students at KCC is no doubt a part of a broader strategy to realize the goals of the institution, perhaps beyond those listed on their website.
If you listen to KCC tell it, they are interested in promoting their mission and His word to all students willing to hear it. Indeed, they do so to an even more diverse constituency than larger Christian post-secondary institutions like Liberty and Baylor. More cynically, however, KCC has used athletics and international students as a means of generating more revenue as well as a flow of candidates to shape into their image of “servant-leaders” without meaningfully changing their culture to reflect their demographics. Diversity in an institution, particularly a conservative one, does not prevent that institution from being one of white saviorism and supremacy. Meaningfully changing would entail more than making a Juneteenth post on Instagram – which got notably fewer likes than their other posts.
What the Numbers say KCC Is
Also surprising about KCC is the suspect quality of their education. And my expectations were not particularly high.
Most jarring is KCC’s abysmal graduation rate of 17%. For Pell Grant recipients, that number drops to 12% For reference, the average graduation rate from an American four-year institution is 58%. While the average annual cost is slightly less than average, the proportional loss in educational quality is staggering. Breaking down the numbers further, 80% of students – four in five – withdrew their enrollment before graduating. Given that 70% of students receive federal student loans, the fact that only 3% of students – four or five total – transferred out, certainly compared to the 100+ who dropped out, is concerning at best. Moreover, only 50% of students – half – returned after their first year. Sure, an acceptance rate of 100% functionally means that anyone can attend, which could drive down their academic performance numbers. But KCC’s situation is so abysmal that it is currently under ED Monitoring, specifically Heightened Cash Monitoring 2, which “is when the Department of Education provides additional oversight because of financial or federal compliance issues.”
For reference, with only a marginally higher annual cost and marginally lower acceptance rate, KU’s graduation rate is just above average at 65% and 53% for Pell recipients, only 9% of students withdrew, and 85% of students returned after their first year. Of course, KU is a public state flagship university with something like 130 times as many students as KCC and plenty of problems of its own, but it is also no elite, exceptional institution. Numbers can be tricky and misrepresentative, but this difference is profound. If a quality education was the goal, there is no clear reason why someone should attend KCC instead of KU or, for that matter, most any other local college or university. No amount of emphasis on small class sizes and spiritual development can obscure that.
Perhaps, then, the goal for people attending KCC is not a quality education. After all, their constant re-emphasis on the Christian nature of their institution puts scholarship in the periphery to put religion in focus. Only one of their listed goals, only one of their listed objectives, and none of their listed values even reference academics. Their mission statement mentions “learning” once at the end. If you’re at KCC, then, even if you’re seeking a business degree, as many undergrads are, you are there for not simply an education that is Christian, but for a Christian education. By secular educational standards, KCC may not be up to scratch, but by Kingdom standards, it might as well be an Ivy.
What Their Handbook Says KCC Is
As I know full well, when a university “throws the book” at you, it’s usually their student conduct handbook or some equivalent. Just like most every other similar institution, Kansas Christian College has a student handbook. Their “Handbook for Residential Programs,” hereafter referred to as “the handbook,” was last updated for the 2023-2024 school year. The handbook is 26 pages in length and details the policies, procedures, rules, regulations, and bylaws students are expected to follow as a part of the KCC community. You can learn a lot about an institution by looking at how it presents itself, but you can learn a lot more based on how it governs itself. Here, I want to walk you through the handbook, discussing many of its notable sections and what they mean. If you’ve stuck around this long, here’s where it gets really good.
After some material already discussed like the mission statement, institutional goals, and a basic description of student life, the handbook gets into the details about what is expected of students at KCC, starting with Sunday worship and chapel. The handbook states that “all on-campus students and full-time off-campus students are required to enroll in chapel” (7), which is perhaps to be expected of such a faithful Christian institution. While the handbook emphasizes how students should take the time to make Sunday a holy day, students are allowed to miss a generous 6 chapels out of 30 in a semester. This seemingly flexible policy is somewhat undercut in the following lines, though, as attending fewer than 24 chapels in two consecutive semesters prevents a student from re-enrolling at KCC.
From here, the handbook details some basic and generally uninteresting matters like participation in campus organizations, parking policy, a Christly set of broad conduct standards like how “christian principles of morality should govern every personal and social relationship and how “students should work to follow a Matthew 18 model of conflict resolution” (10), and a drug use and testing policy.
