When I hear from professors and others at Brigham Young University who are eager, yet imperfect followers of Jesus and believing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and whose faith has now been stricken with fear, it makes me wonder what the church’s education commissioner, Clark Gilbert, is trying to do, trying to change, trying to prove. What his definition of Christianity really is.
I’d ask him, but he’s already refused comment to The Salt Lake Tribune’s respected religion writer Peggy Fletcher Stack, whose reporting of not just the overbearing tone Gilbert is setting as he lords over the church’s flagship university but also the very real implementation of stern restrictions on those eligible to work at the school, is as in depth as it is troubling.
No longer are just the behaviors of professors — and, get this, their spouses, too — put under scrutiny, judged worthy or not by the powers that be, like Berkshire hogs at a county fair. Their specific beliefs are evaluated as well. They might answer standard temple-recommend questions in an acceptable manner, a manner that qualifies them to enter the faith’s holiest places, and still be rejected.
BYU has traditionally had an extra layer of expectation for its faculty and students, some of it ridiculous, at least as it pertains to the authentic following of Jesus — limits on, say, beards for men and skirt lengths for women — but now new measurements have been installed by Gilbert, and perhaps his superiors, that categorize applicants for teaching positions and those who already have been hired. Since when did any true Christian think it was a good idea to herd believers into four different classifications of devoutness, classifications meant to label and cull them?
Read Stack’s story and see, whether you are in or out of the faith, how it makes you feel. Do the strict and sometimes vague requirements, left to be calculated and tabulated by certain leaders, nudge you toward deeper faith or do they creep you out?
Be careful how you respond to that inquiry if you ever want to teach at BYU. However that question is answered — despite what Gilbert & Co. think — is not a reflection of where your true spirituality rests. It’s a reflection rather of what it is: a harsh measure put in place by humans that is intrusive when put to other humans, folks who are doing what they can to follow their faith, to be real believers and true to themselves.
‘Something is messed up’
Some might counter that BYU is a private religious institution that can do whatever it wants. The issue here, however, is more nuanced than that bit of simplicity — namely what it should do, not what it can do.
When faculty members have to worry whether their support of an LGBTQ+ or transgender son or daughter or mother or father or sister or brother or student or friend could put their employment at risk, or if they express concerns over the way matters of race or gender are handled at the school, their career paths could be blocked, all at a place where Jesus’ love is supposed to reign supreme, something is messed up.
I’ve talked with a number of BYU professors and employees who love their religion, love their school, love their jobs, love working with students there, but they do not love the clampdowns being put in place under Gilbert’s leadership. These concerned individuals are not revolutionaries or rabble-rousers. They are believers whose approach to studying and finding and teaching truth, spiritual and otherwise, is important to them. And if it’s so important to them, more important than sheer compliance, they are understandably shaken by BYU’s shakedown, which seems to favor compliance over truth.
If at times issues over policies arise that they have questions or doubts regarding, some of them have been made to feel as though they cannot share those questions or doubts with their ecclesiastical leaders because those issues might put their endorsements to teach at BYU in peril. What an awful condition for any believer to face. Whom can they trust? Whom can’t they trust? Who will accept them and help them? Who will rat them out?
A former BYU professor told Stack he came to worry about speaking his mind during Sunday school classes, afraid that what he said might be misinterpreted as radical or rebellious and make its way back to one of Gilbert’s lieutenants. Shouldn’t church be a safe space, a place of open discussion and learning, alongside worship?
Any thinking person, even a devout one, recognizes that there are gray areas in gospel study and asking questions is a healthy way to find greater understanding. Professors tend to be thinking people.
A ‘dangerous’ path
At BYU, I’ve heard their concerns. They’ve told me, always asking not to be quoted with their name attached because they’re flat-out afraid of losing their jobs for giving voice to what they think. Read the quotes in Stack’s article. Even if you disagree with some of what the people who are featured say, you can empathize with faithful individuals — yes, faithful — who resist being sized up and accepted or rejected for what’s on and in their minds. It appears that Gilbert and those who follow his lead see themselves as the Great Gatekeepers, protecting BYU and its students from supposedly wayward thought.
That kind of approach — far beyond what is taught and anticipated or required in the main body of the church — is more than frightening. It’s dangerous.
A religion — including a religion’s university — that supposedly emphasizes what Jesus taught, discriminating against professors or potential professors who are in absolute good standing in the church, is a bad look. It blows past a bad look. It’s a twisted version of religion that undermines what Christianity was meant to be — from the top down.
BYU is better than that. It should be better. A church that is so insecure that it cannot trust its believers, especially super-educated ones who have made a study of their field of expertise, as well as their religion, is a church that could use a fire hose dose of what Joseph Smith, the faith’s founder, taught: Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.
Clark Gilbert should lay down the hammer he’s swinging, and pick up an olive branch. Do away with the clenched fist, and offer an open hand. That would push BYU closer to what it wants to be, what it aims and sometimes claims to be, even if it will never quite get there: the Lord’s university.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tribune columnist Gordon Monson.
Note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
