I first met Robert B. Sloan, who died on July 4, at a meeting of conservative activists in 2006 in Houston, right about the time he took over as president of Houston Baptist University.
Robert Sloan/ Photo courtesy of Houston Christian University
He was something of a rock star in that group, even though he had, in the previous couple of years, been beaten up badly in the media. He had been president of Baylor University for 10 years, from 1995 to 2005, and he had initiated reforms at that school that generated national attention. He wanted to turn Baylor in a more intentionally Christian direction, while also elevating its teaching and research standards.
Many trustees, donors, and Texas Baptists initially embraced his vision, but Sloan moved fast, and the resistance to his goals was fierce — especially his goal of strengthening Baylor’s Christian identity. When Sloan took over, Baylor had a widespread reputation of being “Baptist in name only.” Sloan wanted to change that.
By 2003, the leadership in the school was engaged in conflict that spilled over into the media. The faculty senate twice passed votes of no confidence. In a university-wide faculty referendum in late 2004, about 60% of the faculty participated, and 85% of those voting said they did not want Sloan to remain president. Sloan’s supporters argued that many faculty members who backed him boycotted the referendum, but the result underscored how deeply divided the campus had become.
By 2005, Sloan was gone. When I met him in 2006, he had been in the wilderness for a season, and he had just taken over as president of Houston Baptist University. In other words, he had, in the space of less than two years, gone from a school with 14,000 students and a national profile to one with just 2,100, barely known outside of Harris County, Texas.
To be sure, HBU was not a failing institution. It may not have been prosperous, but it was financially sound. The Sharpstown neighborhood that surrounded it was an affluent, up-and-coming neighborhood in the 1960s, but by the 2000s it was working class and ethnically diverse.
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But to Robert Sloan, his position at Houston Baptist University was not a runner-up prize. It became his vocation. He had 168 acres in the middle of one of the largest and most ethnically diverse cities in America. He embarked on a building and fundraising campaign that transformed the college. His strategic plan Houston not as a liability — or condescendingly, as a project for reform — but as an asset, a gift, a neighbor.
To make a long story too short, I will simply say that Sloan and his team at HBU were wildly successful. The campus transformed, with $150 million in new building projects during his tenure. During a time Christian colleges saw sharp reductions in enrollment, and many closures, HBU — now called Houston Christian University — swelled from 2,100 to 4,700 students. In 2006, the school had $45 million in revenue. In 2025, revenue was $178 million. New initiatives in apologetics and evangelism attracted Lee Strobel, Mark Mittelberg, William Lane Craig, Joseph Holden, Philip Tallon, Nancy Pearcey, and many others.
By any standard, Houston Christian University has been a massive success. And that success occurred in an era when Christian colleges have not always succeeded.
And a funny thing happened at Baylor University, as well.
Remember Sloan’s Baylor 2012 vision, the plan he put in place soon after he arrived in 1995? That was the plan Baylor faculty protested, the plan that got Sloan fired — or forced out, or whatever you want to call it.
Sloan may have departed, but before he left, he implemented structural changes at Baylor that could not be easily reversed. According to a 2002 issue of Baylor Magazine, the school’s provost, Donald Schmeltekopf, observed that Baylor’s combination of ambitious research aspirations and explicit Christian mission became a powerful recruiting tool. In one hiring cycle alone (2002), Baylor hired 67 tenure-track faculty, many from institutions such as Oxford, Notre Dame, the Max Planck Institute, Westminster Abbey, and Loyola. Under Sloan’s leadership, well-known Christian scholars William Dembski and Francis Beckwith joined the university.
And when he died, Baylor President Linda Livingstone said, “His greatest contribution was the adoption of Baylor 2012, a 10-year vision that placed Baylor on the path to become a top-tier university while remaining committed to our historic Christian mission.”
In short, the “intentionally Christian” direction he hoped to move Baylor has been institutionalized. Most of the reforms he began continued. John Lilly, Sloan’s immediate successor, did not push Sloan’s reforms, but neither did he attempt to dismantle them. Ken Starr, who was president from 2010 to 2016, embraced Sloan’s reforms and made “mission fit” a central part of faculty hiring. And Livingstone’s affirmation of Baylor 2012 speaks for itself.
One of Sloan’s lasting achievements is that many of his once-controversial ideas are now widely accepted at Baylor — his aspiration to be a top-tier Christian research university, his vision of integrating serious scholarship with an unapologetically Christian identity. The vision has become part of Baylor’s institutional culture, though implemented in a less confrontational way.
That aspect of Sloan’s vision came to pass in 2021 when Baylor was classified as an R1 university — the highest research designation in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. That status was reaffirmed in 2025. Baylor is the only explicitly evangelical institution in the nation to achieve this status.
In short, with the benefit of two decades of hindsight, it is fair to say that Sloan lost the presidency but won the long-term argument. Baylor today remains far more intentionally Christian than it was before his presidency, continues to pursue top-tier research status, and still embraces the broad vision of becoming a leading Christian research university.
Robert Sloan was one of a kind. He left a lasting mark on one of the largest evangelical colleges in the nation, and he played a defining role in helping to create one of our fastest-rising evangelical institutions. We should thank God for his life and legacy.
I also thank God that I got to know him back in 2006, when he was arguably at his lowest, after he had been booted from Baylor and before he had transformed HBU. One of the things I think is most impressive about Robert Sloan is that he got back up, reentered the fight, and did not let his defeats define him.
But that is why his death also feels like something of a gut punch. We need more men like Robert Sloan at the tops of evangelical institutions. Where will they come from?
The answer to that question is obvious: from among those of us left behind. It is our turn now. Robert Sloan showed us the way. If the work he started is not done, that only means that God is raising up new workers. Could they be…us? What will we do to honor that legacy and enlarge it?
That is the question all of us who knew, loved, or were touched by Robert Sloan must now ask.
EDITOR’S NOTE: To read Houston Christian University’s document “Ten Pillars 2030: HCU’s Vision and Core Convictions, click here. For a comprehensive examination of Sloan’s tenure at Baylor, read The Baylor Project: Can A Protestant University Be a First-Class Research Institution and Preserve Its Soul? edited by Barry G. Hankins and Donald D. Schmeltekopf.
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