Posted: 2/17/06
Notre Dame model for Baylor generates debate
By Ken Camp
Managing Editor
WACO—Baylor University supporters agree the school is “Texas Baptists’ crown jewel,” but should it aspire to become the “Protestant Notre Dame”? And in a larger sense, what can Roman Catholics teach Baptists?
Since former university President Robert Sloan led the school to adopt its Baylor 2012 long-range plan and open its Institute for Faith & Learning, supporters have pointed to Notre Dame as an example of a religiously affiliated school that successfully integrates faith and learning.
They maintain Notre Dame generally has accomplished what Baylor wants to achieve—recognized status as a top-tier university without surrendering to secularism.
“Notre Dame is both academically highly successful and confessionally Christian. It’s evident from the language university leaders use that they are serious about its Catholic character and its high academic aspirations,” said Michael Beaty, chairman of the Baylor philosophy department.
Baylor could come become the kind of national university that the best and brightest Protestant students will dream of attending, said Doug Henry, director of Baylor’s Institute for Faith & Learning.
“Baylor can have the same sort of image for Protestants that Notre Dame has for Catholics—a place to come to if you’re looking for moral, spiritual and ethical maturity—a place where students set their sights and set their hearts on going,” Henry said. “It can become the most intellectually interesting place to be, and a place where serious, smart Protestant and Baptist students will want to come.”
Holding up Notre Dame as an example does not mean Baylor should seek to copy the Roman Catholic university in every way, added Beaty, who earned his doctorate at Notre Dame.
“It isn’t a recipe or a formula to follow. But it offers an example of what can be learned—positive and negative,” he said. “I’d say we’re about 30 years behind Notre Dame in terms of endowment, facilities, faculty and national prestige.”
Catholic connection criticized
Critics, on the other hand, have maintained the Roman Catholic model for higher education does not fit a Baptist university. And they have viewed with suspicion links between some faculty in Baylor’s philosophy department and Catholic schools.
Beaty serves on the board of advisers for the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture, and he and several other Baylor faculty have participated in a fall conference sponsored by the center for the last few years.
Beaty, Henry and their colleague Scott Moore, director of the Great Texts Program in the Baylor Honors College, also presented papers at a conference at Vatican City last year. The conference marked the 40th anniversary of Gaudium et Spes, a document on social ethics issued by the Second Vatican Council.
Their presentations at the conference—particularly as reflected in an abstract of Henry’s paper that became widely disseminated—sparked heated debate for several months on Internet message boards devoted to Baylor and religious topics. Some writers accused Henry and his colleagues of being “pseudo-Catholics” or “quasi-fundamentalists”—labels the three professors consider unfair and unwarranted.
In fact, all three attend churches in Waco affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Beaty and Moore are members of Dayspring Baptist Church, and Henry is a member of Calvary Baptist Church.
“I joined my colleagues in Rome in offering an invited Protestant response to a key document of progressive Catholic social thought,” Henry said. “However deserving of our attention and respect we consider Catholicism to be, we remain unapologetically Baptist and Protestant in conviction.”
Controversial conclusions
Most of the criticism focused on the conclusion of Henry’s abstract—presented in expanded form in a full collaborative manuscript that he, Beaty and Moore submitted for publication and scholarly peer review after the conference.
At the Vatican conference itself, the three professors presented individual papers verbally and provided a brief précis of each presentation, which later was posted on the Internet.
The widely circulated abbreviated version of Henry’s paper stated: “The time for remedy is now, for Free Church Protestants stand at grave risk of bondage to the spirit of the modern age. Christians of the sort described herein, and Baptists such as I am, seem to face a limited range of options. Amidst the changing cultural conditions precipitated by modernity and now postmodernity, we may: (a) allow our practice of faith—untethered to a rich tradition and without the resources of a functional magisterium—to die the death of continued accommodation to culture; (b) convert to Roman Catholicism; or (c) begin a journey toward Rome that, without giving rise to full communion, nonetheless involves a critical engagement with Roman Catholicism as a touchstone of vital tradition and teaching authority about Christian faith and practice.”
The full manuscript explains the authors do not advocate whole-hearted endorsement of Roman Catholicism but call on Baptists and other Free Church Protestants to recognize its “longer and richer tradition” and learn from it, the three Baylor professors insisted. They pledged to find a middle way—declining to convert to Roman Catholicism while also refusing to accommodate faith to culture.
Lack of magisterium
Still, some Baptists have taken issue with the idea that Free Church Protestants are disadvantaged by their lack of a “magisterium”—a recognized source of teaching authority. In particular, they pointed to historic abuses of the Roman Catholic Magisterium.
“The course Henry advocates would subscribe to a tradition that opposed new theological insights and nearly all scientific advances,” said Raymond Bailey, pastor of Seventh & James Baptist Church in Waco, in a column published in his church newsletter.
