On Friday, February 7, Wheaton College, the evangelical Christian school outside Chicago, publicly congratulated Russell Vought, a conservative activist and architect of Project 2025 who attended the school, for his confirmation by the U.S. Senate as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Within hours, hundreds of Vought’s fellow alumni had complained that Vought’s agenda contradicted the values they had been taught at Wheaton.
By Saturday morning, the college had deleted the post, and a new social media barrage, this time from Vought’s supporters, had begun.
The college has defended its original post, and its subsequent pivot, as “deliberately non-partisan,” as its institutional commitments demand.
“Wheaton College congratulates and prays for 1998 graduate Russell Vought regarding his senatorial confirmation to serve as the White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget!” said the now-deleted social media post on Friday.
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One commenter responded that Vought was not only working at cross-purposes to Christian values but to his fellow alums: “The work that he is doing negatively and directly impacts countless other Wheaton alum who are seeking to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this country and around the rest of the world,” the commenter said, per screenshots of the exchanges that were deleted along with the original post but obtained by media.
After deleting the post, the college backpedaled, escribiendo, “On Friday, Wheaton College posted a congratulations and a call to prayer for an alumnus who received confirmation to a White House post.” On Saturday morning, it wrote, “The recognition and prayer is something we would typically do for any graduate who reached that level of government. However, the political situation surrounding the appointment led to a significant concern expressed online. It was not our intention to embroil the College in a political discussion or dispute.”
In an email to media, Wheaton College spokesperson Joseph Moore said the deletion of the initial post was “in no way an apology for having expressed congratulations or for suggesting prayers for our alumnus.”
“The social media post led to more than 1,000 hostile comments, primarily incendiary, unchristian comments about Mr. Vought, in just a few hours,” wrote Moore. “It was not our intention to embroil the College or Mr. Vought in a political discussion or dispute. Thus, we removed the post, rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction.”
The decision, however, led to further backlash from conservative alumni and activists. Wheaton alumnus Eric Teetsel, chief executive officer of the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank founded by Vought in 2021 and credited for advising on Project 2025, called the decision an “act of cowardice.”
“Nothing about (the school’s) behavior was biblical or resembled the values Wheaton purports to stand for, and by deleting the post and apologizing the school has — yet again — compromised instead of standing firm for what is good, right, and true,” wrote Teetsel on social media site X, citing recent appearances at the school by Christian figures who oppose Trump.
Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term, is listed as an author of Project 2025, a blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term in office, and has recently spoken about his desire to traumatize federal workers and to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, according to ProPublica. Last week, the Atlantic reported that while Project 2025 called for limiting USAID’s funding, the president’s actions to shut down the agency and freeze foreign aid went beyond what was included in the proposal.
Vought has also been a behind-the-scenes leader in opposing critical race theory in churches and school boards and has openly supported forms of nacionalismo cristiano.
One Wheaton graduate who has worked on foreign assistance inside and outside the federal government said she agreed with Wheaton’s decision to delete their congratulatory post. “There are Wheaton alumni out there who really do follow Jesus’ teaching in the gospel, but they aren’t always the ones who are powerful, and so it’s incredibly frustrating to see those who, I think, don’t necessarily embody the gospel taking power in the Trump administration,” she said.
As an example, she cited Vought’s support of freezing foreign assistance and decision to apagar the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from predatory practices, as “deeply against the letter and spirit of the whole biblical witness.”
Kathryn Post is a reporter for Religion News Service based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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14 Responses
President Donald John Trump on 12/06/2017 is the first leader of a nation in the whole world to declare Yerushalayim as the Capital of Yasharal (aka: Israel) in 2000 years. Largely, the entire world is enraged, just as folks were when King Cyrus of Persia supported the rebuilding of Yerushalayim. Biblical Prophecy is coming to pass right before our very eyes. EVERY WORD which YHWH has spoken will not return void, but will accomplish the purpose for which YHWH has declared it and for which He created human beings and also for which His Son Yahshua haMashiach died on Calvary’s Tree: To have a people for Him Self. And the hostages are being released after 492 days! Yahshua is returning, soon. May we be found Faithful to Him and to His Word, Alone. He will be looking for Faith, He says, when He returns to this earth to rule and to reign as KING from Yerushalayim. His Beloved Bride, His Body, will meet Him in the air when He returns on His white horse: Revelation 19.
May YHWH’s Kingdom come, and May His Will be done on earth, just as it is in haShamayim, for His is the Kingdom, the Power, the Kabod for ever and ever, AMEN
Well, I guess they can’t congratulate any alumni from now on, for fear of upsetting people. (sigh)
“ spoken about his desire to traumatize federal workers”
I’m sure that was based on some red letter passages in scripture. Right?
There are a lot of mislead Wheaton graduates that have no idea who Jesus is. They would have chastised him for driving the moneylenders out of the Temple. This government mess and corruption is being cleaned up and folks are against it?
The “mess and corruption” are all the people this alum is enabling. Are you not seeing this?
Wheaton did the right thing. They were proud of a former graduate and then saw some of the evil he and project 25 and Trump are inflicting on our country and democracy and did the right thing. The measures of the new government are not in line with the gospel of our dear Lord Jesus Christ.
Since you have made the above statement it would behoove you to point out exactly what all this “evil” is that Trump is inflicting on the country. Can you do so? Or it that just some kind of shock-value statement because you dislike someone.
I don’t get it, most Trump supporters said Trump wouldn’t do project 25. Trump said he wouldn’t do it. And yet here is the architect and most of the EOs mirror project 2025. So just keep embracing lies dear fellow Christians
Russell Vought must have skipped his Bible classes at Wheaton.
Wheaton needs to decide whether to be a Christian college or a woke college. It can’t be both.
Wheaton College’s first response to pull back from putting a special imprimatur on alum Russell Vought was correct. Then they blinked in the face of political noise – squandering Gospel primacy – and retreated to some sort of odd compulsory endorsement. If Russell Vought is now to become a poster child for the Wheaton College legacy to the nations, then the fruitful end is in site for this once celebrated institution.
Vought’s public record speaks for itself of how destructive and remorseless are his sentiments which are distant from the long legacy of Wheaton College. Vought qualifies for the same resounding rebuke that has been issued in effect to Vice President Vance and President Trump that came in the form of a letter on 2/11/25 from Pope Francis to all bishops in the United States. In this unprecedented communication, the Holy See makes clear that the Vance – and easily the Vought “Gospel” – fail to correlate with the love and Good Samaritan distinctives of scripture. Much more was said and can be read elsewhere.
In the same moment the Pope speaks with clarity to the crisis in America, a premier evangelical institution does a face plant when they should unabashedly be accounting for the claims of Christ. In contrast, an iconic evangelical institution stammers – and others seem silent as well. Orthopraxy matters, and thank God at least the Pope held forth.
The churches in Wheaton Illinois are praying blessings on Trump, so not certain why Wheaton College would limit Vought.
Trump on the campaign trail was vomiting lies and abuses on a daily basis, and I heard virtually nothing from the U.S. Evangelical community.
Vought perfectly represents the values of Wheaton College and the U.S White Evangelical community.
I don’t have an opinion on Russell Vought. But I find the last two paragraphs distasteful. Giving that much voice to a person slandering another and not even including their name is tacky to me. If they’re a private citizen, but their comments being aired against a national figure are getting highlighted, they have ceased to be a private citizen.
Revelation 3: 14-18
“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”
Wheaton College is not what it once was.