On page 11, however, things start to get interesting with the “Interpersonal Relationships” section. Under the “Dating” subheader, the handbook makes sure to cover all its bases by painstakingly defining what it is exactly that this subsection is about:
The purpose of an interpersonal relationship with a person of the opposite gender is to explore common interests such as spiritual and career goals, personal habits, interests, personality traits, limitations and abilities, weaknesses and strengths. Such a relationship makes possible a deeper enjoyment and fellowship on a regular basis, with planned time together, which we call “dates.” (12)
It goes on like this for a couple more paragraphs. From there, the handbook offers some broad advice to dating couples, including “adopting appropriate attitudes about the relationship, choosing their activities wisely, and limiting the amount of time spent alone together” (12), as though there is something wrong with spending time with your pookie. For KCC, though, “until the time of engagement, dating relationships are still to be considered temporary, enjoyable times of togetherness… A mature dating couple uses self-discipline in refraining from physical intimacies until after marriage. An intimate physical relationship is inappropriate until the marriage vows are exchanged.” If there was ever a clearer articulation of Christian incentives to tie the knot ASAP, I haven’t seen it yet.
The handbook also encourages dating couples to write a “dating commitment,” which is recommended to include “physical, mental, and spiritual guidelines” (12). They provide an example of such a commitment:
Physical - No late night time alone, open door policy; Mental - Keep in mind Biblical principles of dating and marriage… stay in tune with the Holy Spirit and God’s prompting for right and wrong…;
Spiritual - pray before doing anything, make sure that the first focus is on god… continually seek God’s will for the relationship. (12)
To have standards like these are already quite absurd, especially for a college with an almost entirely adult student body, but to ask couples to write these things down is humiliating. To tell people who might be old enough to drink that they cannot spend “late night time alone” together is an unironic version of that meme with Jesus and “the myth of ‘consensual’ sex.”
The outright physical control asserted over students is also quite pervasive. The handbook specifies that ”unnecessary physical contact is to be avoided” and that “all petting is strictly forbidden.” (12) It is unclear what exactly “unnecessary” physical contact entails, though I don’t doubt this policy was written intentionally ambiguously, such that anything from high-fiving to coitus could be categorized as “unnecessary.” The use of the term “petting” is also amusing as an outdated and weirdly informal term; I know they’re referring broadly to “kissing, caressing, and other sexual activity between partners that does not involve sexual course,” but I like to think they have a large population of students who are furries and are trying to crack down on them without knowing exactly what they are beyond “people pretending to be animals.”
Perhaps most humiliatingly in this section is the provision for spending time privately with one another. While prior rules in the handbook reference this act, there are several lines here which address it directly:
While students are in a private dwelling or apartment, they are not permitted to have guests of the opposite sex without adult supervision regardless of whether it is day or night. Exceptions may be granted in the case of some planned group activity… Male students are not permitted on the women’s floor of the dormitory, nor are female students permitted on the men’s floor… Failure to abide by this rule may be grounds for suspension or expulsion… regardless of whether it is day or night. (12)
To enforce “holiness of heart” and to ensure that “student life is Christian in character,” the handbook forces students – our peers – to invite in another adult with more authority than them to monitor them and ensure they don’t make any “unnecessary physical contact” with one another. To make it an expellable offense to merely exist in a living space occupied by the opposite gender without constant surveillance is just one way KCC enforces strict standards of sexual shame and purity. To tell a young person that they must avoid so much as hugging the one they love, lest they be wrought with sin and burn in horrible agony for eternity in the sulfur and flames of the domain of the Prince of Darkness, is par for the course with conservative evangelism, but that doesn’t make it any better.
I would have to imagine that there is some discrete way KCC students have to violate this policy, be it some loophole like soaking at BYU or some discrete, tried-and-tested way to avoid being caught. I would also have to imagine the culture around “accountability,” or policing the sexual practices of your peers, is pervasive.
