Brigham Young University: "a hotbed of apologetics"

[_dartagnan]

A very interesting: http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/BYU/chapter9.htm#academic38

[_Blixa]

Thanks for pointing this out. I've wanted to read it and I'll skim through it soon and post comments, if any.

[_Tarski]

Boyd K. Packer in a 1973 address to the graduating class of Utah State University. He warned students of professors who "delight in relieving the student of his basic spiritual values." According to Packer, "Throughout the world more and more faculty members look forward to the coming of [a] new crop of green freshmen with a compulsive desire to `educate' them. . . . Each year, many fall victim in the colleges and universities where, as captive audiences, their faith, their patriotism, and their morality are lined up against a wall and riddled by words shot from the mouths of irreverent professors" ("What Every Freshman Should Know," Ensign, Sept. 1973, p. 35.)

Oh yeh, we can't have college students learning to think and question.
BKP is a real piece of work.

[_The Nehor]

What annoyed me in University was not the discussions of these matters but I had a few professors who flippantly derided religion. It was not in the tone of real discussion but that snide voice that says everyone already knows it's bunk so now it's a big joke. Flippancy.

"But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real joke about virture, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it,"

- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

I had a professor who delighted in dropping tidbits against religion and Christianity in particular to confuse or bewilder those who held those beliefs. Never an explanation, more an anecdote that was never discussed. This was in a Political Science class. The guy loved to manipulate people. Give me an honest athiest like Doughlas Adams who explains his thinking any day over pathetic and cheap snipers. You can't tell me that professor did not have contempt for those views and all those who held them....never a good thing. The irony is that for the paper I had to write on forming an ideal government I chucked my real thoughts and set up an enlightened dictatorship based on the Degrees of Glory complete with hell as a form of World Government and got an A. Go figure.

[_asbestosman]

Boyd K. Packer in a 1973 address to the graduating class of Utah State University. He warned students of professors who "delight in relieving the student of his basic spiritual values." According to Packer, "Throughout the world more and more faculty members look forward to the coming of [a] new crop of green freshmen with a compulsive desire to `educate' them. . . . Each year, many fall victim in the colleges and universities where, as captive audiences, their faith, their patriotism, and their morality are lined up against a wall and riddled by words shot from the mouths of irreverent professors" ("What Every Freshman Should Know," Ensign, Sept. 1973, p. 35.)

Oh yeh, we can't have college students learning to think and question.
BKP is a real piece of work.

I think it possible to intellectually bully in either direction. The difference is that one intellectually bullied about the truth of the church will never have the burning faith necessary to endure. Indeed the D&C mentions that we must teach by the spirit otherwise it is not of God.

I think it unfair for professors to bully people about faith before those people have a fair chance to be prepared for replying to those challenges. I think going on a mission helps because I think all missionaries are challenged in the field.

[_Blixa]

Thanks again. I found Chapters 8 and 9 ("Arts, Entertainment & Literature," and "Academics & Intellectual Pursuits") of especial interest.

Maybe more later.

[_Gazelam]

Excellent reference to the Screwtape letters. Nice post.

[_moksha]

I especially liked this exchange between Professor Ralph Chamberlin a professor at BYU who had taught his Mormon students evolution (and was about to be fired unless he ceased doing so as ordered by Church Authorities) and George Brimhall, President of Brigham Young University.

Ralph Chamberlin responded bitterly, "I never gave a public lecture on evolution until I had consulted you as to whether it would be all right. You urged me to do it. Now, why have you changed suddenly?" Brimhall could only feebly joke, "Well, I'll tell you, Brother Chamberlin, I know which side my bread's buttered on."

[_Blixa]

I found the discussion of the Huebener controversy quite interesting. I remember when the play was first performed, I was an undergrad at the U at the time, but I paid little attention to the fallout. The story of its reception is worth reading. Some excerpts:

The day following Huebener's premiere, BYU trustee Thomas S. Monson telephoned President Dallin Oaks to inform him that Joseph B. Wirthlin, a member of the church's First Quorum of the Seventy and area supervisor for Europe, was "disturbed" over the possible repercussions of the play. Wirthlin, who had not seen the production, called the play "foolish," insisting that it "endangered the lives of all the Saints in [East] Germany." Both Monson and Wirthlin asked pointedly, "Aren't there subjects the `Y' can use for plays that won't endanger the work [we are] trying to do here?"

The criticism of an unseen play is par for the course, but the "fear" of what the play could do to missionary work in the DDR is bizaare: Monson apparently felt it could rouse members to denounce communism, surely a powerful compliment to the persuasive power of the play, but hardly a historically analogous situation.

Later, Wirthlin would add that the play could "arouse . . . [church] members to a more active opposition of their government than would be in the best interest of the expanding church" (quoted in Oaks to Woodbury, 11 Oct. 1976). Consequently, both church officials suggested that "under no circumstances should the script of the play or any plans to present it be sent to Europe." Oaks dutifully agreed and shortly afterwards cautioned fine arts dean Lael Woodbury, "We need to be very sensitive because future plays could possibly cause this kind of problem or some other problem in other parts of the world."

Apparently the play is so powerful no copies of it are to be sent overseas! And look, the emphasis is not on the safety of the members, or the ethics of political opposition, but on possible detrimental effect on the expansion of the church.

"Who knows what was right or wrong then?" explained Monson nine years later in 1985. "I don't know what we accomplish by dredging these things up and trying to sort them out."

Classic. History? Huh?

[_Daniel Peterson]

I got a kick out of this line from Bergera and Priddis: "Four years later, the Honors Program launched Tangents to give students 'a place to publish their undergraduate work.' Tangents produced some of the best satire to appear on campus, including, "Enlightened Despotism: The Fountainhead of Culture" . . .

I wonder if anybody here can guess who wrote "Enlightened Despotism: The Fountainhead of All True Culture" (as its title more accurately read)?

I thought the Bergera/Priddis book skewed and obviously agenda-driven when it first appeared, and now, nearly a quarter of a century later, I don't think it reasonable even for a critic to take the book at face value as saying much about what BYU is today. A very great deal has happened since 1985, including (most notably) my hiring. And, since I would argue that, in a sense, BYU's history really began with the return of the GIs at the end of the Second World War, a quarter of a century amounts to nearly half of its history as a serious school.