As we each finished graduate school and launched our academic careers at BYU, we each faced questions about choosing a church-owned university amid the many other options in broader academia. Hadn’t we heard that religious dogma might limit the kind of questions we could ask and stifle honest inquiry?
While there’s a certain logic to such worries, we find it overly narrow in its evaluation of faith and inattentive to the scholarly limitations imposed by secular worldviews. In our experience, teaching at religious universities has given us unique space to scrutinize larger academic orthodoxies while taking up questions that very few other scholars have the same freedom to pursue.
Space to question secular orthodoxies
We expect some will continue to paint a sort of dystopian picture of Brigham Young University as a place that suppresses dissent in favor of rigid doctrinal orthodoxy — in implied contrast to the open, inviting, free-speech utopia of the rest of the academic world. Yet a recent FIRE survey revealed that, across academia, “three times as many conservative, compared to liberal, faculty at least occasionally hide their political beliefs from other faculty in an attempt to keep their jobs.” Other surveys show a majority of faculty would consider a conservative candidate to be a poor fit for their academic department.
We believe that faith-filled perspectives can be found across the political spectrum. Politically, many of our BYU colleagues lean left, and many lean right — there is no place on the ordinary political spectrum that is off-limits for CES (Church Educational System) faculty that we know of. We feel free at BYU campuses to voice beliefs, perspectives and paradigms that are often discouraged, if not verboten, in the broader academic world.
An instructor at a prominent public university declined to go on record for this editorial, fearing his colleagues or administration might find out about his dissenting views on gender and marriage. He yearns to be able to teach somewhere where he can openly express support for Church teachings without fear of professional reprisal.
Professor Benjamin Pacini writes about BYU-Idaho campus as “the first place that I have felt that I can be authentic in my teaching: in my beliefs about the nature of learning and the human soul; the spark of the divine, and the transcendent need to become something greater than I am.” This space for authenticity, he argues, exists “precisely because church schools are not apologetic about their willingness to embrace gospel doctrines that the world sees as untrendy.”
We recognize that not all of our peers have had the same experience, especially those who have found themselves uncertain of the current emphasis or teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the specific ways those teachings have been translated into policy. And we certainly hope those with different perspectives — but who still want to pursue the mission — can find open-hearted engagement on a wide variety of sensitive questions on our campuses. In our experience, administrative emphasis on BYU’s mission does not dampen such discussions, but rather brings them to the forefront, allowing us to collectively work toward our shared purpose.
A double heritage
We appreciate how BYU boldly declares that rich learning can also come “even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118), and that academic excellence can flourish when grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ (BYU Mission Statement). It is precisely this “double heritage” that attracted us to teach at BYU-Idaho and BYU’s main campus in Provo.
We find it liberating to be able to discuss the scriptures, share and invite spiritual insights in class discussions and pursue scholarship “bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel.” And our sense is that the large majority of our colleagues at BYU campuses agree.
This is more than just praying to begin class. It’s about exploring in class how faith enriches a wide variety of academic subjects — discussions that would again be considered mostly out of bounds on a secular campus.
These experiences are possible precisely because BYU fosters an environment where faith and reason work together — not in tension, but in harmony. Of course, this requires a faculty that is also not in open disagreement with the principles of the gospel and that shares a deep commitment to BYU’s mission.
It’s common for new professors to feel empowered by this unprecedented opportunity to unite their spiritual and intellectual convictions. Many of us feel humbled and blessed to be at an institution where we can pursue academic interests while openly and honestly bearing testimony of our Savior and our love for the gospel.
That’s why we don’t find it conspiratorial or feel distrusted when BYU takes steps aimed at strengthening its mission and achieving its purpose, or asks employees to dedicate themselves to fostering an environment where faith infuses the learning experience.
This is just the kind of learning environment so many students want when they come to BYU, illustrated by one former student’s story published this week. These students deserve a learning environment to work out challenging questions without the burdens of a spiritually and emotionally corrosive cynicism toward prophetic teachings and authority. We would be derelict in our duty if we failed to provide just that.
The value of institutional diversity
While attention naturally goes to the value of exploring competing perspectives at American universities, a thriving intellectual marketplace also depends on institutions themselves offering their own unique visions. And the reality is there are very few academic institutions where openly supporting Church teachings on things like gender and family would be tolerated, let alone welcomed as important influences on scholarship and teaching.
It has been widely noted, with some controversy, that other private universities have embraced as part of their mission a commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, and have asked — and at times have required — that aspiring faculty commit to those broader ideals, and articulate how their research will contribute to those aims.
While Brigham Young University shares those ideals of belonging, it should be no surprise when its central aim of cultivating disciples of Christ likewise finds expression in the policies, practices and norms of the school. Rather than pursuing a sameness across institutions, we welcome the learning that can come when different universities offer unique emphases and purposes, with different freedoms and constraints. Indeed, we have been enriched by interactions with colleagues at other universities who do not share our religious convictions, and we feel a stronger sense of comradery, not combativeness when we discuss our different institutional missions.
Inquiry sparked by faith
Some worry that by bringing our religious convictions into our academic work we risk compromising the objectivity and integrity of our scholarship. Others fear that we will dismiss challenging data or feel pressured to conform to a particular orthodoxy.
But that is not the environment at BYU or BYU-Idaho, in our experience. Intellectual curiosity is alive and vibrant around every corner of each campus within the CES umbrella we have been privileged to be a part of — and that intellectual curiosity is fueled by a faith that declares “the glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” (D&C 93:36).
This gives us confidence to pursue all the answers, and not just the culturally popular ones. Jonathan Haidt has observed that a lack of ideological diversity in the social sciences has led to a narrow focus on the moral concerns of what Joseph Henrich refers to as “WEIRD” cultures (which stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), which trend towards secularism and progressivism — to the neglect of the moral concerns of more religious or tradition-centered communities.
It’s significant, then, that BYU is regularly high on rankings lists for study abroad, international engagement, foreign language learning and other indicators of greater appreciation of non-Western communities. Haidt argues that larger academic biases leads to not merely unanswered questions, but unasked questions — questions that ought to be asked if we want to understand the full truth of so many issues in our complex society today.
In short, temptations to rigid orthodoxy are not unique to religious institutions. Secular scholars are not immune to bias, nor are scholars of faith uniquely susceptible to it.
Freedom, not constraint
Where others see freedom (in academia at large), we see constraint. And where others see constraint on BYU campuses, we see freedom. Freedom to challenge the unquestioned presumptions of our discipline. Freedom to teach students to think rigorously and critically using all the tools of their discipline, and to also think critically about their disciplines.
Like a kite, our academic freedom has a tether — some basic constraints that are unique to BYU and BYU-Idaho. Most of us do not see that tether as an oppressive burden, but as the very thing that allows us to fly. As a consequence, we feel more able, not less able, to equip students with the tools they need to be independent thinkers within their fields.
If that freedom comes with the basic responsibility to (at a bare minimum) not openly critique or undermine long-established Church teachings — to not try to change the culture of the institution to become more permissive of what Church leaders have warned against — then we believe that is a small price to pay to be granted so large and so sacred a stewardship as the lives, futures and testimonies of the rising generation.