Telling on Themselves: A Story of Institutional Betrayal in Christian Higher Education

**Abstract** The author offers a personal narrative of institutional betrayal from within a Christian college, and identifies the ways that authorities at religious institutions weaponize religious identity to work against the institution's stated values, exposing its concrete commitments. This functions, she argues, as a recognizable twist on the pattern of White men in charge projecting their self-identity onto the institution to the exclusion and harm of those who functionally constitute that institution. Her story of 25 years as a member in one such community illuminates the role identity plays in choosing institutional courage over institutional betrayal.