Censorship, or legitimate church discipline, at Baylor University?

TRACY WARNER: Students on the staff of The Baylor Lariat should be commended for their courage in publishing an editorial February 27 supporting gay marriage.

"Just as it isn't fair to discriminate against someone for their skin color, heritage or religious beliefs, it isn't fair to discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation," the editorial concluded. "Shouldn't gay couples be allowed to enjoy the benefits and happiness of marriage, too?"

Not surprisingly, the university swiftly overreacted. University president Robert B. Sloan Jr. expressed outrage over the editorial, citing university policy "prohibiting the advocacy of any understandings of sexuality that are contrary to Biblical teaching" Sloan, in a statement printed in the Lariat, said the administration "respect[s] the right of students to hold and express divergent viewpoints," then immediately contradicted that statement by writing "we do not support the use of publications such as the Lariat, which is published by this university, to advocate positions that undermine foundational Christian principles."

In criticizing the editorial and suggesting future censorship of similar editorials, the Baylor administration discouraged the Lariat student journalists from challenging common wisdom and taking a controversial position for the betterment of aggrieved people who are in the minority--ideal traits of editorialists that educators should praise instead of pummel.

ROD DREHER: We've talked about this a bit on the Dallas Morning News blog. It seems to me that in deciding how one feels about what the Baylor administration did, we should keep in mind that this is a private religious school run by a largely conservative Christian denomination. There is a stated policy setting limits on editorial comment in the school paper, which is not independent of the school administration. Nobody is forced to go to Baylor, nobody is forced to work at the school paper, and Baylor is not a state school dependent on taxpayer support.

It's fatally easy to whack the Baylor administration in this matter, because there's no easier target in American journalism than the Religious Right. I think the Jim Bryant piece from the Houston Chronicle is snide and obnoxious. The Baylor administration may have made the wrong move here--I don't know, because I haven't read the editorial--but to haul out the stereotypical and abusive language ("Bubba," "ayatollahs," "Bible-toting babysitter school") to defend the student journalists is childish; those students deserve better.

What I'd like to see in commentary and analysis is some genuine attempt made to come to terms with what private, religious universities are for, and how this case at Baylor highlights the clash between two values Americans hold dear: freedom of religion and freedom of the press. It's easy to get huffy about those supposedly neanderthal Texas Baptists in Waco, but how would we feel if the student newspaper at Yeshiva wrote an editorial defending so-called Messianic Jews as authentically Jewish and the school administration came down on the editorial board for violating a policy saying the school paper cannot publish editorials contrary to Jewish beliefs? Doesn't the private religious university have a right, and perhaps even a responsibility, to defend its religious identity?

Anyway, regarding Baylor president Robert Sloan, those of us with total freedom to write any editorial we want regardless of the publisher's views may cast the first stone.

TRACY WARNER: This has always been the excuse that high school principals and college presidents, including those of public universities, have used to censor the student press. A couple of points:

1. The Los Angeles Times reported: "Baylor officials said they consider the Lariat an independent publication. And like campus newspapers across the country, it routinely takes positions that run contrary to those of the university administration. In an editorial after the faculty's 'no confidence' vote last fall, the paper called for Sloan's resignation."

2. The most worrisome issue is not so much the president of the university criticizing the editorial but his indication that he would clamp down on future content.

3. The editorial concerned the equal protection clause and discrimination. It's main point of argument was that San Francisco should defend its issuance of marriage licenses in court. It did not criticize the church for its view. For those who want to read it: baylorlariat.com/archives/2004/20040227/022704a.html

ROD DREHER: So what if invoking authority has "always been the excuse" for censorship in schools? It's true. There is no absolute right for a school newspaper that is not independent financially or otherwise from the administration to publish what it likes.

The only people with complete editorial freedom are publishers and bloggers. Besides, we're not talking about a public university in this case, but a private one. Baylor officials may well consider the Lariat an independent publication, and it sounds like the university has given it a lot of freedom regarding editorial comment. But let's not be naive here. Every publisher--and that's what the university is here--has limits. It's fair to criticize the prudence of Baylor's decision to clamp down on the Lariat here, but let's not act like this is an outrageous act of censorship.

I find Point No. 3 most interesting, because it contains a theological judgment. Your point seems to be that because the editorial didn't take on Baptist teaching, that there's no theological content to the editorial, and therefore the administration's chastising of the editorial board for going against Christian teaching (as the Baptists there understand it) is false. That presumes a separation of Church and Life that simply doesn't exist for many religious people. The Catholic Church officially teaches that it is a grave sin to advocate for legal abortion, in part because it considers abortion to be evil and legalized abortion a serious threat to the common good. My point is not to argue the abortion issue, to be sure, but to point out that few, if any, religions entirely privatize faith. That is, there is a public, social dimension to faith. This is why you have religious folks from the left, right, and center getting involved in advocating on public policy issues.

What does this have to do with Baylor? Only this: We should be careful about applying secular standards to the behavior of religious institutions, particularly if we, as editorial writers, lack the theological competence to understand religious institutions on their own terms.

TRACY WARNER: The context of the Baylor situation is that it comes during a time of debate over academic freedom there, a particularly difficult issue at a religious college.

The freedom of the student press is directly related to academic freedom. That's why "they"--student journalists--enjoy an editorial freedom that most professional newspaper journalists do not. Journalists and all citizens should worry when any university with a newspaper--public, private, religious--picks and chooses when the newspaper is "independent" and when it is subject to censorship.

No, Baylor shouldn't be picked on because it is a religious institution, nor should it be given a pass.

ROD DREHER: That's an excellent point, tying this to the struggle about academic freedom and religious identity at Baylor. That's a great story, too, having to do with the nature of higher education in a religious setting. And I have the same concerns there: As journalists, we have a strong bias toward no interference with free thought from authorities. We often absolutize that value, and fail to appreciate the legitimate concerns that churches and religious groups who run these colleges have with keeping the colleges faithful to the values of those religious traditions.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, but I don't see why "journalists and all citizens" should be up in arms over Baptists acting like Baptists. I have never worked for a newspaper, either in my (state) college or as a professional, which did not consider itself independent, but which also did not realize that its independence ended at the corral of the publisher's sacred cows. So what else is new? (he said, with a Gallic shrug).

EDITOR'S NOTE: Disagreement erupted on the NCEW listserv between Tracy Warner and Rod Dreher over a controversy at Baylor University and a subsequent Houston Chronicle column. The Masthead offered Warner and Dreher the opportunity to continue their discussion by e-mail, then jointly submit an edited text. Here is what resulted.

Tracy Warner is editorial page editor at The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Indiana, E-mail [e-mail]

Rod Dreher is an editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News. E-mail [e-mail]