Lilley installed as Baylor president

Posted: 4/28/06

Lilley installed as Baylor president

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

WACO—Humility and civility offer common ground where faith and reason can exist in harmony—whether in a nation or on a Christian university campus, speakers stressed at the inauguration of John Lilley as Baylor University’s 13th president.

“It is sometimes said—and it is sometimes the case—that faith and reason are at war,” said keynote speaker Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek magazine.

But in an age gripped by political and religious extremism, secularists and religionists alike should heed the Apostle Paul’s admonition to “put way childish things” such as the conflict between belief and doubt, religion and science, and faith and reason, said Meacham, author of American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation.

John Lilley, Baylor University’s 13th president.

“We must begin to think of the life of the mind and the life of the soul not as enemies, but as two wings that enable all of us to rise above a fallen world,” said Meacham, an Episcopal layman.

Both science and faith are—in some sense—about making the invisible and mysterious understandable, and that shared goal of both secular rationalists and people of faith offers the potential for peace, he asserted.

“In our country and in our time, I believe it is on the common ground of curiosity and civility and charity and humility that peace between faith and reason is possible,” he said.

Voices of moderation must make themselves heard, or they will be drowned out by the clamor of extremists, Meacham warned.

“Extremes make the journey more perilous, and ours is, sadly, an age of extremism,” he said.

Moderates have a sacred duty to present the “sensible center” in public discourse, he asserted.

Religion can be a force for unity rather than division in the world, Meacham insisted.

“Reverence for one’s own tradition is not incompatible with respect for the traditions of anyone else,” he said.

Humility and a sense of history offer Americans a way to find peace in the midst of culture wars, Meacham said.

The “American gospel”—the good news about the United States—is that “religion shapes the nation without strangling it, and life is best lived when Athens and Jerusalem are not at war, but in alliance,” he said, adding religion and ethical secularism have been steadfast allies in many human advances.

America’s founders created a landmark of statecraft by creating a system that checked the rise of extremism and protected personal religious liberty, Meacham said.

“Dedicated Christians should be among the fiercest defenders of liberty of mind and heart,” he said.

Faithful Christians who present their views in the public square should make their arguments on the basis on reason and not revelation alone, he asserted. People of faith should humbly recognize their interpretation of God’s revelation is not infallible and they see “through a glass darkly,” as the Apostle Paul said.

“We live in twilight and in hope more than in clarity and certainty. This is why the gift of reason is so essential,” Meacham said. “Light can neither enter into nor emanate from a closed mind.”

Humility and civility should be hallmarks of a Christian university, Lilley said, in remarks following his installation as Baylor’s president.

The challenge for all generations of institutional leaders is to seek “what is right and just and fair,” he said, quoting from the Old Testament book of Proverbs.

“Humility is a virtue that needs the attention of all of us,” he said, adding Baylor’s administrative leaders benefit from the ideas of colleagues, students and friends of the university—particularly regarding how to implement the school’s often-controversial Baylor 2012 long-range vision.

“It is the experience of my life that humility is often in short supply at universities—this one included,” he said.

“I have asked all of us to lower our voices and raise our spirits, and a daily dose of humility can help us as we seek to discover what is right and just and fair.”