Once upon a time there was a Christian University (CU) with a wonderful mission to educate men and women for leadership and service by integrating excellence in academics and living out Christian commitment within a caring community. It was a beautiful vision and one that this university faithfully sought to exhibit to the world for the sake of Jesus Christ.
One day, they received an application to one of their excellent graduate programs from a student at a Well-Regarded Christian College (WRCC). This student was, by any measure, outstanding. He had a near-perfect GPA along with glowing recommendations from his faculty replete with superlatives like “best I’ve seen in my career,” calling him a “man of deep integrity,” “deeply faithful,” and a “gift to our program.” He had done internships in his field of study, mentored incarcerated youth, and played intramural basketball, even playing on a team with the college president. He did all this while, as a non-traditional student, raising his baby son who had been born between his junior and senior year, supporting his wife’s career, and serving in his local church. Quite a remarkable young man.
When CU received his application, they immediately recognized his gifts and accepted him into a PhD program with full funding and a stipend. His dream of studying virtue and working with the renowned faculty of this Christian university seemed to be coming true.
However, this young man was unusual in another way. He had spent time in prison. When he was 15 years old, he committed a violent crime and was convicted, moved to the adult population prison when he was 17, and by every measure was on his way to a life of violence and life-long incarceration. But God had other plans for this young man. God provided mentors, older fellow inmates, who sheltered this young man, encouraged him, blessed him, and by 21, he was on a new path. From age 21 until he was released from prison in 2022, this man sought faith and peace, finished his high school education, began his college studies, and when he was released two years early (on the recommendation of a judge), he married, pursued his education, and came to WRCC on a full scholarship for ex-offenders.
CU wondered if they could accept a person who had been in prison. Although the PhD program was very excited about him, they let him know that CU would need to review his application. But how? They said they had never faced this situation before. Who would review? How should they do it? There was no process in place, they said, so they made one.
CU brought together some undergraduate faculty and mid-level administrators to review his court records. They read through transcripts and notes the prosecution prepared 25 years ago to convict this then-teenager. They asked the student to provide his own background check, but they didn’t interview him, nor did they ask him for any explanation or context. They couldn’t know that when the court records said, “The accused was removed from a foster home due to sexual assault,” that he was the victim of the assault. They couldn’t know that two years after his conviction, the foster mother lost her license due to documented abuse and neglect. They couldn’t know how he had processed the trauma and abuse of his childhood, and how he had taken responsibility for his crimes. They could only see, as they would later say, “the nature of the crimes.”
At 5 PM on a Friday afternoon, the student received the bad news. The committee recommended that his acceptance to the PhD program be rescinded. There would be no appeal process. There would be no explanation. Just a brief email with a few lines extolling his virtues, and then a few more closing the door on this opportunity forever, followed by a pithy farewell: “I hope that you don’t let this decision deter you from all the good work you can continue to do,” wrote the Associate Dean of Professional Development. “You are a special person, and God has something perfect in store for you.” Just not at Christian University.
This action raises a number of questions that any Christian university or college should be asking. The first among them: What is our purpose?
The only reason CU gave for rescinding admission was “risk.” They could not accept the “risk” of accepting a student with a violent crime in his past. How do we, in Christ, assess risk?
You would expect a university to start with data. First, a significant body of research reveals that students with criminal convictions pose no more risk than students without.1 According to Ashton Klekamp with the Educational Justice Initiative, the majority of crimes committed on university campuses are by those without a prior record. Additional research shows no correlation between crime and the number of students with criminal convictions. Simply attaching risk to prior conviction does not square with the data.
Second, you would think the process would look at the individual and his or her specific characteristics. Research from scholars at Baylor University’s Science of Virtue lab notes that accountability, for example, can be considered a unique virtue that varies by individual and has demonstrable effects on a person’s self-image and flourishing.2 While the committee had access to the academic recommendations from the WRCC where this student had studied, they did not have specific recommendations on his temperament, conduct, or other signs of “risk.” Nor did they ask for any.
But perhaps the most important question about risk is how Christians should consider what we’re willing to risk and for whom. Jesus mentions prisoners as among the “least of these” to whom his followers should extend particular hospitality. He does not specify that these are only the falsely accused or unjustly incarcerated. The prisoners of Matthew 25 surely include those who have committed the crimes for which they were sentenced. Christians, above anyone, should believe and promote an ethic of redemption and forgiveness.
