AI in Christian Higher Education: Where Faculty Actually Stand

The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) — a global association representing more than 180 Christian institutions, including over 150 in the U.S. and Canada and more than 30 across 18 other countries² — ran a roundtable in its own magazine with three faculty members already teaching and researching AI on Christian campuses: Dr. Joy Buchanan (economics, Samford University), Dr. Andrew Lang (computing and mathematics chair, Oral Roberts University), and Dr. David Bourgeois (associate dean and director of the AI Lab, Biola University).¹ Their answers, taken together, are a more useful read than most institutional AI policy documents — because they're specific about what's actually at stake, not just what's allowed.

The real risk isn't cheating — it's atrophy

All three faculty converge on the same underlying concern, stated in different disciplinary language: AI's danger to formation isn't primarily academic dishonesty, it's the quiet erosion of judgment that comes from delegating thinking before a student has learned to do it themselves.

Time is your truly scarce resource. If you are letting the social media algorithms devour too much of it, that's an atrophy of judgment we need to fight. Attending a university in person might help provide that accountability, in putting our time toward a higher goal of acquiring learning and preparing ourselves for a meaningful future.

— Dr. Joy Buchanan, Samford University¹

Dr. Lang frames the same concern institutionally: "As institutions of Christian higher education, it is imperative that we approach AI with the gravity it deserves. We must integrate AI literacy into our curricula... Our ultimate goal should be to cultivate well-rounded individuals who are not only technically proficient but also morally and ethically grounded."¹ Neither faculty member argues for banning the tools — both argue for building the judgment to use them well before students rely on them.

A specific, practical framing from Biola's AI Lab

Dr. Bourgeois, who directs Biola University's dedicated AI Lab, offers the most concrete operating principle of the three: "To use AI effectively, we need to have some understanding of the types of work we are asking it to do. In the case of decision-making, our students should be learning how to make the decisions necessary to be successful both in their personal and professional lives. If machines will begin making decisions for us, then we need to first understand how those decisions are made and provide oversight to them."¹

That's a usable test for any Christian institution evaluating an AI tool or policy: does this tool let a student (or a staff member) skip understanding a decision, or does it require them to understand it first and then use the tool to move faster? The same test applies well beyond the classroom — to admissions, advising, and operations.

Where the theology and the pedagogy meet

Dr. Buchanan makes the distinctly theological case for why this matters more at a Christian institution than a secular one: "Human beings aren't really being seen differently now in economics due to the rise of AI technologies... Humans are more than LLMs, however, and it's often been the church that has articulated a value for humanity beyond our intellect... Within religion, we are not primarily valued for our intelligence, but rather for our personhood."¹ That's the argument for why Christian higher ed has something specific to say about AI that a purely technical policy can't: personhood, not just productivity, is the thing being formed.

What this means for a Christian university's technology decisions

The faculty roundtable points toward a version of AI adoption that's neither a ban nor a free-for-all: literacy built into the curriculum (Lang's recommendation), a decision-oversight test applied to any tool before it's adopted (Bourgeois's framing), and an explicit theological account of why personhood — not just output — is what's being protected (Buchanan's argument). That's a genuinely different bar than "does this save staff time," and it's the bar Christian institutions are uniquely positioned to hold.