{"id":305,"date":"2009-04-08T10:05:11","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T10:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html"},"modified":"2009-04-08T10:05:11","modified_gmt":"2009-04-08T10:05:11","slug":"i-heart-baylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html","title":{"rendered":"I (Heart) Baylor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the third year in a row, I&#8217;ve spent the past few days in Waco, TX at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/about\/\">Baylor University<\/a>.&nbsp; As a yankee, I hear all sorts of stereotypes about things and places Southern.&nbsp; But, with the exception of some rather rude treatment by a Baylor professor at the Wheaton Theology Conference a couple years ago, I have been hospitably received by all of the Baylorites I&#8217;ve met.<\/p>\n<p>Mandatory college chapel services are, without question, the most difficult speaking gigs that I get.&nbsp; It&#8217;s tough to look out over a sea of uninterested faces and see earbuds, texting thumbs, and literally dozens of sleeping freshmen.&nbsp; Baylor&#8217;s no exception to that.&nbsp; (I will say that my experience in chapel a couple weeks ago at Houghton College was an exception &#8212; their chapel is well-lit with sun streaming in through windows, and it&#8217;s populated by faculty and staff as well as students; there was an energy in that room that I rarely experience in mandatory college chapel services.&nbsp; The only other place I recall that had that energy was Pepperdine (also well-lit with windows).)<\/p>\n<p>But Baylor, and its affiliated seminary, <a href=\"http:\/\/baylor.edu\/truett\">Truett<\/a>, is not the stereotypical &#8220;Texas Babtist&#8221; institution that you might think.&nbsp; Instead, Truett is more like my alma mater, <a href=\"http:\/\/fuller.edu\/\">Fuller<\/a> &#8212; it&#8217;s evangelical, but open and moderate.&nbsp; I had a great lunch with the staff of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/spirituallife\/\">Spiritual Life<\/a> office, and we were interrupted by a couple students who stopped to thank me for my chapel talk.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday afternoon, I stopped in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/truett\/index.php?id=50006\">Amy Jacober&#8217;s<\/a> class.&nbsp; Amy&#8217;s an old friend, and I got the chance to explain the <a href=\"http:\/\/ptsem.edu\/\">Princeton<\/a> approach to <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cgi-bin\/mt\/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=127&amp;tag=practical%20theology&amp;limit=20\">practical theology<\/a>. I felt at home at Truett.<\/p>\n<p>Last evening, Doug and I presented at an open forum, and the undergrads (not our usual crowd) were engaged and talkative.<\/p>\n<p>Baylor is good people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the third year in a row, I&#8217;ve spent the past few days in Waco, TX at Baylor University.&nbsp; As a yankee, I hear all sorts of stereotypes about things and places Southern.&nbsp; But, with the exception of some rather rude treatment by a Baylor professor at the Wheaton Theology Conference a couple years ago,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travels"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I (Heart) Baylor - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I (Heart) Baylor - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For the third year in a row, I&#8217;ve spent the past few days in Waco, TX at Baylor University.&nbsp; As a yankee, I hear all sorts of stereotypes about things and places Southern.&nbsp; But, with the exception of some rather rude treatment by a Baylor professor at the Wheaton Theology Conference a couple years ago,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-08T10:05:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"I (Heart) Baylor - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I (Heart) Baylor - The New Christians","og_description":"For the third year in a row, I&#8217;ve spent the past few days in Waco, TX at Baylor University.&nbsp; As a yankee, I hear all sorts of stereotypes about things and places Southern.&nbsp; But, with the exception of some rather rude treatment by a Baylor professor at the Wheaton Theology Conference a couple years ago,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html","og_site_name":"The New Christians","article_published_time":"2009-04-08T10:05:11+00:00","author":"Tony Jones","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html","name":"I (Heart) Baylor - The New Christians","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-08T10:05:11+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-08T10:05:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/04\/i-heart-baylor.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"I (Heart) Baylor"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/","name":"The New Christians","description":"Tony Jones on Christianity and the Emerging Church","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074","name":"Tony Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","caption":"Tony Jones"},"description":"Tony Jones is the author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and several other books on Christianity and prayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/author\/tjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}