Bruce C. Hafen at the Annual University Conference, August 1991. Courtesy Mark A. Philbrick/BYU. The Dream Is Ours to Fulfill Alma
once described Zarahemla in a way that also describes Brigham Young University:
"We are thus highly favored, for we have these glad tidings [the gospel]
declared unto us in all parts of our vineyard" (Alma 13:23). That blessing
would not be possible for us at BYU or for us as LDS people if it were
not for so many who live lives of conscientious devotion to the Lord,
to his Church, to his truth, and to the well-being of this community.
We don't begin to have the problems other large institutions have with
drugs, violence, sexual harassment, dishonesty, and other threats that
are often encountered in the world. Yet our high expectations make it
doubly tragic when one of us does disappoint our community interests.
Our
aspirations include a commitment to the equal worth of every person, male
and female, regardless of one's station in life. To that end, men should
go out of their way to listen to women, and women to men, to see things
through each other's eyes. No one should be more sensitive to the individual
concerns and perceptions of others than those who approach their stewardship
"by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by
love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge" (D&C 121:4142).
Regarding mutual support and cooperation between staff and faculty, it
impresses me that BYU has not followed the recent pattern of other universities,
whose costs in support areas have risen faster than their academic costs.
As I consider all the good people who labor together in the Lord's vineyard,
I think of Karl G. Maeser's words: "Labor with the hand is as honorable
as labor with the head, but labor with the heart, when the heart is pure
and true, is the noblest labor" of all.1
BYU's
central mission begins with Richard Bushman's attitude: "I am a believer.
I believe in God and Christ and want to know them. My relations with scholarship
and scholars have
to begin there."3 And our relations with student activities, support services, and all else we do must also begin there. The
first theme flowing from this vision is that we nurture authentic religion.
I will return to some thoughts on that subject as my primary topic today.
Second, we offer as many spiritually and academically mature students
as possible the richest possible learning experience. Third, we support
faculty and academic programs that develop our emerging role as a major,
national university, positioned in that fruitful middle ground between
the comprehensive colleges and the graduate research universities. Fourth,
we seek a campus work environment full of professional competence, harmony,
and personal nurturing.
Against this background, let us consider the integration of our religious and professional aspirations. When our very able committee on academic long-range planning met last fall [1991], one person suggested that we begin by reading the teachings of the prophets about the university. Another suggested that we come to our next meeting in an attitude of fasting and prayer. In that very personal kind of mood, each group member expressed his or her impressions after reading these foundation documents. To my surprise, every person around that table expressed a variation on a single theme: we have been too reticent about the place of religion in academic life at BYU. In Marilyn Arnold's words,
The
Jewish author Chaim Potok once distinguished between sacred and secular
thought systems. The scholar in a sacred system "assumes there is a design
and purpose to nature," because God's spirit "hovers over all creation,"
giving divine origins to the premises of the sacred system. Thus, even
the most sophisticated scholar in a sacred system faithfully transmits
"inherited old and acceptable new scholarship" while respecting the established
"boundaries of the system" according to a "predetermined choreography."
By contrast, the scholar in a secular system always probes and challenges
the system's boundaries, believing that all premises originate with human
beings, the exclusive focus of secular systems. In secular systems, "it
is man who gives, and man who takes away."5
Today
Potok sees "a boiling cauldron of colliding ideas and world views" that
makes cultural confrontation between sacred and secular systems unavoidable.
He suggests four possible responses for the religious person who faces
such confrontation. First, the lockout approach: one can simply dodge
the conflict by erecting impenetrable barriers between the sacred and
the secular and then remaining in just one system. Second, compartmentalization:
one creates separate categories of thought that coexist in a "tenuous
peace." Third, take down all walls and allow complete fusion in which
the sacred and secular cultures freely feed each other, perhaps leading
to a "radically new seminal culture." And fourth, ambiguity: take down
most if not all walls and accept a multitude of questions without intending
to resolve them.6
BYU's
history, purposes, and its very nature reflect from every angle what Potok
calls a sacred system of thought. How then do Latter-day Saint scholars
at BYU and elsewhere handle the natural confrontations between the sacred
and our deep commitment to being part of serious university pursuits?
