Editorial: What’s to come of the Baylor-BGCT relationship?
The question I’ve been asked most frequently during the last couple of weeks is, “What’s going to happen with the relationship between Baylor and the BGCT?”
While my guess is as good as anyone else’s, the relationship is likely to continue largely unchanged, but not without some tension along the way. Governance and sexuality are recurring sources of the tension.
The history and context of their relationship explain much of the tension and point to the likely outcome. For those who don’t know the history and context, I’m about to give the longest succinct explanation I can. Those who know the history and context may want to skip to “What now?” at the end.
What sparked the question
The question has been sparked by the BGCT’s response to a student-led event at Baylor.
Two concurrent student-led events happened April 22 on the Baylor campus. One was in direct response to the other. Student-led events at Baylor are governed by a set of policies. See the end of this article for links to those.
A Turning Point USA tour stop was held in Waco Hall, and a contrasting “All Are Neighbors” event was held in Cashion Academic Center. The announcement of the second event elicited two official responses, April 10 and April 17, from the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
According to the second response, BGCT Executive Director Julio Guarneri “will ask the [BGCT board of] directors attending our upcoming May Executive Board meeting to initiate a study of our relationship with Baylor through our Institutional Relations Committee.”
This response has gained attention across the country. Some suggest the BGCT is trying to control Baylor. More on that later.
The Baptist Standard will attend and report on the May BGCT Executive Board meeting, as we do all BGCT Executive Board meetings.
While media was not permitted inside the TPUSA event, featured speakers were to be political commentator Benny Johnson, border czar Tom Homan, and Texas Attorney General and U.S. senatorial candidate Ken Paxton.
The “All Are Neighbors” event featured, among other speakers, Kelley Robinson and Paul Raushenbush, who are both clergy, are married to same-sex partners, and advocate for LGBTQ rights. The last two descriptors drew the response from Texas Baptists.
BGCT’s and Baylor’s positions on sexuality
The BGCT does not have a stated position on TPUSA. That point has been made by some critics of the BGCT.
The BGCT does have a stated position on sexuality it has communicated many times: “In short, Texas Baptists, meeting in annual conventions, have affirmed that sexual relationships honor God only when they occur within marriage between one man and one woman.”
Resolutions adopted by BGCT messengers in 1982, 1992 (reaffirmed in 2005), 1996, 1998, and 2004 provide the BGCT’s position on sexuality in more detail.
In 2016, BGCT messengers approved a motion by Craig Christina, then-pastor of Shiloh Terrace Baptist Church in Dallas and current BGCT associate executive director, that “any church which affirms any sexual relationship outside the bonds of a marriage between one man and one woman be considered out of harmonious cooperation with the [BGCT].”
These stated positions inform the BGCT’s response to the announced speakers for the “All Are Neighbors” event.
Baylor has also consistently communicated its position on sexuality, including in an email from Baylor I received yesterday:
“Baylor’s Statement on Human Sexuality remains unchanged, and there are no discussions within the University administration or Board of Regents to change it. This statement specifically states: ‘The University affirms the biblical understanding of sexuality as a gift from God. Christian churches across the ages and around the world have affirmed purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman as the biblical norm.’”
Baylor’s statement deems “heterosexual sex outside of marriage and homosexual behavior” to be deviations from the biblical norm.
Baylor and the BGCT have very similar positions on sexuality.
History of the Baylor-BGCT relationship
The current controversy is about far more than positions on sexuality, however. It’s rooted in the history of the relationship between Baylor and the BGCT, which is much broader than the following summary of its official nature.
At the impetus of the Texas Baptist Education Society, Baylor was chartered by the Republic of Texas in 1845 before it became the United States’ 28th state. According to minutes of the 1854 Texas Baptist Convention, Baylor’s founding purpose was “to produce for Baptists, ‘a pious laity and a holy ministry.’”
The Baptist General Convention of Texas formed in 1886. From then until 1990, all Baylor trustees—now called regents—were elected by the BGCT.
