Whither Baylor?

After a turbulent tenure as president of Texas' 160-year-old Baylor University, Robert Sloan will step aside to become chancellor of the institution, in a move that would seem to amount to being kicked upstairs, as the expression goes. What will this mean for Sloan's controversial Baylor 2012 programme, intended to push the university to the front ranks of America's major research universities while deepening its distinctively christian character? While I, as a christian academic teaching at a christian university, find it difficult to fault Sloan's desire to recover Baylor's confessional moorings, I do wonder whether he was perhaps overly ambitious and insufficiently patient with those who might have qualms about this agenda. A more incremental approach might have had greater long-term success.

Incidentally, this week Redeemer is privileged to host Baylor philosopher C. Stephen Evans, who will be speaking thursday and friday. The subject? Kierkegaard.