As I come to the end of my first year on faculty at Baylor, I have often been asked what has surprised me about Baylor. One of the things that has surprised me the most has been the depth of commitment and broad support for Baylor’s Christian identity. In a world where many universities founded by Christian denominations have abandoned or sidelined their Christian identity in pursuit of academic prestige, it’s an amazing gift to serve at a university where we understand our Christian mission as informing our quest for academic excellence. There are many factors that contribute to this commitment: thoughtful planning and leadership, the support of alumni and students, and the spiritual commitment of staff and faculty. However, IFL also plays a crucial role in maintaining and advancing Baylor's Christian mission. Through programs such as Cranes, Missio, and Communio, IFL ensures that faculty and staff understand the value and significance of Baylor's Christian identity and have support and resources as they integrate that understanding into their own teaching and research, impacting students across campus.

We are excited to carry on this work next year by expanding the formation and support IFL provides to faculty and staff.  We are working to ensure programs such as Missio and Communio touch more constituencies across all the Baylor campuses. We are growing the Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture to reach even more scholars and students from Baylor and across the country who are committed to the integration of Christian faith and research. We are excited to launch several new research cohorts supporting faculty seeking to integrate faith into interdisciplinary research in line with Baylor in Deeds.

In order to expand our work and ministry, we need your support.  If you love Baylor’s amazing faculty, are passionate about faith at Baylor, and are excited about supporting Baylor’s Christian mission, please join me in making a gift to IFL on Baylor Giving Day, April 2.

Elisabeth Rain Kincaid

Director, Institute for Faith and Learning

Baylor Giving Day is tomorrow, April 2nd, and the Institute for Faith and Learning is excited to participate. Gifts to our Excellence Fund fuel the Symposium on Faith and Culture, Communio: A Retreat for Baylor Educators, Missio: A Reflection on Baylor's Special Mission and Identity, Crane Scholar's Program, and multiple other opportunities for faculty and staff growth and development. We appreciate your support!

Listen to Dr. Elisabeth Rain Kincaid speak about IFL on Todd Talks, the podcast of Dean Todd Still of Truett Seminary

After 20 years in administration, where I spent time as a department chair, dean, and president, I returned to my first love, teaching and writing, at the university where I have felt most at home, Baylor University. It is perhaps odd that a Yankee Catholic would flourish at the world’s largest Baptist University, located in Waco, Texas. But Baylor is a place where the complex set of goods that define the modern university can be pursued in a unified way, even as higher education across the country is increasingly specialized and siloed, and where hope is fostered at a time when despair is a potent temptation. 

Here it is possible to integrate research with the teaching and mentoring of students, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Baylor’s commitment to residential communities encourages students, faculty, and staff to work, eat, and worship together as they reflect on the ways that the life of faith can inform the pursuit of truth, the service of the least of our neighbors, and the cultivation of life-long friendships.

Although there is much in the history, up to the present moment, of our churches that calls for repentance, as members of churches populated by a vast assembly of “every nation, race, people, and tongue” (Revelation 7:9), we have resources for a vision of diversity within unity, where forgiveness does not erase the requirements of justice and where justice is not disconnected from the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation.

For fostering settings where we can think critically and faithfully about all these matters, I am grateful for the work of the Institute of Faith and Learning. Formerly under Darin Davis and now under Elisabeth Kincaid, IFL fosters the cultivation of one of the rarest of goods in the modern university: friendships among faculty across the entire university.   

Dr. Thomas Hibbs

Rayzor Professor of Philosophy, Dean Emeritus

For the 2026 Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture: Technology and the Human Person in the Age of AI, IFL welcomes contributions from scholars and practitioners across all disciplines. We invite reflections on AI’s current significance and its future implications in light of the moral demands based on the nature of the human person and the responsible use of technology in the age of AI. 

We welcome proposals for individual papers, papers with multiple presenters, panels, and posters (a new opportunity!).

Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words by August 1, 2025. 

We have an exciting lineup of invited speakers! Please like or follow us on social media to get updates about invited speakers. 

