Baptist Global News | Mark Wingfield | July 9, 2025
The president of Baylor University appears to have burned a final bridge with a Texas-based foundation that once was a critical funder of its Baptist identity.
President Linda Livingstone has rescinded a $643,000 grant awarded to the Diana Garland School of Social Work from the John and Eula Mae Baugh Foundation. That grant was for an academic study on LGBTQ inclusion in the church and how to address loneliness.
News of the grant last week sparked immediate backlash from evangelical conservatives inside and outside the university. Far-right influencer Megan Basham — who has no connection to Baylor — was among those stirring opposition to Baylor as being subject to a “woke” agenda.
Other national conservative influencers warned — not for the first time — that Baylor has become apostate and conservatives should not send their children to study there.
The Grant
The grant was awarded to Baylor’s Center for Church and Community Impact for research to better understand “the disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQ individuals and women within congregations to nurture institutional courage and foster change,” an earlier announcement — now removed from the Baylor website — said.
The now-missing announcement said many LGBTQ individuals and women “experience what researchers call ‘institutional betrayal’ within their faith communities.” These are “situations where the institutions they depend on for spiritual support fail to protect them or even actively harm them.”
That description was seen as pro-LGBTQ advocacy by critics of the grant, who have been on alert for years to any hint of the Baptist-based university welcoming or supporting the LGBTQ community in any way. Even though the university carefully said in its announcement that the grant was not intended to change the university’s institutional beliefs or policies, but rather to provide resources for congregations to engage with LGBTQ issues within their own contexts.
The LGBTQ debate has been a flashpoint at Baylor that Livingstone previously tried to navigate carefully.
This time, however, it appears she has ceded control to conservatives both on the board of regents and in the larger far-right evangelical community.
The backlash to that decision already is stiff and likely to worsen. Many Baylor alumni who favor greater inclusion at their alma mater are incensed by the reversal of course. Social media posts and interpersonal communications are flying to express dismay.
One alumnus texted BNG to say, “My alma mater never fails to disappoint.”
Baugh and Baylor History
This is likely the final straw for the Baugh Foundation, which is run by a Texas family with deep ties to Baylor. The foundation was started by the late John and Eula Mae Baugh, who were large donors to the university and were instrumental in supporting creation of Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary.
The Baughs funded what is now called the John F. Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise in the Hankamer School of Business. Their generosity also is enshrined on Truett Seminary’s campus which bears the family name. The Tidwell Bible Building on Baylor’s campus features a Eula Mae and John Baugh Foyer.
The Baugh Foundation has funded numerous other projects at Baylor through the years but two years ago stopped funding Baylor because of its anti-LGBTQ stance. (Disclaimer: BNG received $146,000 from the Baugh Foundation this year and has been a long-term recipient of Baugh grants.)
Thus, it was notable that the Baugh Foundation made this new grant.
Foundation Response
Today, the foundation released a lengthy statement responding to the rescission.
The Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation board of trustees is deeply saddened by Baylor’s decision to cancel the recent ‘Courage from the Margins’ research grant following an online campaign of fear and misinformation. A similar project, funded by our foundation and run by the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work over the past three years, has yielded significant insights. They should be permitted to continue the trajectory of the important work they have already been able to accomplish, which focuses on research to equip congregations with evidence-based curriculum on inclusion and belonging for LGBTQ individuals and women.
Our family and board of trustees have deep roots at Baylor. Every member of our board of trustees matriculated there, and our family has been funding work at the institution for well over 40 years. We do not solicit grants. Instead, administrators and faculty apply for funding to support projects that seek to answer open research questions or to meet campus needs. At most R1 research institutions, including Baylor, university administrators outside of the applying department are well aware of grant applications and provide sign off before submission and before financial awards are made. Baylor has solicited and accepted our funds for multiple projects, including this line of research, over many years.
“We believe this is following a pressure campaign from groups with a political agenda, which has been very public.”
This not only abandons this research project, but Baylor’s own faculty and the churches this research could serve.
This was an opportunity to answer the Christian call to care for the marginalized by creating resources and providing important research for faith communities. Our hearts break for the professors, research fellows and, especially, the students who will receive this message from Baylor, loud and clear.
Our foundation is rooted in Baptist distinctives that include church autonomy and the priesthood of every believer. Not all Baptist believers or churches are aligned on every interpretation of Scripture concerning women or LGBTQ individuals, but churches are in need of evidence-based research.
