Baylor 'Pride' Redux

Carrying the Torch

A Beacon of Freedom?

(Image from BAA Magazine Baylor Line)

Now that I've had time to read more from my Fall 2007 issue of the Baylor Alumni Association's magazine, the Baylor Line, I find that I was right about how the BAA is framing the conflict with the current Baylor administration under the guidance of Baylor University President John Lilley.

In an article titled "Carrying the Torch," Baylor Alumni Association President-Elect Bill Nesbitt made the following, crucial point:

We are concerned that the cherished and historic principles that have guided Baylor be not lost, principles that have made Baylor successful in merging faith and the pursuit of academic excellence. We are concerned that revolutionary Baptist principles such as priesthood of the believer, if not understood and cherished, may be swept away in favor of a creedal circumstance in which the central authority seeks to enforce that Baylor become more Christian and more intentional about faith according to the precepts of the enforcer's faith (Bill Nesbitt, "Carrying the Torch," Baylor Line, Fall 2007, Volume 69, Number 3).

I seem to have been on the mark in defining the "pride" alluded to on the front cover of the Baylor Line's current edition: "A Tradition of Pride." Nesbitt is emphasizing 'justifiable' pride in the Baptist tradition of the individual believer's priesthood against the 'unjustifiable' pride of creeds that dictate what the believer must proclaim.

Okay, that's the BAA's way of framing the issue, but how many divisions does Nesbitt have?

There are a hundred thousand alumni who devoted years of their lives and all the money they could beg or borrow to further their educations at Baylor. Many of them care deeply about the university. They are the human face of the fabled "good old Baylor Line." Those human faces collectively have the paramount vested interest in Baylor.

A hundred thousand. That's a good, round number. What do they all want? Nesbitt hopes for support:

Those who cherish Baylor's traditional moderate position -- a position Jon Meacham, in his address at John Lilley's inauguration, called the "sensible center" -- and those who cherish the principles that have guided Baylor over the years will have a happy and supportive alumni association cheering them on. Those who would steer her to the left or to the right will provoke a quarrelsome alumni association.

Nesbitt is hoping for full support from Baylor alumni, but will he get it? Do Baptists still support traditional Baptist views emphasizing the individual believer's freedom of interpretation? Or have they moved toward creedal Christianity's emphasis upon affirmation of an explicit statement of faith?

John Lilley, mind you, is also a Baylor alumnus, so what does he support? I guess that we'll soon see.

Meanwhile, the shape of Baylor's future hangs in the balance, but as special agent K put it in Men in Black, "The world is always about to be destroyed by someone."

Nothing new.

Baylor 'Pride'

Baylor Pride

Baylor Line:

Magazine of the Baylor Alumni Association

(Image from Fall 2007 Issue)

For the past two days, I've been thinking about pride, and just after posting on the issue twice, I noticed that my current issue of the Baylor Line, the Alumni Association's magazine, features the words "A Tradition of Pride" emblazoned across its cover.

Why?

Baylor is a conservative Baptist school associated with the Southern Baptist denomination, which is the church in which I grew up and in which I learned to be suspicious of pride, so why is the Baylor Alumni Association (BAA), emphasizing pride?

What is the organization claiming to be proud of?

I only joined the BAA about three years ago, partly out of nostalgia but partly out of curiosity. I wanted to become familiar with the goings on of the university that I had graduated from about a quarter of a century before.

I discovered -- or, rather, confirmed -- that a religious fight was going on. I say confirmed because at Baylor, there's always a religious struggle going on. There was in my day, there was in the 80s and 90s, and there is today. I know this because even though I didn't maintain close connections to Baylor, I kept hearing news through old university friends and through the media about ongoing conflict over how 'Christian' the University should be.

My impression is that the current Baylor administration under Baylor President John M. Lilley would like nudge Baylor more in the direction of a Christian university, which might include moving towards adoption of a creedal statement that faculty would have to sign. I say "might" because I don't know for a fact but do know that this has often been one of the issues raised.

The BAA seems concerned about this as a possible issue, for the organization's Executive Vice President Jeff Kilgore asks in his "Connections" column ("The crux of the matter") if Baylor University needs a religious "correction" toward a more "intentional" form of Baylor's Christian commitment. He poses this question not because he thinks that it does but because he thinks that it does not.

