Friends,
My soul has been restless all summer as news has trickled out about further changes to the Hub for Spiritual Life, only in its second-year of operation. After attending the Well, a mid-week service for students, on Sept. 1, my soul has been unwell. I’ve spent all weekend in prayer and discernment and must now speak.
My concerns in a nutshell: Danny DeWalt, Pepperdine’s vice president and chief of staff, has taken over spiritual life at the university and made it a satellite hub for his charismatic evangelical church, Malibu Vintage. I worry he is pouring all of the spiritual life resources into one bucket that only serves 15% of our undergraduate students. I worry he is radically redirecting spiritual life at our university, away from our historical affiliation. And I worry the team he has put in place is ill-equipped to meet our students where they are really at.
I believe the Board of Regents must act swiftly to ensure that spiritual life at Pepperdine is theologically sound and in line with the university’s religious heritage.
These concerns, which I elaborate on below, grow out of my deep love for Pepperdine, its mission, and its Church of Christ heritage, which I am watching be erased.
***
When I came to Pepperdine as a first-year undergraduate, I was a cultural Christian who was anti-organized religion. I had come to Pepperdine solely for its journalism program.
But I fell in love with a faith that encouraged me to ask big questions. I met Christians whose lives matched their beliefs.
When I decided I wanted to get baptized and commit my life to Christ at the September campus ministry retreat, the Church of Christ campus ministry leaders made me study for several weeks to understand what I was committing to. Linda Truschke and Scott Lambert baptized me in the faculty jacuzzi in mid-November of my first year.
Pepperdine showed me that a life of the mind and a life of faith could go hand in hand, one strengthening the other. Pepperdine promised me that “truth, having nothing to fear from investigation, should be pursued relentlessly in all disciplines.”
And I pursued God relentlessly. I added a religion minor to my journalism major. Then I stayed at Pepperdine and got a master’s in religion and communication. After some years working in journalism, I went and got my PhD in church history.
Then, Pepperdine recruited me back, to help other young people see how the life of the mind and the life of faith could go hand in hand.
So in that vein, as a faculty member in journalism and religion for the last decade, I want to share what I’ve been witnessing, so that others might better understand how radically spiritual life is being changed, and why it matters.
***
With a new president in charge, Pepperdine reorganized spiritual life on the campus, and created the Hub for Spiritual Life in late summer 2021. The goal was to have a team of chaplains who could minister to all student needs.
Danny DeWalt, vice president and chief of staff to Pepperdine President Jim Gash, placed the Hub under his direction from the start. Now, he’s officially taken it over, on top of all of his other duties, pushing several established chaplains out and hiring his own people in their place. The beloved University Chaplain Sara Barton, who has a doctorate in ministry, extensive experience, deep roots in the Churches of Christ, and who oversaw all spiritual life at the university for the last decade, has been redirected to pastoral care for faculty and staff only.
DeWalt is a lawyer with an MDiv, from Princeton in fact, but his theology and vision is drastically different from our traditional heritage in the Churches of Christ. He spent the last year as interim minister for Malibu Vintage. This is a very evangelical, charismatic-style church.
To understand why that matters, one has to know that the Churches of Christ are almost hyper-rational, unemotional in style. When I was a student, raising your hands in worship at the midweek prayer service was over the top. It’s fair to say we’re guilty of under-developing our theology of the Holy Spirit.
In contrast, one can argue Vintage has an overdeveloped view of the Holy Spirit.
Churches of Christ favor deep, reflective, scriptural study as the core of our religious practice. Charismatic churches tend to favor emotional experience as they seek to display charisma, such as speaking in tongues or healing.
The Churches of Christ are also known for following a very simple, acapella style of worship—meaning no instruments. These days that’s a matter of preference, not theology for most. But it means we sing hymns without a lot of repetitive lyrics or emotional choruses. Vintage follows the evangelical world in having a full rock band.
Both churches can likely learn from the other, but the point is they are coming from radically different sides of the spectrum.
***
The Hub for Spiritual Life took over a mid-week service called the Well when they launched in Fall 2021.
University Church of Christ Campus Minister Thomas Fitzpatrick rebooted a Thursday Night Worship service in the early 2010s. Working with Worship Minister Taylor Begert, they renamed it the Well in 2014, and Begert created a worship band with students known as the Well Collective. Though run by the UCC, the Well was ecumenical in nature, and followed student interest in incorporating instruments in worship and more evangelical rock.
University staff took over the Well when the Hub for Spiritual Life opened in Fall 2021. At the same time, the university church took over the Table, a Saturday night dinner and service that President Jim Gash and other senior administrators started, building off the UCC’s house groups.
I started hearing from concerned Church of Christ students about a charismatic turn at the Well soon thereafter.
While speaking at the Well in December 2021, President Jim Gash urged students to get baptized that night — with little advance notice for university chaplains — and used what some students described as high pressure, performative, and manipulative tactics to get an immediate decision. Mostly this involved repetitive altar calls, prayers and additional songs. Gash baptized six students in the pool at his on-campus house.
