Critics are accusing Waco’s Baylor University of caving to the demands of Christian extremists after the private Baptist campus this month returned a $643,000 grant it received to study the inclusion of women and LGBTQ+ people in the church.
The nonprofit Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation, created to support “progressive, inclusive, nonprofit organizations that reflect the love of Christ,” awarded the grant to Baylor’s Center for Church and Community Impact in June. The center initially accepted the sizable grant, which aimed to “help inclusion and belonging in the church.”
“Through academic research, this grant will help us better understand the disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women within congregations to nurture institutional courage and foster change,” Baylor officials said in a June 30 statement, which the school has since removed from its website, according to CNBC.
Right-wing figures on social media were quick to criticize the university’s decision to promote inclusion.
New York pastor Matt Kennedy tweeted to his nearly 9,000 followers that Baylor is “hostile to faith.” Meanwhile, Denny Burk, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, opined online that Baylor’s decision to accept the grant was “illuminating” and “sad.”
“Baylor has been moving away from Christian faithfulness for decades now,” Burk tweeted. “But it’s still sad to watch another nail in the coffin of a once great Christian university.”
Nine days after accepting the grant, Baylor President Linda Livingstone returned the funds, stating the research project didn’t align with the university’s “institutional policies, including our Statement on Human Sexuality.
“We remain committed to providing a loving and caring community for all — including our LGBTQIA+ students — because it is part and parcel of our University’s mission that calls us to educate our students within a caring Christian community,” the letter said.
In Baylor’s Statement on Human Sexuality, the school affirms that “marriage between a man and woman is the biblical norm” and that “temptations to deviate from this norm include both heterosexual sex outside of marriage and homosexual behavior.”
Although Baylor is a private institution, its decision to return the grant follows a rightward shift in higher education during the second Trump administration. The White House has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to institutions that don’t align with the Republican president’s beliefs, including labeling pro-Palestine sympathizers as terrorists.
Indeed, the Trump administration revoked $9 billion in federal grants to Harvard after the school refused to comply with the administration’s demands to end its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, revise its admission policies and alter its hiring processes, among other changes.
Harvard, a private institution, has since sued the Trump administration on claims that the White House is harming the school’s First Amendment rights.
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This article appears in Jul 10-23, 2025.
