Baylor University Rescinds LGBT Inclusion Grant, But Problems Remain

Daily Citizen received a note from the Baylor’s Assistant Vice President of Media and Public Relations late Wednesday afternoon informing us “that Baylor University has rescinded the grant on which you reported.”

We explained,

On June 30, Baylor University announced its Center for Church and Community Impact (C3I) in its School of Social Work was awarded a substantial $643,401 grant from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation to help “better understand the disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women within congregations to nurture institutional courage and foster change.”

Baylor’s Media and Public Relations office also sent Daily Citizen a link to Baylor President Linda A. Livingstone’s “message to the Baylor family” on the decision to return “all associated funds to the granting foundation.”

President Livingstone helpfully notes the funded research project was “for perspectives on human sexuality that are inconsistent with Baylor’s institutional policies, including our Statement on Human Sexuality.”

She adds,

We recognize that this situation has caused concern and confusion for many within the Baylor Family and among our broader community of churches, partner organizations, and supporters. This has been a learning opportunity for many involved in this situation, and we aim to work alongside our college and school leaders, faculty, and research community, particularly during these challenging times for higher education.

She adds, “We affirm the biblical understanding of human sexuality as a gift from God, expressed through purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman.”

But at the same time, earlier in the letter, President Livingstone asserts,

We remain committed to providing a loving and caring community for all – including our LGBTQIA+ students – because it is part and parcel of our University’s mission that calls us to educate our students within a caring Christian community.

Loving and caring for all students who come to a university to study and grow is critical. No one should ever be mistreated while an institution seeks to hold fast to the biblical norm of human sexuality. Nor should a Christian institution casually adopt the specific language of an ideology that is directly opposed to what a university says it stands for on sexuality and marriage.

 Baylor, nor any other university in the world, has any “LGBTQIA+ students.” “LGBT” people do not exist. It is logically impossible for anyone to be all of those letters.

What exists are individual people who have various struggles with their sexual understanding of themselves and each of their stories are different. Unfortunately, this is the human condition after the Fall and prior to God’s complete restoration of all things. Individuals should be thoughtfully addressed as such, rather than lumped under an incoherent and meaningless political construct that describes no one. Those letters don’t and cannot represent any real person or group because most of them are mutually exclusive and represent radically conflicting concepts.

Baylor Lit Professor Misapplies Jesus’ Words to Defend LGBT Inclusion

A Baylor professor, Dr. Greg Garrett, who holds the Carole Hanks Chair of Literature and Culture recently took to social media to defend the very research grant Baylor has now wisely rejected.

Garrett stated, “I can only say: I serve the Jesus who said ‘If you’ve loved the least of these, you’ve loved me.’ Grateful for this grant that will help us love better.”

His university has now thankfully expressed a very different and proper view on what is loving. And as a literature professor, Garrett should certainly understand the necessity of proper textual interpretation.

Jesus’ statement of “What you did to the least of these, you did to me” which professor Garrett employs is from Matthew 25. This is Jesus’ discourse on the Final Judgement and His separating the sheep from the goats.

It is anything but an “inclusive” text. Jesus is referring approvingly to those who meet the basic survival needs of others, things like food, water, and clothing. Sexual and gender experimentation are certainly not basic human needs that Christians are commanded by our Lord to meet and satisfy. Quite the opposite.

Baylor’s grant rescission indicates they agree.

The celebrated Yale moral theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, famously denounced professor Garrett’s elastic theology in his book The Kingdom of God in America (1937) as “naively optimistic” liberalism proclaiming, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross… all fulfillment of promise without judgement.”

Daily Citizen has updated our original story on Baylor’s foundation gift to note their praiseworthy rescission.

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