Dr. Spencer Fluhman, the Maxwell Institute Director, gave a BYU Devotional speech titled “The University and the Kingdom of God” July 30, 2019. I can have a flair for the dramatic, but I really think this might be the most important LDS talk I’ve ever heard on the topic of the modern faith challenges in the Church. Please stop and listen to the whole talk. https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/j-spencer-fluhman/the-university-and-the-kingdom-of-god/
He introduces his topic talking about the importance of education and intelligence. Joseph Smith and the early restored Church put a supreme priority on education, establishing a university as one of its first priorities after coming to Utah. Indented quotes in this post will all be taken from the speech.
“For a disciple of Jesus Christ, academic scholarship is a form of worship. It is actually another dimension of consecration.” (Neal A Maxwell) As a result, Brigham Young University will not and cannot divorce itself from the big questions of human experience. Unlike other institutions, there is no secularizing retreat here that permits any discipline or field to imagine itself apart from the questions of human flourishing or morality or even holiness. Put another way, where does God’s light not seek to see to shine? What field of inquiry can stand apart from questions of ultimate reality of divine love, of God’s design and creation and redemption…Where do Christ’s claims on us end? Where do charity and justice, not demand a hearing in medicine, in law, in the management of resources, in the deployment of technology, in politics? If we can imagine a field of knowledge here at this university about which the gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing to say, we have made, we may have traded our birthright in Zion for a mess of secular pottage. There can be no host’s whole scale acquiescence to modern categories here. Religion pours out hot and demanding into every field at this university because it must.
He then shifts to focus the message to the process of religious study at BYU which could be more broadly applied to the Church in general.
These realities will make the disciplines more demanding, not less. A steady diet of religious or intellectual twinkies, sugary sweet, but without real nourishment as one of my colleagues describes them, has no place in God’s kingdom. The intersection of academic disciplines and the restoration’s grand facts should be electric and in every sense rigorous. This university after all, must call forth our best selves to be worthy of its place. To be casual about our collective aspirations would be to trifle with sacred things. Expect your courses to be difficult. Expect your professors to wrestle mightily with their topics. Expect unfinished business all around. Expect theory and hypothesis to jostle alongside settled conviction. Expect now and again to fall short of our stated aspirations. Those failures are crushing but necessary. And above all expect to wrestle yourself. There is deep magic in the spiritual struggles demanded here. Joseph Smith hinted at this when he wrote of what it would take to make a difference in this world. Notice how he connects mind and redemption. “Thy mind, oh man, if thou will lead a soul under salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens and search into and contemplate the lowest considerations of the darkest abyss and expand upon the broad considerations of eternal expanse. He must commune with God.” It will not be all sunshine and angels, in other words, expect some abyss.
It’s not going to be easy, but we need to rigorously explore every aspect of our religion, no matter if it has potential for faith harm.
To commune with God, according to Joseph Smith, is to begin to comprehend reality as broadly and as viscerally as He does. Superficiality and slothfulness would thwart that kind of education as surely as sin or oppression. Accordingly, we can’t simply steer around difficult questions here. We have to wrestle right through them. And we must do it together.…the late elder Richard G. Scott warned us that avoiding difficult questions might actually harm faith down the road because we would have missed an opportunity to engage them here together within the household of faith.
This sounds scary. Will it work? Dr. Fluhman answers boldly and emphatically that yes it will as he describes an experience with students in a class that faced the tough issues.
Our students marveled throughout the course that we refused to maneuver around tough questions. Each class period featured some fresh, daunting challenge from violence to race to immigration to gender and sexual orientation. And we marveled back as our students navigated these issues with rigor and faith and especially that they chose to do it together. As difficult as it was for saints from such varied backgrounds and perspectives. I wept as I read their course evaluations to a person. They left the course more committed to the things that matter most, not less.
We need everyone. We have an important work as a Church and we need everyone.
This university is a vector. Its direction is unalterable. It’s chiseled in Wasatch granite. It must build God’s kingdom or wither away. Its magnitude, however, is variable. Its significance in the world depends on our collective, intellectual and spiritual force as a gathering of God’s children…You might think of yourself as seeking God here, but in truth, he has been seeking you. He is fitting you for a world that needs you. There are always problems afoot that will demand our very best and then some from poverty to racism, to ecological collapse, to rampant inequality, to sexual violence, to pour healthcare to religious freedom to deficient education. This world groans under the weight of our collective failures. This world yearns for a people with a broad and compelling vision infused with the hope and compassion that the gospel of Jesus Christ inspires in each of us. In short, this world needs you. Do you want to make a difference in your communities? You’re at the right university. Do you want to change the world? You’re in the right church.
