Posted: 9/19/03
Three views on Baylor's quest
The Baptist Standard asked three Texas Baptists to write from differing perspectives on one of the questions at the heart of the current debate over the future of Baylor University:
Can a university be distinctively Baptist
& academically excellent?
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| By Joel Gregory | By Ella Wall Prichard | By Chris Seay |
As a double graduate of Baylor University, I see my alma mater as standing at a crossroads. It is looking both ways at an intersection and will have to make a decision. That decision superficially appears to be about debt, football, a disgruntled faculty or factious regents. To limit the historic decision confronting the school to those issues trivializes its impact on 158 years of Baylor history. The controversy transcends the disparate issues raised by those with a bushel basket of beefs about the Bears. | The lists of “top universities in America” include the great public research universities; once-Christian universities, such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton; a few private institutions founded as secular universities after the German model, such as Stanford and Johns Hopkins; and a handful of elite Catholic universities. As a student at Baylor University from 1959 to 1963, I dreamed of the day when Baylor would become a "Baptist Harvard." | As I travel the country speaking to pastors, I get a lot of questions about my commitment to our denomination. I believe denominations are quickly becoming dinosaurs. So, many wonder why I invest my time and resources as a Texas Baptist. I tell them straight up that the Baptist General Convention of Texas is more like a family than a denomination. |
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