Eldest Daughter tells me that Robert Sloan, President of Baylor University, resigned today, effective at the end of May. From the statistics in an article from Waco TV station KWTX, almost everything at Baylor had improved under Sloan’s leadership.

Enrollment has grown from 12,202 in Fall 1995 to 13,799 in Fall 2004, an increase of 14 percent.

In Fall 2001, Baylor Regents endorsed Baylor 2012, the University’s 10-year vision that calls for Baylor to become a nationally prominent research institution while simultaneously strengthening its Christian mission.

Faculty additions have brought credentials from some of the world’s great universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT. Overall faculty has grown from 644 in 1995 to 780 in 2004.

Three Schools —Engineering and Computer Science (1995), Honors College (2002) and Social Work (2004)— have been established.

Annual gifts to the University have grown from $18.5 million in 1995 to more than $45 million in 2003 , the University’s fourth-best giving year, with more than 3,500 first-time donors. Gifts to the University during the Sloan administration total almost $400 million. Endowment has almost doubled, from $341 million in 1996 to $722 million in 2004

The average SAT score of entering freshmen has improved from 1160 in 1995 to 1190 in 2004.

The five-year, $500 million Campaign for Greatness begun in November 1999 finished successfully one year ahead of schedule and exceeded its goal by $27 million. More than 35,000 individuals, foundations, companies and organizations committed their support during the endowment campaign.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Read the news report. So what’s the problem., and why is Dr. Sloan resigning? Well, if I understand what’s going on (and I very well may not), there’s a contingent of faculty who want Baylor to remain a sleepy little semi-Baptist, semi-Christian university out in Waco. Let’s not make waves. Let’s not be vocal about that “Christian” label, in particular. The university under Sloan has been hiring professors from many different Christian traditions (Catholic, Methodist, Episcopal, even Baptist) who are actually serious about applying their faith to their academic studies. Some think the problems started over a tragedy in the summer of 2003 (just before Eldest Daughter arrived on the scene at Baylor) when a basketball player murdered another basketball player. However, I think it started with this:

Baylor University in October(2000) terminated well-known Intelligent Design scientist William Dembski as head of the Michael Polanyi Center for Complexity, Information, and Design. The center was placed in limbo, without a name or certain future at the university in Waco, Texas. Dembski, who retains his Baylor professorship, says he was overwhelmed by politicking within Baylor.

Some people were afraid that the serious study of “Intelligent Design” would damage the reputation of Baylor. Sloan and others thought it would strengthen that reputation in the long run and would honor the Author of Design.

I am praying that Baylor will retain and even strengthen the vision for a first class university with a distinctively Christian worldview—even under new leadership.

I found a link to this amazingly open and vulnerable article by an abortion doctor at Christianity Today. It reminded me of Huckleberry Finn, probably because I’m still reading Huck Finn (no, I didn’t finish before this morning, but it’s OK). Huck is so confused about morality and ethical reasoning. He knows it’s not right for him to help Jim, the slave, “steal himself” from his mistress, but he just can’t bring himself to do the “right” thing and turn Jim in to the authorities. So he decides that he’ll just have to do what he feels is right and face the consequences, “go to hell.”
The Boston abortion doctor in the article is just about as confused as poor old Huck. She know the baby in the womb is a child, that she is ending a life when she aborts a baby.

I have the utmost respect for life; I appreciate that life starts early in the womb, but also believe that I’m ending it for good reasons. Often I’m saving the woman, or I’m improving the lives of the other children in the family. I also believe that women have a life they have to consider. If a woman is working full-time, has one child already, and is barely getting by, having another child that would financially push her to go on public assistance is going to lessen the quality of her life. And it’s also an issue for the child, if it would not have had a good life. Life’s hard enough when you’re wanted and everything’s prepared for. So yes, I end life, but even when it’s hard, it’s for a good reason.

The doctor ends her confessions with these hauntingly tragic words:

I feel like I’m doing something so right. How could people think it’s wrong?