We reject the lockout approach that would shut our eyes to life's conflicts
and realities. We are in--even though not of--the world. Yet we also cannot
accept the total fusion model. Although the gospel embraces all truth,
we must give priority to the truths that lead us to Christ, and we cannot
allow our most sacred premises to be altered or even minimized by secularist
assumptions. At the same time, we are too open to be rigid compartmentalists.
So how do we view the ambiguity and uncertainty that remain? We don't fear ambiguity's questions, partly because, as John Tanner has said, we approach our questions from an attitude of faith.7 The
Restoration actually provides a fifth alternative for integrating sacred
and secular thought systems--the model of eternal perspective. The restored
gospel of Jesus Christ is the most comprehensive explanation of life and
of the cosmos available to humankind. This idea is illustrated by Terry
Warner's essay on Alma's teachings to Korihor. Terry wrote that the main
difference between Alma's map of the universe and Korihor's map is that
Alma's map is broader. If Alma's map is represented by a ten-by-ten-foot
square, Korihor's map is a four-by-four-foot square within Alma's larger
square. Alma doesn't have the answer to every question, but he does see
and accept the same scientific evidence that Korihor does. Beyond that,
he also recognizes evidence of personal meaning and spiritual reality
that Korihor's map by definition excludes.8 As William James
said, "The agnostic [expression] 'thou shalt not believe without coercive,
sensible evidence' is simply an expression of a private, personal appetite
for evidence of a certain peculiar kind."9 Not that these limits
are all bad: we really don't want science or the government to tell us
the ultimate meaning of our lives--we make those choices personally, based
on evidence available outside the limited scientific sphere. Thus we can
integrate a secular map into the broader sacred map, but our sacred system
cannot be made to fit within the smaller secular map.
Similarly,
Parker Palmer, who recently conducted a valuable seminar for BYU faculty,
believes that Western culture's vision of learning suffers from "one-eyed
education," teaching the mind but not the heart.10 "There is
an illness in our culture [arising] from our rigid separation of the visible
world from the powers that undergird and animate it. That separation [diminishes]
life, capping off its sources of healing, hope, and wholeness."11
He urges us to teach with "wholesight," a complete vision of the world
in which mind and heart unite, as Robert Frost has said, "as my two eyes
make one in sight."12 And "the mind's vision excludes the heart,
but the heart's vision can include the mind."13 The aim of
wholesighted education, anchored in a heart that guides the mind, is wholeness.
In Alan Keele's words, "Great theology and great scholarship are not only
compatible but are mutually and limitlessly illuminating."14
Yet, because Alma's vision is the broader one, the gospel should influence
our view of our disciplines more than our disciplines influence our view
of the gospel.
Many
thoughtful LDS people have enjoyed Chaim Potok's novels, often because
they identify with the conflicts Potok's characters face between sacred
and secular systems. The gospel teaches us to take education seriously,
but it also teaches us to put the kingdom of God first in our lives. I
am acquainted with the spiritual and intellectual biographies of many
in this BYU audience and in the LDS community beyond, and I would like
to know them all. Each of us, like characters in a Potok story, could
recount our personal confrontations between sacred and secular systems
of thought. My struggles were typical. I yearned to know if religious
literalism is compatible with a fully breathing, stretching life of the
mind. I found that the best resolution of the faith-versus-reason dilemmas,
better than any book or argument of abstract reasoning, is the example
of faithful and competent teachers in my own discipline--one of whom was
Dallin Oaks--who have answered my questions with their lives. For a generation
of LDS scientists, that role model was Henry Eyring. For many LDS doctors,
it is Russell Nelson. To know teachers such as these is to be set free
from the burden--sometimes the agony--of wondering whether serious religious
belief and serious professional or academic commitments can fill the same
heart at the same time.
One
of BYU's highest purposes is to help its students--and to help Church
members everywhere--confront such questions in ways that strengthen both
their minds and their hearts, that they may be fully engaged as productive
citizens of both society and the kingdom of God. President David O. McKay
once told the BYU faculty that this is "primarily a religious institution,
established for the sole purpose of associating with the facts of science,
art, literature, and philosophy the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ."15
In this vision of BYU, students of the highest potential in every discipline
may model their lives after teachers here who are the Henry Eyrings and
Russell Nelsons in their fields. That is far less likely at state institutions,
even with an LDS Institute of Religion, because--obviously with some important
exceptions--the teachers there tend to be oriented primarily to either
a sacred or a secular system. Thus the best way to teach young people
who are struggling to find the place of a sacred system in a profane world
is to offer them not just theories, but teachers and classmates who have
found their own wholesightedness. This opportunity is BYU's unique gift
to the youth of Zion.