What do we do when our journey leads us to a frustrating place where no one else seems to have done the same intellectual work we have and care about the same issues we have? How do I survive in this Church when I’m in that state? Answer: reframing.
We can come to believe that our perspectives are more important than others who may lack our training or our experience. We can grow impatient or condescending with our fellow saints. We can become cynical. I’ve experienced some of this. I have bite marks on the inside of my lips from past Sunday School lessons to prove it. But I rarely experience those frustrations these days. What changed things for me was church service, actually. As I have come to better comprehend the scale of human suffering around us, my questions have changed. Rather than being haunted by the fact that other saints don’t care about the same questions I do in every instance, I’ve been obliged to reframe the problem this way. “How can my academic training answer the problem of human suffering or contribute to the redemption of the human family?” …In this pivot, my cynicism has faded, mostly. As God has brought me into closer proximity to suffering, I have had far less time for cynicism. Ultimately, reframing in this way has drawn me profoundly towards rather than away from my fellow saints.
What if the struggle is too difficult?
If in the complexities and contradictions we must all face along the way, we are driven to our knees before the beautiful, startling mystery of it all than we will be latter day saints, indeed.
This is when the talk for me hit an emotional nerve and the tears flowed. I was there. I have loved ones that are there. Many are there. It feels good for at least one person to validate that. If you have a tough time in your faith journey, does that mean you’re not as faithful, or you’re inferior somehow? No, it means you’re a latter day saint. I don’t write that in the official church’s style because I think it has two meanings. 1) you’re a church member 2) you’re doing saintly things in the latter days. You’re not less than anyone. You’re doing what God would have you do.
This intellectual and spiritual work can be difficult. It can be exhausting. I know some of you are tired. You’re not sure you can keep at it. You go ahead and find some stillness today. Gather your strength today. Rest up today because tomorrow we ride for Zion! And it’s not quite Zion if you’re not there. Remember you don’t ride alone. Step back and consider the thousands around you. Consider the thousands who preceded you. Consider the unnumbered hosts yet to come. You don’t ride alone. This path takes courage and vision, yes! It takes faith. And faith will always be counterintuitive in this world. So is love. Why believe or hope or care when the data seems so often stubbornly trailing in other directions. Faith, hope and charity are audacious in such a world as this. But make no mistake, we’ll find the place that God for us has prepared, even if it seems far away today. Just when your strength is flagging, you’ll catch the glint of some gleaming tower off in the distance and you’ll sense that God is there. He is. Keep going. God is playing the long game and we should too. If we understand the scale of the struggle, the ride will not end. The restoration will not conclude until every daughter and son of God, who will come, has been safely gathered into his extended covenantal embrace.
Calling the words of of the hymn Come, Come Ye Saints, Dr. Fluhman compares the difficulty and the importance of the pioneer journey to the important work of this generation of Latter-day Saints to intellectually push through all the modern challenges to a testimony of God and the restoration.
We all know the stats of millennialls leaving the Church. I hear him lovingly encouraging those that have stumbled. Rest a while. But please come back and join us when you can. We need you. The world needs you. We have something to do together that’s way more important than polygamy or Book of Abraham issues.
As a result, the critical moment in church history is now because it’s the one that falls to us each generation and the church gifts to the next. The faith that has lighted our way in return. The rising generation reveals to us those facets of the gift that are most meaningful.Now that is what you students gift to us. So I thank you, my students numbered in the thousands now for showing me what is both timely and timeless and durable about this faith that has won my devotion in the early history of the church.
My words now, forgive me if you think I’m taking too many liberties with Brother Fluhman’s message.
If you haven’t faced every difficult Church history and scriptural issue, do it now. Let’s all do it together. Not just BYU students but the entire millennial generation, the entire Church. Let’s face it together, now, together in the household of faith. Read the scriptures. Understand the Documentary Hypothesis. Understand New Testament textual criticism. Read scholarly commentaries. Study philosophy. Plato, Nietzsche, Charles Taylor. Study other religions. Read the CES Letter. Know the FairMormon responses. Study the alternative approaches like Greg Prince. Know the viewpoints of leading LDS scholars: Bushman, Givens, Mason, Miller, Hardy, Riess, McBaine, Peck. If you’re struggling, rest a while if you need, keep with it when you can, and we’ll all figure it out together.
