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Baylor At Breaking Point With Bible

Is the influential Texas Baptist university reaching a point of no return?
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I’m hearing that at Baylor University, the Texas Baptist university that has been surrendering to aggressive wokeness (see my recent “Every Knee Shall Bow”), there are faculty and staff who are urgently concerned that the institution is about to pass the point of no return. One of my readers, an alumnus who is very well connected at the university, writes:

You recently reported that the Baylor Board of Regents had entrusted President Linda Livingstone with chartering an LGBT group that provided community and support for Baylor’s LGBT students and yet also was consistent with the University’s stated position on sexuality. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/every-knee-shall-bow-baylor-lgbt-live-not-by-lies/

As a Baylor alum, I have to wonder why on earth the regents would trust Livingstone to do this given how her administration has handled Title IX training for faculty and students. Remember the “tea video” that you discussed here? https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/tea-and-sexual-sympathy-at-baylor/

How about the slides from the faculty and staff Title IX training that mandated trans inclusive language? https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/title-ix-transformation-of-baylor/

Now the word around the campfire is that after you posted ‘The Title IX Transformation of Baylor’ that training was taken down within a day. There remains at least one Baylor regent who draws breath and has not bent the knee to Baal somewhere.

So the administration was trying to sneak trans-inclusive language into their faculty and staff training, and they got caught red-handed. The faculty and staff training was better the following year. But now staff tell me that the administration has now started making the training super-woke again. I suppose the administration decided that if they couldn’t explicitly signal Wokeness by mandating trans inclusive language, they could implicitly send that message through the training. Despite LGBT being only a fraction of the population, they dominate the training. There is clearly a message being sent here.

 

The alumnus continues:

Now ask yourself, what do these slides communicate in the context of being part of the official training for Baylor University? There’s a message being told here and it is not a message authorized by the regents or consistent with Baylor’s position on sexuality. It is not a message that values holiness and which flees from unrighteousness.

What does it tell you about the administration that after being explicitly reprimanded for including trans dogma in the Title IX training explicitly, they have shifted to pushing the message implicitly? Do any of the slides I have sent explicitly violate the letter of the law that the regents have laid down regarding sexuality? No, they don’t– but I think that’s the problem. This administration has deliberately and carefully sought out a space that undermines the University’s position on sexuality, but in a way where they can’t be pinned to the wall. There’s no explicit violation here, no red line has been crossed, but there is clearly intent to undermine the official University policy and to tip-toe right up to the line without crossing it.

That sort of delicate attention to detail–finding the line and yet not crossing it tells you everything you need to know about this administration and where it stands on sexuality and on what its goals are. Nobody does that fine a job finding and then setting up camp on the threshold unless they are up to no good and looking to subvert. Certainly this is not the sort of training materials you would expect from an administration which embraced the University’s position on sexuality–the righteous flee from all wickedness. Holiness is about separation and distance from sin, not seeing how close you can get to it without getting in trouble.

Given the deceitful and reluctant performance of the administration on the Title IX training, do you really think Linda Livingstone is going to charter an LGBT group that upholds the BGCT [Baptist General Convention of Texas] position on sexuality? That sex is for marriage between a man and a woman and that male and female are not gender identities we identify but are marked on our bodies by the author of our nature? Give me a break.

The regents have been fooled, they were citing suicide statistics on their explanation for the decision and yet as many of us know now, those statistics don’t tell us anything about the danger of not entering into the delusion of those with ROGD [Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria] but that these women are deeply mentally unwell. There should be support for transgenders at Baylor but it should be godly and courageous support–the support that mitigates the danger of their delusion and keeps them from things like surgery which vastly increases the risk of suicide. I would recommend every regent read Irreversible Damage to get a handle on the real story of mentally unwell teen girls acting out that is driving the trans phenomenon. The talking points being delivered to the regents (probably by Baylor’s own School of Social Work) are ideological untruths. I could go on and on about the influence of the School of Social work; see here from a professor:

and this charming lady (link to her pastor page) is on the “board of advocates” for the BSSW:

(Here’s a link to the column.)

but I think we all know where the hard push from the Left on campus is coming from.

