Close Menu
The Baylor Lariat
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube LinkedIn
    Trending
    • Students react to emergency alert following campus lockdown
    • Baylor shelter-in-place lifted following police pursuit of robbery suspects
    • Baylor graduate charged after killing cats with pellet gun, hanging bodies over utility lines
    • Baylor Football’s Alex Foster dies at 18
    • Board of Regents confirms budget, renovations, new leadership in May meeting
    • How facilities responds to storms, flooding in campus buildings
    • Welcome Week leaders now paid in hopes of increasing numbers
    • 5 Baylor sports storylines to look forward to in 2025-26
    • About us
      • Spring 2025 Staff Page
      • Copyright Information
    • Contact
      • Contact Information
      • Letters to the Editor
      • Subscribe to The Morning Buzz
      • Department of Student Media
    • Employment
    • PDF Archives
    • RSS Feeds
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube LinkedIn
    The Baylor LariatThe Baylor Lariat
    Subscribe to the Morning Buzz
    Wednesday, July 2
    • News
      • State and National News
        • State
        • National
      • Politics
        • 2025 Inauguration Page
        • Election Page
      • Homecoming Page
      • Baylor News
      • Waco Updates
      • Campus and Waco Crime
    • Arts & Life
      • Wedding Edition 2025
      • What to Do in Waco
      • Campus Culture
      • Indy and Belle
      • Sing 2025
      • Leisure and Travel
        • Leisure
        • Travel
          • Baylor in Ireland
      • Student Spotlight
      • Local Scene
        • Small Businesses
        • Social Media
      • Arts and Entertainment
        • Art
        • Fashion
        • Food
        • Literature
        • Music
        • Film and Television
    • Opinion
      • Editorials
      • Points of View
      • Lariat Letters
    • Sports
      • March Madness 2025
      • Football
      • Basketball
        • Men’s Basketball
        • Women’s Basketball
      • Soccer
      • Baseball
      • Softball
      • Volleyball
      • Equestrian
      • Cross Country and Track & Field
      • Acrobatics & Tumbling
      • Tennis
      • Golf
      • Pro Sports
      • Sports Takes
      • Club Sports
    • Lariat TV News
    • Multimedia
      • Video Features
      • Podcasts
        • Don’t Feed the Bears
      • Slideshows
    • Advertising
    The Baylor Lariat
    Home»News»Baylor News

    Lecturer encourages minorities to speak out

    Harry RoweBy Harry RoweOctober 25, 2018 Baylor News No Comments4 Mins Read
    Dr. Bill Leonard, founding dean and professor at the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University, have a lecture titled, “Teaching Dissent — The Witness of the Minority,” on Monday afternoon in Hankamer. Liesje Powers | Multimedia Editor
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    By Harry Rowe | Staff Writer

    Those in the minority must always be protected and be able to speak out against injustices, according to Dr. Bill Leonard, founding dean and professor at the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University.

    Leonard gave a lecture titled, “Teaching Dissent — The Witness of the Minority,” at 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon in Hankamer. The talk was open to the public and followed a workshop among faculty discussing the love of teaching.

    Dissent, according to common definition, is about going against a certain philosophy or idea. Leonard talked about recent topics, beginning with a message transcribed from a sexual assault victim’s words to Sen. Jeff Flake from Arizona. Flake was confronted in an elevator going to work someone that pleaded that they had been a victim of sexual assault, and they hadn’t told anybody. They told Flake that he was showing that he didn’t believe women, and that he was “telling all women in America, that they don’t matter,” according to Mariah Gallagher, the woman.

    The room was silent for a second before Leonard asked the audience to say the words on the screen out loud. As soon as the crowd was asked to say Gallagher’s words aloud, the crowd recounted one woman’s words of her experiences that she hadn’t told anybody.

    “You’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them, you’re going to ignore them,” the room read out loud. “That’s what happened to me, and that’s what you’re telling all women in America, that they don’t matter, they should just keep it to themselves.”

    Leonard said this was the public dissent of the minority, happening live right in the United States Capitol elevator.

    “The Kavanaugh saga prompted a group of Yale students to stage a sit-in calling for investigation for sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, a Yale alumnus,” Leonard said.

    These, he argued again, were the dissenting minority, a voice that burned and needed to be heard. He also mentioned Reverend Dr. William Barber, who got arrested for protesting at the national offices of McDonalds for the minimum wage in Chicago on the same day he received his grant for over $600,000 from the McArthur Foundation. Dr. William Barber, the pastor, urges Americans, particularly religious ones, to become the moral deliberators of their time. This, Leonard explained, was another example of the smaller voice speaking out for injustices they see and being willing to fight for them.

    He had the room read the screen several times, saying direct quotes from people like the sexual assault survivor to Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther of the protestant reformation for some quotes, one about how the nature of dissent is unavoidable.

    “Today we acknowledge that dissent, often with religious implications, is not only present but also essential in a democracy. So we ask, can dissent be taught? And if so, can it be learned?” Leonard asked.

    Leonard talked about the several historically altering figures such as Rev. Martin Luther King fighting for civil rights in Alabama or Martin Luther during the protestant reformation, where he argued against the need for religious authorities like the Pope. He additionally mentioned that Baptists have their roots in standing up for religious freedom, as they wanted to let people live as they pleased.

    They did not believe they held the authority to punish people on earth, according to Leonard. That was up to God. However, as time goes on, the oppressed slowly become the oppressors. The same churches that wished to have their own religious freedom in England became the same churches that had mandatory church attendance laws in America. Leonard argued that the dissent and call for change is what keeps progress moving forward. Recognizing your conscience and speaking up for injustice is the right thing to do, according to Leonard.

    Dr. Mikeal Parsons, professor and Macon Chair in religion at Baylor, studies pedagogy and how people teach.

    “One of the things we were looking at today is is there such a thing as Baptist pedagogy, that is there anything out of the Baptist tradition that should inform the way we teach, so we wanted to have somebody to come in that could talk to us about Baptist distinctives, and Dr. Leonard is the premiere Baptist historian in the United States.” Parsons said.

    Harry Rowe

    Keep Reading

    Students react to emergency alert following campus lockdown

    Baylor shelter-in-place lifted following police pursuit of robbery suspects

    Baylor Football’s Alex Foster dies at 18

    Board of Regents confirms budget, renovations, new leadership in May meeting

    How facilities responds to storms, flooding in campus buildings

    Welcome Week leaders now paid in hopes of increasing numbers

    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Recent Posts
    • Students react to emergency alert following campus lockdown June 27, 2025
    • Baylor shelter-in-place lifted following police pursuit of robbery suspects June 26, 2025
    About

    The award-winning student newspaper of Baylor University since 1900.

    Articles, photos, and other works by staff of The Baylor Lariat are Copyright © Baylor® University. All rights reserved.

    Subscribe to the Morning Buzz

    Get the latest Lariat News by just Clicking Subscribe!

    Follow the Live Coverage
    Tweets by @bulariat

    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube LinkedIn
    • Featured
    • News
    • Sports
    • Opinion
    • Arts and Life
    © 2025 ThemeSphere. Designed by ThemeSphere.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.