Although he responded initially only to the Henry abstract, he later read the full collaborative paper and was “firmer in my position than ever,” he said in an interview.
Bailey, who taught five years in a Catholic college in addition to time at Hardin-Simmons University and 16 years at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., expressed appreciation for Catholic traditions. But he also pointed to the Roman Catholic Church’s historic suppression of scientific inquiry and control over theological expression.
“A small oligarchy of thought-police control academic and intellectual endeavors; those who disagree with the magisterium are censored or declared heretical,” Bailey wrote.
For all its weaknesses, the Free Church Baptist tradition comes closest to the New Testament model, he insisted.
“Let those of us who believe that God continues to work among the people, and that theology and the kingdom of God are unfinished business, remain committed to autonomy of the local church and the responsibilities of private interpretation and personal accountability. Most of the great movements of history, Christian or otherwise, were led by those who heard the voice of God and refused to submit to hierarchal authority. Thank God for those who dare to be nonconformist.”
Call for careful examination
But Beaty, Henry and Moore insisted they were acting in the nonconformist Baptist tradition by speaking at the Vatican as they did and holding their own theological tradition up to careful examination.
“The unexamined Baptist life is not worth living; the unexamined Catholic life is not worth living,” Beaty said.
Henry agreed, saying he wanted to call Baptists to a critical engagement with Catholicism, not to an uncritical endorsement of it. Roman Catholicism offers a touchstone of vital tradition, but not the final word, he said. And, he added, it “bears promise for helping us Baptists share the challenges of faithful life in a post-Christian age.”
Baptists can learn from other Christian traditions without surrendering distinctively Baptist “non-negotiable” beliefs, Henry insisted.
“To talk with other Christians—including Catholics—to seek to understand better the longer and larger Catholic tradition out of which our Baptist heritage grows as a dissenting expression of Christianity, and to try to learn how to think intelligently as a Christian by looking for help from Catholics—in none of these efforts is one required to abandon one’s Baptist identity and convictions,” he said.
“Such non-negotiable expressions of faithful discipleship as believers’ baptism, commitment to the supremacy of Scripture as Christians’ guide to faith and practice, the priesthood of all believers—along with the grave responsibilities to one another that such priesthood signals … ground my commitment to the Baptist way.”
Community or individual?
Furthermore, Henry sees his position as consistent with the trend toward reclaiming ancient Christian traditions, such as Advent and Lent, and an emphasis on interpreting Scripture in the context of community.
“The position I occupy really expresses a movement within Baptist life to retrieve much in the Christian tradition of which we for a season lost sight. Indeed, this movement is itself merely a Baptist expression of a transdenominational, ecumenically broad effort to pay better attention to the historic roots and practices of Christian faith. Part of that movement involves listening to and learning from those who have remained more connected than we have to longstanding Christian traditions of faith, thought and practice,” he said.
“To pay attention to the breadth of Christian history, reflection and practice hardly makes us less Baptist, but rather …promises to help us realize the fullness of our Baptist identity.”
Baylor University Regent Phil Lineberger, pastor of Williams Trace Baptist Church in Sugar Land, questioned if Baptists and other Free Church Protestants really benefit much by looking to Catholicism—which he characterized as a religious system that historically squelched freedom—and he questioned whether any magisterium can be workable in the Free Church tradition.
Henry’s paper attacked as weaknesses three principles many Baptists see as strengths—the priesthood of the believer, the soul competency of the individual and local church autonomy, he asserted.
Lineberger also took issue with Henry’s perceived preference for the community over an individual guided by the Holy Spirit’s leadership.
“If it weren’t for a radical individualist like the Apostle Paul, we wouldn’t have much of the New Testament,” he said.
“Look at the book of Acts. Matthias was chosen as an apostle by a magisterium—by a council—and we never hear of him again. The Apostle Paul wasn’t chosen by a council; he was called by God.”
Challenges of modernity
Both the Henry précis and the collaborative full manuscript include another statement that caused some critics to respond with alarm.
The document said: “Committed to a polity in which the autonomy of local churches is paramount, and in which cooperation with other Baptists and Christians is wholly voluntary, Baptists lack any kind of shared magisterium—apart from a common commitment to the inviolable authority of Scripture—that might provide them clear and consistent direction in the face of modernity’s many challenges.
“Baptists’ go-it-alone proclivity, combined with the foregoing, simply compounds their openness to cultural co-optation, for any hope of faithfully resisting the cultural hegemony of modernity necessitates the binding solidarity of the body of Christ, mutually accountable one to another.”
Russell Dilday, former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, took issue with that view.