Spiritual
lives really are at stake in resolving the root questions of faith versus
reason. For that reason, the risk of confusing our students on these issues
is the ugly mirror image of our unique capacity for good, as searing and
destructive as our positive potential is magnificent. A valued BYU colleague
who is a gifted teacher and an inspired researcher of impeccable academic
achievement recently told me that increasing numbers of his students are
"falling into his foxhole," seeking help for their wounded religious faith.
I asked why he thought there would be more spiritual casualties now--is
the world more wicked? Do brighter students see more dilemmas? He said
some of the deepest wounds are inflicted when a thoughtful student senses,
even through subtle hints, that an LDS teacher whom the student respects
is cynical about the Church. That kind of wound can cut to the quick,
because it implies to students that the fundamental integration of faith
and reason doesn't work, as if in some objective sense it can't work.
An LDS student would never draw that conclusion from the cynicism of an
agnostic or atheistic professor in a state university, because the student
will assume that such a teacher has long been seeing with only one eye.
But when someone whom the student believes has spent years looking through
both eyes implies that the view is darker with the sacred eye open, the
message can be devastating.
Especially
perverse is the teacher who conveys cynicism about the Church as evidence
of his commitment to liberal education. That stance can put out both eyes
at once, because it may offend believing Church members to the point that
they attack liberal education as the cause of cynicism. But liberal education
is an essential part of the wholesightedness we seek. Indeed, my own liberal
education helps me know that cynicism is as intellectually indefensible
as dogmatism. In my own student days, the BYU students who troubled me
most were the shallow, religious dogmatists. Now I am just as troubled
by the shallow, irreligious cynics who delight in poking fun at "Molly
Mormon." The only thing that has changed is the direction of the thoughtless
posturing; the superficiality has stayed the same. Neither group has both
eyes open. Why would any of us believe we serve the cause of serious education
if our primary goal is nothing more than teaching students to "think otherwise"
through simplistic posturing and antiauthoritarianism? As Ted Marchese
has said, "Beware the cynic as well as the huckster."16
Still,
one faculty member has urged that we encourage students and each other
to engage in public criticism of the Church because the "courage" involved
in saying unsettling things will demonstrate that BYU's commitment to
liberal education is "indeed working." This argument mistakenly assumes
that secular systems are broader than sacred systems. Moreover, there
is no connection at all between a superior education and such criticism.
Both the educated and the uneducated may be troubled by some Church issue.
But whether one expresses those troubles publicly is a function of personal
judgment more than it is an expression of integrity or educational depth.
It is also a function of how one understands revealed teachings about
publicly challenging those we sustain as prophets. Some defend their public
criticism on religious grounds, claiming they must protect the Church
from its misguided leaders. The irony in that attitude can't help but
convey cynicism about the divine influence in a Church based on prophetic
leadership. Conscientious private communication may ultimately be of real
help to the Church and its leaders, but public expression by those professing
to have both eyes open may simply spray another burst of spiritual shrapnel
through the ranks of trusting and vulnerable students.
Of
course, the premises of our sacred system--and, obviously, the premises
of sound liberal education--make spiritual and intellectual freedom absolutely
crucial for the development of wholesighted education. You can lead a
child to a book, but you can't make the child read it--much less understand
it. In my opinion, Satan's plan to save us without agency could not have
worked. Without free inquiry and voluntary action, no understanding, no
real testimony, and no personal growth is possible. For example, after
Aaron taught him the gospel, the converted Lamanite king wanted his people
to embrace the gospel as he had. But instead of imposing his new convictions
on his subjects, as did Constantine in the apostate era of early Christianity,
the king simply asked that the missionaries be allowed to preach freely.
As a result, the Lamanites who "were converted unto the Lord, never did
fall away" (Alma 23:6). This commission did not mean, however, that freedom
among the people of Aaron and Alma was unlimited. Korihor was initially
free to preach his anti-Christian views because there was "no law against
a man's belief" in Zarahemla (Alma 30:11). But when his expression moved
from pursuing his own beliefs to the point of "destroy[ing] the children
of God" (Alma 30:42), he exceeded the limits of the sacred system.
