A Force for Integration: An Appreciation of Donald Schmeltekopf
Not long after I arrived at Baylor University in 2003 as a graduate student, I became aware of the growing controversy on campus surrounding the presidency of Robert Sloan. Different narratives were flying about along with a scandal involving the basketball team, but the real contours quickly became clear. Sloan had taken the university’s Christian mission seriously and was willing to touch the third rail of hiring to accomplish the goal. After ten years of an incredibly significant presidency that led to Baylor’s emergence as one of the nation’s major universities, Sloan resigned.
At the end of Sloan’s decade of leadership, there was significant stock-taking done regarding what had happened. Donald Schmeltekopf, a former provost of the institution, and the historian Barry Hankins edited a volume of essays, The Baylor Project. Thanks to Schmeltekopf’s mentorship and friendship, I received the opportunity to contribute to that volume. My chapter focused on the differences between two presidents of Baylor University: Herbert Reynolds and Robert Sloan. At one time, Reynolds had been Sloan’s mentor, and Sloan referred to him as one of a handful of great men he had known. By the time Sloan resigned, they became tragic adversaries as Reynolds opposed Sloan’s attempt to integrate faith and learning more fully at Baylor. The story of Reynolds and Sloan at Baylor is one I invite readers to explore in The Baylor Project. But the point of this essay is to discuss the outstanding contribution of the provost who served both men, Donald Schmeltekopf.
When I became interested in the growing controversy at Baylor, Schmeltekopf had just transitioned out of the provost’s office and moved to a space in the old Carroll Library on campus. It happened that my graduate program had its offices and research space across the hallway. Someone, probably James Bennighof (whom I knew from church), encouraged me to meet the former provost. I sought him out. He gave me a warm welcome. It would turn out to be one of the most consequential relationships of my life and opened the door to virtually everything that has happened in my career in Christian higher education. We talked about Baylor and about how it could best realize its mission, about the integration of faith and learning, and about what he had done to try to bring Baylor closer to integration and to win it away from a two-spheres model in which academics and faith are more separated.
In this appreciation, I will share some of the things Donald Schmeltekopf said in important addresses to university constituencies, but I would like to begin by talking about the incredible, loving spirit with which he invited the faculty of Baylor to sign up for the journey of integration and to help the university to strive for faithfulness. During his first five years in office, which began in 1991, Schmeltekopf held regular breakfast meetings with faculty. The cohort would meet once every three weeks for a year. At the conclusion of the year, they would then select their successors in the next cohort. There were readings and topic assignments. Looking through my old papers, I found a variety of materials Dr. Schmeltekopf shared with me and a transcribed interview I conducted with him. Among those materials is a list of the participants in those “faith and learning groups” from 1991–1995. It intrigues me to see that these groups were not filled with hand-picked allies. Rather, it seems that Schmeltekopf and then the cohorts (at his invitation) chose diverse groups of discussants. The way the Baylor provost ran his process shows a genuinely open heart and the intellectual strength needed to truly engage. I also have a list of questions he used with “Faith and Learning Group V.” Below I offer a representative sampling:
What is meant by a Christian world view? How would a formalized statement of a Christian world view read for Baylor University?
If one accepts that “all truth is God’s truth” and that for the Christian there is no sacred or secular, what are the implications for the curriculum and the way that curriculum is taught?
What is faith? Is there a working definition that allows integration?
How does a Christian university judge itself? In other words, how does it know it is being successful?
If faculty are to be role models as well as instructors, should Baylor University be restrictive in its hiring of faculty? If yes, in what ways should it be restrictive?
Why are many of the faculty so anxious about the faith and learning issue? And what could the administration do to calm this anxiety?
Where are we in regard to the idea of intellectual secularization? What are we as a faculty doing to prevent this from happening at Baylor?
Why have Protestants failed, in the twentieth century, to develop institutions that are, as George Marsden said, “Christian in any interesting sense”?
The task that Schmeltekopf set for himself in these discussions was a serious one and a tremendous challenge. Looking at Baylor from the perspective of 2023 rather than 1995 (when the group faced these questions) shows that there was no final victory, but I think it can also be said that the provost’s work had an impact. Baylor may be a bit balkanized today, but there are certainly significant portions of the university that are highly interested in the type of questions Schmeltekopf was posing. Before Donald Schmeltekopf, I suspect that many Baylor faculty would have been uninterested or would have avoided these questions as a sign of undesirable fundamentalism.