In 1990, Baylor President Herbert Reynolds and Baylor trustees unilaterally amended the university’s charter, giving the Board of Regents “sole responsibility for governance” of Baylor. The stated purpose for the change was to prevent a “takeover by Fundamentalists,” which they saw happening in the Southern Baptist Convention and feared would happen in the BGCT.
This move—both in its one-sidedness and its substance—created much consternation among Texas Baptists that still fuels suspicion among some of them toward Baylor.
After much discussion between Baylor and BGCT leadership following Baylor’s move, the two entities entered into a special agreement in 1991. Among other things, the special agreement grants the BGCT the right to elect 25 percent of Baylor’s governing board, a detail still lamented by plenty of Texas Baptists.
The agreement was renegotiated in 2011, adding a provision to review the agreement every 10 years. Delayed by the COVID pandemic, Baylor and the BGCT renewed their agreement in 2023, but not without some questions. More on that shortly.
This brief history shows those who think the BGCT is going to control Baylor that it isn’t going to happen. That ship sailed in 1990. But control isn’t the best way to maintain a relationship.
Now, about the 2023 agreement renewal: One issue raised some questions about the relationship.
Recent concerns over Baylor and sexuality
Prism
On April 19, 2022, Baylor chartered Prism, an LGBTQ student organization.
Per Prism’s constitution, the organization “serves Baylor University and its students through creating a respectful space that embraces diverse sexual identities (community) focused on continuous learning for the Baylor community, giving voice for LGBTQ+ students to the administration (care), and creating opportunities for all students to access resources through connection, belonging, and education.”
In a statement posted the following May 3 to Texas Baptists’ (BGCT) website and subsequently removed, BGCT Executive Director David Hardage responded to “concern[s] expressed [about Prism] by many in the Texas Baptists family,” and “we are seeking clarification to determine the best course of action moving forward.”
Hardage issued another statement August 16 stating the BGCT and Baylor were reviewing and considering changes to their special agreement. On August 19, Hardage clarified Prism’s charter was not a driving concern in the conversation, that the timing of the review was governed by the two institution’s 2011 special agreement.
Baylor made clear Prism must operate within the bounds of the university’s student organization policies and in accordance with Baylor’s position on sexuality.
As noted above, the agreement was renewed in 2023.
Then came a grant announcement in 2025.
Social work grant
On June 30, 2025, Baylor’s Garland School of Social Work announced a grant of nearly $644,000 awarded to Baylor’s Center for Church and Community Impact from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation.
According to the announcement: “This grant will help us better understand the disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women within congregations to nurture institutional courage and foster change.”
Additionally: “The study will help congregations develop greater cultural sensitivity and humility, trauma-informed approaches to ministry, concrete steps toward genuine inclusion, and environments where all members can thrive.”
These and other statements in the announcement drew swift and strong reactions from some Texas Baptists.
Baylor President Linda Livingstone and BGCT Executive Director Julio Guarneri issued separate responses to the questions and concerns this announcement raised among those Texas Baptists, reiterating the university’s and the convention’s positions on sexuality and care for people.
On July 9, Livingstone announced the grant was rescinded and funds were returned to the Baugh Foundation.
Much more is involved in this situation. You can read more here and here.
Motions to change relationship with Baylor
Then, in November 2025, Mike Miller, pastor of Central Baptist Church in Jacksonville, brought two motions to the BGCT annual meeting.
His first motion called for removing funds directed to Baylor from the 2026 BGCT budget until Baylor “terminate and refuse any current or future affiliation and/or endorsement of any group or organization that affirms or approves the LGBTQ agenda and lifestyle,” including Prism and Baptist Women in Ministry.
His first motion was voted down overwhelmingly.
His second motion was not.
Miller’s second motion was to “‘direct the Institutional Relations Committee of the Executive Board to evaluate the special relationship agreement with Baylor University, specifically with respect to Baylor’s endorsements of and partnerships and affiliations with any organizations that advocate or affirm the LGBTQ lifestyle and agenda, and report back any findings, actions, or recommendations’ to messengers in 2026.”
The raised-ballot vote on this motion was too close to call. The standing-ballot margin was very thin. Sitting front and center, I turned to see the room. There was broad support for Miller’s motion. After the chair ruled that the motion failed, Miller did not challenge the chair’s ruling.