I
know that some BYU students and other members of the Church are too trusting,
too reliant on authority figures, and they expect the Holy Ghost to do
their thinking for them. We must rouse them from their dogmatic slumbers,
teaching them to love the Lord with all their heart, might, mind, and
strength. They need education that liberates them from ignorance and superstition,
developing the tough-minded independence on which self-reliant people
and democratic societies utterly depend. Thus Alma counseled his people
to "stand fast in this liberty wherewith ye have been made free," to "trust
no man to be a king over you," and to "trust no one to be your teacher"
(Mosiah 23:1314). In other words, of course Hamlet's Ophelia should
not expect someone else to "tell her what she should think."17
And beyond doing her own intellectual homework, Ophelia must also, as
did Alma, fast and pray "many days that I might know these things of myself"
(Alma 5:46).
But Alma's more complete thought
was "trust no man to be your teacher, except
he be a man of God" (Mosiah 23:14;
italics added). It is just as important that Ophelia trust the man or
woman of God as it is that she not trust authority figures in general.
The advantage of having a liberal education in a free society is that
no one will tell us what to do. But the disadvantage is that no one will
tell us what to do. The rich young ruler who approached the Savior wanted
desperately to know what he should do to inherit eternal life: "Master,
what good thing shall I do?" (Matt. 19:16). There are at least two very
different meanings to that word, "Master." One is the master of a slave.
Another is a teacher in a master-apprentice relationship. The young man
approached Christ as an apprentice who fervently needed his master's guidance.
As Michael Polanyi wrote, "To learn by example is to submit to authority.
You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things. .
. . [The] hidden rules [of his art] can be assimilated only [if the apprentice]
surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to [imitating the master]."18
But
how can Ophelia know what teacher, what master in the best sense, she
should trust? The scriptural standard is trust no one to be your teacher
except a man or woman of God. Alma "consecrated . . . all their teachers,"
and "none were consecrated except they were just men [who] did watch over
their people, and did nourish them with . . . righteousness" (Mosiah 23:1718).
What an aspiration for all the consecrated people who work at BYU, we
who, in and out of the classrooms, teach some of the purest and brightest
young men and women in all the world. They fulfill their dreams by coming
to this oasis of learning in a spiritually parched world, yearning to
ask the young ruler's question, What shall I do? And they come believing
that the faculty and staff here will tell them not only what to do to
learn to think for themselves, but what to do to inherit eternal life.
Wholesighted teaching, with both eyes open. We move them from dogmatism
through healthy skepticism toward a balanced maturity that can tolerate
ambiguity without losing the capacity for deep commitment. By example
as well as precept, we teach how to ask good--even searching--questions,
how to trust, how to know of ourselves. This university's vitality is
a continuing witness for the proposition that within the broad gospel
framework, robust faith and healthy skepticism are not mutually exclusive.
The chosen, consecrated men and women of God who teach and work here live
lives that make that clear.
The
ultimate purpose of our integrated teaching model is to teach our students
how to live. As Parker Palmer put it, "Truth is an approach to living,
not just an approach to knowing."19 Or as we have recently
described the purpose of the BYU Jerusalem Center, our purpose is not
only to orient our students to a holy land, but to orient them to the
holy life. How can we do that? Each teacher, faculty or staff, must find
his or her own way, and some settings are more natural than others for
making connections that help students see how secular interests fit within
the larger sacred sphere.
Of
course, we can't pursue excessive digressions that waste precious time
in classrooms, offices, and work places. But many students, such as Amy
Baird Miner, tell us that BYU students hunger for "life talks" as well
as "grade talks" from their teachers. Joseph K. Nicholes used to love
"teaching moments," those unexpected openings when a teacher, a head resident,
a job supervisor, or a leader in a student ward senses an opportunity
to step back from the subject at hand and open up the bigger picture of
life. For example, one student will always remember how a BYU teacher
talked soberly about life's larger purposes after witnessing a serious
accident on the way to class. I know a BYU professor who concluded a rigorous
course on logic by telling his students that now they know the rules of
logical analysis. But if they build their testimonies on these rules alone
rather than upon the spirit of God, they are built upon the sand.
