Students at Brigham Young U. Petition to Bring Back ‘Christ-Centered’ Education
“to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life”
Good for these students. You wouldn’t think you’d have to make such a demand at a school like BYU. It just goes to show how far things have drifted.
Campus Reform reports:
BYU student starts petition to bring back ‘Christ-centered education’
Students at Brigham Young University have started a petition to bring back “Christ-centered education” at the university, that has already gained over three thousand signatures in support.
Hanna Searic and Tristen Mourier at BYU stated in the petition that they feel the university has “wavered on a practical level” when it comes to fulfilling its mission statement, which is “to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.”
In an interview with ABC 4, Searic said that her primary purpose is to simply have a discussion with the BYU administration over the concerns of how modern culture is influencing the campus. She said her intention is not to have any faculty feel as if they were being “attacked.”
Searic told the local TV station that she has faced “backlash” for her efforts, with BYU students opposing her movement to restructure education religiously grounded, which she feels the school is moving away from.
Searic’s and Mourier say that one of the motives of their campaign was a lack of encouragement and sponsorship from faculty members for student organizations which were either attributed to conservative activism or affiliated with the LDS Church.
The petition notes that they acknowledge the BYU’s faculty’s pursuit of academic freedom with the ability to teach other subjects, noting that it does not aim to discourage personal opinions on social issues, but wishes to “place LDS religious values in all of the activities of the institution…to produce students who are fully appreciative of the principles of the Latter-day Saints faith and of their roles in the universe as sacred and independent individuals,” as stated by former BYU President Ernest Wilkinson.
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Comments
I support this. And I would be VERY surprised if the Church does NOT support her; For the past 2 years, the Church has been urging the members to bring Christ back to the center focus of everything we do. We even managed to change website domain names to reflect that – from lds.org to churchofjesuschrist.org – I was more than surprised we were able to make that happen.
Sounds like Brigham Young is far more Christian than 98% of so-called Catholic colleges and universities.
This is an important dilemma. On the one hand, social justice warriors are advocating that universities explicitly teach values and hold heretics accountable for violations of the official orthodoxy. On the other hand, when the official values and orthodoxy does not meet their desires, they attack the institution for a lack of liberalism. BYU has every right to advocate the values of the Mormon Church. Heaven forbid if we leave these decisions to the church leadership or the college administration.
I’m not Mormon, nor do I believe it remotely Christian – it’s akin to Islam which also ‘broke away’ from Christianity. That being said I have have to applaud what these students are doing. BYU is a Mormon university. Does it not make sense that it will provide a Mormon education? Those who object to such an education can simply choose to go elsewhere – it’s not like there’s a shortage. Sadly all too many institutions that call themselves Christian are gaining headlines these days for refusing to adhere to Christian standards, or worse, for persecuting students who do.