We believe that all humans are created in God’s image and deserve a loving spiritual home. The purpose of this research was not to dictate theology, but to better understand the disenfranchisement that LGBTQ individuals and women often face in the church. This research held the potential to speak to urgent challenges facing the church today, such as the growing loneliness epidemic among young people and the steady decline in church membership, by offering insights rooted in compassion, community and belonging.
This decision disserves Baylor students, faculty and the broader Christian community. Baylor has a duty to protect and uphold the integrity of scientific inquiry, allowing its world-class faculty to investigate complex issues without fear of reprisal based on shifting political winds.
Pulling the rug out from under its faculty after those researchers have already put the grueling work into securing funding, work they undertook with Baylor’s full knowledge and approval, is a chilling affront to the very concept of academic freedom. Stymying research and opportunity will inevitably lead the best and brightest students and faculty to other universities where their work and their freedom will be valued and protected.
While we are disheartened by this decision, the Baugh Foundation’s commitment to supporting progressive, inclusive and justice-oriented work remains unwavering. We believe that congregations are uniquely positioned to be places of healing and belonging for all people. We continue to support partners who have the courage to listen to voices from the margins and who are dedicated to building a more just and welcoming world.
We regret that Baylor has chosen not to be such a partner. We hope this moment will be a catalyst for reflection and will inspire other institutions to take up the important work that Baylor has abandoned.
Who made this decision?
The foundation’s statement raises a critical question in the series of events: Who made this final decision?In an email to alumni today, President Livingstone said Dean Jon Singletary and principal investigator Gaynor Yancey “have voluntarily offered to rescind their acceptance of this grant on behalf of the School of Social Work and return all associated funds to the granting foundation. Provost Nancy Brickhouse and I support this decision and agree this is the appropriate course of action and in the best interests of Baylor University.”
But the foundation’s board questions that description, as it appears Singletary and Yancey did not return the money voluntarily but under pressure. That pressure is likely from conservative pastors in Texas and even some conservative regents.
Critics of the decision are wondering what role the board of regents plays in managing research grants at a university that has boasted of its coveted Research-1 status. Typically, a university’s trustees do not delve into that level of management.
Livingstone told alumni that despite this decision, “we remain committed to providing a loving and caring community for all — including our LGBTQ students — because it is part and parcel of our university’s mission that calls us to educate our students within a caring Christian community.”
And she said Baylor seeks to “strongly uphold the principle of academic freedom.”
The concerns that led to the recission “did not center on the research itself, but rather on the activities that followed as part of the grant,” she said. “Specifically, the work extended into advocacy for perspectives on human sexuality that are inconsistent with Baylor’s institutional policies, including our Statement on Human Sexuality.”
That statement also has been a flashpoint of concern among students, alumni and faculty who favor greater acceptance of the LGBTQ community.
In an apparent statement to conservatives, Livingstone said: “Please be assured that Baylor’s institutional beliefs and policies remain unchanged. Our commitment to our Christian mission and our historic Baptist identity continues to guide our approach to academics, student life, and spiritual formation. We affirm the biblical understanding of human sexuality as a gift from God, expressed through purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman.”
A tale of two schools within Baylor
Livingstone’s announcement came as she was traveling in Australia and New Zealand with Todd Still, dean of Truett Seminary, and Julio Guarneri, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Both Still and Guarneri represent the faction of Baptists who oppose LGBTQ inclusion.
Ahead of the 23rd Baptist World Congress in Brisbane, Australia, the Baptist World Alliance and Baylor announced creation of a Baptist World Alliance Program, a graduate-level study center devoted to the study of the life, history and ongoing mission and ministry of the Baptist World Alliance. The program will be housed at Truett Seminary. BWA also is nonaffirming.
Under Still’s leadership, Truett Seminary has advanced a distinctively noninclusive stance. That has endeared him to traditional Texas Baptists but estranged him and the seminary from more progressive Baptists who supported the seminary at its founding — and from the Baugh family.
At the same time, the School of Social Work has taken up the mantle of inclusion as part of its core values. Truett Seminary and the School of Social Work represent polar extremes within Baylor’s culture.
And ironically, the School of Social Work is named for its founding dean, Diana Garland, who was fired from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 30 years ago by President Al Mohler, who said the values of social work are incompatible with the gospel.
The same tug-of-war between Baptist factions that led Garland, who is now deceased, to leave an SBC school to become a dean at Baylor remains alive and well.