On April 17, in response to concerns raised by some Texas Baptists about the announced speakers for the “All Are Neighbors” event, BGCT Executive Director Julio Guarneri said he “will ask the [BGCT board of] directors attending our upcoming May Executive Board meeting to initiate a study of our relationship with Baylor through our Institutional Relations Committee.”
While lengthy, this is a brief explanation of what gives rise to the concern about the future of the Baylor-BGCT relationship.
What now?
I went into the lengthy explanation above to provide more of the history behind and the context around the BGCT’s April 17 statement, history and context many reports are not including.
Which is understandable. There’s a lot to the history and context, and we’re sound-bite people. TLDR. If you just read that, you either skipped from the beginning or are to be commended for your endurance.
The BGCT plans to study its relationship with Baylor because it’s a relationship, a mutually agreed-upon relationship between two parties. Each party has every right to study the relationship. And study it, they will, because it is a long, broad, and storied relationship well worth maintaining.
In May, the Baptist Standard will report on what the BGCT Executive Board decides to do about this study. I expect we will report further on it when the Executive Board meets again in September, and again in November when the BGCT annual meeting takes place in … Waco.
I expect there will be a strong contingent in support of Baylor throughout these months. Many of them will be Texas Baptist pastors who were educated at Baylor and Truett Seminary and/or who have direct connections to how Baylor and Truett have engaged in and empowered great gospel ministry on campus, throughout Texas, and around the world.
There will also be strong opposition from some Texas Baptists to the BGCT continuing its relationship with Baylor as is. Many of them also value Baylor and might favor the relationship continuing, although with changes.
Will the relationship change? I don’t know. If it changes, how will it? I don’t know.
I do know any discussion about a change in relationship between Baylor and the BGCT generates a great deal of anxiety—energy we all need to spend more productively for the gospel.
As I see it
As I see it, Baylor needs to be able to do what it does as a Christian institution of higher learning, which is to hold and navigate the tension between and among disparate views and to do so guided by a Christian foundation, Christian principles, and the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Likewise, the BGCT needs to do what the BGCT does, which is to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ in word and deed through the cooperative work of local churches and many related institutions, all under the lordship of Christ and the guidance of the Spirit.
Baylor and the BGCT have navigated plenty of stormy waters together for well over a century. It’s time for them—for us—to show a world eager to pull apart at every seam how to stay together and pull together, not by human control, which isn’t the best way to maintain a relationship, but under the lordship of Jesus Christ and with the power of his Spirit. Because there’s still great gospel ministry to do.
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I have fielded a couple of other questions related to the overall relationship question. The following are succinct responses to those questions.
Student event approval
Does Baylor approve of TPUSA and “All Are Neighbors?”
Both events were organized by Baylor student groups, not Baylor. Baylor’s student activities policies govern how they were to seek approval for their respective events and what was permitted to take place during them.
Additionally, these events were subject to Baylor’s expressive activity guidelines. Expressive activity is defined as “any form of organized communication or conduct intended to convey ideas, perspectives, or information.”
While Baylor granted permission for these events to occur on campus, the university “does not institutionally endorse the views of speakers at these events or other individuals invited to speak by student organizations.”
Money
And, of course, people have asked about the money involved.
During their 140-plus year relationship, Texas Baptists—institutionally and as local churches and individuals—have given a sizable sum of money to Baylor. The numbers below represent only the convention’s monetary investment in Baylor.
A 2023 BGCT-Baylor joint statement reported: “The BGCT provides approximately $1.3 million annually to Baylor in the form of scholarship dollars in support of pastoral and ministerial education through George W. Truett Theological Seminary, financial aid for BGCT-affiliated pastors and ministers and their families, and in support of Baptist Student Ministry activities.”
The BGCT’s 2026 budget allocates $649,575 in support to Baylor and $452,750 in support to Truett Seminary. Baylor reported $1,500,364,000 in annual income during the 2024-2025 reporting period.
Eric Black is the executive director, publisher, and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.