Our
university courses are not Sunday School classes, but our fears about
that legitimate concern can inhibit some of us more than they should.
As President Spencer W. Kimball once said, "Every [BYU teacher should]
keep his subject matter bathed in the light of the restored gospel."20
We must be cautious about both sentimental emotionalism at one extreme
and stale academic neutrality on the other. And of course, we should teach
students to respect rigorous standards of evidence, but let us not neglect
all "anecdotal" evidence. Every personal testimony is in a sense anecdotal,
but testimonies of personal experience are among the most powerful forms
of data.
Another
risk of integrating sacred and secular systems, especially in scholarly
work, is that integrationists sometimes devalue in some lopsided way either
the religious or the professional dimension. I have learned firsthand
about this problem through the process of writing and publishing articles
on family law in scholarly journals. In all of that work, my reasoning
has implicitly proceeded from the teachings of the scriptures about marriage
and family life. But my interaction with skeptical reviewers and demanding
editors quickly taught me that I should avoid the ineffective approaches
of shrill profamily writers who have no idea what it means to observe
rigorous research methodologies and to master the available literature.
One could give several examples of meaningful scholarly integration; I
know of none better than the work of BYU's Allen Bergin, whose work on
the place of religious values in psychotherapy recently earned the distinguished
service award from the American Psychological Association. He has learned
to let his work proceed on a small, empirically based scale that reveals
its own conclusions, rather than trumpeting in advance a "moral framework"
that implies a preconceived dogmatism. His research speaks for itself
when he uses Alma's large map rather than Korihor's small one.
Following
Allen's example in selected disciplines, we should, as Clayne Pope has
urged, "work within our disciplines with the additional light of the gospel
to inform and direct our work."21 Our audience for this integrated
scholarship is not just BYU or the Church, but also the entire scholarly
world--if our work is rigorous enough to satisfy the highest professional
standards. Adapting a phrase from James Burtchaell, we can contribute
to society in unique and greatly needed ways when our integration is skillful
enough to critique the academy from the standpoint of religion, rather
than only critiquing religion from the standpoint of the academy.22
A
faculty group in one of our academic areas would like to bring Parker
Palmer back to the campus to share further his ideas on the spiritual
dimensions of teaching. Having read Professor Palmer's work, I applaud
that interest. It is reassuring to see someone of another faith validate
our interest in religious and professional integration. But faculty on
our own campus are already doing the nation's finest teaching of that
kind--they just haven't written about their work as much as Palmer has,
and our reward system should encourage them. It isn't enough just to ask
that BYU personnel avoid damaging students' religious faith in the ways
described by our new academic freedom statement. When we go beyond that
minimal threshold to ask whether someone has contributed enough in citizenship,
teaching, and scholarship to warrant continuing faculty status or other
special recognition, we look for extensive fulfillment of BYU's aspirations,
not merely the absence of serious harm. The university's new policy on
advancement and continuing status describes this approach.
It
also matters how job applicants see these issues. I well remember interviewing
two well-trained applicants for the same position one day. When I asked
how each one felt about the Church influence here, one said, "Oh, the
Church is no problem for me--I've learned not to let it get to me." The
other said, "The Church and the gospel are my whole life. That is why
coming to work at BYU is my lifelong dream."23 The vast attitudinal
difference between these people was, and should be, a major factor in
deciding whom to hire. We aren't looking for people who merely tolerate
our environment or who will try not to harm it; we seek believing, thoughtful
people for whom this is the freest intellectual and spiritual environment
in the world.
Let
us consider, finally, the conditions on which our work at BYU may enjoy
full access to the revealed truth and prophetic guidance that are the
source of our sacred system's life and breath. One of Parker Palmer's
favorite stories is about Abba Felix, an early Christian "desert teacher."
In this story, "some brothers . . . went to see Abba Felix and they begged
him to say a word to them. But the old man kept silence. After they had
asked for a long time he said, . . . 'There are no more words nowadays.
. . . Since [the brothers now] ask without doing that which they hear,
God has withdrawn the grace of the word from the old men and they do not
find anything to say, since there are no longer any who carry their words
out.' Hearing this, the brothers groaned, saying, 'Pray for us, Abba.'"24
Felix's point, says Palmer, is that "truth is evoked from the teacher
by the obedience of those who listen and learn, and when that quality
is lacking in students, the teacher's words are taken away."25
Felix's students had only been curious. They desired not the words of
life--they wanted words that created an illusion of life, while letting
them avoid the responsibility of living according to truth.
