A year ago today, Brittney Griner was released from a Russian penal colony in a prisoner exchange for notorious arms dealer Victor Bout. 

Griner had been detained since February 17, 2022, when she was accused of having had a vape cartridge containing cannabis oil while going through security at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. A week later, Russia invaded Ukraine, eventually drawing worldwide attention to Griner’s predicament. After a trial and rejection of appeals, she was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment. 

The breaking news came as I was at my computer preparing a service for the Waco, Texas and Baylor University communities to come together in solidarity and prayer for Griner’s release. I originally planned the liturgy with friends, in consultation with Griner’s management, to hold space for grief, express our support and plead with God for her return. After hearing the news that God had heard our prayers before we even uttered them, we created, instead, a liturgy of thanksgiving, which was held just before Christmas. 

This was against the backdrop of what many in the Baylor community believed to be deafening silence from university leadership regarding Griner’s plight. 

Griner was the centerpiece of a Baylor women’s basketball team from 2009-2013 that won three Big 12 conference titles and an NCAA National Championship in 2012, capping off a historic 40-0 season. She was a three-time All-American and honored twice with the Wade Trophy, recognizing her as the country’s most valuable women’s basketball player.

After college, she has gone on to have one of the most distinguished professional careers of any former Baylor athlete. 

Given all this, you might expect those in the “Baylor family” to have been among the most vocal supporters and proponents of Griner’s release. But aside from a general statement of care and concern at the beginning of the situation, Baylor officials remained largely silent throughout the ordeal. 

In the beginning, this was understandable. Griner’s camp initially employed a strategy of public silence while they worked behind the scenes to secure her release. This was based on the idea that drawing too much attention would signal to Vladimir Putin how important Griner was to the U.S. 

But as spring turned to summer, the strategy shifted. Griner’s family and WNBA teammates became more vocal about the need for the U.S. government to secure her release.

The “Baylor family,” however, did not follow suit. 

Like Brittney Griner, I am a part of the Baylor family. As a graduate of Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary and having served on the university staff in several roles, I know how caring and loving a place it can be. No institution is perfect, but Baylor is special in many ways. 

Many of us used our platforms to call on Baylor to be the best version of itself during Griner’s detention. We suggested moments of silence and visual representations of our support for her during high-profile events like nationally televised football games.

Baylor remained mostly quiet, with one bright exception. 

Nicki Collen, head women’s basketball coach, often used her social media platform and press conferences to remind the Baylor family that Brittney Griner is one of us. The team wore “BG” patches on their jerseys throughout the season, even after Griner’s release. 

For their part, on the afternoon of Friday, July 8, 2022, after months of silence and increasing calls to say something, Baylor Athletics released a moving Instagram Reel calling for her return. Other official Baylor accounts, however, steered clear of amplifying the post.

Those who have studied the media know why messages are often released on a Friday afternoon– to bury them underneath the information rubble of the weekend. 

Baylor’s official Instagram account finally chimed in on the day of Griner’s release with a statement of thanksgiving and celebration

With a prominent alum caught in the middle of one of the most newsworthy geopolitical events of recent memory, why were official Baylor mouthpieces so silent?

It would be cravenly disingenuous not to suggest the reason was because Brittney Griner is gay. 

Although Griner was “out” to her family, friends and anyone who knew her, she casually revealed her sexuality in an ESPN interview leading up to the 2013 WNBA draft.

In her 2014 memoir “In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court,” Griner wrote about Kim Mulkey, Baylor’s coach from 2000-2021, pressuring her to keep her sexuality private while she was a student. 

She recounted being called into Mulkey’s office after sharing a social media post that revealed she was dating a girl. In a subsequent meeting with the entire team, Mulkey admonished her players to “keep their private lives private.” Griner, however, was the only one who received a personal, one-on-one scolding. 

For some in the Baylor family, Griner telling her story felt like a betrayal. Mulkey, who had built a nationally prominent program at Baylor, was widely beloved. 

