Wheaton College’s slow-motion descent into theological surrender is a tragedy, but not a surprising one. For years, the once-proud evangelical institution has been prostituting its doctrinal backbone for a seat at the table of cultural relevance. And what do they have to show for it? A revolving door of apostates and charlatans who walk through their halls under the pretense of Christian leadership, only to later reveal—shamelessly—that they were nothing more than infiltrators working to undermine a Christian worldview.

And at Wheaton College, it has worked.

Once Wheaton’s star diversity hire for “ministering” to students struggling with same-sex attraction, Julie Rodgers was paraded around as a progressive concession to the ever-evolving whims of culture. But even back then, the writing was on the wall. The administration assured nervous donors that Rodgers was committed to “celibacy” and upheld the college’s moral code.

But anyone paying attention could see the cracks forming. Her entire brand was built on self-identification, on centering identity around “queerness” rather than repentance.

And then, of course, the inevitable happened. It always does. She resigned from Wheaton in 2015, citing her newfound belief that committed same-sex relationships were perfectly fine in God’s eyes. The “struggle” with same-sex attraction miraculously disappeared, replaced by an enthusiastic embrace of what she once claimed to resist.

Wheaton didn’t confront her error. They didn’t call her to repentance. They didn’t correct her in love. Instead, they let her drift. She was a pawn in their game, useful for making them look “compassionate” and “nuanced” on LGBTQ issues, until the moment she became an inconvenience.

And when Wheaton abandoned her, she continued down the well-worn path of rebellion—one that Wheaton’s refusal to stand firm helped pave.

Now, Julie Rodgers is openly “trans,” announcing her grotesque mutilation on Facebook with all the unhinged excitement of someone showing off a new haircut.

“I had top surgery 8 weeks ago and I am completely overjoyed,” she gushed on social media, as if surgically amputating healthy body parts was an accomplishment to be celebrated, a milestone in the sacred journey of self-discovery. “The first is that virtually everyone I told I was getting top surgery responded with, ‘Congratulations!’”

Congratulations. That’s the word she chose. Not grief, not hesitation, not a single moment of second-guessing. Just unbridled enthusiasm for the irreversible destruction of her God-given body.

She describes, with an almost religious fervor, how her workplace rolled out the red carpet for this self-inflicted tragedy. “I sat down with two of my directors at work and told them I was hoping to get top surgery on September 26… After sharing in my joy, they were like, ‘Honestly, I don’t think 2 weeks will be enough. Why don’t you take 4? Have you ever asked an employer for time off and then them respond with, ‘You know what? Let’s double it.’ And for gender-affirming care??”

Yes, because nothing says “supporting your employees” like subsidizing their self-harm. Welcome to the new corporate world, where if you ask for time off to take care of a sick family member, you’ll get side-eye and a stern reminder about productivity, but if you want to undergo medically unnecessary surgery to butcher your body in service of the gender delusion, you’ll get twice the time off and a round of applause.

Her partner, ever the dutiful enabler, “drove me to appointments, cooked delicious food, love-googled millions of medical questions, and binged shows with me in bed.” A heartwarming scene, no doubt, because nothing says unconditional love quite like standing by while your “significant other” permanently disfigures themselves under the knife of an ideology that demands total submission.

Rodgers ends with a call to “choose delight.” That’s what she calls it. Not rebellion. Not rejection of God’s design. Not the logical endpoint of years of slow, methodical self-destruction. No, it’s delight.

But she didn’t get here alone. Wheaton helped her. They helped by hiring her in the first place, under the false assumption that her self-identification as “queer” could be somehow managed—even sanctified— within their theological framework. They helped by refusing to draw clear boundaries, to say, unequivocally, that identity in Christ requires dying to sin, not wrapping it in academic sophistry. And they helped by discarding her when the controversy became too much to manage, leaving her to be swept away by the very movement they failed to confront.

This is what happens when institutions like Wheaton elevate pragmatism over conviction. It’s how they keep ending up with people like Julie Rodgers—and Ed Stetzer, for that matter—people who either outright abandon a Christian worldview or twist it beyond recognition, all while wrapping themselves in the language of faith.

Rodgers was hired under the assumption that she at least pretended to hold to Wheaton’s moral code, but what she truly represented was the ideological rot that has infected so much of modern evangelicalism—the need to be seen as “compassionate,” “thoughtful,” and “inclusive,” even at the expense of the gospel.

The silence from Wheaton’s leadership is deafening. No rebuke. No clarification. No acknowledgment that they once elevated this person to a position of spiritual leadership all because of the idol of pragmatism. Because to do so would be to admit failure. Instead, they will keep plodding along, hiring the next compromised voice that offers just enough plausible deniability to slide under the radar—until, inevitably, that person too follows the same well-worn path into full apostasy.

This is not a one-off incident. This is a pattern. A trajectory. A warning. The institutions that once stood for biblical truth are crumbling, one by one, not from external pressure, but from their own desperate need for cultural relevance. And in their wake, they leave a parade of the spiritually shipwrecked, like Rodgers, who mistake their own rebellion for enlightenment and demand the world applaud them for it.

And Wheaton College will do what it always does—pretend it had nothing to do with it.