Welcome

The Department of Religion is a community of faculty members, staff, undergraduate and PhD students, who work together on issues of religious identity and the journey of faith in our world. We affirm Baylor’s mission for Christian higher education—our academic reputation highlights vigorous research and teaching, service to the church and the academy, and collegiality. The Department’s work with students gives extensive attention to the importance of vocation: formation for Christian ministry, and preparation for careers in higher education. Our work is central to the common core of Baylor’s undergraduate curriculum and its goals of general education. We provide foundational courses that illuminate the importance of the Christian Scriptures and the Christian Heritage for transformational education and life experience. All students, regardless of their background, are provided rich resources that form and equip persons to live in a religiously pluralistic world. They learn to affirm and clarify their convictions while engaging with generous hospitality toward others who are different from them.

Several key values are foundational to our departmental identity. We have long supported historic Baptist principles like religious liberty for ALL people and the freedom of conscience. We strongly affirm diversity (our faculty includes Christians who are female, male, persons of color and persons from across the globe). We affirm egalitarian leadership in the church and world; over 50% of our religion majors are women. Our faculty are actively engaged in the life of local churches. A key element of progressive Baptist values is our affirmation and practice of robust ecumenism (regionally and globally). Our students come from many different Christian groups. Our department has long been known as a place that loves the Bible. We take the biblical story seriously for faith and practice. We affirm biblical scholarship that is not bound by the restrictions of an inerrantist hermeneutic. As a faculty, we encourage, support, advocate, and collaborate for each other and our students. Grounded in our commitment that we are a diverse community of Christian scholars who are one in our commitment to the Christian faith and to the Church, we invite you to join us in the journey of transformational Christian education in the Department of Religion.

C. Douglas Weaver
Chair