Like 82% of Christian higher education institutions, Baylor does not require students to be Christians. So this past month, with the help of my colleague Kevin Dougherty, I decided to drill down into our 2026 Senior Baylor Faith and Character data to find out about the experiences of non-religious students at Baylor. What are their perceptions? I looked at survey results from 830 of our 2026 graduating seniors that included sixty-five non-religious students.
Here was the biggest surprise of all. Non-religious students not only had a highly positive view of Baylor’s faculty, staff, and student leaders, but they also expressed a higher opinion of Baylor faculty and staff than Christian students! The question is why. The possible answer holds an important lesson for all Christian educators and their approach to non-Christian students—a lesson I have written about before.
Now, before getting to a possible answer to that question, I want to provide some data about these sixty-five students. They answered that they had “no religion” on our survey (57) or Other (8). Three or four of these “Others” appear to have some theistic belief, since 5% answered that they at least sometimes, often, or always “have a real sense that God is guiding me” and 7% answered that their life is at least sometimes committed to God. The others had no sense of God’s guidance or commitment to God.
The following table shares the percentages of these non-religious students who indicated a positive or very positive view of the various faculty, staff, and student leader groups during their experience at Baylor. I should note that a high percentage of the answers for faculty in residence (47% Christian; 56% Other Rel; 43% Non-Religious) and counselors (41 % Christian; 65% Other Rel; 33% Non-Religious) had high “neutral” responses, since respondents likely had limited experience with these staff or faculty. In addition, it will help to know that “Community Leaders” at Baylor are like Resident Assistants (RAs) at other institutions. They are student leaders.
Table 1
Reflecting on your experience at Baylor, please rate the quality of your relationships with various members of our campus community: Percent answering Positive or Extremely Positive
| Group | Christian | Other Religious | Non-religious |
| Faculty within your major | 84% | 65% | 90% |
| Faculty who taught Gen Ed courses | 58% | 61% | 67% |
| Faculty in Residence | 49% | 40% | 55% |
| Community Leaders (CLs) | 53% | 50% | 67% |
| Counselors in the Counseling Center | 48% | 35% | 51% |
| Other students | 83% | 59% | 65% |
We see that in every leadership category, non-religious students had a more positive view of the faculty, staff, and student leaders with whom they engaged at Baylor than Christian students (the only exception being “Other Students,” and these students are not in leadership)! That seems to say something about Baylor’s educational leaders and their hospitable actions toward non-religious students. But what does it say?
Christian Hospitality vs. Southern Hospitality?
In general, I think this finding says something positive regarding our hospitality to non-religious students. That being said, I do wonder if Baylor achieves these results by having faculty and staff demonstrate Southern hospitality instead of Christian hospitality. American Southerners are wonderful at welcoming people, but they often do not like to talk about uncomfortable things to maintain positive relationships. That would appear to include talking about religion/spirituality or meaning/purpose with non-religious students. For example, see Tables 2 and 3 below.
Table 2
How often have your professors at Baylor University provided you with each of the following? Encouragement to discuss religious/spiritual matters.
| Christian | Other Rel | Non-religious | |
| Frequently | 33% | 3% | 20% |
| Occasionally | 57% | 79% | 47% |
| Not at all | 10% | 17% | 33% |
As Table 2 indicates, one-third of non-religious students mention that they do “not at all” experience encouragement from professors to discuss religious/spiritual matters. This finding is a bit odd because we require students to take two Christian courses—but taking courses is different than encouraging discussion. Now, let’s look at staff in Table 3.
Table 3
How often have your staff at Baylor University provided you with each of the following?
Encouragement to discuss religious/spiritual matters
| Christian | Other Rel | Non-religious | |
| Frequently | 19% | 7% | 9% |
| Occasionally | 47% | 56% | 41% |
| Not at all | 19% | 37% | 50% |
This perceived failure to encourage religious discussions with non-religious students is even worse with staff. Half of non-religious students say they did not experience encouragement from Baylor staff to discuss religious or spiritual matters versus 19% for Christian students.
Now, one would think that this might improve with the less controversial subjects of meaning and purpose. We see in Table 4 that it does, but only with faculty. In this case, a lower percentage of non-religious students said they were “not at all” encouraged to have discussions about these subjects: one quarter versus one-third for religion. Still, it was nine percentage points lower than the Christian students. This finding is particularly important because frequent talks with faculty about purpose or meaning are correlated with a number of important variables related to spiritual growth and belonging.
Table 4
How often have your professors at Baylor University provided you with each of the following? Opportunities to discuss the purpose/meaning of life.
| Christian | Other Rel | Non-religious | |
| Frequently | 30% | 10% | 16% |
| Occasionally | 55% | 66% | 58% |
| Not at all | 16% | 24% | 25% |
Unfortunately, when it comes to staff, the situation is even a percentage point worse. More than half of non-religious students (51%) said they were “not at all” encouraged by staff to discuss purpose and meaning.
Table 5
How often have your staff at Baylor University provided you with each of the following? Opportunities to discuss the purpose/meaning of life
| Christian | Other Rel | Non-religious | |
| Frequently | 15% | 7% | 7% |
| Occasionally | 47% | 55% | 42% |
| Not at all | 38% | 38% | 51% |
As I have argued before, the secularization of Christian higher education usually occurs not because of rising anti-Christian sentiment, but simply because we love our neighbor more than God. In other words, a high percentage of Christian educators at Baylor appear to understand love for one’s non-religious neighbor as avoiding uncomfortable or potentially conflictual discussions about religion or life purpose.
Now, I grant that non-religious students may not invite these conversations at a Christian university, but I still consider these findings odd. And while I do not want to suggest I have somehow proven causality, it does seem strange that the students who are most likely to say faculty and staff failed to encourage them to have conversations about religion, spirituality, meaning, and purpose are also the ones who have the highest opinion of faculty and staff.
As mentioned in my previous two posts, I contend that this failure could be addressed by having all of our students take a first-year seminar that explores the topic of meaning and purpose, in particular, the good life as a whole, as well as the purpose of higher education at a Christian university (we do not have such a seminar at Baylor). In addition, student life staff could make a concerted effort to cultivate conversations about purpose through specific programming. Unfortunately, these findings indicate that Baylor faculty and staff may be providing an education informed by Southern hospitality, but not a Christian education that results from Christian hospitality. The two are different. Christian educational leaders should not be reticent to talk to non-religious students about religion or purpose.
