2nd Opinion: Cheer for moral leadership, not merely football success

All of Texas seems to be aflutter about the Baylor University football player convicted of raping a female student in Waco. Which means this ought to be a really good time for Christians of goodwill to engage in a thoughtful conversation about what really matters at a faith-based university.

Mark WingfieldUnfortunately, most of the chatter crossing my Facebook feed and what I read in the newspaper lately has been about who knew what when and who told who what when. Which misses the larger point. This is not really a football story; it is a morality story set in the context of collegiate football.

What I see and hear precious few people talking about is the horror this female student endured and how, for whatever reasons, she did not get the support she needed and felt it necessary to transfer to another school to avoid harassment. Let us remember a court of law has found the victim’s story to be not only credible but true. The court did not rule on who knew what when, which is why Baylor University is working hard to sort that out now, for which the university should be commended.

I am not a Baylor alumnus (although I do have honorary alumni status from Truett Seminary), and none of my family has attended Baylor. Our family has ties to TCU, which is one of Baylor’s chief sporting rivals.

Because of these things, I have little standing to make an appeal to Baylor administrators and regents about what I think should or should not have happened. Which is why I issue this appeal especially to my hundreds of Baylor friends who I know to be compassionate, caring people and who do have a platform to speak out.

Focus on core ideals

My appeal is for all of us as Texas Baptists to set aside rooting for any of our teams and focus on the core ideals that inspire Christian higher education. Among those is the belief that all people—male and female, athletes and non-athletes—are created in the image of God and are therefore worthy of respect. And also among those should be the belief that victims of sexual assault should not take the blame for what has been done to them.

We ought to be able to say with a united voice—whether to leaders of Baylor, TCU, SMU or any other faith-based school in our state—we are concerned as much (or more) about preventing sexual harassment as we are of investigating the morality of other peoples’ lives.

Again to my Facebook feed and the news coverage this week: I have seen more of my Baptist friends posting about who got caught in the Ashley Madison scandal and how awful adultery is than I have seen posting anything expressing dismay that a female student experienced such tragedy at one of our fine Baptist universities. And I have seen more defensive comments about the need to vindicate a football program than I have seen comments calling on the university administration to dig deep and find out how a rape victim was driven away from our Baptist school—even if that in the end reflects poorly on the beloved football program.

Advocate for victims of sexual assault

Our congregation has a focus on Christian advocacy these days, and we are learning as we go. This is hard work and often it upsets the status quo. Advocacy means speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for those who are victimized and powerless. We are all pretty good at advocating for our favorite sports teams. But what if, beginning now, we all became advocates for women (and men) who have been victims of sexual assault? In this high-profile moment, what if we could use the same voices that we cheer our teams with also to cheer on moral leadership behind the scenes as well as on the playing field?

This united front would truly make Christian universities “higher” education.

Mark Wingfield is associate pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas and former managing editor of the Baptist Standard.