SDA Issues: Infiltration of Marxist Thought into Adventist Institutions SEIRES: Evidence of Critical Theory Influence in Adventist Higher Education

And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: Romans 11:26

"A review of publicly available academic materials from several Adventist universities shows clear patterns indicating the presence, and in some contexts the promotion of Critical Theory and its modern branches, including Critical Race Theory (CRT) and critical pedagogy. Although most syllabi remain behind password-protected portals, even the limited open-source information reveals a consistent trend.

At Andrews University, the evidence is the most explicit. In the

undergraduate course ENGL 255: Social Justice and the Graphic Novel, students are required to read Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, one of the most influential and overtly ideological texts within the contemporary CRT movement. 

Beyond classroom curricula, Andrews’ Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) office maintains an official anti-racism reading list featuring authors such as Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility), Layla Saad (Me and White Supremacy), Derrick Bell (Faces at the Bottom of the Well), Dorothy Roberts, and Angela Davis. 

These works are not presented for critique but commended as resources for shaping Christian practice and institutional life. Additionally, Andrews-connected graduate-level coursework includes Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a foundational neo-Marxist text that frames education as a tool of class struggle and ideological liberation.

At La Sierra University, while fewer syllabi are publicly accessible, the university church’s widely promoted “Anti-Racism Resources” page showcases many of the same CRT-aligned authors—Kendi, DiAngelo, and others. Though framed as spiritual resources for Christian growth, these recommendations mirror the ideological frameworks now common in secular academia and reflect a worldview grounded in power analysis, identity dialectics, and the language of systemic oppression.

Meanwhile, course catalogs from institutions such as Burman University and Union College (including courses delivered through Southern Adventist University partnerships) explicitly list “critical theory,” “feminist theory,” and “postmodern theory” as instructional lenses. 

Taken together, these open-source indicators demonstrate that key Adventist educational institutions have begun incorporating—not merely studying—the methodologies, categories, and assumptions of Critical Theory as valid tools for moral, social, and spiritual formation. 

This subtle shift is significant because Critical Theory carries with it a moral vision incompatible with Biblical Christianity: a worldview grounded not in creation, fall, and redemption, but in power, oppression, and ideological liberation. 

When such frameworks begin shaping Adventist classrooms, training programs, and campus culture, the church risks speaking a language foreign to Scripture yet familiar in Babylon—a language that redefines sin as oppression, salvation as activism, and sanctification as sociopolitical consciousness."
Dr. Adami A. Gabriel, PsyD