Posted on 07/20/2004 4:20:19 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Four years ago, Baylor University announced what it called “Baylor 2012.” Its goal is to “propel [Baylor] into the ranks of the nation’s top tier colleges and universities,” while retaining and even strengthening Baylor’s Christian identity.
The most important factors in becoming a “top tier” college or university are the faculty and the students. To that end, Baylor has committed itself to recruiting faculty “capable of achieving the best of scholarship, both in teaching and research.”
More important, new faculty members must “embrace the Christian faith” and be “knowledgeable of the Christian intellectual tradition.” The goal is “to exemplify the integration of faith and learning.” A symbol of this commitment was Baylor’s hiring a first-rank scholar, Dr. Thomas Hibbs, as the head of the Honors College.
Hibbs, the former head of the Philosophy Department at Boston College, is a prominent Catholic philosopher whose specialty is the Medieval period—an age that best exemplified the kind of learning Baylor is striving for.
Expectations for students are no less demanding. They’re expected to combine “high academic merit” and “Christian character.”
A “nationally ranked research university” with an “unapologetically Christian worldview” is the way that Baylor President Robert Sloan sums up his vision. At first blush, it’s hard to imagine anyone objecting to that, but it has prompted a lot of criticism. Some of the criticism is over the cost, and it will certainly be expensive to achieve Sloan’s goals.
But far more troubling is the criticism of the vision itself. Some suggest that “top tier” scholarship and an “unapologetically Christian worldview” are mutually exclusive.
Some faculty members also have characterized Sloan’s emphasis on Christian learning and preserving Baylor’s Christian identity as part of a “fundamentalist” takeover of the school. As columnist Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News has written, this accusation is laughable.
Some of the most visible additions to the faculty, like Hibbs and his former Boston Collegecolleague Rob Miner, are Catholics. When Sloan speaks of the Christian intellectual tradition, his understanding of that term is broad.
As Miner told Dreher, “Many people at Baylor are more receptive to hearing and learning from the voices of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas” than those back at Boston College. This is not what you would expect from a “fundamentalist” takeover.
The real issue at Baylor is whether the price of academic respectability is the surrender of Christian identity. Is it true that “smart people outgrow God,” as secular critics insist? Or can Baylor provide an alternative, namely, a university that, in Dreher’s words, “can speak to the broader culture from an intellectually sound but morally distinct vantage point”?
That’s why every thinking Christian, Baptist or non-Baptist, has a stake in the debate over Baylor’s future. The alternative to the worldviews that dominate our culture must come from schools like the one envisioned by Sloan: where faculty and students can come together to show that faith and reason not only go together, but are inseparable.
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A couple of the best religion professors at Wake Forest (from my time there in the 1970's) have moved to Baylor - both top-flight academics and professing classical Christians, but certainly not fundamentalists.
My fiancee who is converting to Judaism is transferring to a private Christian univeristy in January.
It's a much better school than the local public university, and the faculty is unabashedly conservative.... light years beyond the AZ state university system faculty which is unabashedly communist for the most part.
LOL
My daughter (the real cowgirlcutie) will be transferring to Baylor this fall. She has worked her little heart out to get there and this was just one of the reasons.
Why oh why.
Baylor will eat itself alive before it gets around to saving civilization.
Why do you say that, newby?
Wasn't Classic Liberalism directly tied to Christanity.
Baylor will eat itself alive before it gets around to saving civilization.
Why don't you get specific with your criticism of Baylor, if you have any backup for it at all, that is.
I'd rather deal with liberals than with Freepers who do hit and run crap like this.
You are right, and I believe that Baylor already has a top tier med school.
DTOM
Chill out.
It wasn't a criticism; it was an observation.
Because it's my opinion, and just because you've been croaking to the admiring bog a little longer doesn't make your opinion any better than mine. ;-)
Is that possible? Let's see: The list of "Fundamentals" from which fundamentalism draws it's name are, if I recall correctly:
Belief in God,
Belief in the Trinity.
Belief in the Virgin Birth.
Belief in the Crucifixion and Ressurrcetion
Belief in Final Judgement, Heaven and hell.
...that's about it,
On a lighter, slightly OT note, do they also have a plan to improve in Big 12 athletics?
Opinions generally have substance. Yours did not. I was curious to see if I missed some deeper meaning that you intended, but failed, to convey regarding Baylor. Guess not. :o*
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