Just imagine the patience, love, and respect for his colleagues and for his school that Schmeltekopf demonstrated as he carried out dozens of these breakfast meetings where he pressed forward a conversation that was surely uncomfortable at times. Nevertheless, he persisted in his positive vision for how Baylor could simultaneously be academically serious and Christian. When I interviewed him about his experience during those years, he spoke happily about the opportunity he had to think through these questions with 50 different faculty members. He also conceded that some of them became opponents. Even though some refused his invitation to faith-learning integration, he continued to insist that they were people of good will who merely disagreed with Baylor’s new direction. He summed up that direction with the idea of Baylor as “a serious academic institution that takes its Christian identity to heart in its academic life as well as its student life.” The integrated university would be a total package bringing in faculty and administrators who were committed to that vision. It is hard to imagine a more desirable combination of respect and charity for opponents combined with determination to realize a vision.
When I carried out the long interview with him, he pulled out a speech he had given to the Baylor Board of Regents in 1992 and read from it:
What would make a distinctive Christian university? It is not mushy, bland value talk that makes it truly distinctive, nor is it even a so-called Christian environment, as important as that is. Rather, it is the real and expressed belief that the university community past, present, and future sees its work and its understanding of the world in relation to God.
He then cited Richard Hutcheson, who wrote in The Christian Century, “At the heart of Christian higher education is the Christian proclamation there is a sovereign God incarnate in Jesus Christ and attested by the biblical revelation, and that this reality shapes the meaning and purpose of human existence.” He paused to laugh. It was a laugh of delight in the words as he continued, “The basis of our distinctiveness at Baylor, then, is that we – to echo Martin Luther – take our stand. We acknowledge and seek openly to advance the Christian world view that there is sovereign God, incarnate in Christ, who gives purpose to our lives.” Donald Schmeltekopf took joy in this vision.
In that same speech, Schmeltekopf defined the task of the Christian university as well as I have ever heard. He told the board:
We can have a fully realized Christian university only when the learning process, or the intellectual life of the campus, is informed explicitly by and infused with Christian beliefs about the nature of God, his creative activity, his redemptive work in Christ; about human nature; about sin and suffering in this world; about the need for divine grace and forgiveness; about the moral imperative of love; about divine and human justice; and about what is good in life. I am aware, of course, that Christians, even evangelical Christians, do not speak with one voice on these matters, but there is a great scholarly Christian and evangelical tradition from which to draw, including the Bible, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, the Puritans, Roger Williams, Thomas Helwys, Jonathan Edwards, E.Y. Mullins, C.S. Lewis, T.B. Maston, and Elton Trueblood.
How do we achieve this goal? For Schmeltekopf, the answer was that all the parts of the university (departments, disciplines, etc.) should be engaged in a larger learning community and a conversation “that connects Christian beliefs and understanding.” Encouraging that kind of learning community at Baylor was Schmeltekopf’s most important task.
In 2002, Schmeltekopf announced that he would conclude his service as Baylor’s provost at the end of the 2002–2003 school year. He made the announcement in a substantial address to the Baylor faculty. He titled it, “Taking Stock.”[1] The entire address is worth reading. He elaborated on the work he spent his 12 years achieving. In particular, he said that as provost he had dedicated himself to “recruiting, cultivating, nurturing, indeed, loving . . . a faculty who would gladly embrace the idea of a Christian university.” What does it take to embrace the idea of a Christian university? It “requires a kind of intellectual conversion” for most academics with a typical American preparation in secular research universities. They have been molded in a culture where science (however defined) is the primary standard of truth and yet a variety of “special-interest perspectives reign.” He explained that the Christian university exists within this “contemporary context” and will thus need time to really “understand and appropriate the Biblical mandate to love God with our minds as well as our hearts” and to heed the Apostle Paul’s call in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to “make our understanding captive to obey Christ.”
Specifically, how should we do these things? Schmeltekopf’s advice was to engage in faculty recruitment that measures a candidate’s capacity to think in Christian categories, faculty development that cultivates Christian scholarship, and to include the “leavening presence of Christian exemplars.” For a dozen years, Donald Schmeltekopf implemented these policies. For the last twenty years, he has dedicated himself to being a Christian statesman and coach for our colleges and universities. He has been there offering the invitation and giving encouragement. Yes, it is hard. And, yes, the project is worth the effort.
While I am the one writing this appreciation of Donald Schmeltekopf and sharing a number of the wonderful words he spoke and wrote during his time as provost, a period that was surely one of the most productive and interesting in Baylor’s history, I know that I am far from the only grateful colleague. He mentored many individuals. I was a graduate student but the list includes college presidents. Many have sought his advice, his coaching, and his inspiration. When I look back on my life, I remember well that period when God blessed me with the influence and attention of Donald Schmeltekopf. A Big 12 provost gave me hours of his time and attention. It was entirely characteristic of the kind of Christ-follower Donald Schmeltekopf has always been. His love of the Lord and of his brothers and sisters led him to invest in people and to do so with the kingdom in mind all along the way.
[1] See Donald Schmeltekopf, Baylor at the Crossroads: Memoirs of a Provost (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock), 2015.
Hunter Baker
Provost and Dean of the University Faculty, Professor of Political Science | North Greenville University