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After Baylor University rejected a grant it had previously accepted from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation to study how churches can create spaces of belonging for women and LGBTQ+ individuals, it is time for moderates within the Baylor and Baptist families to acknowledge a point that their progressive siblings have been making for years: A “loving and caring community” for LGBTQ+ students cannot coexist alongside Baylor’s current statement on human sexuality. This is not only true for Baylor, but for the churches that support it.
By now, there’s no need to share a dissertation level, nuanced description of all the various biblical and theological views around LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church, society and our institutions. A quick glance will suffice.
On one side are those who can’t reconcile the handful of ancient, sacred texts addressing sexual identities with generations of human insight about the spectrum of sexual attraction. They’ve figured out how to make the interpretative leap when it comes to issues around wealth, dietary laws and divorce, but not with sexuality. On the other side, you have those who have found a way to reconcile the two.
And of course, there is a spectrum between those we have, for lack of more imaginative terms, labeled “non-affirming” and “affirming.” There are extremes on both sides for those of us who claim the moniker “Christian.”
One extreme has been on display over on X, where non-affirming evangelicals have gone apoplectic over the inclusion of a married male couple with two sons in a new Magnolia Network television show. The timing couldn’t have been more serendipitous, as Chip and Joanna Gaines, the creators of the Magnolia empire, are Baylor graduates and operate out of Waco, Texas, where the university is located.
On Sunday morning, in a series of posts on X, Chip Gaines decried the pushback. In response, others volleyed attacks such as this one from Nate Scholmann, pastor of Village Church in Midlothian, Virginia: “Of all the things to throw away your eternal award for,” Scholmann wrote, “celebrating two dudes sodomizing each other and ripping boys away from their moms is one of the very lamest.”
A type of extremism that can be found in LGBTQ+ affirming churches was described in a recent Baptist News Global article by Ryan Self. This extremism is marked by an almost complete abandonment of Christian identity, which is replaced by a sort of progressive activism that has been baptized— though not by full immersion—in the language of the biblical prophets and the Sermon on the Mount. Absent are clear calls to personal holiness or Christian discipleship.
Several years ago, an acquaintance of mine described her thoughts on these types of churches. She was a young reporter in New York and had just come out as gay when she began looking for community in religious spaces. She figured out quickly that most churches she went to weren’t going to accept her for who she was.
But those that would, she told me, lacked many distinctive features of Christian community she was looking for. “Why would I waste my time in these churches,” she told me, “when I can receive the same type of nourishment at a poetry night or lecture at a community college at more suitable hours?”
Most of us, as in all areas of our lives, live somewhere in the vast middle between these extremes. We either believe God affirms and celebrates sexual and gender identities that traditional interpretations of scripture have left to the margins—or we don’t. But regardless, most of us want to live in a gentle, generous world that is kind and creates space for disagreement.
Because of this, some churches have attempted to navigate LGBTQ+ discernment processes by opting for a “third way,” one that allows a multiplicity of beliefs to reside under a big tent. In virtually all of those churches, however, the gatekeepers of policies regarding baptism, ministry and marriage are exclusively those who do not believe God affirms LGBTQ+ identities.
This may allow for a “big tent” that allows people with differing beliefs to gather under. But, as was recently described to me, LGBTQ+ individuals end up being the tent pegs holding up the structure. They do all the work to hold it up, but aren’t covered by it.
This is what Baylor attempts to do by holding tightly to its statement on human sexuality in its policymaking, while employing the rhetoric of a “loving and caring community for LGBTQ+ students” in its communications strategy.
I personally know many of the non-affirming leaders at Baylor and some of the pastors who recently signed a letter of support for the university’s decision to reject the Baugh grant. All are loving, caring people who want the best for Baylor. But their appeals to policy and processes in service to traditional convictions on human sexuality leave Baylor’s LGBTQ+ students, faculty and staff doing all the work to uphold the “loving, caring community,” without the benefits of being fully under the tent.
The good news for these leaders is that a “third way” is possible. But it is one in which God’s affirmation of all people is taken as the starting point, not an allowable deviation. In any other scenario, a “loving and caring community” is just a slogan.
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