"But what about the rights of your students, alumni, and community partners to understand why this policy suddenly merits enforcement?"

Dear Dr. Taylor,

Recently I was reminded of Martin Luther’s landmark assertion in “On the Freedom of a Christian” (a work I first encountered in a class taught by Dr. Brad Creed, by the way): “A Christian is an utterly free man, lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all, subject to all.” While Luther uses his master/servant metaphor to thread the needle between grace and works, I believe this paradox has some relevance to the current controversy in which Samford and your administration has become embroiled.

I am of course referring to the recent decision to uninvite or disallow affirming churches or their representatives from doing ministry on campus, a decision that I must confess I find absolutely baffling. If these rules did indeed exist when I was an undergraduate student between 2008 and 2012, I never once heard of their existence or witnessed their enforcement. During those years I was a frequent and vocal critic of the administration, and had there been a policy to point to, surely someone would have shown it to me in an attempt to shut me up. I was also a devoted student of Dr. Jim Barnette, and he never once mentioned such a policy existing during his tenure as minister to the university. In fact, I knew of at least one occasion where Jim invited someone to speak in convocation because that person was a gay Christian.

In every communication I have seen to date, both you and Phil Kimrey have repeatedly asserted the university’s right to limit engagement with affirming churches or their representatives. In this you are correct. You are, after all, “utterly free…subject to none.” But what about the rights of your students, alumni, and community partners to understand why this policy suddenly merits enforcement? What about our right to know how far you intend to take its enforcement? Will churches who ordain women soon face the litmus test of “biblical orthodoxy”? And what in the world would you do if a group of Jewish or Muslim students were to request services be held on campus?

More importantly, however, I believe that “rights” are a terrible basis for ethical or theological discourse. After all, Luther asserts in the same breath that the very freedom which liberates us from all things in the name of Jesus also binds us in service to every other person in the world, and in the same name. Of course you have the right. Not a single person I know is contesting this. But what of your duty? Your LGBTQ students are already at significantly higher risk of negative outcomes like suicide or mental illness. What is going to happen now that their university – their home – has taken steps to publicly limit their access to affirming spiritual care? How can they possibly feel cared for or served when their community has gone out of its way to confess that ideological purity is more important than their very lives?

Dr. Taylor, you may not remember this, but we actually met during my freshman year. You were still dean of the business school and you came to lecture in Calling and Leadership, a brand new component of the University Fellows Program (by the way, you may also like to know that Sarah Shelton, pastor emerita of Baptist Church of the Covenant, was also a guest in that class). To this day, I remember being struck by your assertion that Christians shouldn’t be too worried about creating overtly Christian businesses, but should simply strive to live out their vocation well, and allow their work to speak for itself (another idea for which we are indebted to Luther). As a student freshly off the boat from the land of bad Evangelical copies and ichthus stickers slapped on the corners of ads, I found your perspective refreshing.

But this decision is going to render so many of my fellow clergy incapable of doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. It is going to prevent them from having access to campus and to their students the same way other ministries do, something I have discovered is absolutely vital for college ministry. It is going to limit students’ exposure to affirming clergy, something that was absolutely vital for my own ministry journey. And I worry it will have a chilling effect when it comes to other controversial ministry topics, even for clergy who choose to be non-affirming.

I hope that you will reverse this decision, and I hope you know that doing so will only make Samford more Baptist, not less, by providing more room for the free exercise of conscience. But if for whatever reason you cannot reverse this, could you at the very least explain it?

Sincerely,

Rev. Aaron Coyle-Carr, Class of 2012