{"id":42607,"date":"2022-03-10T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=42607"},"modified":"2025-05-26T08:11:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T14:11:38","slug":"in-defense-of-boundary-maintenance-at-byu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/03\/in-defense-of-boundary-maintenance-at-byu\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Boundary Maintenance at BYU"},"content":{"rendered":"

BYU\u2019s recent policy changes that appear to be geared towards reinforcing the institution\u2019s Latter-day Saint character are causing consternation in some circles, so I thought now would be a good time to be the bad guy and make a case for why proactive faculty boundary maintenance is needed for an institution like BYU to fulfill its mission. Like a lot of other people, I get the sense that recent changes are bellwethers for future shifts to come, so this will probably be a relevant topic for the next little while. <\/span><\/p>\n

First, a common response is that a religiously sponsored institution can positively reinforce its religious mission while still allowing faculty to challenge the teachings of the sponsoring institution. However, t<\/span>he whole idea of a religious institution of higher education is the belief that a synthesis of the faith\u2019s framework and the traditional academic venture is synergistic in some way. Challenging the faith\u2019s framework itself doesn\u2019t fit into that; using that framework as a\u00a0<\/span>lens\u00a0through which to view academic learning does.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t hold to the premise that religious institutions are right to perform any boundary maintenance, if you\u2019re okay with an anti-Mormon teaching a religion class as long as they have an MDiv, then this is the part in a \u201cchoose your own adventure\u201d book where it tells you to skip to the end, but as a parting note I would just add that there\u2019s plenty of ideological boundary maintenance in secular universities as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, if we can assume that some boundary maintenance is warranted, it raises the question about which boundaries to maintain. Many of the same people who bemoan the boundary maintenance of BYU today are themselves the beneficiaries of the wars fought at BYU in the 20th century over issues like Book of Mormon historicity. People can take it for granted that they can send their children to BYU today and assume that an authority figure in the classroom won\u2019t subtly imply that Joseph Smith made it all up because of battles over this issue that were fought and won decades ago.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe we\u2019re going through another wave of boundary maintenance now. While Book of Mormon historicity is now more or less settled as an issue at the BYUs, the same is not true in the case of, for example, the Church\u2019s theological position on human sexuality. Anybody who has spent time immersed in the sectors of BYU which are at least adjacent to these issues is aware of the fact that a not-insignificant contingent of BYU faculty fundamentally disagree with the Church on the theology (and yes I\u2019m talking about theology, not politics, for which there is a much wider berth understandably).<\/span><\/p>\n

(As a side note and to pre-empt a common criticism, you can disagree with the salience of Proclamation on the Family issues for the Church leadership, but it\u2019s clear that human sexuality is the hot issue of the day, and that it is just as germane for the left as the right right now, so it\u2019s disingenuous to attack Church leadership as being obsessed with these issues.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, if we assume that 1) religious universities have the moral as well as legal right to perform active boundary maintenance on their faculty, 2) the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now emphasizing Proclamation on the Family principles because of their contemporary salience (among other things), and 3) there are in fact a not-insignificant number of faculty who have doctrinal disagreements with the brethren on sexuality issues (and, more importantly, students can sense said discordance), then it logically follows that the new initiatives, which I along with many on the left assume are geared towards these issues, make sense. Of course, I\u2019m sure most on the other side would dispute the Church\u2019s position for # 2, but if you fundamentally disagree with the Church on this issue theologically maybe that\u2019s where the discussion should go instead of pretending that we\u2019re acting from the same first principles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a closing note, it is clear that boundary maintenance is an inexact process administratively, and there are false positives as well as false negatives. I won’t name names, but I know absolutely orthodox faculty candidates who had problems with the General Authority interview, and I\u2019ve known closet non-believing, wannabe Martin Luthers of Morminism who passed every litmus test.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, some of the the inexactness is a natural consequence of the fact that when the lines are precisely delineated those who are trying to \u201creform\u201d the Church know how to dance around and actively try to circumvent them, so I\u2019m okay with a little bit of subjectivity when it comes to gatekeeping. There will be false positives and false negatives, but the administrative solutions are sometimes necessary when relying on one-off gatekeeping isn\u2019t enough for keeping BYU on the same wavelength as the brethren.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BYU\u2019s recent policy changes that appear to be geared towards reinforcing the institution\u2019s Latter-day Saint character are causing consternation in some circles, so I thought now would be a good time to be the bad guy and make a case for why proactive faculty boundary maintenance is needed for an institution like BYU to fulfill its mission. Like a lot of other people, I get the sense that recent changes are bellwethers for future shifts to come, so this will probably be a relevant topic for the next little while. First, a common response is that a religiously sponsored institution can positively reinforce its religious mission while still allowing faculty to challenge the teachings of the sponsoring institution. However, the whole idea of a religious institution of higher education is the belief that a synthesis of the faith\u2019s framework and the traditional academic venture is synergistic in some way. Challenging the faith\u2019s framework itself doesn\u2019t fit into that; using that framework as a\u00a0lens\u00a0through which to view academic learning does.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t hold to the premise that religious institutions are right to perform any boundary maintenance, if you\u2019re okay with an anti-Mormon teaching a religion class as long as they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2970,3022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-leadership-and-policies","category-sexuality"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42607","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\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42607"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50102,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42607\/revisions\/50102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}