Some interpreted Griner’s comments as throwing Mulkey under the bus. They suggested she should have known what she was getting into when she signed up to play basketball at the world’s largest Baptist university, an institution with a restrictive statement on human sexuality

I can’t help but speculate that these aggrieved members of the Baylor family were partly responsible for Baylor’s silence during Griner’s imprisonment.

It would be helpful if there were another case against which to test this hypothesis.

Thankfully, there is. 

On August 3, 2001, missionaries Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer were arrested in Afghanistan for sharing Christian literature with Muslim women, which was illegal under the ruling Taliban regime. Curry and Mercer were Baylor alums connected to Antioch, a prominent evangelical church in Waco. A month later, the September 11 attacks and subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan drew worldwide attention to their imprisonment. 

Given how small an institution Baylor is, the similarities between the two stories are staggering: Female members of the Baylor family arrested for alleged possession of illicit materials by authoritarian regimes known for corrupt criminal justice systems, all set against the backdrop of war. 

Granted, the digital landscape of 2001 was ancient compared to 2022. Social media didn’t exist in the easily accessible and ubiquitous forms it would eventually take. 

With that said, I was in Waco and among the Baylor family in 2001. The plight of Mercer and Curry was in our thoughts, prayers, conversations, daily local news stories and public statements of concern. It was at the center of attention for the entire community, as it should have been. Translated in 2020’s terminology, their story went viral in the Baylor family. 

What was the difference between the Griner and Curry/Mercer stories?

Some may say it was the nature of the crimes they had been indicted for. Even though the vast majority of U.S. citizens live in states where cannabis is legal, many evangelicals would balk at comparing it to the possession of religious materials. 

But isn’t a “crime a crime” and “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime?”

That leaves one glaring distinction between the two stories: Griner is a queer, black woman. Curry and Mercer are straight, white women. 

Baylor University is at a crossroads.

Numerous members of the Baylor community are calling for greater inclusion and acceptance of its LGBTQ+ family.

In April 2022, the university granted a charter to its first LGBTQ+ student group, under the condition that the group remains within the parameters of the university’s statement on human sexuality.  

To its credit, university leadership didn’t appear to stifle the vocal support of Nicki Collen and Women’s Basketball. (If they did attempt to do so, they were unsuccessful.) It seemed they were hiding behind Collen’s voice, which shielded them from potential detractors.

Collen, who never coached Griner and was near the beginning of her tenure at Baylor, had little to gain and a lot to lose by speaking out. 

Additionally, as a Baylor employee during Griner’s imprisonment, I was never asked to tone down my calls for more robust expressions of support from the Baylor administration. I suspect this freedom of expression was extended to other members of the Baylor family who were publicly critical of the university’s lackluster response.

At the same time, I am aware of prominent stakeholders who work behind the scenes to derail the careers of anyone suspected of advancing a more inclusive Baylor. 

The university recently received a Title IX exemption to LGBTQIA protections to legally maintain its statement on human sexuality.

Baylor’s Truett Seminary is now closely associated with the Global Methodist Church, a denomination whose recent formation was almost solely for the purpose of LGBTQ+ exclusion. 

Most of the Baylor family, regardless of their religious convictions, have no strong opinions on the university’s stance toward its LGBTQ+ family members. They just want the issue to disappear and could be convinced by either side of the conversation. 

I would recommend they take a trip to Tidwell Bible Building. Many scholars Baylor, tasked with teaching theology and Christian scriptures, would tell them the same thing: The hermeneutical gymnastics required to include powerful, wealthy men under the umbrella of “Biblical Christianity” are far more complex than those needed to include LGBTQ+ individuals under the same umbrella. 

Baylor has found a way to stick the landing for one but not the other. 

In an interview with NPR for her album “By the Way, I Forgive You,” Brandi Carlile tells the story of her youth minister who refused to baptize her. Carlile’s family and friends were already gathered at the church, but the young minister decided at the last minute that he couldn’t do it because she was gay. 

In the days after the incident, he begged for her forgiveness, saying he wanted to baptize her and struggled with the decision for a while, but he simply “ran out of time.” She eventually forgave him, which is the subject of “Every Time I Hear That Song,” the album’s opening track. 

Although it isn’t too late for Baylor to do the right thing, the clock is ticking. 

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