Ken Starr and Baylor University

Ken Starr is going to be named the new president of Baylor University.  Already, there have been rumblings.  Here in Houston, where I live, the pastor of Ecclesia church Chris Seay, who is a well known author, has already suggested people should join him in sending a statement to the Board of Regents expressing concern.  When I sent him a message via twitter, his opposition appeared less than sinister.  He was just surprised to get what he viewed as a conservative political operative choice rather than a “Billy Graham” style choice.

I think this kind of protest misunderstands Kenneth Starr.  Because he conducted the investigation which led to President Clinton’s impeachment, Starr became the focus of intense media scrutiny and was viewed as some kind of attack dog for the Republican Party.  That sort of view does not convey a real sense of who Ken Starr is or has been.

Of course, Starr has led the school of law and public policy at Pepperdine University for several years now.  In the past, Pepperdine has made its commitment to the integration of faith and learning clear and they are indisputably one of the finest Christian universities in the nation.  They are one of the finest universities period.  (Mr. Starr may be excited about the simpler task of paying academics in Waco versus finding a way to pay them adequately so that they can find a home in Malibu!)

In addition, before the Clinton-Lewinsky mess — which I believe he took on as a public servant and not as a hack — Ken Starr was on the short list for the United States Supreme Court.  He is extraordinarily well-regarded in the legal community and occupies a place in the very highest level of practitioners.  Although Baylor has an outstanding law school, Starr will immediately become the best known and most distinguished lawyer at the university.

Overall, I have little doubt that Starr will bring a new level of recognition to Baylor which has been rising fast.  Anyone who visits the campus will  be amazed at how beautiful it is today and what a wonderful environment it has become for students and professors.  Certainly, there are still tensions.  Baylor continues to be a school in transition and that means there are different camps of people hired in different periods.  But if ANYONE can withstand the politics of Baylor University, I would suggest it is Kenneth Starr.  He handled himself with grace and dignity throughout a difficult time in the spotlight in the 1990′s.  Notably, the worst thing that anyone could find to say about him was that he enjoyed singing hymns to himself.  Members of the media found that habit to be extremely odd.

One more question, which is significant, has to do with Starr’s long affiliation with the Church of Christ.  Baylor’s last president, John Lilley, had been a Presbyterian for many years and then returned to the Baptist church for Baylor.   (If Paris was worth a mass, what is Waco worth?)  Starr has agreed to join the Baptist church because the president of the university is required to be Baptist.  The question is whether Baylor has given up on true Baptist leadership since the last two presidents have had to “convert” in a manner of speaking.  I am unable to come up with a good answer here.  I suspect that the best long time Baptist candidates were already committed to their own projects and could not leave.

I wish Mr. Starr the very best and hope he will find good advisers in the provost’s office to continue driving forward on the integration of faith and learning at Baylor.  A great deal will depend on what kind of leadership he chooses on the academic side of the university.

(Disclosure:  The very first magazine item I ever had published was a letter to World Magazine defending one Kenneth Starr from the slings and arrows of elite opinion.)

Good Men in Waco and Good Books

When I began my doctoral studies at Baylor University in 2003, I was full of excitement over the 2012 vision cast by the university’s president Robert Sloan.  I was also interested to meet Francis Beckwith, who had just joined the program where I’d be studying.  In my mind, I was going to a place where a renaissance in Christian higher education would occur.  New leadership.  New scholars rising.  I felt as though I was joining a great historical movement.

About five minutes after I got there, it began falling apart.  News vans parked all over the campus.  The presidency of Robert Sloan was under siege, as was the vision for a great Christian university.  On a smaller scale, similar things were happening in my department.  Francis Beckwith came under attack almost immediately from members of an old and distinguished Baylor family.  I also became aware of dynamics within our department that would cause trouble for Beckwith when it came time to apply for tenure.  To his credit, Beckwith never believed me when I told him there were forces conspiring to deny his tenure.  He found out the hard way.  He also fought tenaciously to win the tenure he deserved.  And he eventually prevailed. You can get Beckwith’s story on the affair (including a few references to yours truly) in his Return to Rome.

