As I’ve stopped hyperventilating over the leak of this forthcoming change, I’ve had some thoughts. I have a general rule when I’m in\u00a0Gospel Doctrine that I try not to say anything unless it’s constructive (or the teacher says something really flagrantly crazy\/wrong, which is rare in my experience.)<\/p>\n
\nTeaching in Religious Education is to be substantive and inspirational. Students should become familiar with the text studied in each course taken and learn the implications of the text for daily living. They should feel free to raise honest questions, with confidence that they will be treated with respect and dignity and that their questions will be discussed intelligently in the context of faith.\u00a0Where answers have not been clearly revealed, forthright acknowledgment of that fact should attend, and teachers should not present their own interpretations of such matters as the positions of the Church.\u00a0Students should see exemplified in their instructors an open, appropriately tentative, tolerant approach to \u201cgray\u201d areas of the gospel. At the same time they should see in their instructors certitude and unwavering commitment to those things that have been clearly revealed and do represent the position of the Church.\u00a0Teachers should be models of the fact that one can be well trained in a discipline, intellectually vigorous, honest, critical, and articulate, and at the same time be knowledgeable and fully committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, His Church and Kingdom, and His appointed servants.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nTwo aspects of the new classes are problematic.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nFirst<\/strong>, the nature of these classes as topic-based<\/em> instead of sequential study through scripture. Julie has already laid out several valid concerns, which I won’t rehash too much. These\u00a0could\u00a0be done well, depending on the professor and expectations\/boundaries laid out by the department. The danger that many of us reasonably fear, based upon experience with the Church\u2019s manuals and such, is that the class would largely take a monolithic presentist view, and then strongly imply that This Position is the revealed and only one that has ever been taught, worlds without end,\u00a0 is therefore found in all the scriptures, and then engages in a disconnected proof-text method to show that.\u00a0Over 100 years ago, BH Roberts wrote,<\/div>\n\nIn the past, a too exclusive adherence to merely “text methods” of work has been followed. That is to say, there has been a selection of separate and disconnected texts marshalled together in support of a \u00a0given subject without sufficient care being taken to know the context and \u00a0historical association of the scriptural utterances, often attended with \u00a0great danger of forming misconceptions of such texts, resulting in wrong deductions and conclusions.”- Seventy’s Course in Theology<\/em>\u00a0(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1907\u20131912), 1:i.)<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nAnother danger is the potential of reifying current views that are not actually revelatory and may be reversed or discarded. Of course, even actual revelation can be reversed or superseded, e.g. circumcision or polygamy. But there\u2019s a real danger of teaching a tradition as revealed when it\u2019s not<\/a>. From that perspective it is both safer and more honest to teach a diachronic overview of something as well as the current view(s) espoused by current Apostles and Prophets. Along with doctrine, students need to be taught critical thinking skills<\/a> and develop a broad base of scriptural literacy. That is much more easily acquired in a good quality sequential reading course. Yes, many BYU students have not had good experiences in those courses, but they are the unlucky ones who (unwittingly) ended up with the storytellers, the myth makers, etc. While we teach dogma well, we do not teach\u00a0scripture-study well nor create realistic expectations or skills to deal with friction, uncertainty, contradiction, change, etc. After a mission, BYU, etc., we think we know much more than we really do. All of which brings me to the second problem.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSecond<\/strong>, and more troublesome to me, is that these new required classes displace the old scriptural courses,\u00a0changing demands on professors and hiring requirements, as well as basic scriptural literacy.\u00a0The scripture classes will remain as electives for most students, and some will still be requirements for Ancient Near Eastern Studies\u00a0majors (who choose a Hebrew Bible or Greek NT emphasis). 10,000 freshmen will no longer be signing up for Book of Mormon 121. The standard Scripture classes could even improve, since students who take them are now going to be self-selecting.\u00a0I had to \u201cweed out\u201d students who wouldn\u2019t appreciate the kind of class I was going to teach<\/a>, in order to avoid a clash of expectations and potentially negative student reviews. It\u2019s possible, then, that this shift\u00a0of religion classes will allow a much higher quality class for the few students who decide to take it.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nNow, this curriculum change is a\u00a0fait accompli<\/em>, it’s going to happen, and there’s really nothing any of us can do about it directly or indirectly. (Cue melodrama.) However, as Top’s letter makes clear, the content and structure of these courses is almost entirely yet to be determined. \u00a0These could be fantastic, thought-provoking, challenging, faith-building courses. I’d like to call for practical non-snarky suggestions. Here are some of mine.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
- Generally, more emphasis on analyzing and thinking, less on factual intake (though some of this is always necessary.) More acknowledgement of different strains of LDS thought, even at the highest levels. Students need to be challenged and exposed to other thoughts, not just dogmatized.<\/li>\n
- Incorporate the text and references from the new Gospel Topics statements. Particularly in the Foundations of the Restoration, these would be great to read and discuss, because they acknowledge what we do and don’t know, as well as sources. They would help get at the many productive tensions inherent in the Restoration around revelation, authority, canon, interpretation, etc. A diachronic, historical perspective is invaluable. This is a class I’d actually enjoy teaching. The opportunity to spend several days on the First Vision, for example, would provide a great opportunity to engage differing accounts, the nature of history and historiography, the importance of context and the cultural embeddedness of revelation (e.g. try Bushman’s\u00a0“Visionary World of Joseph Smith”<\/a>), and how time changes perspective (i.e. address the rampant presentism in the Church. Try James Allen’s article on the First Vision here<\/a>)<\/li>\n
- In the family class, one could explore how revelation and tradition intermingle by talking about what we do and don’t know about Mother in Heaven. There’s been plenty published on this by respectable names that could be used in a BYU class, like Paulsen<\/a>, Kevin Barney<\/a>\u00a0(maybe), Dan Peterson<\/a>, etc.\u00a0How will it deal both with historical challenges to the conception of the family (polygamy) and current\/future (gay marriage)?<\/li>\n
- The thematic\u00a0Book of Mormon class could engage in careful literary readings of what I called Power Chapters on my mission, those that seem to have minimal narrative and maximal doctrine, the dense ones. Grant Hardy’s recent book<\/a> could be useful. Oh wait, this is actually what the Advanced Book of Mormon class is doing right now.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
What are productive questions, sources, and approaches that could realistically (or aspiration ally) be used in these classes? How would you teach both the necessary doctrine AND spiritual\/intellectual skillset needed for a faithful disciple of Christ?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As I’ve stopped hyperventilating over the leak of this forthcoming change, I’ve had some thoughts. I have a general rule when I’m in\u00a0Gospel Doctrine that I try not to say anything unless it’s constructive (or the teacher says something really flagrantly crazy\/wrong, which is rare in my experience.) Let me open with this positiveness, then. BYU\u2019s RelEd has some fantastic people, some new hires, and good things happening. I\u2019ll single out the Advanced Book of Mormon class. The two\u00a0Fall 2014\u00a0sections are not the first time this class has\u00a0been taught. The two \u201cregular\u201d Book of Mormon classes are prerequisites,\u00a0the syllabi I\u2019ve seen look very good, and the profs are top-notch. \u00a0BYU still includes this aspirational statement (which I\u2019ve cited before)\u00a0about the nature of teaching in RelEd. Teaching in Religious Education is to be substantive and inspirational. Students should become familiar with the text studied in each course taken and learn the implications of the text for daily living. They should feel free to raise honest questions, with confidence that they will be treated with respect and dignity and that their questions will be discussed intelligently in the context of faith.\u00a0Where answers have not been clearly revealed, forthright acknowledgment of that fact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31923,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31921\/revisions\/31923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}