“Any supposed dangers that might accompany the right of individual believers to read and interpret the word of God in light of the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and in the light of insights gained from other believers, are fewer and less damaging than the real dangers of an authoritarian magisterium,” wrote Dilday, now chancellor of the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute.
“Baptists and other Free Church adherents have not drawn their convictions about individual freedom from modernity but from biblical teachings about the individual’s singular accountability to God.”
Response to critics
Henry insists when he used the term “magisterium,” he was referring not to the Roman Catholic church’s established teaching authority but was using the word “in the more elastic sense” to refer to “a doctrinal center of gravity” that unites a body of Christians.
As Baptists, “Scripture constitutes our unmistakable magisterium—even if unlike other Christians we have not used a Latin word to describe our confidence in the teaching authority we vest in the Bible,” Henry said. “And for this very reason, Baptists appeal like no other people to the Bible when they want to clarify doctrine and to discern faithful responses to life’s problems.
“We have not ultimately embraced any other magisterium besides Scripture to which to turn. Moreover, since we vest in Scripture rather than in any human person or worldly institution the functions of a teaching authority, the Bible—our magisterium—may only be ‘enforced’ through the human power of persuasion and the divine power of spiritual conviction.”
Dilday particularly found troubling Henry’s critique of Baptist theologian E.Y. Mullins’ writing about the Baptist contributions to religious liberty and Mullins’ defense of soul competency. Henry’s abstract cites Mullins as “a good example of the historical myopia besetting Baptist regard for Christian freedom” and as one who was “given habitually to overwrought claims about freedom” as Baptists’ distinctive contribution to religious thought.
“Christian liberty is not a Baptist invention, but instead is rooted within centuries of prior theological reflection,” Henry wrote. “Disconnecting their devotion to freedom from two millennia of Christian theorizing about freedom, Baptists at best turn this important virtue into a mere byword, and at worst render it liability to faithful thought and practice. For, uprooted from its theological home and in thrall to modernity, liberty quickly degenerates into the hyper-individualistic form of autonomy emblematic of modernity.”
Dilday acknowledged some Baptists claim more credit than they are due, but he disagreed that Mullins’ evaluation of Baptist contributions to religious freedom fit into that category. “Granted, sometimes Baptists—particularly we Texas Baptists—are known for ‘overwrought claims’ about our work and strengths,” Dilday wrote. “But serious scholars like Mullins are not guilty of overstating the consistent record of Baptist advocacy and sacrifice for freedom, nor can they be faulted for identifying freedom as a primary defining characteristic.
“This is particularly true when those scholars point out how Baptists have historically championed religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and separation of church and state. It would be fair to say, there are few if any other denominational groups with that long historical record.”
Lessons from history
When it comes to looking at the historical record, Baptists and Free Church Protestants have much to learn from the Christian tradition that predated the Reformation, Henry said.
Baptists are “inescapably marked by 1,500 years of Catholic doctrine, history and practice and yet unwilling to embrace Catholic ways uncritically,” he asserted.
Many central Baptist beliefs—such as the full deity and humanity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity—grow out of “the root stock of Catholicism,” he said.
As dissenters and nonconformists, Baptists need to understand from what they are dissenting and what they wish to reform, he added.
“To be a Baptist is to follow Christ faithfully in dissent from certain features of Roman Catholicism, while at the same time yearning always for the completion of reformation, so that all of Christ’s followers may serve and worship together,” Henry said.
Roman Catholic model
Furthermore, Baptists in general—and Baylor in particular—have much to learn from the Roman Catholic model of higher education, Henry insisted.
“Baptist intellectual life is a relatively late development in the Christian history; it is preceded by centuries of thoughtful Catholic reflection on the relation between the life of the mind and the life of faith,” he said.
“If Baptists want to think sensitively about the grace-filled beauty of creative and artistic expression, or the possibilities and limits of faithful citizenship, or the relation between faith and reason or nature and grace, or the ways in which human language is and is not capable of describing God, or the basis for human confidence in science as a means of understanding the world—all of these and so many other issues have a long history of thoughtful and articulate treatment within the Catholic tradition.”
So, the question comes full circle. Should Baylor University model itself after Notre Dame? Not entirely and certainly not uncritically, said Baylor President John Lilley.
“I certainly respect the great reputation of Notre Dame, but I think Baylor should be allowed to grow in its own environment, with its own sense of identity,” Lilley said.
“I’m sure there are lessons at Notre Dame that we should learn and could use, but I think great institutions can develop their own benchmarks. It’s an overstatement to say we we’re trying to become the Notre Dame of the Southwest or the Notre Dame of Baptist life. We will go our own way and follow our own lights.”
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up the challenge of this same task. Texas Baptists would not be who we are today without Phil Strickland. All of you who love the historic Baptist vision and cherish its values owe more than you know to Phil’s work and spirit.
