Charlie and Cindy Fuller of Woodway, Texas, along with their family, have committed $1.5 million to Baylor University to establish an endowed chair for social justice in the Garland School of Social Work.
The gift will qualify for matching support through Baylor’s Give Light Campaign, which to date has raised $1.3 billion. The campaign has created 791 endowed scholarships and 44 endowed faculty positions.
The Fuller Family Endowed Chair for Social Justice will support a faculty member researching and teaching about social justice for marginalized populations.
Baylor President Linda Livingstone called this a “transformational gift.”
Diana Garland
The Garland School of Social Work — named for legendary Baptist social work educator Diana Garland — has developed a national reputation for combining biblical witness with social justice in its teaching. The school also is known for its dual-degree program in partnership with Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary, by which some students earn both the master of divinity degree and the master of social work degree. Other dual degree programs also are offered.
Garland School alumni are serving in churches, agencies and private practice across the nation.
Social work education began as a department at Baylor in 1967. Baylor began offering an undergraduate degree in social work in 1976. In 1997, the university hired Diana Garland — who previously led the historic Carver School of Church Social Work in Louisville, Ky. — to expand classes to the graduate level. That led to formation of a school of social work in 1999. Garland was named dean in 2005.
In 2015, facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Garland retired and the university named the School of Social Work in her honor. She died later that year.
Although Baylor is not directly affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, its social work school carries on a part of the tradition that for decades was nurtured among Southern Baptists through the Carver School. A change in administration at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary led to the closure of the Carver School as the new president declared social work education “not compatible” with the Bible.
Charlie and Cindy Fuller come from that tradition of a Southern Baptist Convention now long gone, where social justice was considered biblical.
“The Fuller Chair provides the Garland School with an opportunity to illuminate biblical justice through social work research.”
“The Fuller Chair provides the Garland School with an opportunity to illuminate biblical justice through social work research, seeking to understand and support the needs of the most vulnerable in our society,” said Jon Singletary, dean and holder of the Diana R. Garland Endowed Chair of Child and Family Studies. “The scholar we identify will strengthen the school’s legacy of advocacy and leadership in this area, while also serving the faith community through our broad network of churches.”
This will be the fifth endowed chair within the School of Social Work.
Charlie and Cindy Fuller
Charles and Cindy Fuller were joined by their daughters, Becky and Sarah, in establishing the chair. The Fullers’ third daughter, Rachel, died in a plane crash in 1999.
The family gave this statement about their decision to establish the academic chair at Baylor: “The Fuller Family feels a deep responsibility to heed the consistent call of the gospel to care for the poor, the oppressed and those that have been marginalized by society. The two-fold call to both advocacy and action is rooted deeply within Scripture, from the Hebrew Scriptures to the Gospels to the very end of the New Testament. It is a call universal to all who claim the name of Christ, both as individuals and as churches.”
Both Charlie and Cindy Fuller are Baylor graduates, as is their daughter Becky Fuller, who is a graduate of Baylor School of Law.
Charlie and Cindy Fuller are well-known within the world of Baptist musicians and within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. In 2016 and 2017, Charlie served as chairman of CBF’s Illumination Project, which sought to find a way to address divergent views on LGBTQ inclusion.
Both Fullers previously taught at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas, where he was a choral director and dean of the School of Fine Arts and she was a lecturer in music. Both also were involved in the musical group The Centurymen, which he directed and for which she served as accompanist.
After leaving Ouachita, Charlie Fuller served as minister for congregational life at Second Baptist Church in Little Rock and then as executive pastor of the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C. In the Waco area, they are members of Lake Shore Baptist Church. He currently serves as interim minister of music at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
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