After thoroughly elaborating on their views on cis-hetero relationships, the handbook begins its “Human Sexuality” section with a tirade against “homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery, pornography, and other forms of licentiousness as sinful perversions of the divine gift of sexuality” (13). To address the inevitable “temptation of sexual sin” at their institution, KCC has a solution:
Anyone being tempted in this way is strongly encouraged to seek help from the dean of students or campus chaplain. Our college is committed to the biblical standard of sexual purity, and we desire to do all we can to reverse the loosening sexual standards of society. Currently enrolled students who willingly come forward to seek help and healing in these areas (without prior knowledge by KCC representatives) will be given support with accountability, while those who do not and violate this standard will be subject to the disciplinary process that may include suspension or dismissal. (13)
In short, your choices are to suppress your queerness so that no one finds out, tell a KCC representative and be “healed,” or get caught, outed, and suspended. This is a terrifying dilemma for anyone to be in, certainly if, in all likelihood, given that you’re at KCC, your family doesn’t know you’re gay. You are pressured to either undergo what I infer to be conversion therapy, which is not banned in Overland Park, or to be shamed out of the school. Of course, any kind of institutional homophobia is unacceptable, but for an institution to be so open and brash with their desire to rid queerness from the world with a Biblical mandate is chilling.
Unsurprisingly, the next subsection, “Gender Identity,” follows a very similar train of thought:
We only support or affirm the resolution of a psychological gender identity in harmony with one’s biological birth sex. Therefore, we do not support or affirm attempts to change one’s given biological birth sex via medical intervention in favor of the identity of the opposite sex or of an indeterminate identity. (13)
On page 2, the handbook includes a nondiscrimination statement, which affirms that KCC “admits students of any race, color, gender, or national or ethnic origin” and that “it does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, gender, disability, or national or ethnic origin” in administering its programs. Interestingly, sexuality is nowhere included in that statement, yet gender is. As articulated in the “Gender Identity” subsection, though, it should be unsurprising that the handbook clarifies that KCC will “make institutional decisions in light of this policy regarding housing, athletics, facilities, student admission and retention, employment hiring and retention and other matters” (13), meaning that it will gladly discriminate on the basis of gender, so long as that gender is outside the bounds it sees as divinely established. It is difficult to offer insightful commentary into something so blatantly bigoted. I mourn for the queer and trans students trapped at KCC.
In the next section, “Pregnancy,” KCC purports to support “the sanctity and preservation of life” (12). To align with this, KCC has a similar procedure to the one for students struggling with “the temptation of sexual sin”:
If, as a result of premarital sex or sex outside the bounds of marriage, a pregnancy occurs, KCC will not seek formal institutional discipline if all of the following conditions are met:
1. The student(s) voluntarily come to the dean of students or campus chaplain seeking assistance;
2. An abortion has not been performed;
3. The student(s) vow to abstinence and begin personal counseling; and
4. The student(s) voluntarily step down from co-curricular activities, including, but not limited to, being candidates for positions of honor, from holding office or any other responsible position in organizations or being a college representative to the public. (12)
Again, KCC offers an awful choice of either public shaming and becoming a lesser person within their community or outright expulsion from their institution. It is here that I feel most strongly the lack of a commitment to compassion in KCC’s numerous defining statements. For all the talk of “Kingdom service” and worshipful ways of living, there is no mention of forgiveness of sin or even redemption for it outside of their stringent internal framework. As though an unexpected pregnancy wasn’t enough for a fledgling adult to handle, you would be put through a ritual of admission of your terrible sin, personal counseling to further shame you and compact you into their “Biblical worldview,” and a resignation from potentially deeply valuable and meaningful spaces and positions, all to punish you for starting to bring life into the world outside of their control. When you would need your community the most, they have it enumerated that they will not be there for you until you violently squish yourself into their premade, “pure,” “holy,” box for you.
The handbook then lays out its “Appearance Guidelines”, which are numerous and specific in what is allowed and disallowed.
The theme of modesty is a motif for most of this section. For example, the handbook dictates that “any jewelry worn must not be gaudy and must avoid the appearance of extravagance,” that “students are not permitted to obtain tattoos while a student,” and that “any cosmetics worn must promote a natural appearance, not drawing undue attention to one’s self” (14). The idea that individual expression must be reigned in to avoid standing out is one of the less outright violent notions of holy living in the handbook, but that does not make it reasonable. In the view of KCC, to live with a “Biblical worldview” and to have “holiness of heart” is to conform, not just to the teachings and ideas of the church, nor just to the college, but also to the plain appearances of your fellow “servant-leaders.”
The handbook also stipulates that “men’s hair must be kept short, neat and trim (clearly distinguishable as masculine)” and that “women’s hair styles should be long (clearly distinguishable as feminine)” (14). Here, conformity in expression also means conformity to gender norms, and by extension, rejecting the “brokenness” of non-conforming gender identities and presentations.