This
was the same condition on which Ammon taught King Lamoni: "Wilt thou hearken
unto my words, if I tell thee by what power I do these things?" (Alma
18:22). Likewise, we must "hearken unto the words" of our all-comprehending
system if we are to learn its truths and see all else in its bright light.
The highest liberal arts tradition teaches a similar concept: hubris.
For the ancient Greeks, no sin was greater than the intellectual pride
by which the learned thought themselves wiser than divine sources.
For
us, obedience to divine sources first requires that we live a gospel-worthy
life-style. Further, because ours is a sacred system premised on divinely
ordered leadership, each of us must nourish a humble willingness to follow
prophetic counsel. The statement by the First Presidency and the Twelve
in 1991 counseling against any participation in certain kinds of symposia
was most unusual, yet very deliberate.26 Because the statement
is for all Church members, it is not primarily a BYU matter, but it clearly
speaks to BYU people. It is written in nondirective, nonpunitive terms,
but its expectations are clear to those with both eyes open.
Some
Church members and leaders have wondered in recent years if BYU's increasing
academic stature would develop at the expense of basic Church loyalties.
I don't believe that has happened, and I don't believe it will at today's
BYU. I believe with all my heart in Elder Jeffrey Holland's "consuming
vision that we [can] be a truly great university [that is] absolutely
faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ."27 But that proposition
will constantly be tested, and how we are perceived on an issue as elementary
as "follow the Brethren" means more than we might imagine. Tip O'Neill
used to say that you find out who your friends are not by seeing who's
with you when they agree with you, but who's with you when they think
you might be wrong. And the religious core of a sacred system just might
ask its followers to trust the religious imperative even when it does
not square with their own opinions.
The
BYU dream will forever elude us if, as Abba Felix said, "God withdraws
the grace of his words from the elders because the young people no longer
carry out the teachings of the elders."28 And even though I
believe our collective religious commitment is stronger now than ever
before, if a few among us create enough reason for doubt about the rest
of us, that can erode our support among Church members and Church leaders
enough to mortally wound our ability to pursue freely the dream of a great
university in Zion. Somehow we must sense how much is at stake in how
we deal with this issue. "Pray for us, Abba,"29 because the
dream really is ours to fulfill.
Almost
exactly one hundred years ago, when the Church already had several stake
academies, including Brigham Young Academy in Provo, the First Presidency
released James E. Talmage from heading LDS College in Salt Lake City and
assigned him to create the plans for what Talmage's biographer called
"a genuine Church university."30 Talmage was stirred to the
core at "the prospect of founding an institution that would merit recognition
by the established centers of learning throughout the nation and the world.
It was a dream he had cherished for many years."31 The proposed
name was Young University.
Think
of it: just months after the Manifesto of 1890 had been issued, the Church
barely rescued from the jaws of utter destruction, Utah not yet a state,
already a network of Church academies in place, and those Saints in their
poverty wanted to create "a genuine university." This early plan was shattered
by the Panic of 1893, but the dream lived on. In the 1920s and 1930s,
the Church withdrew from higher education, creating a system of LDS Institutes
of Religion and offering to state governments all of its academies but
our very own Brigham Young Academy, which the First Presidency determined
to keep in order to develop one genuine university.32 The dream
was still alive.
Sixty
years later, the Lord's Church of the twenty-first century is expanding
miraculously all across the globe. Never again will we see a Churchwide
network of colleges or academies, but there is still one "genuine Church
university" that has demonstrated its capacity to bless and be worthy
of all the Saints, every person who pays a dollar of tithing. Some voices
in today's winds claim that BYU will never achieve intellectual respectability
as long as it is controlled by the Church. But in the twenty-one years
since I joined the BYU faculty, I have watched the faculty, the staff,
and the students of this university take an astonishing leap in the quality
of their teaching, learning, and scholarship. I can bear firsthand witness
that BYU's recent emergence onto the national and international stage
is winning, in many circles, the honest and deserved admiration of a society
desperate for educational leadership because of that society's moral decay
and intellectual confusion. And this leadership role is being thrust upon
the university not in spite of its lifeline to the Church, but precisely
because of it.
