Christian College Presidents

Two important Christian institutions of higher education have appointed new presidents.

Baylor University has chosen Ken Starr. Best known as the special prosecutor in the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, Starr has been a law school administrator at Pepperdine with loads of academic credentials. This still doesn’t tell me where Baylor is going, though. The university has been torn between the goal of a former president to become a true Christian university, an evangelical Notre Dame, and the goal of many of its entrenched faculty to become just another liberal university like nearly all the others. Choosing someone known for his politics rather than his theology seems like yet a third way for the Baptist school, one that may please neither side.

The new president of Wheaton College will be Philip Ryken

. What a good choice! I know him. The son of Wheaton professor and major Christian literary scholar Leland Ryken, Phil is currently the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where he succeeded the late James Boice. Phil will bring to the job a depth of scholarship, the heart and skills of a pastor, and Protestant orthodoxy.