I had upset Church of Christ students in my office the next day, struggling to process what they had seen.
I followed up with chaplains and was assured they had provided pastoral care for students who made decisions. Best practice in youth and young adult ministry is to avoid highly emotional or high-pressure decisions when it comes to baptism, as it is supposed to be a life-changing and life redirecting decision.
While our tradition frames baptism as a very thought out, well-studied and premeditated decision, the key to me is that people are connected to faith communities where they can keep learning and growing in their faith.
I couldn’t check out the Well for myself at all last spring because I taught a graduate class in the library on those Thursday evenings. But I can attest that everyone in the vicinity of the amphitheater can hear the music. My students had to discuss American moral thought—including Christianity’s not-always-positive role in shaping the nation—with a constant background noise of evangelical rock music seeping in.
So I made a point to attend the Well this past Thursday, during the first week of classes.
Here’s the good I saw:
● Students packed the amphitheater. While only half full at the start, they had to do a seat shuffle to make room for more people a few songs in.
● At least half the crowd really got into the worship; hands up, dancing, clearly enjoying themselves, clearly moved at times. This includes Danny DeWalt.
● The main message, preached by Cameron McCollum and his wife, Abbey, was lovely. It was short on scripture — they focused on just the first words of Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy,” — and emotionally charged, but (from my view) theologically sound. Abbey McCollum particularly gave a strong testimonial that when following God, your life should illustrate that, your life should reflect your belief. McCollum is the director of the Sudreau Global Justice Institute at the Caruso School of Law, which DeWalt also is the executive director over. Yes, this is in addition to being chief of staff and running spiritual life.
● Students received a very strong message throughout the night from both McCollums that God loved them, that God would meet them just where they were, that no prior sin or failing in their life could keep them from the love of God. Our students need this message!
● Abbey McCollum announced there would be a baptism that night, and appropriately issued an invitation for other students considering such a step to come and talk to her, her husband or one of the other ministerial staff present after (though others were not identified in the crowd).
● Cam McCollum read out some clear scripture about baptism before the first baptism so students could better understand what was happening.
● Two more students ended up getting baptized.
● When the song leaders dropped out, the students were really singing. That was beautiful.
Here’s what gave me pause, and left my soul feeling unwell:
● The overemphasis on the Holy Spirit was very apparent, in the language used “I have a word for you tonight,” in the songs chosen, and in the invitations given. Hope Dease, a recent graduate who is a fellow at the Global Justice Institute and is now running the social media accounts for the Well and the Hub, told students in a second altar call that the Helper was better than Jesus, that it was God living inside of us.
● Before the first baptism, there were basically two more additional altar calls/urgings for students to make decisions/additional songs sung. Dease, who was helping lead worship, told students at least three times: “No pressure, but the invitation is … ”
● Before the first baptism, Cam McCollum had students practice how they should scream and celebrate when the student came out of the water. DeWalt was then there filming it each time. Let me repeat that and put it in bold: They made students practice their reactions and got it on camera.
● The student who had shown up that night to get baptized said she had been motivated to do so after attending the previous week’s Well during New Student Orientation. She gave a deeply moving and emotional testimony—sharing very, very vulnerable information I won’t repeat here. While highly successful at reaching the hearts of others, I am deeply worried that this was too big of an ask for someone who had just given her heart to God.
● Another altar call and song followed, and another student was baptized. Then another invitation, another song, another baptism.
● The baptisms left me feeling deeply torn — so grateful that those students found God’s love in that moment, so worried about how much the emotional nature of that night impacted their decisions.
● Basically everyone involved in leading this service goes to Malibu Vintage, and the whole service was basically an extension site of Malibu Vintage.
● I recognized only one song the entire night, which I think just speaks to how vastly different Vintage is.
● I could not tell what follow-up pastoral care there would be. I could not spot any chaplains I knew in the crowd beyond the worship leader Ko Ku.
My initial worry after attending the Well Sept. 1 was just how over-committed the remaining chaplains would be to provide follow-up pastoral care after such emotional decisions, because I knew their ranks had been decimated and, last I had checked, the ministers listed on the Hub website included several who no longer worked there.
Since then, the Hub for Spiritual Life’s webpage was finally updated, showing the new staff with DeWalt leading. Compare this list to last year’s announcement.
Now, I have serious concerns that most of the new hires are Vintage people, and that many of them are pulling double, in the case of DeWalt, triple duty at the university. The Vintage connections are well known, but they are not transparent on this staff page.
MORE UPSETTING, and that deserves the bold capital letters, is the severe lack of theological education. From what I can tell, only DeWalt and Zac Luben have advanced degrees in ministry. Luben is one of the original Hub chaplains. He has significant ministry experience, but his title indicates he's been only serving the graduate campuses. Parker King is completing his Master’s of Divinity at Pepperdine and was a graduate intern in last year’s Hub. He’s been promoted to associate director for discipleship.