Perhaps I should let Mr. Kilgore speak:

In the spring issue of the Baylor Line, Baylor Alumni Association president George Cowden III, president-elect Bill Nesbitt, and I ran a column in this space titled "A Thriving Faith." We wrote, in part:

Baylor is first and foremost a place of learning. It was not founded to be a church, a hospital, a children's home, or a mission-sending agency but rather a Baptist university of the first order, based upon the historic Baptist principles of the priesthood of the believer, the sufficiency of scripture, the autonomy of the local church, the separation of church and state, and religious liberty for every human being. The beloved and incomparable George W. Truett summed it up best when he said, "There should never be coercion in matters of religion; God wants free worshippers and no other kind."

Afterward, I heard from a regent who had just rotated off the Board of Regents who interpreted our column as being a call for Baylor to move in a less religious and more secular direction. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, during a recent breakfast with Harold Cunningham, chair of Baylor's Board of Regents, I told him that the alumni association would fight as vigorously against any effort to secularize Baylor as it would against any effort to weaken Baylor's adherence to traditional Baptist principles by implementing policies and engaging in practices that would create a more coercive and restrictive religious environment.

The Baylor Alumni Association stands with Baylor's founding fathers and leaders over the years in pointing to Jesus Christ as Lord and following Christ's teaching to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." The point of our column -- and a primary function of the alumni association -- is to speak out on behalf of Baylor's thousands of alumni who are resolute in protecting Baylor from extremism, whether it's secularism or religious demagoguery. We want to protect Baylor's historically maintained place in the "sensible center" of Baptist theology.

During a discussion of these large issues with Harold Cunningham over breakfast, he told me that he understood our position. But he then suggested -- as I remember the general themes of our conversation -- that perhaps the so-called "center" Baylor has occupied, religiously speaking, has been too far to the left. He said that all they were doing was trying to correct that situation, which I understood to be an allusion to the efforts by some Baylor regents and administrators to install a more "intentional" form of Baylor's Christian commitment on campus.

I am guessing that "intentional" is a code word for "institutional" in the sense of "creedal" -- for that's been the issue fought over among Southern Baptists ever since the late 60s. Traditionally, Baptists have been opposed to creeds, emphasizing the sufficiency of scripture for belief and the priesthood of the believer for interpretation. Such a position as that remains unchallenged so long as everybody believes more or less the same thing but becomes challenged if beliefs among believers begin to diverge, which is what happened in the 60s.

The Southern Baptist Convention has moved toward adopting a creed and some Baptists have felt that Baylor should move in the same direction.

In my hard copy issue of the Fall 2007 Baylor Line, the page with Kilgore's column includes a quote from the late former Baylor president Herbert H. Reynolds:

"It would be easier if Baylor were either a secular university of a Bible college, but it would not be Baylor. When a school claims to be 'morally better,' it abandons excellence for spiritual pride."

In quoting this statement, Kilgore would seem to be throwing down a gauntlet. To wit: those who wish to push Baylor in the direction of a more "intentional" expression of Christianity are in danger of commiting the sin of "spiritual pride."

Here, "spiritual pride" would mean "moralism." Kilgore is suggesting that a movement toward adopting a creed would result in hypocritical, outward conformity masking whatever the individual truly believes.

The "Tradition of Pride" emblazoned across the Baylor Line's front cover, by contrast, is intended to affirm a commitment to Baylor's more traditional conformity to "historic Baptist principles of the priesthood of the believer, the sufficiency of scripture, the autonomy of the local church, the separation of church and state, and religious liberty for every human being," as noted above.

Such a commitment implies free expression, however, and Kilgore invites a free response:

The central question I would ask you now is this: Based on your experience, do you believe Baylor's religious commitment has been properly balanced with our values of academic freedom and religious liberty, or has Baylor's religious commitment been too weakly applied to our life at Baylor and thus requires a more intentional implementation in the areas of faculty hiring and tenure decisions, student life, and the character of our academic programs?

In short, is a "correction" necessary? If not, are greater efforts required to preserve Baylor's heritage of a passion for Christ that stems from his liberating grace and an academic environment characterized by the principled pursuit of knowledge unfettered by narrowness and bigotry?

I expect that the Baylor Line will be hearing from various alumni and that the winter or spring issue will feature the answers to this question.

I suppose that we'll see precisely in what matter -- Baptist tradition or Christian creed -- people take the most pride.