Baptist Roots Meets Modern Pressures: Baylor University Confronts Its Defining Tension
(ANALYSIS) Baylor University can boast of occasional Big 12 athletic prowess, but its fame rests far more on academic quality. It was founded in 1845, even before the Republic of Texas joined the Union, and has a unique status as the world’s biggest Baptist campus (current enrollment: 18,853).
Across American history, many colleges have attenuated or dropped their original religious purposes. Harvard University stripped down its 17th-century Latin motto, “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” (Truth for Christ and the Church) to simply “Veritas.”
However, Baylor still proclaims “integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment” as its core mission.
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Just what does that mean in practice? This long-running issue, which affects many campuses, erupted anew at Baylor last month and is on the agenda for the May 18-19 board meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and its Nov. 15-17 annual gathering (occurring, by coincidence, in Baylor’s town of Waco).
The BGCT long controlled Baylor by appointing all of its regents. But then hardline conservatives took command of the nationwide denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. To protect academic freedom, moderate Baptists in 1990 maneuvered to reduce BGCT appointees to one-fourth of the regents, though all must still be Baptists.
For more than half a century, American Protestantism has undergone a divisive conflict over sexual morality. Unusually for such a major campus, Baylor adopted a traditionalist policy in 2002, revised it in 2004 and revised it again twice in 2009. That latest wording states that the university affirms the Christian teaching on both heterosexual and homosexual relationships “across the ages and around the world,” which defines “purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman as the biblical norm.”
Those facing personal challenges with this are encouraged to seek university counseling. Then this: “It is thus expected that Baylor students will not participate in advocacy groups which promote understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching.”
The BGCT, which strongly upholds the sexuality belief, first began pondering Baylor ties in 2022, when the university recognized Prism, a new student organization that provides “a respectful space that embraces diverse sexual identities.”
Last June, Baylor’s social work school announced a study of churches’ “disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women” to develop “concrete steps toward genuine inclusion.” Church folk protested, and within days, Baylor President Linda Livingstone rescinded the project and a $643,401 foundation grant.
But that did not prevent a motion at last November’s BGCT meeting to cut off funding for Baylor unless it bars such student groups as Prism and Baptist Women in Ministry. That bid was soundly defeated. But voting on a second motion to re-examine the whole Baylor relationship was close and only killed by the chair without balloting.
Then came April 22 and two competing campus events sponsored by students. The first was organized by Turning Point USA, the conservative political movement led by the assassinated Charlie Kirk. The controversial headliners were President Trump’s border-enforcement chief, Tom Homan and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is campaigning for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in the May runoff (Paxton replaced Donald Trump Jr., who was originally set to speak).
Whereupon Baylor Democrats and other student groups won university approval for an “All Are Neighbors” rally on campus that same evening. The event featured two prominent LGBT activists with same-sex partners: President Kelley Robinson of the Human Rights Campaign and American Baptist minister Paul Raushenbush, president of the Interfaith Alliance.
In response, BGCT Executive Director Julio Guarneri is asking the May board meeting to launch an official study of Baylor issues.
Apart from sentimental bonds, the BGCT this year is donating $1.1 million to Baylor and its Baptist seminary, not bad but a tiny factor in the school’s $996 million operating budget. However, there’s considerable risk to donations and student recruiting within the 5,300 BGCT congregations and the 46,876 in the Southern Baptist Convention nationwide, not to mention support from individual Baptists.
In recent years, some 200 U.S. religious schools that uphold traditional sexuality beliefs have been identified as discriminatory by LGBT activists who have liberal political backing. Most, like Baylor, are conservative Protestant, but Catholic, Latter-day Saint, Jewish and Muslim campuses are also targeted. Penalties proposed for them are the removal of regional accreditation, the denial of tax exemption, and the ending of government grants and student aid.
A major setback occurred in 2024 when the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that colleges need not obey government anti-discrimination policies that violate deeply-held beliefs. A major group pursuing related LGBT lawsuits disbanded last August.
A large university like Baylor can ride out the current controversies, but higher education faces troubling times even apart from sexuality conflicts. Small private colleges, often in rural settings and many with religious profiles of varying piety, find it difficult to compete with public and elite private universities on fundraising and student recruiting.
An April 10 Wall Street Journal headline was blunt: “Smaller Colleges Face Extinction.” An April 26 listing at highereddive.com said that during the past decade, 147 non-profit colleges merged or shut down, and the Huron Consulting Group reported that another 442 face serious risk in the coming decade. By rule of thumb, a minimum enrollment of 1,000 is the break-even point.
Demographers predict U.S. high school graduates will begin to decline after the class of 2025. The latest U.S. government report shows a new low of 1.57 births per woman, which compares with the 2.1 needed to maintain stable population.
Within years, projections calculate, U.S. deaths will begin to exceed births. All that is a huge developing issue — not just for colleges but for the whole of American religion.
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.