The Baylor Line Foundation recently awarded its 2025 Hall of Fame honorees at a luncheon held at the Baylor Club in Waco, Texas. The event recognized the contributions of distinguished alumni, outstanding young alumni and retired faculty.
Former U.S. Representative Chet Edwards received the Babs Baugh Servant Leadership Award, which, according to Baylor Line CEO Jonathan Platt, “recognizes individuals who have risen to the call of leadership to better the Baylor family in the servant leadership manner of Babs Baugh.” Babs Baugh was the President of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation, which was instrumental in developing Baylor as one of the preeminent Baptist universities in the world.
W.R. Poage Distinguished Chair for Public Service Chet Edwards. (Credit: Baylor Lariat)
Edwards represented the Waco region for eight years in the Texas Senate and 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives before becoming the W.R. Poage Distinguished Chair in Public Service at Baylor. He was recognized at the ceremony by his former chief of staff, Lindsey Davis Stover, who highlighted Edwards’ efforts in championing religious liberty and extending GI Bill scholarships to 9/11 survivors’ families.
Though Edwards is not a Baylor graduate, his wife and children are. In his acceptance speech, Edwards remembered how those connected to Baylor, including the Baughs and former university president Herbert Reynolds, pulled him aside and tutored him on the Baptist principles of religious freedom.
“The constitutional issue of church-state separation,” Edwards said, “is the bedrock of religious liberty in America.” He added that it was “the single most important issue I was ever involved with in my 20 years in Congress.”
The current Baugh Foundation President, Jackie Baugh Moore, was one of four recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award. According to Platt, the award was created in 1965 “to showcase those alumni who have gone above and beyond the normal call of duty to shine in their respective fields, providing inspiration for their alma mater.”
Moore was introduced by Sterling Moore, her oldest son. He said his mom “is a lot of things to a lot of people, but high up on that list is ‘Baptist.’”
Jackie Baugh Moore
Moore noted that, although there are many ways to be Baptist, Jackie is “a Baptist who looks at the world through the lens of love. She takes scripture seriously, and Scripture tells us that love is greater than hope, greater even than faith.”
He continued: “She showed us that a love which only comforts is only half a thing. Love is a shield and a sword. Love rights wrongs. Her Christian duty of love requires her to support the excluded, but it is not satisfied until she fights against the exclusion itself. And so she fights using every tool in her disposal–for her family, for her friends, for women in ministry, for an end to discrimination against people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants and non-Christians, for the representation of all people in our democratic system of government, and for the preservation of that democracy itself. That is mom’s way of being a Baptist.”
Jackie Baugh Moore used her acceptance speech to highlight the work of the Baugh Foundation. She spoke about her grandfather, John Baugh, the founder and longtime CEO of Sysco Foods. According to Jackie, John’s success in business, his “superpower,” was in examining the landscape of the food industry and “forecasting ahead of others” where it would go.
“He wasn’t a prophet,” she said, “but he was a visionary.”
John’s visionary capability prompted him to warn against fundamentalism within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). But he also knew, Jackie said, that the SBC’s takeover “was not the end of the game.”
She continued, “At some personal risk, they [John and Eula Mae] did what they could do to warn that the long-term plan of that movement, disguised as a religious one, was actually a political movement. [He] explained to anyone who would listen that the Baptist oligarchy…had their sights set on the political takeover of our beloved democracy.”
The Baugh Foundation, which Jackie Baugh Moore heads, continues to safeguard democracy through initiatives that support compassion, inclusivity, and freedom of (and from) religion.
The Abner V. McCall Humanitarian Award was presented to Devin Li and Jaja Chen, Baylor graduates and cofounders of Cha Community and Waco’s Asian Leaders Network.
As students, they struggled to find cultural connections to their homes, which prompted them to establish Cha Community, a boba tea business that also serves as a community hub. In accepting the award, Chen said, “From day one, our goal has been to create community and belonging for the Asian community in Waco and to invite everyone else who wants to join us to celebrate vibrant cultural foods.”
A complete list of honorees can be found here.
The Baylor Line Foundation is an alumni organization that works closely with but independently from Baylor University. It produces The Baylor Line magazine, hosts special events, and amplifies the stories of alumni and friends.
Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas. It was founded as a Baptist institution. In 2021, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education recognized it as an R1 research university, its highest classification.
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