None of this means putting others in harm’s way without their knowledge. Undoubtedly, the committee members at CU who decided to revoke this student’s admission were considering the current members of their university community. What if something were to happen? It is a reasonable question to ask. But it is hard not to think that one of the louder voices in the room was the lawyer. Lawyers are there to provide counsel about all the “what if?” circumstances, and the consequences of a known ex-offender harming a member of the community would certainly open up CU to risk.
It could make you wonder: who is CU truly trying to protect?
Ex-offenders face innumerable barriers to life after release.3 Universities routinely decline to admit students with past offenses due to the perceived risk. But shouldn’t CU have a different metric? Can we throw away a life when there is such powerful evidence that God is at work in a person’s life? What is the purpose of a Christian University if not to be part of God’s redeeming work?
It’s a bit surprising that CU has never had a student apply with a criminal background before. Perhaps it was this particular student’s transparency and circumstances that alerted CU to his past. It is certainly reasonable for CU to have a process for evaluating each student for suitability for the community, as they do for academic qualifications, and perhaps considering criminal history should be part of that. But having an ad hoc committee without training or expertise, without reaching out to the student in question to have a personal conversation, without taking the research into account, seems at odds with a calling any Christian school should have.
This student is resilient. He wouldn’t be where he is if he weren’t. And while God may not have something “perfect” down the road, there is no question that God will be on the road with him wherever it may lead. In the end, the tragedy is as much for CU, which lost the opportunity to have a remarkable person in their community. We can only hope they might see themselves in this tale and rethink what it means to truly integrate academic excellence and Christian commitment in a caring community.
- See Carol W. Runyan, Matthew W. Pierce, Viswanathan Shankar, Shrikant I Bangdiwala, “Can Student-Perpetrated College Crime Be Predicted Based on Precollege Misconduct?” Injury Prevention 19, no. 6 (2013): 405–11. https://doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2012-040644; see also, Sokoloff, N. J., & Fontaine, A. (2013). Systemic barriers to higher education: How colleges respond to applicants with criminal records in Maryland. John Jay College of Criminal Justice. ↩︎
- Robert J. Ridder, Charlotte V.O. Witvliet, Hiroki Matsuo, Juliette L. Ratchford, Karen K. Melton, Perry L. Glanzer, & Sarah A. Schnitker, “Pursuing Personal Goals: Temporal Associations of Welcoming Accountability, Personal Responsibility, and Progress Satisfaction,” Journal of Research in Personality 19 (2025): 104652. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2025.104652 ↩︎
- National Public Radio recently ran a story chronicling the challenges and even the ironies of university admissions decisions. See “For College Applicants with a Criminal Record, Checking the Box can be a Barrier.” https://www.wbez.org/wbez-news/2026/04/13/for-college-applicants-with-a-criminal-record-checking-the-box-can-be-a-barrier ↩︎
Wondering if you would’ve had the same analysis if the person who had applied to your doctoral program had been a white male conservative, southern Baptist, who did not believe in women’s ordination and had been credibly accused of sexual harassment under title IX. As long as you traffic in vague abstractions, you’ll tug at the heart strings. But when it gets specific, and you add unwoke characteristics to the subject, the tribal allegiance is reversed.
Also, a university has an obligation to its other students as well. who expect a safe environment to study. The university has to also care about its own legal liability.
I am afraid that you missed the core idea the author put forward and am also concerned about you’re uncharitableness which is not in the spirit of CSR. The author was intentionally leaving the specific demographics of the protagonist vague; you are the one supposing that the protagonist does fit the demographics you listed, which I think reveals more of your presumptions about the protagonist than even the author made clear. The author’s point is that universities tend to dismiss applicants with a criminal record despite the data that indicates they pose no real risk to the university are student body. To your point, I think you’re correct that a university should take special care to protect a safe environment for students and the institution’s own liability, and the CU failed to that by denying the student admission. Admitting them would pose minimal risk, not above other students with no criminal records, but instead this student was denied despite being desired and highly qualified to a safe environment to study.
More than all this, is the author’s core thesis that of all universities, Christian universities should be the ones that resist the stereotypes of people with criminal backgrounds and give each student a fair and evidence-based evaluation which is led by the Christian vision of redemption and transformation of sinners into saints.