We were thrilled to host Drs. Drew Collins and Ryan McAnnally-Linz from the Yale Center for Faith and Culture in a workshop for Baylor faculty exploring integration of Scripture into interdisciplinary teaching. Thank you to our presenters and attendees!

IFL and the Truett's Grants and Public Scholar Committee invite Baylor faculty to a writer's workshop on Monday, April 14 at noon. Ryan Sanders, the Commentary Editor for the Dallas Morning News, will conduct a workshop for faculty with a focus on how to develop academic writing for traditional popular news media.

We had a great time on March 18th with Dr. Jared E. Alcántara celebrating his recent book: The Challenge of Joseph H. Jackson. Thank you to the respondent,  Dr. Ralph Douglas West, pastor of The Church Without Walls.

IFL loves helping organize conversations around questions of vocation across campus. On March 17, we partnered with Truett Women in Ministry and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship to host a dinner gathering women from across the campus to explore “out of the box” opportunities for women discerning a call to service in ministry.

We were thrilled to host a Communio Reunion Dinner for former Communio participants, bringing together a wonderful community of friends and colleagues. The evening was filled with delicious food and meaningful reflections. We are especially grateful to Coach Dave Aranda, Drs. Andrea Turpin, Ian Gravagne, and Steve Reid for sharing their thoughtful reflections on the profound and lasting impact that Communio has had on their lives, both personally and professionally.

We were excited to host a workshop with Dr. David Smith that brought together faculty from across the university to reflect on the intersection of faith and pedagogy. Over the course of the three-hour session, faculty explored how their Christian faith informs not only what they teach but also how they teach. David Smith encouraged participants to consider how even the ordinary routines of the classroom can embody and express the values of the Christian faith.

We love learning about the innovative ways in which Baylor faculty are integrating faith across campus.  Take a look at this innovative Engaged Learning class offering (and encourage students to enroll!). Spanish for Christian Ministry (SPA2322) includes the development of vocabulary, grammar, composition, and conversation skills in Spanish for students interested in Christian ministry, using the Bible and related religious materials. Contact Dr. Joan Barrett for more information.

NetVUE Scriptural Reasoning Training Hubs, May 7-9, 2025

This Scriptural Reasoning Training Hub will be held at Southwestern College in Winfield, KS on May 7-9. Very briefly, this is a practice to enable students from different religious backgrounds to study texts together in a way that encourages reflection about their future vocations. NetVue would be especially glad if Baylor could send 2-3 faculty members or staff to this event. Students at campuses like Baylor are eager to engage with religious texts, and they would be attracted to the thoughtful, non-threatening atmosphere that Scriptural Reasoning sessions offer. Two nights’ lodging and all meals are included in each gathering. Due to the generosity of Lilly Endowment Inc., there is no cost to participate. Visit the NetVUE Scriptural Reasoning page for additional details, locations, and dates.

Integrating Vocation in the Academic Disciplines, May 29-31, 2025

This NetVUE regional gathering seeks to help faculty members and academic departments integrate vocation into disciplinary programs and courses. The event focuses on helping students connect vocation to the knowledge and skills of academic disciplines, particularly as students' central point of vocational focus is often grounded in their major field. 

An Inklings Week in Oxford, July 6 - 11, 2025

The fifth edition of the triennial Inklings Week in Oxford will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by exploring "Of Other Worlds: 75 Years of Narnia". The weeklong event includes a grand collection of speakers as well as evening concerts staged by Oxford University. Please refer to the registration form for additional information including cost. 

25th Annual Notre Dame Fall Conference: That which I Also Received, November 13-15, 2025

In honor of its 25th annual Fall Conference, the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture will consider how the phenomenon of living tradition—whether dogmatic, religious, literary, artistic, legal, interpretive, or otherwise, up to and including the customs, embodied practices, and habits of everyday life—serves to bridge past and future. The de Nicola Center invites scholars, practitioners, and artists from diverse fields to submit proposals that address any of the following questions: How does tradition influence ethics, culture, identity, community, technology, education, creativity, public policy, and other areas? How, broadly speaking, is continuity reliably preserved through change? What might a closer look at the phenomenon of tradition say about the value of interpersonal and intergenerational dialogue? Why and how does the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition remain important, relevant, and necessary?

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