This morning’s New York Times features a story about continuing tensions between Southern Baptist state conventions and the colleges they support. The article focuses in on the recent agreement between Georgetown College in Kentucky and the Kentucky Baptist Convention (KBC) to part ways. As the Times reports, the separation was shepherded through the process by Georgetown president Bill Crouch and my friend and colleague Hershael York, then the president of the KBC.
While the article highlights Baptist struggles over this issue, the same article could be written, with different details, about virtually any segment of American Christianity. Should (small o) orthodox Christians fund and promote a “progressive” university, whose faculty oppose the most significant things the conservative churchgoers believe? Does a confessional Christian identity mean the end of academic integrity?
The article ends with what, I think, are two very revealing quotes that indicate why, at least in this case, the university and the churches were looking to two different audiences. Georgetown’s provost says the college was seeking a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, a chapter they didn’t believe they could achieve with a close relationship to the state convention. “Phi Beta Kappa is the gold standard,” she said. The article closes with this: “It’s good to go to a college that’s religious, but it doesn’t really matter to me,” said John Sadlon, a sophomore. “What matters to me is getting my education.”
HT: Jim Smith