comes great responsibility.”–Spiderman We’ve been watching (and pretending) a lot of Spiderman around here for the past few days. And I’ve been thinking about that mantra and how it applies to various ethical situations facing our country and our family. Spiderman feels responsible for everybody. He thinks he’s responsible for his uncle’s death because he had an opportunity to stop the thief who murdered his uncle and didn’t do it. He shirks his responsibility to fight evil in order to pursue the girl he loves and finds that he can’t protect her unless he does what he has been empowered to do–fight evil. So how does all this responsibility/power stuff relate to our nation and to the decisions we make as a family? I have lots of questions but not so many answers.
I supported our nation’s decision to invade Iraq, partly because I believed, along with practically everyone else, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or was busily developing them and that he was encouraging and training terrorists to export death and destruction around the world. Even after we discovered that Iraq’s weapon program was probably not as well developed as was originally thought, I believed that we had a moral responsibility to overthrow the government that was responsible for torture, persecution, and murder on a large scale. I could not live with the idea that we had the power to get rid of Saddam’s evil, and we stood by and let it happen. But where does that responsibility end? Do we have the responsibility and the resources to eradicate evil in every country on the globe? Of course not. How much responsibility do we have, because of our riches, to rebuild SriLanka or Indonesia? How many dictators must we overthrow and replace? Do we decide on the basis of self-interest? Saddam was a threat to us, so we took him out. Dictator Y is only killing his own people, so we leave him alone? Or do we decide on the basis of what is possible? We could remove Saddam, so we did. Removing Kim Chong-Il of North Korea would provoke China, so we just talk to him and tell him to be good.
Then there’s individual and family responsibility. I long ago rejected the idea, at least in practice, that it is wrong to shop or eat out on Sunday because we’re supporting those businesses who compel their employees to work on Sunday. Likewise, I rent movies from Blockbuster even though I believe that they are purveyors of many very subversive and evil movies. I recently asked a question on another blog about boycotting Walmart, and received this answer:

Mattel and Disney and all the other toy manufacturers don’t pay decent wages because Wal Mart won’t pay a fair price for toys, and since they are the world’s largest retailer, they have the power to set the market price. So they set a wholesale price so low that the manufacturer can’t pay a decent wage.
Wal Mart has a multitude of sins, including selling products below their cost in order to kill competitors, knowingly hiring contractors that employ illegal immigrants to clean stores, because they work cheap; widescale discrimination against female employees, refusing to pay overtime and making salaried workers work 60 hours a week

Am I really responsible for the sins of Walmart’s owners and stockholders because I shop there? If so, what are my alternatives? Are there any sin-free zones where I can shop? Isn’t Target or Sears just as bad? Don’t they all get their products from the same places? Or is there a threshhold at which the sin becomes so egregious that I am truly encouraging and participating in evil when I shop at a certain business? If I knowingly bought products from businesses that were working within the Nazi system during WW2, wouldn’t I be morally culpable? If this is a general principle, shouldn’t I also refuse to rent movies at Blockbuster, watch movies produced by certain film companies, buy anything made in China, shop at stores that open on Sunday, etc. ad infinitum? How far does my responsibility extend? With great power comes great responsibility. Because as Americans we are rich, we have some power. How much responsibility do we have?
And then what about unintended consequences? Our presence in Iraq has had some unintended consequences. Some say we have drawn more terrorists to the region by our very presence. My not buying products made in China (or sold by Walmart) could have unintended consequences, too. If enough people joined me, those people who are now working for slave wages and under horrid conditions might becme unemployed and starve to death. Would this, too, become my responsibility?

As anyone can see, my training in ethics is somewhat limited. However, I think these are the kinds of questions that average Christians struggle with and want answered. Any ideas?

Luke 12:48b From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

Some people are getting all upset about Garrison Keilor’s latest remarks:

“I am now the chairman of a national campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians. Just a little project of mine. My feeling is that born-again people are citizens of heaven, that is where their citizenship is, is in heaven, it’s not here among us in America. …If born-again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?”

I thought it was funny when I read it on someone else’s blog, and I still do. And I am a born-again Christian. When someone gets serious about taking my citizenship away, I’ll get worried, but Keilor is just funny. It seems to me that the comment is a creative way to deal with the frustration of losing the election.

As Peggy Noonan says in her latest column, “could we relax a little?”

After all the Sturm und Drang of the past few weeks our country would benefit from an absence of sound. Next week we mark Thanksgiving. Today, in anticipation, and after our fractious election, we could declare National Settle Down Week. National Be Still Week. Or National Give It a Rest Week.

My friends Teresa and Carl don’t exactly fit the RSECVV mold. Actually they’re RSCCVV–Red State Catholic Christian Values Voters. They are also homeschoolers, deeply committed to their Catholic faith, and supportive of conservative Republican candidates. In addition to homeschooling her five children, Teresa is a businesswoman. She has owned a bookstore, and she now does marketing for a radio station. Carl is a musician, and he works for a power company. Teresa is pro-life and also concerned about “feminist” issues—the protection of women from abuse and rape. In the past, she’s arranged self-defense classes for women and teenagers in our area. Carl and Teresa’s children have grown up being taught their values, unapologetically. Now their oldest child is an actress living in London, appearing in a major West End production, and living an exciting and chaste life. These folks are not uncultured, not out of the mainstream, and not likely to vote for Democrats who mouth “values platitudes” without meaning.