Who needs Yale, Brown, and Columbia Universities when you’ve got Wheaton College smack dab in the Chicago suburbs? Once the beating heart of evangelicalism, it’s been ideologically devoured from the inside by the parasite of what is risibly called “progressivism.”
Now that anthropology professor Brian Howell has skedaddled out of Wheaton, the school’s most voluble leftist is music professor Shawn Okpebholo who had a doozy of a Facebook post on June 19th in which he concomitantly celebrated Juneteenth, Barack and Michelle Obama, and the idolatrous monument to Barack while taking potshots at President Trump, conservatism, and white evangelicals. Quite a feat for a Wheaton College professor and not one that would likely be celebrated by alumni Billy Graham, Dan Coats, or Russell Vought.
So, let’s take a gander at a few of Okpebholo’s proclamations.
He begins with a remarkably divisive “confession”:
I have a confession that might surprise some people who don’t know about my political transformation: I didn’t vote for Barack Obama. Not once, but twice.
Back then, I was a conservative to my core. Looking back, much of that conviction was shaped by an echo chamber full of contradictions, hypocrisy, and performative ideas I absorbed from pundits, politicians, and many of the white evangelical spaces I was in. I was sincere. But sincerity and being right are not always the same thing.
Definitionally, a confession is not merely an acknowledgment of change. Definitionally, a confession is an admission of wrongdoing or a disclosure of sin. Okpebholo’s “confession” reads more like an insult to conservatives masquerading as a humble confession. Call it a trans-confession: a condemnatory insult that identifies as a confession.
To be clear, “white evangelical spaces,” is a dumb and obvious way to avoid saying white people. Those yucky white evangelical echo chambers filled with contradictions, hypocrisy, and phony performances by white people led Okpebholo astray. Sounds kinda, sorta, maybe racist.
The good news—no, not that Good News—Okpebholo’s small “g,” small “n” good news is that he is free at last:
Breaking out of that mindset sparked my journey toward becoming more progressive. Or, perhaps more accurately, becoming more in touch with humanity and more faithful to the Gospel I claimed to believe.
Breaking free of the influence of white evangelicals leads ineluctably to becoming a more faithful Christian, which I guess means conservatives are less faithful Christians.
Okpebholo is now, purportedly, more in touch with humanity—except, of course, with the humanity of human fetuses that he and his fellow progressives believe are expendable from conception to birth for any or no reason. Oh, and except for women, whose humanity as women created by God whom Okpebholo claims to serve better now. Thanks to the “progressivism” he now embraces, the private spaces and sports of girls and women are violated by the presence of men.
Okpebholo attributes his political transmogrification in part to “actually reading the Bible.” That’s an odd claim coming from a Wheaton College professor who has been part of the faculty since 2010. He didn’t “actually” read his Bible until after 2012? If there are any conservative faculty members remaining at Wheaton, does Okpebholo believe they have actually read the Bible?
Okpebholo is “profoundly relieved” that Obama was elected paving the way for his history-making two terms:
President Obama’s time in office was deeply consequential, from foreign policy moments like the operation that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, to one of his greatest domestic achievements: expanding healthcare access to millions of Americans.
Many would agree that Obama’s foreign policy decisions were, indeed, “deeply consequential,” but perhaps not in the same way Okpebholo views their consequentiality.
Many Americans view Obama’s leadership “from behind,” his failed Russian “reset,” the JCPOA and pallets of cash, and the Syrian red line written in disappearing ink as weakening America and destabilizing the world by empowering Iran, Russia, and China.
Obamacare too has been deeply consequential. Insurance premiums, deductibles, and cost of healthcare services have all risen. Millions of Americans who were promised that if they liked their plan, they could keep it have seen their plans cancelled because those plans didn’t meet Big Brother Obama’s requirements. In other words, lies dripped from Obama’s honey tongue.
That wasn’t Obama’s only lie. He also lied during his first campaign when he said,
I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.
Even David Axelrod acknowledged in his book that Obama had no opposition to homosexual marriage during that campaign.
One would think that after reading the Bible, Okpebholo, would oppose both lying and homosexual marriage. As a Wheaton College professor, Okpebholo is required to sign a document affirming that he personally believes marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
Okpebholo’s worship of the Obamas extends even to the thankless Michelle Obama about whom Okpebholo wrote, “Michelle Obama’s role in that moment matters.”
