{"id":43507,"date":"2022-09-05T16:36:38","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T21:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=43507"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:36:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:36:14","slug":"byu-professors-calling-the-brethren-autocratic-fascists-is-not-going-to-help-anybody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/09\/byu-professors-calling-the-brethren-autocratic-fascists-is-not-going-to-help-anybody\/","title":{"rendered":"BYU Professors Calling the Brethren Autocratic Fascists is Not Going to Help Anybody"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a recent post over at BCC<\/a><\/span>, a tenured BYU-X professor communicates some anxiety about CES\u2019 new direction, which is certainly their right, but in doing so the author calls the people who made this decision (i.e. the brethren, if that wasn\u2019t clear from Elder Holland\u2019s talk) autocrats, and prominently displays the fasces at the top of the post. Now, I don\u2019t know if this is a weird attempt at a \u201cthey who have ears to hear\u201d thing, but the fasci is a well-established symbol of fascism<\/a><\/span>. Implying that the people who actually have the power to do anything about this are autocratic fascists isn\u2019t going to help their case.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While as a matter of principle I think non-inflammatory rhetoric is generally best, for what it\u2019s worth I\u2019m on the other side of this. However, I\u2019m actually skeptical that the new direction will achieve much, although I might be wrong. It doesn\u2019t matter if all the deans are on board with the church\u2019s \u201c<\/span>teachings on marriage, family, and gender\u201d<\/span> (which they aren\u2019t, in at least one case I’m aware of); I suspect that the faculty who fundamentally disagree with the Church on hot button social topics and are in part at BYU to \u201creform\u201d the Church through its institutions will just lay low and continue to hire the kind of people who also fundamentally disagree with the Church and are trying to reform it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I suspect that the concern over arbitrariness, while valid, is also in part simply masking a concern that the Church is putting their foot down on the expectation that faculty\u2019s primary ideological loyalties lie with the Church when its teachings directly conflict with another ideology (usually the predominant ideology of the academic discipline).\u00a0<\/span>For example, a less \u201cbishop roulette\u201d and more \u201cone size fits all\u201d\u00a0 alternative that I suspect would cause even more gnashing of teeth is for the Church to ask more direct questions (e.g. do you support the Church\u2019s theological position that only a man and woman married together can be exalted? Do you believe that President Nelson is God\u2019s most authorized representative on earth? For non-members maybe replace “support” with “respect”) that don\u2019t leave any wiggle room like the current wording does.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, the Church is very public and open about asking these questions, so eventually word gets around the relevant academic professional organizations that every BYU professor has signed a faith statement to that effect, essentially forcing BYU professors to be more transparent about where they stand instead of being coy about where their primary loyalties lie when the Church\u2019s position conflicts with the predominant ideology in the field. If that makes it so BYU can\u2019t recruit enough to field a full department, then so be it. There are a lot of other places the widow\u2019s mite can be spent, because at the end of the day BYU is not the gospel or the Church, and the mission of the Church is less dependent on recruiting a theorist from a top ten school than some academics think. The implicit threat that the departments will be hollowed out if the Church presses these issues does not have much leverage, as I suspect the Board of Trustees would be fine if the English Department was operating at half strength. (Although I have no idea where the BYU English Department is on these issues, for all I know they\u2019re all Molly Mormons who never skipped seminary).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not my place to tell the First Presidency what to do here, but I\u2019m making the point that from some perspectives the new direction is less restrictive than it could, and possibly should be in order to get BYU faculty on-mission. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a recent post over at BCC, a tenured BYU-X professor communicates some anxiety about CES\u2019 new direction, which is certainly their right, but in doing so the author calls the people who made this decision (i.e. the brethren, if that wasn\u2019t clear from Elder Holland\u2019s talk) autocrats, and prominently displays the fasces at the top of the post. Now, I don\u2019t know if this is a weird attempt at a \u201cthey who have ears to hear\u201d thing, but the fasci is a well-established symbol of fascism. Implying that the people who actually have the power to do anything about this are autocratic fascists isn\u2019t going to help their case.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While as a matter of principle I think non-inflammatory rhetoric is generally best, for what it\u2019s worth I\u2019m on the other side of this. However, I\u2019m actually skeptical that the new direction will achieve much, although I might be wrong. It doesn\u2019t matter if all the deans are on board with the church\u2019s \u201cteachings on marriage, family, and gender\u201d (which they aren\u2019t, in at least one case I’m aware of); I suspect that the faculty who fundamentally disagree with the Church on hot button social topics and are in part […]<\/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":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43507","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=43507"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50140,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43507\/revisions\/50140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}