Linda Livingstone

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Baylor wins a key victory (somehow or another) defending its stand (sort of) on sexuality

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Baylor wins a key victory (somehow or another) defending its stand (sort of) on sexuality

This has been true for decades: Journalists just love headlines that include Baylor University and anything having to do with sex.

More than two decades ago, it was Baylor coeds posing for Playboy. Two decades before that, it was student journalists getting fired for disagreeing with a Baylor policy that students shouldn’t pose for Playboy. Ironically, that controversy was an echo of earlier controversies about student journalists (including moi) publishing stories about sexual assaults near campus (and other hot topics).

The big idea is that sin exists at Jerusalem on the Brazos and that Baylor leaders are naive in thinking that they can do anything about that. Trust me: Some of these headlines are more important than others. Now we have this double-decker headline from Religion News Service:

Baylor University wins exemption from Title IX’s sexual harassment provisions

The private Baptist school argued discrimination complaints made by LGBTQ students were ‘inconsistent’ with the university’s religious values

As always, there are two questions that journalists need to answer when covering this fight and both of them involve religious doctrines that define this private academic community.

Question 1: Are Baylor’s “beliefs” backed by legal ties to a specific denomination and its teachings?

Question 2: Are Baylor students required to sign a “doctrinal covenant” in which they agree to support this private school’s “student code" or, at the very least, not to publicly oppose it?

The answer to both: Maybe, maybe not. Clarity on both of these questions is crucial to the Baylor left (and that is a real thing), the Baylor establishment and to Baylor’s conservative critics. It would help if journalists at RNS and other mainstream news outlets asked those questions and published the results. It’s no surprise that the best information can be found in niche Baptist-news sources.

Meanwhile, here is the RNS overture, atop a story that does not include a single sentence of material drawn from interviews with experts backing Baylor’s point of view.


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Conservative, moderate, liberal: A few more thoughts on Baylor, Baptists and theological labels

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In my post Thursday, I delved into the religious background of Baylor University's first female president — a Baptist supportive of female senior pastors.

In that post, I noted that the Dallas Morning News — in a front-page story — referred to Baylor as a "conservative Baptist school."

I wrote:

I'm not certain that "conservative Baptist" is the best description for Baylor, particularly in Texas. Longtime observers know that Baylor in the 1990s "survived a fierce struggle between conservatives and moderates at the Southern Baptist Convention." As Christianity Today notes, Baylor maintains a relationship with the moderate (in Baptist terms) Baptist General Convention of Texas, which "selects a quarter of Baylor’s board of regents and provides a sliver of its annual operating budget."

I also suggested that describing Baylor as "conservative" was questionable given its hiring of a president, Linda Livingstone, who has attended churches affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. The CBF, I said, "includes progressive Southern Baptist and former Southern Baptist congregations."

My post drew some excellent feedback from two longtime observers of Texas Baptists — and I wanted to highlight their insight in this follow-up post.

The first comment came from Jeffrey Weiss, the former award-winning Godbeat pro for the Dallas Morning News. Given that Weiss is in the midst of a cancer battle about which he has written eloquently for his own newspaper and Religion News Service, I was especially grateful to hear from him.

Here is what Weiss said:

I would gently suggest that BGCT remains "conservative" if one need not be extreme to justify the word. CBF is a different story, however. Fascinating!

I always appreciate gentle comments from faithful readers. Many thanks, kind sir!


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Baylor again has a Baptist president — its first female head — and other relevant details on her hiring

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By now, you probably heard that scandal-plagued Baylor University has hired a new president — its first female one.

The lede from the Dallas Morning News' front-page report:

Baylor University has hired its first woman president in its 172-year history, the university announced Tuesday, as the school works to recover from its long-running sexual assault scandal.
Linda Livingstone, the dean of George Washington University’s business school and a former faculty member at Baylor, was the unanimous choice of the university’s regents, the school said.
She will begin June 1.
Livingstone steps in to steer the university after a sexual assault crisis led to the ousting of her predecessor last May. Baylor parted ways with university president Ken Starr, as well as the football coach and the athletic director, in a sweeping reaction to the school’s botched handling of rapes and other attacks, including those by football players.

Obviously, Baylor's decision to hire a woman to deal with its ongoing rape scandal is the major news development.

But GetReligion readers no doubt are interested in specific religious details concerning the new leader of "the world's largest Baptist university" — as the news media and Baylor itself often refer to the Waco, Texas, institution.

Such details are scattered throughout the secular newspaper and Christian media reports that we scanned. When put together, those accounts begin to paint a portrait of Livingstone's faith background.


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