Many Americans remember Michelle’s infamous statement about her husband’s first campaign, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.” That graceless, bitter comment matters too. Some Bible readers know that in all things, Christians should give thanks.
Since the Obamas have left office, Michelle has spent a considerable amount of time griping about life with Barack and life in the White House. Not all the perks of living in the White House were sufficient for Michelle. In May 2025, she whined,
As many people don’t know … much is not covered. Um, you’re paying for every food, every bit of food that you eat. You, you know, you’re not paying for housing and the staff in it. But everything, even travel, if you’re not traveling with the president, if your kids are coming on Bright Star, which is the first lady’s plane, we had to pay for their travel to be on the plane. It is an expensive proposition.
Poor, poor pitiful Michelle.
Such ingratitude undermines her fitness as a role model.
Not even the Kaaba-esque Obama tribute to himself, his presidential library, escapes the admiration of the Bible-reading Okpebholo:
I’ve had the privilege of driving past the Obama Presidential Center at least a half dozen times. Every time I pass it, I’m struck by what it represents. It’s not just a building. It’s a vessel that will carry our history forward, the very history that some people seem determined to sanitize, minimize, ban from classrooms, or erase altogether. Seeing it take shape has been deeply moving.
Who is seeking to ban the history of blacks in America? I’m as old as the hills, and I was taught about slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights Movement. My kids were taught the same.
No mention from Okpebholo of the people who live in the community where the Obama’s vanity project is located and view it as an eyesore. No mention of subcontractors who claim they are owed approximately $100 million for work done. No mention of community anger about the loss of public parkland, the gentrification of the area, and the likely displacement of longtime residents. No mention of the cost to the public of infrastructure needs generated by the Obama tribute to Obama, which is estimated to be around $175 million.
And no mention of the requirement to enter the museum: a valid photo I.D. I guess the Obamas are trying to keep blacks out of their museum.
Okpebholo compares Obama’s leadership to Trump’s:
I find myself longing for … Leadership that doesn’t govern through grievance … and a constant need for validation and monuments.
First, wow.
Second, just after expressing his adulation of Obama’s $850 million monument to himself, Okpebholo criticizes Trump for a “constant need for” monuments. That I know of Trump has built zero “monuments” to himself since he’s been in office.
Third, I’m not quite sure what Okpebholo is referring to when he mentions governing through grievance. Maybe he’s referring to Trump undoing all the ideologically biased DEI and “trans” policies Biden implemented that have cost taxpayers buckets of ducats and fomented division all across the country.
Or, fourth, perhaps Okpebholo is referring to the legitimate grievances President Trump has because of the unconstitutional use of lawfare to target him by the Obama and Biden administrations and their “progressive” minions across the country.
Describing his feelings while watching Michelle Obama speak at the Obama monument to himself, Okpebholo said,
Watching Michelle speak reminded me how low we’ve allowed the bar for public leadership to fall. …
And that is precisely why this center matters. … It’s a monument to values that feel increasingly endangered in our public life: dignity, empathy, humility, inclusion, intellectual curiosity, competence, and a belief that our differences do not diminish our shared humanity.
Amazing. Just a few paragraphs earlier, Okpebholo said that his prior conservative beliefs derived from “an echo chamber full of contradictions, hypocrisy, and performative ideas I absorbed from pundits, politicians, and many of the white evangelical spaces I was in.” Does that statement demonstrate empathy, humility, inclusion, or a commitment to our shared humanity?
In his concern about dignity, has Okpebholo ever posted criticism of drag queen story hours in public libraries? In his concern about intellectual curiosity, has he ever posted criticism of the shocking ideological imbalance on secular college and university faculties? In his concern about competence, has he ever posted criticism of DEI hiring practices that subordinate competence to skin color?
Okpebholo winds up his diatribe with these unoriginal words:
Truth is often resisted. Justice is often delayed.
On that we can agree. “Progressives” have demonstrated ad nauseum that they have an indefatigable capacity for resisting truth. Despite having now read the Bible, Okpebholo has allied himself with the party that denies the truth that the product of conception between two humans is human created in the image of God with a right not to be exterminated. And he has allied himself with the party that denies the truth that men cannot become women.
Justice for the millions of humans legally exterminated since 1973 and justice for the countless minors whose bodies, minds, and hearts are being despoiled by the “trans” scam cannot come soon enough.
I wonder how all those inhabitants of the white evangelical, performative echo chamber who attend, pay for, or donate to Wheaton College feel about Okpebholo’s spanking new social, political, and moral worldview.