What's In A Name?

I recently received a copy of the SBC News in which there was a notice that the Convention leadership is looking at the possibility of asking the Convention to change it's name to something more relevant to the times. Then today I get a Facebook notice from my University that the Trustees are looking at a name change for the school. I had to ask myself, "What is this all this name changing stuff really about.

Now I have been around long enough to see the issue of a name change for the Southern Baptist Convention come and go several times. The calls for a name change always revolves around trying to make the Convention either more relevant to the times or more acceptible to non-southern people or to whatever the present Convention emphasis happens to be. After all, the argument goes, we are not just a "southern" Convention anymore. We are a national and maybe international group and our name should reflect where and how we operate. I suggest it should represent "who" we are when and wherever we are and that's just what the name Southern Baptist Convention does.

Then of course my University, Houston Baptist University (HBU), wants to change its name as well. The trustees apparently believe that somehow the term "Houston Baptist" no longer reflects who the University is. I have to wonder if they are talking about it's location, the constituency of its student body or its mission statement.

Both the names, SBC and HBU, represent something in particular that supersedes and go beyond geography. For example, the term Southern Baptist Convention is not so much a geographic description as it is a theological metaphor. While the name was born in Augusta, Georgia in 1845 (Same year Texas became a state - not a totally unrelated event as the first home missionaries were to the State of Texas) and was comprised of churches in the South it also represented a particular theological viewpoint and a way of doing missions that was revolutionary. Over time that name has become synonymous with a particular fundamental approach to missions that is born of a particular theological viewpoint.

In the case of HBU this is even more pronounced. This University was born in the hearts and minds of Baptist leaders in Harris County, Texas (essentially metropolitan Houston) who saw the needs for a distinctively Baptist institution of higher learning in the area. HBC, as it was known then, was the first Baptist College in a major urban setting and was intended to provide a quality college education in a distinctively Christian enviorment available to the Baptist's of the area. It was also to be a distinctive Christian witness to both academic community and the public square.

Now some might argue that they have already changed the name once and they would be technically correct. They changed the schools status institutionally and academically from a College to a University. Hence, HBC (my school) became HBU. However, this does not represent a "real name change as it does a status change. Houston Baptist College became Houston Baptist University because its academic configuration changed but it remained Houston Baptist because it's location and its spiritual roots had not changed.

It correctly identified as "Houston" because that is where the University is located. (Think Phoenix University: It is located in Tempe, Arizona but operates around the world visa vis the Internet). Houston Baptist University is "Baptist" by birth. HBU was born in the hearts of local Baptist leadership and was intended to always through name and mission statement to reflect it Baptist roots.

Is HBU to become just another Brown University, i.e, a University so removed from its roots that its founding core values are relegated to a footnote in a history no one reads. Brown University owes its founding to a Baptist Association in 1762. In fact, Harvard, Yale, and Princton all owe their births to particular denominational groups and all have lost that identity as their succeeding trustees and leadership moved them further and further from their roots. I fear I see the same pattern being repeated at my alma mater, HBU.

I readily admit that its student body represents far more diversity and is more non-Baptist than it is Baptist. But that is a whole other issue. I simply fail to see the need to change the name unless (1) the school no longer considers itself Baptist or (2) they plan to move the campus to some other locality besides the City of Houston.

I do not see the University of Houston clamoring to change its name; I have not heard anything about Cambridge University changing their name; In fact, I don't recall hearing any great Universities changing their name. Ford Motor Company retains its name because it identifies what they do and from whence they came. Their names defines who they are! Their name stands for something in their communities and the world of academia and in Ford's case the the planet.

The names of the SBC and HBU also more than simple monikers, they stand for something. The names of these institutions reflect their distinctive legacy and I cannot imagine breaking faith with that legacy by changing our name. My family has a legacy attached to our family name that goes back in this country (the USA) to the 1730's and I would never dream of breaking faith with all those who have gone before me and those who will come after me by changing my essential name. We are Appleby's all. Our given names may change from generation to generation but our surname remains as it ties us one and all together. The same is true of the names "Southern Baptist Convention" and "Houston Baptist University."

So as one alumni said on Facebook, "HBU PLEASE GROW UP AND STOP BEING STUPID... if you continue to change everything about the university everyone will stop caring."