In the first paragraph of the section, the handbook makes clear that “the standard of dress is intended to maintain modesty and a standard that does not draw attention to one’s self or create a distraction or hindrance to members of the opposite sex” (14). This is written in an ostensibly gender-neutral manner, applying to both men and women. Later guidelines are not as subtle. In its subsection titled “Inappropriate Attire,” the handbook says that, “regardless of intent, the following items may be perceived as sexually suggestive or distracting and are therefore inappropriate”:
Sleeveless, strapless, backless or low-cut clothing (unless properly covered), cut-off shirts or shorts, tight or form-fitting clothing… – unless properly covered), shirts with openings that expose the chest, abdomen, midriff, etc., visible undergarments (including the wearing of undergarments on top of acceptable clothing). (15)
They also note that “skirts, dresses or shorts should be loose-fitting, knee-length or longer and must at a minimum rest easily at the top of the knee when seated” (15).
Enforcement of the dress code at my public high school was already highly disproportionately targeted at girls, women, and people perceived to be as such over boys, men, and people perceived to be as such. Here, there is some continuity between my experience and what I can assume to be the experience of students at KCC, in that their policy is set up to be enforced much in the same way. The key difference here is that the handbook for KCC specifies that men and women, which are here understood as the only two genders, ought to dress outright modestly and in a way that makes it clear that they are the gender that they are. As such, both male and female students could be dress coded for wearing a piece of “form-fitting clothing” in respective ways; women because they can’t be giving men impure thoughts with their yoga pants and men because they don’t look enough like a man, whatever that means. At least the handbook admits that the point of a dress code is to be a sexual and gender morality code. Though the handbook doesn’t specify who would be distracted by the woman wearing a tank top, my guess is that it wouldn’t just be the students.
Here, I want to speak more directly to Christian purity standards. If it was not clear that the handbook leans heavily into purity culture, its assertion that “modesty runs deeper than a dress standard, and begins with remaining pure in mind and heart regardless of the way another is dressed” (15) should suffice as clarification. Enforcement of standards of purity, physical modesty, and rejection of “sexual sin” is a process of aggressive social conditioning where the subject, most pervasively girls, women, and people perceived as such, are taught to fear their own body and to hide it and all their feelings around it from the world. This enforces a strict morality code around bodily and sexual expression, the breach of which is, literally, a cardinal sin. Jubilee Dawn, a creator on Tiktok, has shared her stories about escaping an abusive marriage and her controlling church. She has some helpful content that tells stories from her community about the gender and sexual hierarchy inherent to purity culture.
From here, the handbook begins to wind down, but not before getting on its soapbox about modern media. It says the following about internet access and porn:
The school reserves the right to check the online history of sites visited. If it is determined that the student is spending time at sites deemed to be unwholesome or pornographic, the student development committee will be called upon to investigate and implement a course of action to correct the problem. (17)
A formal investigation into viewing “unwholesome” websites on school wifi is par for the course for KCC at this point; it’s yet another avenue of control over expression, privacy, and sexual expression. Interestingly, however, nothing in the handbook explicitly prohibits masturbation or use of offline materials, so this policy is less broadly enforceable than other purity standard rules on the books.
Under its “Media Policy,” the handbook also laments how “much of today’s culture found in [media] does not reflect holy living,” and so “students must be extremely careful to make choices of entertainment that are consistent with Biblical values” (17). It elaborates how “right choices will prohibit students from viewing, attending, or participating in any entertainment… that promotes sexual immorality, contains excessive violence or profanity, or disrespects God,” which pretty much just leaves Veggie Tales, classical music, and a few films made under the Hays Code.
One of the most out-there provisions of the handbook is located at the end of the subsection on “Social Dancing”:
Our community, considering itself in the mainstream of the evangelical tradition, and recognizing the temptations inherent in the sensuous and erotic nature of some social dancing, disapproves of social dancing by members of the community. (18)
I can only assume that they want to prevent people from ballroom dancing because it would lead to people making “unnecessary physical contact,” though I still can’t see what kind of joyless person would tell already touch-deprived students that they can’t so much as swing dance with one another. I’d tell them to watch Footloose, but it’s rated R and so almost certainly violates the Media Policy. It’s also interesting the handbook specifically positions KCC as a part of the “mainstream of the evangelical tradition” as opposed to the conservative strain COGH positions itself as, implying that they view them as one and the same.
