In 2008, Brit Blalock graduated from Samford University, a Christian university in Alabama. At the time, it was unsafe to be an openly gay student on campus. “I was on a scholarship and while no one had told me this explicitly, my assumption was they could take that away if they deemed a reason good enough to do so,” she said. “I made the conscious choice to stay closeted through all four years so that I could get my degree and then immediately came out right afterwards because it had been miserable.”
Blalock was not alone. When graduation arrived, waves of former students began to come out and quickly, an underground network started to form. Blalock set up a Facebook group to connect those coming out after finishing their time at Samford. Within 48 hours, the group gained hundreds of members.
Blalock’s original Facebook group grew into a community that still exists today called SAFE Samford: Students, Alumni, and Faculty for Equality. While the university has never had an official LGBTQ+ student group on campus, SAFE aims to fill the gap by connecting LGBTQ+ students and creating a space for them. As of 2022, the SAFE Facebook group has over 900 members.
In 2022, SAFE found itself fighting Samford’s decision to expel two LGBTQ+-affirming churches from its campus ministry fair, an expo event that showcases different churches. Blalock described the decision as a hard-right, fundamentalist turn reminiscent of the culture SAFE hoped the school had left behind.
“We decided to limit Samford’s formal ministry partnerships to churches and to organizations that support Samford’s traditional view of human sexuality and marriage,” said Beck Taylor, Samford’s current president, in an official video to students.
This decision had its roots in the 2019 hiring of a new campus pastor, Bobby Gatlin. Due to campus closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 ministry fair was the first that Gatlin oversaw. Gatlin’s hiring received pushback from the Samford community because of his commitment to fundamentalism, a sharp shift from the past ministers. A substantial number of Samford faculty quit their jobs to protest his hiring.
“He is openly homophobic and doesn’t believe women should be pastors, which is wild for Samford where tons of women are educated at the seminary itself,” Blalock said of Gatlin.
Samford defines itself as a Christian university, founded by Baptists. However, prior to the expulsion of these ministries, both the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches had a strong presence on campus and participated in ministry fairs. A large portion of current students, faculty, and staff regularly worship at and are deeply connected to many of the uninvited churches. Since the decision, there has been an outpouring of dissent from students, faculty, and alumni. Hundreds have lined up to protest, created response videos, and signed onto open letters. Alumni have called to disinherit Samford from their wills and cancel monthly donations. Samford has not reversed the policy.
The Presbyterian and Episcopal churches are examples of Christian denominations that have become more accepting of LGBTQ+ people. In 2018, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church voted to affirm its commitment to the full acceptance of all sexual orientations and gender identities. In 2015, the Episcopal Church codified its support for same-sex marriage and committed to oppose all legislation that reduces access to public restrooms, locker rooms, and showers for transgender and gender non-conforming people. Despite these decisions, Presbyterians and Episcopalians were still welcome at Samford until 2022.
Baptist leaders at Samford have been working behind the scenes for years to cement the university’s status as a key foothold for fundamentalist beliefs. Through strategic hires and quiet shifts, conservative administrators have entrenched both their power and their anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs into the university. “I wish that I could say something like, ‘Oh, I think this sort of just accidentally happened,’ but that is not the case at all. It’s definitely happened through a thoughtful evolution and decision making. That’s come from very high up,” said Blalock.
As part of this evolution, the objectives of Samford’s presidents have changed. Blalock described how a former president, Thomas Corts, was an academic who ran the university in a style that encouraged freedom of inquiry and debate. In contrast, the last president, Andrew Westmoreland, ran the university like a “mega church,” and the current president, Beck Taylor, has followed a similar path. When Samford hired Gatlin, the university changed the name of his position from campus “minister,” a post often held by academically-minded people with doctorate degrees, to “pastor.” Gatlin’s 2019 hiring as pastor may have been the turning point for such a sharp shift in policy, but the foundation had been laid for many years.
Blalock finds the university’s backslide “shocking” because it is in such stark contrast to the school’s setting in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. The city of Birmingham recently received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign assessment of LGBTQ+ inclusion in policy and law, a recognition that came after the city passed an LGBTQ+-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance and hired its first LGBTQ+ liason, among other iniatives.
At the same time, the presence of southern evangelicalism, a conservative Protestant Christian movement that includes the Baptist denomination, has rapidly declined around Birmingham. Even young people who still identify as religious have become more progressive on social issues, according to Blalock. At Samford, in particular, the percentage of students who identify as Baptists dropped from 59% in 2000 to 30% in 2020. Young people have grown up largely under the expansion of LGBTQ rights, gay-straight alliances, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that ruled same-sex marriage to be protected by the Constitution. In particular, there is a large difference between Generation Z’s understanding of sexuality and that of older generations.
