Posted on 07/09/2025 3:42:01 PM PDT by madison10
Baylor University voluntarily rescinded a controversial grant that supported research focused on inclusion and belonging in the church, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ individuals, President Linda Livingstone announced in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
According to a now inaccessible press release published on June 30 from the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, the $643,401 grant was awarded to the Center for Church and Community Impact (C3I). The Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation supplied the grant to “better understand the disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women within congregations to nurture institutional courage and foster change.”
The Baugh Foundation funds “general support, interfaith projects, projects focused on separation of church and state, house of worship-based community projects and other topics critical to faith in our democracy.” According to the Christian Broadcasting Network, Baylor intended to use the grant to fund a study entitled “Courage from the Margins: Inclusion and Belonging Practices for LGBTQIA+ and Women in Congregations.” The information was to be used for developing “trauma-sensitive training resources for churches.”
The announcement of the grant was met with immediate backlash from the Baylor community and beyond.
“It’s much better to send your child to a secular university, hostile to the faith, than to a ‘Christian’ university like Baylor,” Rev. Matt Kennedy wrote on X in response to the grant acceptance.
Baylor professor Greg Garrett was among those in support of the grant.
“When the far right media comes for me, my colleagues or Baylor?” Garret posted on X. “I can only say: I serve the Jesus who said ‘If you’ve loved the least of these, you’ve loved me.’ [I’m] grateful for this grant that will help us love better.”
Nine days following the grant announcement, Livingstone said in a press release that Dean Jon Singletary and Principal Investigator Dr. Gaynor Yancey “voluntarily offered to rescind their acceptance” of the grant on behalf of the school of social work. All funds will return to the granting foundation.
Livingstone supports this decision, stating that Baylor remains committed to academic freedom and caring for LGBTQIA+ students. Concerns were not for the research, but for “activities that followed as part of the grant.” Livingstone explained that the concern overstepped Baylor’s institutional politics, particularly the Statement on Human Sexuality.
“We affirm the biblical understanding of human sexuality as a gift from God, expressed through purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman,” Livingstone wrote.
With the grant rescinded and the funds returned, the Center for Church and Community Impact will no longer proceed with the proposed study. Baylor has not announced any changes to its policies regarding external funding or research review, and no further statements have been issued by the Baugh Foundation or the researchers involved.
Diana R. Garland School of Social Work Greg Garrett Jon Singletary LGBTQ+ President Linda Livingstone research grant
Hannah Webb
“better understand the disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women within congregations to nurture institutional courage and foster change.”
Wow.
Having seen how the sausage is made, so to speak, in terms of Christian higher ed, you have to know that just because a big college is a Christian one, there will inevitably be faculty who are not real believers. This is especially true in the more “godless commie heretic” fields like psychology. I’m sure that the leaders of the college were as surprised and upset by finding out about that research project as one would expect. It’s a constant battle in a couple of Christian schools I’m familiar with to keep some of the faculty in line.
The problem is that in order to get an advanced degree to teach things like sociology or psychology you are inevitably exposed to a cesspool of indoctrination. That makes it very difficult to hire a faculty that is exclusively or even mostly composed of committed, Biblically grounded believers.
They should research LBTWQWERTY inclusion into mosques.
Yes, my niece was a psychology major at a Wesleyan Christian university. It messed her up. She converted to Catholocism. Partly due to her fiance, but she had no regrets with the change.
Repent of this Blasphemy
2nd Peter 2:6-9
New King James Version
6 AND TURNING THE CITIES OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH INTO ASHES, condemned them to destruction, MAKING THEM AN EXAMPLE to those who afterward would live ungodly;
7 and delivered righteous Lot, who was OPPRESSED BY THE FILTHY CONDUCT OF THE WICKED
8 (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, TORMENTED HIS RIGHTEOUS SOUL from day to day BY SEEING AND HEARING THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS)—
9 then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the Day of Judgment,
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Peter%202%3A6-9&version=NKJV
All downhill at Baylor since they allowed dancing.
This doesn’t reflect favorably on Baylor. They just got caught with their pants down.
I serve the GOD who gave Sodom a chance to repent.
So far...
My name is Ben Dover and I approve this message.
And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.
(read the REST of the record.)
Amen! They cherry pick verses to uphold their perversions. Baylor, not S & G.
Their initial intentions are known. Definitely too late. Embarrassing, actually.
That any “Christian” university would have a psychology department is unthinkable to me. Clinical psychology is antithetical to biblical Christian, by ADMISSION of clinical psychology itself.
And yet, most seminaries have these as majors. It part of the Great Apostasy of our age.
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