I
pay tribute to the thousands of women and men in the BYU community who
match and exceed their rich professional achievements with lives of uncompromising
faithfulness to the gospel, "offer[ing] in sacrifice all that [they have]
for the truth's sake, not even withholding [their] lives,"33
because they seek to know the mind and do the will of God.
The dream has become a consuming vision: "a truly great university [that is] absolutely faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ."34 Its name is Brigham Young University. Pray for us, Abba, for the dream is ours to fulfill. This address was given at the 1992 Annual University Conference, when Bruce C. Hafen was Provost of Brigham Young University. It was published in BYU Studies 32, no. 3 (1992): 1125. NOTES
1Reinhard
Maeser, Karl G.
Maeser: A Biography by His Son (Provo,
Utah: Brigham Young University, 1928), 78.
2Paul
Pixton, "History Department Memo," memorandum to Brigham Young University
Department of History, April 1992. Memorandum in author's possession.
3Richard
Bushman, Brigham Young University Commencement Address, August 1991, transcript
copy, Brigham Young University Publications.
4Marilyn
Arnold, Bob Daines, and Dennis Thomson, "Summary of the Discussion of
the Religious Mission of Brigham Young University," November 25, 1991.
Memorandum in author's possession.
5Chaim
Potok, "Scholars Real and Imaginary in Culture Confrontation" (paper presented
to the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, Third Annual Tanner
Academy Lecture, Utah State University, Logan,
May 19, 1989). 6Potok,
"Scholars."
7John
S. Tanner, "One Step Enough," devotional address, Brigham Young University,
Provo, Utah, June 1992.
8C. Terry
Warner, "An Open Letter to Students: On Having Faith and Thinking for
Yourself," The New Era 1
(November 1971): 1419.
9William
James, Essays on Faith and
Morals, ed. and comp. Ralph
Barton Perry (Cleveland: Meridian Book, World Publishing, 1967), 25.
10Parker
J. Palmer, To Know As We
Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San
Francisco: Harper, 1983), 11.
11Palmer,
To Know As We Are Known,
10.
12Robert
Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time," quoted in Palmer, To
Know as We Are Known, ix.
13Palmer,
To Know As We Are Known,
xii.
14Alan
F. Keele, "All Truth Circumscribed in One Great Whole," Student
Review, June 24, 1992, 4.
15David
O. McKay, "The Church University," Messenger
11 (October 1937): 3; see page
10 in this volume.
16Ted
Marchese, "Regional Accreditation (II)," Change
(March/April 1992): 4.
17William
Shakespeare, "Hamlet," quoted in Thomas G. Plummer, "Diagnosing and Treating
the Ophelia Syndrome" (paper presented to Delta Phi Alpha, Brigham Young
University, Provo, Utah, April 5, 1990).
18Michael
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge:
Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1962), 53.
19Palmer,
To Know As We Are Known,
65.
20Spencer
W. Kimball, "Education for Eternity" (lecture given at the Annual Preschool
Faculty and Staff meeting, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, September
12, 1967); see page 54 in this volume.
21Clayne
Pope to author, August 1992.
22James
Burtchaell, "The Decline and Fall of the Christian College," First
Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 13
(April/May 1991): 17.
23Personal
interviews conducted during author's tenure as provost of Brigham Young
University, Provo, Utah, 198892.
24Palmer,
To Know As We Are Known,
41.
25Palmer,
To Know As We Are Known,
43.
26Statement,
Church News,
published by Deseret News,
August 31, 1991, 3.
27Jeffrey
R. Holland, Spring Commencement Address, 1991 (Brigham Young University,
Provo, Utah).
28Palmer,
To Know As We Are Known,
45.
29Palmer,
To Know As We Are Known,
45.
30John
R. Talmage, The Talmage Story:
Life of James E. Talmage--
Educator, Scientist, Apostle (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1972), 108. 31Talmage,
The Talmage Story,
108.
32Harold
B. Lee, "Special Committee Report," Church Board of Education, The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, 1964.
33Lectures
on Faith 6:7, in The Lectures
on Faith in Historical Perspective, ed.
Larry E. Dahl and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies
Center, 1990), 93.
34Holland,
Spring Commencement Address, 1991.
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