Evangelical leaders acknowledge that this trend has created challenges for their mission. “Our culture is changing a lot,” said Dana Hall McCain, who serves on the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the top decision-making body for the Baptist church. “If they are to remain, orthodox [traditional] Christians will have to be more forthright.”
Since being elected to the executive committee in June, McCain has become a key stakeholder in decisions about relations between member churches and the SBC, missions, disaster relief, and responses to allegations and mismanagement of sexual abuse claims. She lamented that rapid cultural change has caused an awakening of evangelical Christians towards an impending societal shift in favor of pro-LGBTQ+ politics and away from orthodoxy.
“Our position has been that Scripture is very plain on this issue, and that Scripture is inerrant. And is sufficient. And so we have made no adjustments, and I would be very surprised to see us ever making any adjustments to sort of accommodate the cultural change in that area,” McCain said.
McCain expressed the difficulty the church faces in preserving Southern Baptist strongholds in an increasingly progressive world.
“It’s really hard because it’s an unpopular message… to point people back towards some objective standard of truth and say that these answers are knowable,” she said. “You may not like the answer, but here’s the thing: the answer is for your good. The answer is given to you by God who loves you.”
Southern Baptists like McCain see anti-LGBTQ+ policies as part of this “answer.”
“We’re seeing a resurgence of targeted anti-gay and anti-trans legislation because Christian supremacists are trying to lay claim to ownership over the composition of the nation,” said Chelsea Ebin, an Assistant Professor at Centre College who researches the development of right-wing movements. “Christian supremacists want to define their ownership over the United States to lay claim to it as a Christian nation, to assert the righteousness of how they understand social and sexual relationships.”
Targeting higher education has been part of the Christian right’s playbook since the 1970s. Religious activists have focused on educational institutions because they are responsible for “structuring and informing,” argued Ebin.
The conflict at Samford parallels cases of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination playing out on the campuses of Christian universities across the country. Other instances include bans on same-sex relationships and official LGBTQ+ student groups at Andrews University, the denial of housing and health care to LBGTQ+ students at Baylor University, the expulsion of students who come out at Bob Jones University, and the refusal to hire individuals in same-sex relationships at Seattle Pacific University. Educational institutions have become ground zero for a resurgence in old-school homophobia, a strategic power play for the Christian right.
Southern Baptist leaders are open about their strategy. “The higher education moment in the life of young adults is crucial for spiritual formation, for ethical formation,” explained McCain.
To Blalock, this strategy has a different connotation. She referred to the efforts of Baptists to shape education as “fascist-like policies to keep the other ideas out.”
Beyond evangelicals’ actions in schools, the movement has also turned to the polls to impose its values within the political sphere. White evangelicals make up the largest voting bloc in the United States, according to Sophie Bjork-James, a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has studied the National Religious Right for years. Due to evangelicals’ high turnout rate, the community represents about a quarter of the voters in any given election, despite accounting for only 14 percent of the American population.
Katherine Stewart, an investigative journalist who writes about the religious right, also emphasized the disproportionate significance of the religious right in the American electorate. “In a country where roughly half of the people don’t vote, and others have their votes essentially taken from them because of voter suppression and gerrymandering, you don’t need a majority to win elections,” she said. “All you need is an organized and committed minority.”
This vocal minority is determined to radically shift the American political field. “They aim to create a new type of order, one in which they, along with members of certain approved religions and their political allies, will enjoy positions of exceptional privilege in politics, law, and society,” Stewart said.
It all begins with schools. As the conservative campaign to strengthen traditional values continues, students at targeted schools will continue to live in the closet, face discrimination, and risk expulsion or the denial of housing, healthcare, and employment opportunities.
However, LGBTQ+ advocacy groups like SAFE do not plan to stop fighting anytime soon. When Samford produced and circulated a recruitment video with a homophobic scene, SAFE coordinated a response and Samford took the video down. In 2012, SAFE applied to have a station at the annual homecoming event. They were approved and now have had a presence for roughly ten years.
SAFE faced other losses outside of Samford’s recent decision about the ministry fair. In 2017, for example, an LGBTQ+ student group called Samford Together was almost unanimously approved by the faculty, but ultimately rejected by the president. LGBTQ+ advocacy groups expect both wins and losses and understand that loud, active voices are key to push schools like Samford towards inclusivity.
“We’re not demanding that these leaders at Samford change their own personal opinions about the issue of homosexuality,” said Blalock. “We just want them to create an environment that’s equal for all people.”