I’m not sure what the author’s tribal allegiance is, but based on your small comment I have sense of yours and it does not appear to be the kind of tribe that Christians are called to be in.
Yes. To all of this. Thank you, Nathaniel, for your careful read and excellent articulation of the point.
You are reading a lot of things into this article that just aren’t there. All we know is male and around 40 years old. Anything else is speculation and/or agenda.
This post does not indicate that the individual is or is not a “white male conservative, southern Baptist, who did not believe in women’s ordination” so I’m curious why you’d assume otherwise.
Related to your hypothetical alternative candidate who was “credibly accused of sexual harassment under Title IX”, I’d have the same questions and evaluation as I’d have for the individual portrayed in Dr. Howell’s piece – 1) how much time has passed since the incident and 2) during that time what consistent evidence of a repentant heart transformed by Christ exists and is communicated by diverse and credible voices in the community who have had meaningful interactions with this individual. Assuming that any student who felt unsafe being in the classroom with a former violent offender at “WRCC” would have filed their own report through channels like Title IX, the evidence that there was none should be enough evidence to mitigate that risk.
The fact that this individual has a proven track record of integrity and flourishing in areas of increasing accountability in academics, family and ministry obligations, in light of the evidence presented from Baylor’s School of Virtue pointing to accountability being a factor in “demonstrable effects on a person’s self-image and flourishing”, would be a solid predictor of future success in my opinion. This man has been given much and has consistently proven faithful stewardship and rehabilitation.
Finally – I know if I were evaluated for a future opportunity strictly on my behaviors, attitudes, and actions when I was 15 years old (and without consideration of my growth and transformation), I would be discounted from them all. Praise God that through the gospel of Jesus Christ we are not judged by the lens of our past but by the blood of the Lamb. I pray for eyes of compassion, mercy, and sound discernment for all those entrusted with admissions decisions.
Beautifully said. Truly. Amen and amen.
First, I fully acknowledge the duty of the university to its students. That is why I bring research to bear that demonstrates those with a prior conviction pose no demonstrable risk. Moreover, this student has been a thriving member of a college community for years and has excelled in every way. What possible evidence would this committee have that has not interviewed him nor invited character references that he now poses a risk?
Second, I don’t actually know this student’s views on women’s ordination, and by many measures he would certainly be considered “conservative.” But all that is irrelevant to the point here. Nathaniel has answered this as well as I by simply reading the piece carefully and with charity.
This whole situation reminds me that if the Apostle Paul applied to said “CU,” then he also would’ve been rejected because of his past, same could be said for many in the faith if their secret lives were exposed openly — the protagonist in this piece said himself that his past is what got him so far within the “WRCC” but its also what had him blocked from this “CU.” God will still show out with his son in the writing here, but I’ll say everyone is Christian until it’s time to apply spiritual discernment and the Word to their life because if they would’ve prayed about this for not even 30 seconds, then the outcome would’ve been different.
The young man should apply to a secular university. He has paid for his crime many times over. It is time to move on and join the human race (emphasis on the work human). He might consider a school like Temple University, which has an open acceptance policy to any student who wants to take courses. If he does well academically, he will be in a good place to apply to a graduate program.
This is a tragedy and a failure; not to mention that the university (and any healthy Christian community) should have an appeals process, or some kind of balance for poor decisions and misuses of power.
Agreed! Of course, no process is perfect and decisions that seem wrong could still happen, but it is definitely my hope that this university will identify itself (to itself) and use the opportunity to create a fair, consistent, transparent process for any future students who seek to study there. (They already do have a process, I believe, for undergraduates, but not for graduate students. My student believes – astutely I would say – that while they’re willing to take a “risk” with certain undergraduates who may have certain abilities that make the university money, when it comes to accepting a student who would *cost* them money [although not really because grad students are labor] they aren’t as accommodating.)
Such an eye-opening read. Thank you so much for writing this! As a friend and colleague of this young man, I have been nothing short of amazed by his impact and leadership on campus. I recently witnessed this young man receive a prestigious award at WRCC (presented by the president himself), and the sheer pride and love the entire campus has for him were very evident by the standing ovation and cheering that lasted an entire minute. Regardless of where this young man decides to continue his education, they will be truly blessed to have him. Praying for him and his beautiful family!