The rest of the handbook talks about how students shouldn’t sell sinful products and experiences, how they are entitled to an internal escalating due process procedure, and how they have rights under FERPA before concluding. However, there is still one more aspect of the handbook I want to discuss: the unquestionable authority of the KCC administration.
At the top of the “Interpersonal Relationships” section, it is said that ”students are expected to loyally support the school administration in the achievement of the objectives of the school and that “students will not engage in negative talk about administrative decisions, classroom procedures, fellow student involvements, social events, etc.” (11). In the “Standards of Conduct” section, it is said that “the administration reserves the right to prohibit the attendance at any social gathering or entertainment establishment that is deemed detrimental to the development of Christian character” (10). At the top of the “Engagement and Marriage” section, it is said that “no student is permitted to announce or publicize his or her engagement during the school year, except by permission of the administration” (13). In the “Cafeteria Etiquette” subsection, it is prohibited to make “remarks that are critical in nature about the food” (15). In the “Petitions” subsection, it is said that “formation or circulation of any petition regarding school policies of administrative decisions will not be tolerated” (15). In the “Social Dancing” subsection, it is said that “performances on campus are carefully screened and exclusively selected by KCC personnel as educational and appropriate to the performance” (18).
Throughout the handbook, at every turn, it is mandated for students to act in fealty to Kansas Christian College. A failure to not just support the school, but to loyally support school administration, could result in formal punishment. What exactly that entails is unclear. What is more clear is that criticizing anything about the administration, even something as petty as the cafeteria food, is grounds for disciplinary proceedings. The administration reigns over the school with impunity, with students barred from so much as collectively expressing their opinions or being publicly engaged without prior authorization. Merely attending a party or a queer-friendly establishment could be met with reproach and shame. KCC’s near-unlimited power over its students can extend as far as it wants to within its jurisdiction, as the handbook notes that “no code of conduct, no matter how lengthy, could list all the situations in which choices and decisions must be made” (10). KCC has a student council, but it is unclear how much power it actually has. Given the potency of their overseeing administrative regime, my guess isn’t much.
While a multiversity like KU uses its administrative power to suppress dissent, it is ultimately a large public institution and so cannot completely squash free speech. Even for religious multiversities like Baylor and BYU, suppression requires tactical response from the administration to maintain its status quo. For KCC, however, a small school with a strong administrative state can assert a more brazen and direct control over its student body. It certainly helps to be able to point to their “Biblical worldview” as the basis for many of these policies, but nowhere in the Bible does it decree that you can’t watch an unapproved local theatrical production or say that it’s dumb that you can’t visit your fiance in her dorm without the dorm dean present. While many of these policies are derived from a particular conservative Christian worldview, demands for obedience to a school’s administration is what KCC has deemed necessary to enforce them. Positioning themselves as almost divinely uncritiqueable while decrying blasphemy and sin is hypocritical at best, but at this point, you shouldn’t expect much better from them.
What KCC Is
After talking about my findings about KCC with some friends, at least one of them suggested it sounded like a cult. At first, that seemed outlandish, but at this point, I think that description ought to be seriously considered.
The word “cult” can refer to “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious” and “is often used to describe groups with strong religious beliefs, charismatic leaders, and zealous followers,” frequently involving coercive environments and isolating tactics against vulnerable people.
The Holiness movement, of which the COGH is a part, has its own cult-invocative practices. The notion that one must live perfectly and purely to be cleansed of original sin to get into heaven means that one must behave in a very structured and particular manner, deviation from which can get one ousted from the community. The strong commitment to a plain, modest lifestyle, common of conservative Holiness churches and related institutions, suppresses personal expression, making it easier to assimilate followers into the uniform group while also making it harder for them to think freely as an individual. In a sense, to have “holiness of heart” is to unquestioningly accept the teachings of the church.
The administration of KCC is also clearly deeply controlling of its students. While President Pollard might not fit the traditional model of a cult figurehead, at least not from the outside, the sheer dominion the whole administration has over its students is undeniable. For an institution with so few students and such a low student-to-faculty ratio, it would be easy to assert this control uncompromisingly. Given that “all single college students under the age of 21 at the beginning of the semester, which are not living with immediate relatives, must reside in the residence hall” (7), students are rarely too far away to keep an eye on. It doesn’t really matter that they have a “Student Grievance Procedure” if all but the highest escalation of that process is housed within this repressive administration (21).
