Baylor Students’ Leftist Counter to Turning Point Misses True Neighborliness

More than 350 Baylor University students, faculty, staff, and alumni attended a student-organized event featuring national LGBTQ+ advocates and intended to counter a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event held on the Waco, Texas, campus the same night.

The April 22 “All Are Neighbors” event at the Baptist university featured speakers advocating LGBTQ+ affirmation, condemning Trump administration immigration enforcement and lauded religious diversity. Baylor faculty and undergraduate students also spoke.

Baylor University did not endorse either event; both required extensive paperwork and express logistical approval to be held on campus. The respective events had ample security and were required to post an “Expressive Activity Ahead” sign at their entrances.

Throughout “All Are Neighbors,” speakers explained how their Christian backgrounds inspired their political advocacy. Interfaith Alliance President and CEO the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush spoke on his identities, as a Baptist and as a gay man, as compatible and divinely bestowed.

“My faith teaches that each one of our lives — in all of our complexity and diversity — are divinely and beautifully created,” Raushenbush shared.

In contrast, the weaponization of faith and politics against people in vulnerable communities is the “blasphemy” and “sin” we must stop, the progressive cleric insisted.

The Rev. Susan Hayward, minister for Justice Organizing and Adult Faith Formation at Creekside United Church of Christ (UCC) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, emphasized human diversity as a reflection of God.

“In learning and celebrating our differences, we can understand better a God who is bigger than any one race or culture or nation or religious tradition, a God who does not belong to any one of us, but to whom we all belong,” Hayward proposed.

The UCC pastor challenged the audience to stand in solidarity with immigrants. She described how she and her community in Minneapolis stood against Operation Metro Surge with nothing but whistles and phone cameras, and how the community helped to feed and conceal illegal immigrants from federal officials.

Dr. Greg Garrett, the Carole Ann McDaniel Hanks Chair of Literature and Culture at Baylor’s English department, recalled being named to TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist two years ago.

“They don’t comprehend my deep faith,” Garrett asserted.

Referencing Matthew 25:40, Garrett emphasized that what matters at the end is whether we have served “the least of these.” To then redirect attention away from those on the margins is an affront to the faith, Garrett claimed.

“I am a straight white Christian male, and I am not one of the least of these. Even though some white American Christians claim to be persecuted, or that Christianity is under siege, this is not reality,” Garrett insisted.

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson told those at the event that her faith is foundational to her work. As a self-identified queer person raised Catholic, Robinson said that church taught her how to build community and to advocate for others. She urged the audience to have a “civic faith” that “together we can bring forward a world that we all deserve.”

“One day, my kids will feel just as safe surrounded by the American flag as they do when they’re surrounded by pride flags,” Robinson predicted.

Robinson praised the “All Are Neighbors” organizers for offering an alternative to the TPUSA event.

“This moment … exists because … the community decided that if harmful ideas were going to have a platform, then by God, the truth would have one, too,” Robinson declared..

“All Are Neighbors” served as Robinson’s chance to remind listeners that “the power of the people is always greater than the people in power.”

Baylor University Director for Pastoral Care Dr. Sara Barton delivered the event’s benediction. She reminded students that the chaplains around Baylor’s campus offer care and support—whether that means sharing snacks or discussing the big questions.

“I’m here on behalf of our office to say especially to the students who are here: we are here for you,” the Baylor Associate Chaplain noted.

In the form of a benedictory poem, Barton highlighted texts from various religions that echoed the idea of loving one’s neighbor. Baylor Spiritual Life did not respond to request for comment.

The shortcomings of the “All Are Neighbors” event highlights the need for true neighborliness. Part of being a true Christian neighbor means engaging with others in a way that promotes Christ’s message of reconciliation through both truth and love.

Despite repeated invocations of love and truth, speakers at “All Are Neighbors” encouraged the audience to unlovingly abandon their neighbors in their sin and lostness. Our neighbors—regardless of their sexual orientation, race, religion, or immigration status—are in dire need of the truth of the Gospel. While hatred of neighbor has no place in the Christian mission, neither do unbiblical, sin-affirming platitudes.

True neighborliness means walking alongside our LGBTQ+ friends in conquering sin. It means treating our illegal immigrant friends with compassion and dignity, even while respecting the laws our government has in place. It means reaching those of other religions with the Gospel, humbly recognizing that it is only by Christ’s blood that any of us can stand in relationship with God.

The “All Are Neighbors” event attests to the cosmic loneliness of our generation. Speakers were correct in identifying an unloving divisiveness too often tolerated by conservative Christians. Believers should have little patience for vitriolic, dehumanizing insult-lobbing, such as right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson at the TPUSA event also occurring on Baylor’s campus referring to “deal with” liberal women the same as cows and pigs.

However, the antidote to alienation is not affirmation but atonement. Affirmation of sin praises that which separates us from God and neighbor. Only by faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice can we conquer that sin and reconcile with both God and neighbor.

True neighborliness is imbued with loving and truthful humility. It’s true neighborliness that empowers the Apostle Paul to declare, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

A version of this article was published at The Standard at Baylor University. Read the original here_._

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