Soon after David Solomon arrived at Baylor University in 1960, he realized that one of his new friends had a problem \u2014 this rancher\u2019s kid had spent his life in boots.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s all he had,\u201d said Solomon, a philosopher who leads the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture. \u201cWe went out and he bought his first pair of lace-up shoes. \u2026 That\u2019s what Baylor was about, back then. Baylor was supposed to take Baptist kids from small-town Texas churches, knock the dust off them and hit them with the Enlightenment. You know, civilize them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Texas has changed. But anyone digging beneath the headlines about the Waco wars over faith and learning will find that the past has power. The old assumption was that students arrived rooted into a brand of faith that was rich and rigid. Thus, Solomon said most of his professors set out to \u201cshake everybody up\u201d and teach students a more complex, progressive set of beliefs than what they learned at home and church.<\/p>\n\n
Baylor life was baptized in faith, symbolized by chimes that played hymns as students \u2014 like me, during the 1970s \u2014 walked to chapel.<\/p>\n\n
But in the classrooms, most professors assumed that piety was a good thing, but had little to do with the wisdom in secular textbooks, said Solomon, who has stayed active in debates at his alma mater. Thus, the world\u2019s largest Southern Baptist school was a \u201cuniversity with a Christian atmosphere,\u201d but not a \u201cChristian university\u201d that blended ancient faith and modern learning.<\/p>\n\n
This worked for decades, until reports about sex, drugs and nihilism pushed millions of parents to hunt for distinctively Christian campuses. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, enrollment in the 105 members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities \u2014 an organization in which I teach journalism \u2014 soared 60 percent between 1990 and 2002, while numbers at public and secular private schools edged up or stayed level.<\/p>\n\n
Recently, Baylor has steered toward \u201cChristian university\u201d status, led by its regents and an academic team headed by a brash president named Robert Sloan.<\/p>\n\n
The result was Baylor 2012, a controversial plan calling for a larger endowment, a 36 percent tuition hike, more scholarships, 230 new faculty positions and a wave of construction, most noticeably a $103 million science building. Sloan\u2019s team also began asking prospective professors \u2014 Protestants, Catholics and Jews alike \u2014 to explain how faith affected their teaching and research. This was a direct challenge to the \u201cChristian atmosphere\u201d tradition, with its separate zones for faith and learning.<\/p>\n\n
Sloan fought for a decade, before the Jan. 21 news that he will step down to become chancellor. Baylor\u2019s civil war had become national news, especially when combined with a tragic basketball scandal.<\/p>\n\n
While Sloan made painful mistakes, Baylor 2012 provoked a public statement of support from an ecumenical coalition of Christian educators \u2014 including Solomon \u2014 from Notre Dame, Yale, Harvard, Duke, the University of Chicago and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cBaylor has charted a bold course,\u201d it said. \u201cIt has strengthened the mission entrusted to it by its founders, preserving its Baptist heritage while making it intellectually relevant. \u2026 In matters of faculty hiring and curricular innovation Baylor has assumed a leadership role among the remaining Christian colleges and universities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
News reports have often linked the Baylor controversy to decades of conflict between Southern Baptist \u201cmoderates\u201d and \u201cfundamentalists.\u201d But what Sloan and the regents say they want is a \u201cbig tent Christian orthodoxy\u201d that transcends Baptist politics, according to Robert Benne of Roanoke College.<\/p>\n\n
These are fighting words to many Baylor loyalists. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cAbove all, traditional Baptists disagree with Sloan\u2019s contention that Christianity has intellectual content,\u201d argued Benne, writing in the Christian Century. \u201cIn the view of Baylor\u2019s new leaders, faith is more than atmospheric. There is a deposit of Christian belief that all Christians should hold to. On the basis of that belief they should engage the secular claims of the various academic disciplines.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
This attempt to wed soul and intellect encouraged, or infuriated, many educators in postmodern America, said Solomon.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe can no longer assume that our students know much at all about the faith once delivered to the saints,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a new world, even for church kids. The days of bringing boys in off the farm are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Soon after David Solomon arrived at Baylor University in 1960, he realized that one of his new friends had a problem \u2014 this rancher\u2019s kid had spent his life in boots. \u201cThat\u2019s all he had,\u201d said Solomon, a philosopher who leads the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture. \u201cWe went out and he bought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[105,170,190,748,813],"class_list":["post-1320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-baylor","tag-cccu","tag-christian-education","tag-robert-sloan","tag-southern-baptists"],"yoast_head":"\n