Baptist News Global | Paula Garrett | July 9, 2025
Monday, I shared the news with my classmates at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, where I am pursuing a master of divinity degree, that Baylor University had received a grant from the Baugh Foundation to “foster LGBTQ inclusion in churches,” according to news stories. I was thrilled.
Tuesday, I had lunch with a friend from my Baylor days, also a preacher’s daughter. We talked about our faith, our mutual love of Baylor, our challenges with friends and family in the world today.
And then, as she dropped me back on campus, I opened an email from Baylor’s president, Linda Livingstone, explaining Baylor would not accept the grant after all. Livingstone’s message added insult to injury for me.
The email included this assurance to Baylor’s conservative base: “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.” I almost laughed at that line. Whoever actually wrote the letter signed by Livingstone should have done better than affirming the “biblical understanding of human sexuality.” Shouldn’t they at least have said New Testament understanding? Or Pauline understanding? Surely, they aren’t affirming multiple wives, swapping one sister for another in the dark tent.
I’m hurt. I’m angry. And I’m embarrassed. And I’m surprised that Baylor still matters that much to me given its ongoing ambivalence, at best, and lack of Christian love, at worst. So many alumni friends who are part of the LGBTQ community are hurt, once again, by Baylor’s fumbling of LGBTQ issues, as if our lives are just something Baylor can flipflop over when apparent online pressure after a misinformation campaign scares the administration.
According to the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation statement in response to Baylor’s reversal, “at most R1 institutions, including Baylor, university administrators outside of the applying department are well aware of grant applications and sign off before submission and before final financial awards are made.” In other words, Baylor administrators knew of this research, had supported it in the past and now, because of pressure from the far right, Baylor capitulated, throwing ongoing faculty research, participating churches and, most importantly, LGBTQ students, potential students and alumni under the bus.
The foundation’s statement addresses this issue: “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.”
In full disclosure, I am studying at Perkins with funding provided by the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation’s support of the Baptist House of Studies. When I first reached out to BHS’s former director, Professor Jaime Clark-Soles, I told her of my interest in studying the center of the Venn diagram between people of faith and the LGBTQ community. She didn’t flinch. In fact, she cheered. Interestingly, I was introduced to Clark-Soles by a friend from my undergraduate days at Baylor, also a member of the queer community.
There are many, many more of us than Baylor would care to admit. And there are dozens of us working on faith issues, particularly on healing from religious trauma that results from church and, in this case, Baptist institutions like Baylor.
One day, Baylor will have to answer for all the harm it has done in God’s name.
After I read Livingstone’s letter, I immediately reached out to a retired Baylor faculty member and friend. She had not yet read the email in her own inbox, but when she did she simply responded, “This makes me nauseous!” She later added, “Just one more hit in a week that has already broken our hearts.”
I also reached out to current faculty member Greg Garrett (no relation), who continues to fight the good fight. He was my creative writing professor when I was in undergraduate. This was before his experience with an inclusive Black church that changed his life. My own journey has been informed and buoyed by his conviction that inclusivity is of God. He is the go-to for many of us who need help translating Baylor.
I asked Garrett how he understands Baylor’s decision initially to accept the grant and then to reverse its decision. He responded by putting this decision in a broader context.
“Baptists are wrestling with the larger question of inclusion, just as most Christian denominations are or have. Some of us at Baylor offer theological justifications to pitch a larger, more-inclusive tent, which is why I celebrated the Baugh Family foundation grant to the School of Social Work. I’d guess there was also a substantial amount of anger and dismay pushing back against the aims of the grant,” he explained.
I asked him what he might say to LBGTQ Christians who might not even consider Baylor because of the ambivalence, at best, and the rejection, at worst, that they see from the university on LGBTQ issues.
His response was tender, exposing the difficulty of loving a place so much you want it to be better: “It is heartbreaking that you’re even asking this question. I wake up in the morning loving Baylor. I want students to come to Baylor. I want the most diverse Baylor classrooms possible so we can learn from each other. I hope my classes and my office offer safe spaces for everyone, but I can’t blame anyone who feels that Baylor is not a welcoming place for everyone. As one of my queer former students said, ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner ultimately just feels hateful.’”
Garrett offered an apology to those who are hurt by Baylor’s decision although he obviously was not part of it. He said, “At my house, when we see someone is hurting, we say something.” He also assured me there are many regents, faculty members, alumni and students who believe in full inclusion for “all God’s children.”
This is a welcome reminder to me and to other queer Baylor students and alumni. But we need to hear it from more than just Garrett. He asked that tonight I pray for Baylor. In my earlier email to the president and provost expressing my disappointment, I said I would hold Baylor in the light, and I will.
But it isn’t easy to keep loving Baylor. It feels like an abusive relationship. Baylor takes a few baby steps forward only to come crashing down again, mishandling this grant situation so badly that it makes Baylor look ridiculous, like its moral compass is broken and it can be bullied by people who don’t even understand what is at stake for the church of the future.
In my exchange with Garrett, he voiced concern for the future church: “For 20 years, research by evangelicals and mainstream polling organizations like PRRI have shown that two of the greatest factors driving people from the church are homophobia and intolerance.”
I am concerned, as well, about the future church. But I am more concerned for the young people on Baylor’s campus who now feel one more rejection of who they are. I want to find every single one of them and remind them that they, too, are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image. That the love of God is deep and wide enough for all of us.
I suppose if I believe that, I also have to believe the love of God is deep and wide enough even for those at Baylor whose tolerance for injustice and cowardice in the face of un-Christlike exclusion drives decisions like today’s.
There are and always have been folks at Baylor who believe in the expansive and inclusive love of God. For that I’m grateful. But, tonight, I remain convicted Baylor’s refusal to offer full welcome and inclusion of LGBTQ Christians is wildly unchristian.
I’m ashamed of my alma mater.
Paula Garrett serves as professor of English at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C., is a master of divinity student at Perkins School of Theology and serves as director of communications at Neighborhood Economics.
