Radical Acceptance at Canterbury at TTU

The landscape of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Texas Tech has changed dramatically over the last several years. The process began in 2023, when the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 17, prohibiting DEI offices and many DEI programs at public universities across the state. In preparation for the law taking effect on January 1, 2024, the Texas Tech University System closed or repurposed DEI offices, discontinued or revised DEI-related programs and activities, removed DEI materials from university websites, and changed employment and training practices. Texas Tech described these changes as necessary to comply with state law.

The changes did not stop with the implementation of Senate Bill 17. After Brandon Creighton became chancellor of the Texas Tech University System in November 2025, the system established new oversight of classroom instruction concerning race, sex, gender identity, and sexuality. A December 2025 directive required faculty to submit certain course content for review and instructed faculty that the system would recognize only two sexes in course content. In April 2026, the system expanded those restrictions, directing universities to phase out academic programs “centered on” sexual orientation or gender identity and placing additional restrictions on some course materials, research, and future faculty hiring. Texas Tech has characterized these measures as efforts to ensure compliance with state and federal law and to provide consistency and accountability across the university system.

For students and faculty, however, these changes are not simply administrative decisions happening somewhere in the background. They shape the environment in which our students learn, build relationships, discover who they are, and decide whether there is room for them within the university community. A 2026 Faculty Senate survey found that professors reported changing or being asked to change material in hundreds of courses in response to the new restrictions. For students who are LGBTQ+, students of color, and others who have historically relied upon programs intentionally created to foster belonging and support, the gradual dismantling of these structures raises a deeply personal question: Where am I still allowed to belong?

At Canterbury, we believe the Church has something important to say in this moment. We cannot control the policies of Texas Tech or the decisions of the State of Texas, but we can be very clear about the kind of Christian community we intend to create in the midst of them. As structures devoted explicitly to diversity, equity, and inclusion have disappeared or been restricted around us, Canterbury has chosen to become more intentional—not less—about proclaiming the dignity and belovedness of every person who walks through our doors.

That is why our Welcome Week this year centered on the theme of Radical Acceptance. Radical acceptance is more than telling someone they are welcome to attend one of our events. It means creating a community in which people do not have to earn their belonging. Students should not have to become less themselves before they can sit at our table. They should not have to hide their identities, silence their questions, pretend certainty about their faith, or conform themselves to someone else’s expectations in order to be loved.

This commitment is not something we have adopted in spite of our Christian identity. It grows directly out of it. Every time we renew our Baptismal Covenant, we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. Those promises matter most precisely when dignity is being questioned, belonging is becoming more precarious, or people are being told—explicitly or implicitly—that some parts of their lives are better left unseen.

At Canterbury, that means continuing to make room for LGBTQ+ students, students of color, international students, students from different religious traditions, students who have been hurt by the Church, students who are questioning everything they have ever believed, and students who simply need somewhere to eat dinner and discover that someone is glad they came. It means allowing difficult questions and disagreement without making another person’s humanity the subject of debate. It means noticing who is becoming more vulnerable in the community around us and asking what faithfulness requires of us in response.

Radical acceptance does not mean that we will always agree with one another. Canterbury has never been a community built around sameness. Christian community is not the absence of disagreement; it is the decision to remain at the table together because every person gathered there bears the image of God. Our task is not to make everyone identical. Our task is to become the kind of community in which difference does not have to become division and in which no one has to wonder whether they are too much, too different, too queer, too uncertain, too wounded, or too complicated to belong.

As the landscape at Texas Tech continues to change, Canterbury intends to be a faithful dissenting voice when dissent is necessary. More importantly, we intend to embody another possibility. We want our students to encounter a Christian community in which they are known, challenged, cared for, and loved—not because they have passed some test of acceptability, but because their dignity was never ours to grant in the first place.

This year, our work is not simply to tell students that they belong. It is to build a community in which they can experience that belonging for themselves. That is what we mean by radical acceptance, and in this particular moment at Texas Tech, we believe that witness matters.