New Baylor president affirms school’s heritage, plans to become Baptist

WACO—Although Kenneth Starr grew up in the Church of Christ and has been a member of a nondenominational church for decades, the newly elected Baylor University president affirmed the Baptist school’s heritage and pledged to “readily, cheerfully and enthusiastically” join a Baptist church by the time his tenure begins June 1.

Starr also said he would welcome all of Baylor’s divided constituencies to the conversation about the university’s future.

Starr discussed his impending role Feb. 15, three days after the board of regents unanimously elected him as the university’s 14th president.

Texas Baptists founded Baylor in 1845 in the Republic of Texas, before statehood. The university is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which elects 25 percent of its board of regents. The board itself elects the other 75 percent.

Starr was born to a Church of Christ pastor June 21, 1946, in Vernon and was raised in San Antonio.

“I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Lord and Savior at the age of 12,” Starr recalled, noting his father baptized him. “I remained in the Churches of Christ tradition through high school.”

“But beginning at about the age of 18, I began having questions about certain practices, beginning with instrumental music,” which the Churches of Christ do not allow in worship services, he said. “As time wore on, I found myself moving into the larger evangelical world.”

Several influences nudge him in that direction, including evangelicals involved in the legal circles of which he was a part, as well has his “home congregation,” McLean Bible Church in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

Starr and his wife, Alice, have been active in the church in McLean Va., where they lived from 1978 to 2004, he said. Since then, they have attended University Church of Christ on the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., where he is dean of the law school. But the McLean congregation continues to capture their passion and involvement.

“We’ve been very involved” and continue to be involved in McLean Bible, where he has taught Sunday school, he said. The Starrs also have been engaged in two of the church’s ministries—founding The House, an outreach to inner-city youth in Washington, and Jill’s House, a ministry to special-needs children and their parents.

Starr also has participated in professional groups that reflect his faith, such as the Christian Legal Society, which he described as a broadly inclusive evangelical Christian organization, and the board of directors of Advocates International, which promotes religious freedom worldwide.

Baylor’s next president said he anticipates becoming a Baptist as he steps to the helm of the denomination’s largest university.

“I feel a great sense of kinship and fellowship with the Baptist community,” Starr said, noting he has studied a treatise on key Baptist doctrines and practices written by David Garland, Baylor’s interim president and dean of its Truett Theological Seminary.

“I’m comfortable with the articulation of Baptist distinctives—including the role of baptism,” Starr reported. The doctrine of baptism has provided a theological sticking point between the Churches of Christ, which believe baptism is essential for salvation, and Baptists, who do not.

Starr particularly affirmed twin doctrines championed by Baptists for four centuries—soul competency and the priesthood of all believers, he said.

“Our great mediator is Christ Jesus, our Lord,” he added, affirming the individual’s right and responsibility to relate directly to God, as well as Baptists’ nonhierarchical view of divine relationship that reflects those principles.

“We have been given gifts of reason to seek to discern biblical truth and then to exercise our conscience,” he said. And this manifestation of soul competency results in “the precious, almost quintessentially American but deeply Baptist, commitment to the separation of church and state.”

Asked about his feelings for Baylor’s J.M. Dawson Institute, which historically has championed church-state separation, Starr said Baylor should be a leader in affecting culture. “Baylor is particularly situated to reflect on the growth of the central government” and to grapple with questions regarding the role and relationship of religious institutions to the state and to individuals within the state, he said.

Acknowledging he will have a lot to learn from his fellow Texas Baptists, Starr affirmed his commitment to Baylor’s strong, historic relationship to the BGCT.

For its part, Baylor can contribute to the strength of Texas Baptists by training young people to be strong people of faith throughout their lifetimes.
This should begin with freshman orientation, with a lesson on the Baptist principles that led Texas Baptist to found the university 165 years ago, he explained. Baylor should teach students to develop a “moral sense of connection to this cloud of witnesses who have gone before, to what led them to found this Baptist university that has had a global impact.”

Starr also affirmed Baptists for their historic commitment to establish institutions that minister to “the least” of society. That commitment continually manifests itself in “current, active, purposeful engagement … through all avenues of Baptist life, pouring themselves into kingdom service.”
During the administrations of Starr’s two immediate predecessors—Robert Sloan and John Lilley—the “Baylor family” sharply divided over the university’s nature and future.

The president can make an impact on the future and the relationships of Baylor’s constituencies through his style of leadership, Starr said.

“It’s the duty of a servant leader to take seriously the Baylor mission of the creation and fostering of a caring community,” he said. “We are in fellowship with one another in common cause, and each voice needs to be listened to with dignity and respect.”

Starr noted one of his tasks would be to explore ways to honor traditions and find new avenues for community creation. A practical approach would be for the president to say to all parties, “Welcome to the conversation,” he said. “Your views, borne of love for the institution and its traditions, will be weighed in the balance and viewed with great respect.”

Regarding the president’s role in that process, he said, “Servant leadership is a useful safeguard for what might otherwise be termed executive unilateralism. The communities are best served when the leader strives mightily to remain connected to all elements of the community, who … are the stakeholders.”

 “This is a timely opportunity for the conversation” regarding Baylor’s future, Starr said. Baylor 2012, the school’s strategy plan, is near its end. The university will establish “an intentional process of listening the faithful voices who love the community, while being a faithful steward of reporting to the board of regents and taking the eventual, ultimate guidance from the board of regents,” he added.

Acknowledging it would be premature to announce a business plan, “Step 1 would be an assessment of where we are in 2012 and what remains to be done,” he noted.

A practical goal would be to focus on reaching Baylor’s $2 billion endowment target.

“We must focus on this quickly, not just because it’s a goal, but because of what underlies that goal—to build the financial stability and to empower the university to serve more fully and actively the kingdom,” Starr explained.

Baylor also will continue to assess its intention to integrate faith and learning, he said, noting the university must provide a “holistic approach to discerning truth.

“We uniquely have been given the gift of reason, and it should be used,” he said. “Baylor has been at the lead of thinking in the Christian world, … and I would want to encourage the deepening of that.”

In recent years, the university administration and regents have become increasingly estranged from the Baylor Alumni Association. Starr noted it’s “early and premature” to speculate on specific plans for how his administration will relate to the organization.

“The prefix ‘uni’ in ‘university’ means ‘one,’” he observed. “And Scripture teaches us …, ‘A house divided cannot stand.’ And so we all need to be pulling together as we can.”