It was in this boiling cauldron of university politics where I found myself trying to gain the notoriously elusive doctoral credential, the union card for college faculty.  I began with Beckwith as my adviser and my future dissertation chair, but as I have noted above, I realized he might be tied up in other difficulties.  I had to figure out how to move forward.  Who could guide me?  Who could I count on to make sure I was treated fairly?  The choice was simple:  Barry Hankins.  Hankins was one of my first professors at Baylor.  The simplest thing I can say by way of describing him is that he struck me immediately as an intellectually honest man.  He reinforced that impression many times over during the next few years.  I was terrifically blessed by his willingness to help me.

Hankins has been a prolific author during the past few years.  I had the privilege of serving as a research assistant for him while he was writing Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America.  Hankins is a scholar studying Schaeffer, while I’m more of a sold-out fan.  His treatment of the revolutionary Christian activist preacher and thinker is highly informative.  I learned many things I hadn’t known before.  The big difference I had with Hankins while he was writing was that I saw more of a continuous Schaeffer while Hankins saw a great voice fall off stride a bit in a detour with the religious right of the late 70′s and early 80′s.  Hankins’ point of view is probably the more well-accepted one.

I strongly recommend his book.  Working with him on it hardly felt like the usual grad school drudgery.  Hankins is an academic with a gift for direct, simple expression.  I consume his books.  Put his Francis Schaeffer on your shelf next to his masterful Uneasy in Babylon which was written about modern Southern Baptists.  Once you buy a book by Hankins, you’ll quickly want another.

Christian Higher Education

I have spent the last five years of my life with two goals.

One has been to write a book about secularism which would demonstrate what I believe to be the uselessness of the concept.  That goal has been achieved.  The End of Secularism comes out in August 2009 with Crossway Books.

The other has been to do anything I can to take Christian higher education to the next level.  I worked to that end while trying to save the presidency of Robert Sloan at Baylor University.  What I saw there was a growing community of serious Christian scholars taking shape.  Those on the outside can laugh if they want, but what I saw happening there in Waco was the first emerging signs of a Christian Ivy.  Baylor is surprisingly large with about 15,000 students.  It is part of the Big 12 athletic conference.  The endowment is over a billion dollars.  However, since Dr. Sloan left Baylor the basic identity of the school has remained in doubt.  I cannot say who will prevail.  It will either be an alliance of iiberals and Christian pietists who think their faith is private or it will be Christians dedicated to bringing their faith and scholarship together.  I certainly hope the latter group eventually runs the school.

I just received the latest issue of the Baylor Alumni Association’s magazine.  They have consistently been against the Sloan vision for a renaissance of Christian higher education.  The issue contained a series of suggestions from various alumni and other stakeholders on how to unify Baylor.  I was particularly repulsed by a letter from retired professor Rufus Spain who dripped contempt for the new “world class” (quotes added by him) faculty at Baylor.  I don’t get that.  Why wouldn’t you want your university to improve?  Why wouldn’t you be happy to be associated with people who have reached the top rank of their profession?  I don’t fancy myself a great Christian scholar, but I am thrilled to see them do their work and to help them influence the culture.

I finished my own doctoral work in December 2007 and have joined Dr. Sloan at Houston Baptist University to continue the project of renewal for Christian higher education.  I have been there nearly a year and a half and have never had such good work to do in all my life.  Culturally speaking, we dare not ignore the university.  College students are amazingly open.  They are thinking everything through and are figuring out:

• What work they will do
• What their view of the world is
• Whether they will go to church
• Whom they will marry
• How they will vote

And a number of other things about life.  Christian universities need to be attractive and ready to meet the challenge of mentoring students.  It is clear to me that while it is good to have big cultural ministries like Focus on the Family, we have underinvested in colleges and universities.  These institutions are force-multipliers, better than think tanks and policy institutes by far.  At our colleges and universities we can have both character and worldview formation of the young AND research and publication by our faculty.  This is where many of us need to be working and giving today.