Art students at Pensacola Christian College are, according to the college’s website, “equipped to share Christ through the visual arts, music, or dramatic performance.” Fair enough. A rather niche area of study, but each to their own, right?

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

Art history features prominently in the curriculum, as students are encouraged to gain a biblically supported understanding of the arts. What a wondrous world awaits the student! Feasting on the fruits of human imagination since the dawn of time, they will learn all about the life and times of some true icons of mankind, from Michelangelo and Da Vinci to Van Gogh, Picasso and Dali. Talk about putting the fun back into fundamentalist Christian schooling!

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

However, not is all as it seems. Denial of history is a common tactic among the more hardcore religiously-minded, and while it’s not exactly the Taliban blowing up ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, feeling the need to censor the slightest hint of cleavage on the Mona Lisa is sensitivity bordering on the extreme.

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

How are students supposed to learn the history of art when the realities of the times are fastidiously covered up? Someone, somewhere, had the onerous task of ‘clothing’ an entire textbook’s worth of iconic figures deemed too ‘risque’ by the prudish art department, with classical genitals, boobs and bums crudely drawn over in black marker.

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

The results are sad for the students, whose worldview is tragically limited by the religious police, but quite hilarious for us, as we see the lengths that some Christians will go to maintain their ideological ‘purity.’

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

Pensacola Christian College is located in Pensacola, Florida and was founded in 1974. Their goal is to “train young men and women in higher education for a life of service to Jesus Christ,” and to “promote the cause of Christ by providing a distinctively Christian-traditional, liberal arts education that develops students spiritually, intellectually, morally, culturally, and socially.”

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

The school is free to teach as it chooses, but what do you think about this kind of censorship? What do you think that sheltering students from reality like this, hopes to achieve? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

Image credits: scopecreepstudio

The Imgur user who shared the images gave their view on the bizarre textbook

While others were just baffled by it all