Linda Livingstone is not a Social Justice Warrior. She’s isn’t woke–not really. She is of course quite liberal, but that’s not the same as being an ideological fanatic–she isn’t one. She is a competent, pragmatic, and risk-averse administrator. That’s why right now and in this day and age, she is the exact wrong person to lead Baylor–Baylor does not need a manager to ease Baylor into conformity with “best practices” of the secular world.

“Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” James 4:4

“You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Matthew 10:22

Baylor certainly does not want someone risk-averse, someone afraid of confrontation with the world at the helm. To be Christian in a secular age is to be in conflict and to face scorn and ridicule. Baylor needs a leader who will confront the secular world and who is unafraid to speak truth against the lies of fashionable ideologies. If Baylor is not willing to stand up to lies of trans ideology and speak truth, it is better off shutting its doors. Conforming to the world in general is not an option–that is to lose one’s saltiness, to become lukewarm. But to actually lead young ones into sin? Jesus had harsher words for such and it involved a millstone.

We live in an extraordinary time characterized by deep spiritual darkness. The darkness that is descending over the U.S. is as ominous as any iron curtain. Most people, even the good people, are quietly acquiescing out of fear. The universities are ground zero for this movement that distorts the truth, which deifies self, which leads young people astray with soothing and deceitful words. To see Baylor succumb would be sad in and of itself, but is especially bitter to accept when Baylor has so many solid and faithful Christian faculty who have not bowed down before this darkness. Baylor could be a refuge or a stronghold against this movement. Despite the fait accompli narrative pushed by the media regarding the trans hysteria, most Americans and Christians are not on board with the nonsense on pronouns and gender identity, they do not support mutilating young women, and they resent the use of suicide victims as hostages for a program of social revolution.

If ever a Christian reading stories of the ancient martyrs or other great pivotal times in history wanted an opportunity to be a witness for Christ against deceit of the world, now is the time! The moment to give testimony of the truth that stands in sharp relief to the world has arrived! This is the time you have been preparing for, praying, fasting, and disciplining yourself so that you’ll be ready when the time of testing reaches you. This is one of those rare moments where the contrast between the light of Christ and darkness of the world is greatest–the crest of the wave. When in our own time have we ever seen such spiritual hunger and desperation? Young people would flock to the truth if anyone would be bold enough to tell it, to risk the wrath of the world. Any current faculty you lost for proclaiming Christian truth would be replaced by the faithful ones laying low in secular universities, seeking a place that would stand for truth. To paraphrase Gibson’s William Wallace, If you would just lead them, they would follow you.

Maybe the decision will be to play it safe, keep your head down, go with the flow, repeat the lies. This is of course what most ordinary people did in both Germany and Russia when poisonous ideology became orthodoxy. Maybe when all the risks are calculated, the enrollment and endowment numbers are crunched, our long term viability just looks better when we tell lies in the short term. Surely the trans hysteria will pass as all such movements do; we can weather the storm for the next few years by blending in and regurgitating the ideological tenets. We’ll live to a ripe old age, never offending any cultural elites or having our names dragged through the mud by activists on twitter. But man, I’d hate upon arriving in that great company of witnesses to have to tell St Peter or any martyr that during the great time of testing that I lived through, I didn’t do anything–just “shoveled shit in Louisiana.”

He goes on:

The regret from playing it safe could come much sooner. Just in the past year, the Baylor regents have found it necessary to admit the University’s complicity in another great evil–slavery. Assuming that the shame expressed was genuine and not a calculated PR move that coincided with the June protests, how embarrassing is it to have to admit that while liberty was being preached at Hillsdale, Baylor was repeating the lies of the antebellum South–which was no doubt the safest route; Baylor after all lived to tell the tale.

For a contrast to Baylor’s safe complicity with slavery, check out what Baptists were doing at the same time at Hillsdale.

When the dust settles on the trans hysteria–when doctors pay millions in settlements, when gender reassignment surgery reaches the company of electroshock therapy and the experiments of Mengele, people will find it amazing the untruths about male and female and about language and identity that were told on college campuses and they will marvel that anyone could have ever been so foolish or cowardly not to speak the truth against such outrageous and obviously corrupt ideology. The regents of Baylor at that time may be forced once again to apologize for the school’s complicity in perpetuating this darkness and again be humbled by places like Hillsdale.

Man, that was something. This is what it means to lose an institution to an ideology. If Baylor breaks with the Bible, it’s not coming back.

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