My prayers are centered here in my home state this week.
Texas Education. My alma mater, the largest Southern Baptist University in the world, located in Waco, Texas, is back in the news again. Baylor University was given a grant by the John and Eula Mae Baugh Foundation to the School of Social Work for a study that would “help us better understand the disenfranchisement and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women within congregations to nurture institutional courage and foster change.” The School of Social Work issued a press release announcing their gratitude over receiving this grant. This news apparently did not sit well with the righteous in our midst. Baptist Pastors, conservative bloggers, and God knows who else, bombarded Baylor Administration with angry missives about this clearly immoral study on sodomites and women. After all, Jesus calls the faithful to reject these kinds of people and remand them to the shadows where they belong. Therefore, Baylor returned the money to the Baugh Foundation with a “no thanks” card. I wish Baylor would stop bragging that they are a Tier I Research University. Harvard is giggling as I write this. I guess giving back money for the disenfranchised is so much better than the faithful taking back their money from Baylor out of spite. WWJD?
Texas Television. Speaking of Waco, Brother Chip Gaines and his beloved wife, Sister Joanna Gaines, have done so much to make Waco a destination through their successful home makeover shows, their Magnolia complex of shops and restaurants for the Godly, and their public professions of their faith. The Lord has rewarded their faith in mighty ways. The success of their businesses has allowed them to start their own television network. While not as colorful as the Trinity Broadcast Network ever was (God rest Sister Jan Crouch), Magnolia Entertainment was believed to be squeaky clean thanks to Brother and Sister Gaines. Their newest television program focuses on several families as they attempt to live life like frontiersmen in the 1800s. Lord help us, one of the families in the show is a sodomite couple and their two “children.” The faithful have once again risen up to protest to Chip and Joanna about this decision. Brother Chip hath spoken a rebuke to these protests, citing love and tolerance over ignorance and hate. What is this world coming to when Christian broadcasters extend God’s love in a broad casting of nets?
Texas Texans. Finally, here in Texas, our state Attorney General, Brother Ken Paxton (a fine Baylor graduate) and his State Senator wife, Angela, are divorcing. HORRORS! I am relieved to read that Sister Paxton has initiated this divorce on “biblical grounds.” According to my Bible, the only biblical grounds for such an action would be adultery on the part of a spouse. It stands to reason, then, that Brother Ken was caught with his zipper down while filing any number of his beloved injunctions against his immoral naysayers. May the two of them find happiness going forward, while still deifying the sanctity of marriage. It appears that “moral decay’ crept into their home, and it all crumbled as a result. Let us pray.