Only one other of the new directors — Kira Augustine — appears to have any undergraduate degree in religion or ministry. I believe Augustine was already working as an administrative assistant in the Hub.
The university has not released biographies yet on any of the new hires. But one, Cameron Gilliam, the new top director of Student Ministries, has a website. It lists him as a life coach with a master’s in education in human development and a bachelor’s in biology. From what I understand, he now runs Seaver 200, which replaced convocation, Pepperdine’s religious education requirement for undergraduates. This means someone without any theological education is running a key piece of the theological education students receive.
Further, everyone has been given new titles, they are all directors or associate directors of ministries. Only Jordan Holm in Athletics still uses the title chaplain.
Strangely, the new list includes original Hub leader Christin Shatzer Román, director of Community Engagement and Service, but leaves off Olivia Robinson, assistant director of Community Engagement and Service. It’s my understanding that both are working feverishly right now in preparation for Step Forward Day Sept. 10, the biggest service event in Pepperdine’s calendar. It’s very upsetting that in drafting his new team, DeWalt left off one of the few people of color.
***
I’m concerned that this focus on worship and evangelism, while clearly reaching a chunk of the undergraduate student body (maybe as high as 15%), may be also turning off our actual Church of Christ students (8% these days) and further alienating our students who have been turned off to organized religion (as high as 22%). It’s not clear to me whether the Hub for Spiritual Life is still for all students, including our non-Christian students, or whether it is explicitly for Christians, and even more explicitly for charismatic-leaning Christians. With this focus on emotional worship, is there room for a faith led by the mind? Are there people to walk with our students who are deconstructing and reconstructing? Because that’s where most of the students I meet are these days.
Given the move away from chaplaincy and toward directing student ministry, I am worried about what pastoral care will look like moving forward. A lot of the unseen demands on the chaplain’s office come in the middle of the night, and in times of deep crisis. We had three students die last year, and I saw our chaplains doing amazing feats of spiritual care in the wake of those losses, and in the candlelight vigil they held in November to acknowledge the dual tragedies our then seniors had faced as first years —the death of first-year Alaina Housley in the Borderline mass shooting and a massive wildfire that threatened campus. Who will serve the student community when mourning inevitably comes?
I’ve raised this last concern with the highest levels of Student Affairs, because the resilience training Pepperdine offers points students to the Hub as a major resource. Their curriculum points to numerous resources and videos that Sara Barton created. The best part of the switch to the Hub was that it provided a team of chaplains to minister to all students at a time when they are increasingly not OK. I trusted every member of the team Sara Barton put together. Now, given the current staffing I am seeing at the Hub, with their lack of theological training and their clear charismatic emphasis, I cannot in good conscience generically refer students there.
Further, just like with the creation of the Hub, which involved some major lay-offs, reorganizations and new hires, there has been zero communication about what’s happening and why. We’re starting the second week of classes and there still has been no official announcements or explanations of these changes. That lack of transparency and clarity furthers my sense of discomfort.
My own experience coming to faith and my expertise as a historian of American religion shape my viewpoint. I can tell you, had I experienced what I saw Thursday night during my first week on campus, I might have forever written off the faith. In my current research, there’s some troubling threads in charismatic thought and practice I won’t go into here, but they are definitely adding to my soul’s unrest (Ask and I’ll provide references).
More importantly, as a scholar of religion, I know that when religious universities lose their direct, institutional ties to their affiliated faith, they start to lose their religious identity altogether. While I wouldn’t mind one iota if students included charismatic-style worship in the ministries they lead, it’s the top-down nature of this development, that someone with the blessing and trust of the university’s president is actively trying to move us away from our religious heritage, that has me deeply disturbed.
Some may not know this, but Pepperdine religion professors are the only professors on campus required to be members of a Church of Christ. Further, due to our affiliation, Church of Christ folk are given preference across hiring in all positions, but all we ask other faculty and staff is that they are active members of a religious congregation and support Pepperdine’s mission. Some may raise fair questions about whether this practice of favoring Church of Christ members should continue, but I have to ask, how is the Board of Regents OK with the fact that the university’s spiritual life staff is now led by someone who is not Church of Christ, and who is clearly favoring his narrow co-religionists above all others? Are regents OK with Pepperdine becoming affiliated more strongly with Malibu Vintage than the University Church of Christ? Are they OK with the reality that DeWalt took over a UCC ministry and made it a satellite service for his own church?
Again, I believe the Board of Regents must act swiftly to ensure that spiritual life at Pepperdine is theologically sound and in line with the university’s religious heritage.
If you believe this too, please share this with the regents you know.
Sincerely,
Christina Littlefield, PhD
Associate Professor of Journalism and Religion
Pepperdine University
Addendums: Links to additional posts I’ve made related to this topic.