Students can also come straight to KCC from Overland Christian School, both affiliated with the COGH. Given that OCS starts taking students in preschool and KCC now offers masters programs, theoretically, you could be affiliated with the same campus for two decades or more during the most important developmental years of your life. Students brought in for athletics are grouped together with students taught the doctrine of Holiness their whole lives, making it easier to assimilate outsiders, especially those from the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised communities they target.
Still, for all of these qualities, some may believe KCC should not be called a cult.
For one, students leave. The fact that half of students are gone after their first year and 4 in 5 are gone before graduating seems to indicate that, if this is indeed a cult, it doesn’t have much sticking power – something often highly characteristic of such groups.
Moreover, while students are encouraged to be a part of the COGH, at least for its public-facing forums like the handbook, KCC clarifies that, “although Kansas Christian College is affiliated with the Churches of God (Holiness), it is nondenominational and will accept students of various religious persuasions as long as they are willing to abide by the principles and policies of the school (2). As such, students do not appear to be funneled into the COGH, or even the Holiness movement broadly, at least not formally or openly.
Ultimately, though, many of the qualities of KCC discussed here could be constructed as evidence of its status as a cult just as much as they are of its conservative Christian dogma. Its emphasis on purity of heart, body, and mind is both characteristic of conservative attitudes against individual expression as well as cult alienation of the individual from themselves beyond the cult. Its despotic administration is in line with conservative views on hierarchy and authority as well as cultish reverence for and submission to the head of the group and its enforced beliefs. Whether or not something is a “cult” is hard to determine from the outside with reliable certainty, but what is clear is that Kansas Christian College is at least an organ of control and brainwashing in service of a conservative Christian ideology. The two categories seem to blur together.
Students, be they willing disciples or forced by their families, attend a school where they are given a subpar education, a mandatory draconian morality code, and food that they are forbidden from complaining about. They may have been funneled there from OCS, got a decent athletics scholarship, were recruited on a mission trip, or were fooled by its unassuming veneer. Perhaps they leave with a degree, but based on their college’s own mission statement, that’s not the goal; regardless of if they graduate or not, students are leaving “able to articulate a biblical worldview” and having “holiness of heart,” except perhaps the outgroup sinner deviants who smoke, are gay, and hold hands before marriage.
The conservative Christian worldview sees the hierarchy of man over woman, husband over wife, as inevitable, just as is the hierarchy of God over man. They see such hierarchies as natural and good, and questioning this ordained order of things is to break both the social order and the institution’s control. At KCC, to question God or the class schedule is blasphemous and unacceptable. It’s not as simple as even a correct interpretation of the Marx quote about religion being the opium of the masses; the conservative view of not just religion but religious institutions is one of submission and subordination rather than spiritual expression, enlightenment, and liberation. The hegemonic community that develops out of this thinking is defined by its adherence to the teachings of the resident authority, here being KCC. There is no room for non-hegemonic or counter-hegemonic communities, even as controlled opposition, in such a system, and so all such dissidents must be purged, be it through forced assimilation, shameful demotion of social rank, or expulsion from the ingroup altogether.
What, then, is KCC? It is a private school whose programming is more focused on God than portable skills or academics. It is a long-standing part of the Overland Park community. It might be a cult. Ultimately, however, it is a means of spreading a conservative model of Christianity by forming a small community of students of all backgrounds and molding them in accordance with their vision for the world.
P.S. One Other Thing KCC Did
I didn’t really have a place to put this in the piece proper, but I did want to include it here as a short postscript, perhaps as a sort of reward for those who made it to the end. As I was parsing through their website, I came across a program KCC was offering called the “Walk Where Jesus Walked Holy Land Tour.” It is exactly what you think it is.
Yes, KCC was offering “a custom tour to Israel in 2024” where traveling students could “move from reading the Bible to experiencing the Bible as you walk where Jesus walked and see what Jesus saw.” President Pollard and Friendship Tours promised that “this trip is one of the best prices available anywhere.” It should come as no surprise that a conservative Christian institution wanted to visit “the Holy Land.”
As for the trip itself, however, I am less sure of how it actually went. In fact, I’m not sure if they went at all. There are neither press releases from it nor Instagram posts commemorating it. As a hint as to why they might not have, the final date to submit your fees for the trip was October 8th, 2023.
Anyway, Free Palestine.
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