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Clark Gilbert, BYU, and Developing Disciples of Jesus Christ

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At this point, I assume most readers of this blog have read the extensive article in the Salt Lake Tribune about CES Commissioner Clark Gilbert’s policies and the effects they’re having on faculty at BYU.[fn1] The issues Peggy Fletcher Stack uncovers in her excellent reporting matter a lot to me, as an alum of BYU, as an academic, and as a friend of both professors and students at the school.

There’s a lot to say about this article, and maybe going forward I’ll say more, but I want to highlight one critical point: Gilbert’s policies are impeding the inculcation of faith for BYU students. While they (maybe) provide short-term engagement, long-term, the risk losing a significant portion of BYU students.

In response to the article, BYU spokesperson Carri Jenkins wrote that BYU has a

unique and compelling faith-based mission to develop disciples of Jesus Christ. Our employees and students come to BYU because they want to contribute to the university’s spiritual mission. . . . We are grateful to have employees who are deeply committed to the values and aims of a BYU education.

And honestly, I think that’s (largely[fn2]) right. The problem is, I believe that what the article is describing impedes this stated mission (though honestly, I believe it’s inadvertent, the result of short-term thinking).

I’m particularly concerned by this idea that the BYU professoriate needs to maintain some degree of lockstep orthodoxy (as judged by, I suppose, Gilbert). See, he apparently divided faculty into four categories:

• The Faithful Core: They teach with the Holy Spirit and weave in church tenets as they understand them.

• The Supportive Center: They support the church but are not as enthusiastic as church leaders think they ought to be.

• The Secular First: They put “truth” from any source on an equal footing with the Latter-day Saint gospel.

• Open Foes: They write an article or take a public position contrary to that of the church.

Now, a lot of these categories are frankly incoherent.[fn3] But worse than that, it fails to understand what students need to live faithful lives.

See, the vast majority of BYU graduates (and, for that matter, members of the church who didn’t go to or graduate from BYU) are going to face issues where they disagree with the church. That may be on fundamental policies, including pre-1904 marriage, pre-1978 racial issues, or current policies on the LGBTQ community. It may be on scriptural interpretation, or women and the priesthood. It may be on cultural issues, like clothing choices.

We all have disagreements with the church. (Yes, even you, random commenter who’s going to drop in below.) We have to! The church (at least, if we read it broadly to include our local communities) doesn’t even always agree with itself!

So what do we do in the face of that kind of disagreement? Well, if we’re told that orthodoxy reigns, and that we have to choose between our values (including, critically, the values that have been inculcated in us at church) and what we perceive as the church’s preferences, we’re not going to necessarily choose the church.

Heck, if I believed (as Joseph Fielding Smith taught, and as recent BYU hire Ross Barron also apparently, in the year of our Lord 2025, believes) that the gospel was incompatible with evolution, and that I had to choose one or the other, well, the evidence for evolution is pretty indisputable.

But you know what? I don’t have to choose between them! I can remain a faithful and committed member of the church even where I don’t agree with everything the church teaches.

And how do I know that? While not exclusively, it is, in no small part, thanks to professors I had at BYU. Smart, committed women and men who understood the disconnect, who didn’t agree with the church’s position in every situation, but who were also faithful believers and practitioners of Mormonism. The modeled for me, and for many of my classmates,[fn4] how to live lives committed to Jesus, how to live faithful in the church, even where the church doesn’t live up to my, or its, ideals.

That, I believe, is the critical harm that Gilbert’s philosophy toward BYU education is doing to BYU students. It is denying the validity of the strait and narrow road that many of them need to stay active, participating members of the church. It imposes, instead, a superficial definition of faithfulness, one that undercuts BYU’s mission to develop disciples of Jesus Christ.


[fn1] The article is, justifiably, behind a paywall; it takes effort and money to do such thorough journalism. Some of you probably subscribe to the Tribune; others (like me) don’t. I have personal or work subscriptions to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post; as a non-Utahn, I don’t need local Utah news. But I do appreciate its religion coverage, and the Tribune recognizes people like me might be interested. So they have a Patreon page where we can subscribe to just the religion stuff, or buy articles as a one-off purchase. So if, like me, you don’t subscribe, you can still access this important article. If that’s the route you want to take, the article is here.

[fn2] I don’t know that it’s as unique as BYU’s administration believes. Having spent the last 15+ years teaching at a Jesuit university, I’ll just say that BYU isn’t alone in having and following a faith-based mission, and that it’s not alone in attracting faculty, staff, and students who believe in its faith-based mission.

[fn3] Like, contrary to popular belief, most of us teaching at the university level, other, perhaps, than philosophers. aren’t teaching Truth. Personally, I’m teaching tax and business law. I talk about policies underlying rules, how to understand and navigate rules, and how the rules can contribute to or draw us away from a better society, but none of that is capital-t Truth.

[fn4] I don’t want to overstate anything here. Of course some BYU students and grads, even with this kind of role modeling, will leave the church. And of course people who never attended BYU, and even who never had this type of model, will stay in. But I believe strongly that seeing someone remain a faithful member of the church who doesn’t agree with everything the church does or says is a critical part of making room for people to participate and to believe.

Photo by Jaren Wilkey. CC BY-SA 3.0


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