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Sloan is fighting on at least three fronts. The first is intellectual. Many academicians have been trained to believe that faith and reason are either irreconcilable or irrelevant to each other. As an example, some older faculty complain that the only Christian way to teach a subject like political science is to teach it well. They ignore the reality that faith influences the questions one asks and the solutions one may consider. The second is spiritual. Moderate Baptists are incredibly dedicated to freewill and tend to see the Sloan administration's careful interview process as overly searching. The third is a simple human dynamic. Sloan is the type of leader who drives his agenda forward with hopes of soothing hurt feelings after the tough sledding is finished. Among moderate Texas Baptists with ruffled feathers remaining from the loss of the Southern Baptist Convention to their "fundamentalist" cousins, grudges of every kind have been quick to harden.

To some extent, what Sloan has set in motion is irreversible. He has presided over the hiring of approximately half of the 800-plus faculty at the school. Youth is on the side of change as well. Most of the opposition professors are older than Sloan's prized recruits. Whether the change continues in slow motion due to inertia or with dispatch thanks to the continued presence of guiding vision is what's at stake now. It is possible that Sloan's administration has absorbed as much punishment as the opposition can muster. On the other hand, the slender margin by which he has been retained may cripple him.

Regardless of what happens next at Baylor, the school has taken a major stride forward in offering a new vision for education and research at a major university. The idea that faith and reason can't coexist or are "non-overlapping magisteria" is beginning to encounter resistance. The challenge Baylor has taken up was issued long ago by giants like Carl F.H. Henry and Elton Trueblood. It has since been re-issued persuasively by Christian historians like George Marsden and Mark Noll. Initially, expectations were modest. Perhaps an endowed chair here or a special institute there at a large school. But with Baylor, the idea of a university simultaneously reaching for research excellence and Christian identity at the same time has begun to become a reality. Let's hope the same Board of Regents that once strongly approved this great vision will have the courage and fortitude to see it through. May God grant them favor in so doing.

Hunter Baker is a doctoral fellow in Religion, Politics, and Society at Baylor University. This article originally appered in The American Spectator Online. Reprinted with permission.

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Christianity Today's earlier coverage of the Baylor controversies include:

Weblog: Baylor President Narrowly Survives Regent Vote | Sloan keeps post, but barely (May 19, 2004)

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June (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48