The Baylor University Center for Church and Community Impact (C3I) has won a $643,401 grant from a progressive foundation to promote LGBT “inclusion and belonging” in Christian churches, the university proudly announced last Monday. Such a mission actively undermines what faithful Christian churches teach.

If the institution were Union Theological Seminary or Yale Divinity School, such a grant would not even be news. But Baylor is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, whose 2000 Baptist Faith and Message reaffirms the historic Christian gospel and historic Christian ethics. The grant therefore seems designed to inject progressive poison deep into the veins of gospel-preaching churches.

Such a conclusion involves some reading between the lines. Baylor does not come right out and declare an intention to undermine historic Christian teaching about gender and sexuality. Instead, it focuses on “lived experiences” of young people (18- to 24-year-olds) who have felt “institutional betrayal,” specifically “LGBTQIA+ individuals and women.”

The inclusion of “women” as a marginalized category is telling. Few institutions have done more than the church to elevate the status of women, and women comprised a majority in the church for most of American history. But in recent conventions, Southern Baptists reaffirmed their conviction that Scripture teaches that women cannot be pastors, and they removed several churches who violated this rule. Evidently, Baylor researchers plan to interview women who felt betrayed by that decision.

Baylor goes on to define institutional betrayal as “situations where the institutions they depend on for spiritual support fail to protect them or even actively harm them. This might involve exclusion from church activities, family estrangement, and painful conflicts that leave lasting emotional wounds.”

This explanation suggests the grievance sessions will go beyond abusive pastoral situations. “Family estrangement” seeks to contemplate situations where young people who grew up in Christian homes pursued an LGBT identity and, when their loving Christian parents refused to affirm their sin, cut themselves off from their families. “Painful conflicts” could describe situations where people were confronted over their sins and refused to repent. Certainly, such conversations would leave lasting emotional wounds for the pastors trying to shepherd their souls.

Additionally, “exclusion from church activities” once again suggests a focus on women excluded from preaching. It could also include people who were excluded from participation in the Lord’s Supper for embracing an LGBT identity and refusing to repent. This exclusion, too, is done out of love for the person, and in faithfulness to Scripture, which warns that “anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Corinthians 11:29).

The language of “betrayal” is also telling. Before the researchers have even selected their study participants, they have already selected a morally and emotionally laden word to describe their findings. Whatever this research project is, it will not be a careful examination of where churches can improve when they inevitably fall short of showing love in truth for people God has called out of LGBT identities. Instead, the aim is “to nurture institutional courage and foster change” — that is, to provoke churches to abandon biblical teachings about marriage and sexuality in order to accommodate the culture.

The character of the granting organization reinforces this interpretation. The grant comes from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation, which funds “Progressive Baptist organizations and institutions” that are “openly welcoming and affirming.” The term “welcoming and affirming” means “Welcoming and Affirming of all people regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.”

In other words, the mission of the granting foundation confirms that the grant promotes a pro-LGBT view of Christian churches, which is to say a view of Christ’s body that rejects the teaching of Christ himself.

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” Jesus said (Matthew 19:4-5), directly applying the narrative of the creation order to contemporary social controversies (no-fault divorce, to be specific). Bible-believing Christians hold to “traditional” sexual ethics because that is what Jesus himself and all of Scripture teaches.

It would be best to hear Baylor’s own defense before reaching final judgment on the character of this grant. We cannot guess the motives of others (Joshua 22), and “love … hopes all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). However, Baylor did not respond to multiple requests for comment. And it seems fairly straightforward to establish the character of this grant based upon Baylor’s own release.

“This is illuminating and sad and not at all surprising,” responded Denny Burk, president of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church. “Baylor has been moving away from Christian faithfulness for decades now. But it’s still sad to watch another nail in the coffin of a once great Christian university.”

Jesus also warned, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). This is a warning against those who claim to be Christians but who come to prey on the church by deceiving her with lies. Those who contradict Jesus are teaching lies (John 14:6).