Baylor University graduates who bowed their heads at their spring commencement ceremony heard a prayer denouncing fossil fuels and a world with too many white, straight men in positions in power.
The commencement prayer by church minister Dan Freemyer — himself a straight, white man — drew cheers from graduating students but has predictably been criticized for its politically-charged nature.
“This is appalling,” American Conservative writer Rod Dreher responded in an online commentary. “Whoever would have imagined that ‘straight white men’ would be denounced in prayer at a Baylor University graduation ceremony?”
Baylor, a private Christian university located in Fort Worth, is known as the largest Baptist university in the world with approximately 17,200 students on its 1,000-acre campus.
Freemyer, a Baylor graduate, is currently missional engagement pastor at Broadway Baptist Church, a “progressive” church also located in Forth Worth that describes itself as a “diverse community of faith” that welcomes different backgrounds and beliefs.
In his two-minute prayer for the graduates, Freemyer asks God to give them the “moral imagination” to reject fossil fuels that are “poisoning” the planet — a planet, he continued, with “too many straight, white men like me behind the steering wheel, while others are expected to sit quietly at the back of the bus.”
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[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Bob Kellogg and originally published at OneNewsNow. Title changed by P&P.]