You, dear millennialls, are here in this critical moment of time in Church history for a reason. It’s your responsibility to do the work. Read and study. Struggle and pray. Fall and give up but then try again. The Spirit, your ancestry, your posterity beckon you.
You will transform yourselves through this process and what you will learn, the Church needs. You will then take that and transform the Church and continue in this work of redeeming the world and create Zion, a heaven on earth.
Thumbs up! Now there’s a talk I would download and keep and I thank you for bringing it to my attention.
“If you haven’t faced every difficult Church history and scriptural issue, do it now. Let’s all do it together. Not just BYU students but the entire millennial generation, the entire Church. Let’s face it together, now, together in the household of faith. Read the scriptures. Understand the Documentary Hypothesis. Understand New Testament textual criticism. Read scholarly commentaries. Study philosophy. Plato, Nietschke, Charles Taylor. Study other religions. Read the CES Letter. Know the FairMormon responses. Study the alternative approaches like Greg Prince. Know the viewpoints of leading LDS scholars: Bushman, Givens, Mason, Miller, Hardy, Riess, McBaine, Peck.”
Take care not to let the study of religion replace the practice of religion.
I listened to the whole talk as the post recommends, and I appreciated it, but it wasn’t until I re-read the post that I began to appreciate it as ChurchisTrue seems to appreciate it.
I will say that I don’t think it’s necessary, or even a good idea, for everyone to drop what they’re doing and read, say, the CES letter. There are many facets to faith, and the intellectual complexities in one area aren’t necessarily conducive to developing faith in another. The timing matters. We simply aren’t capable of developing empathy in every way at all times, and I think we should be leery of force-feeding the anorexic and thinking it’s the best thing to do. That said, I agree we all need to eat.
Wonderful, Beautiful, Inspiring, Hopeful, Intelligent…..RHETORIC. Oh, if only Professor Fluhman had the full backing and public support of Senior Church Leadership. For, what he so masterfully describes….”the Church” does not do! The discussions he supports and aspires to…are (in the Chapels and Classrooms) driven into the dark corners and shamed to the “outside of Zion’s Tent”. I really like this guy….but, I suspect he’ll be quietly silenced soon enough.
I think the talk is designed to give permission; not to compel. So many people will not drink Coca-cola without permission (or do so in secret). So many people dreaded being compelled to go to Missouri, for instance, thinking it was a commandment. Giving students permission to delve into the study of religion innoculates them so they are not caught totally unaware by the many snares that now exist on the internet. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak.
So who is actually going to do all that study? I have no idea, but probably not many.
No doubt some that study religion will choose a different path; but that’s okay too. If you haven’t chosen whatever path you are on then it isn’t really your path; not yet anyway.
Nice summary but your last paragraph discloses what is wrong with modern Mormonism. You left out the best and brightest. Why no mention of Mike Quinn the best Mormon historian of this generation. What about Denver Snuffer the most prolific Mormon writer of this generation. What happened to Rock Waterman who has a prolix blog on all things Mormon. What about Paul and Margret Toscanini who in my view have great insights in Mormon theology . What about Mike Stroud and his marvelous insights into the Book of Mormon.What about the only true Mormon theologian of the generation Blake Ostler. I doubt you failed to mention these out of ignorance. We both know all but Ostler have been excommunicated for asking “hard questions”.Try it yourself. Ask hard questions and see where it gets you. I will tell you where out of the church. The hypocrisy of all of this must cause Joseph Smith to turn over in his grave
I think that it is vitally important for people of all faiths and backgrounds to seek education and knowledge. It is also important for LDS believers to grapple with questions that come difficult to them.
However, Fluhman is asking students to bend their minds around a number of preset conclusions. And that isn’t how academic knowledge is supposed to work. Ultimately, I don’t think that the LDS religion is compatible with the academic methods of inquiry. For we have to allow for disagreement of views and conclusions in academia. But the LDS church and its centers of learning won’t allow for that on a select number of questions related to its truth claims. The LDS church cannot call itself fully compatible with academia (even if it is fully compatible in a number of areas) until it is ready to allow its scholars to say that the Book of Mormon is not historical or that LGBTQs should have full rights without repercussions.
Yeah, wonderful talk. It’s nice there are a few optimists left in the Church. But his claim that students in his tough issues class “left the course more committed to the things that matter most, not less” is probably wishful thinking. Some left more committed, some didn’t. Of those who left more committed, some will find that commitment waning as they deal with reality (local leaders and members who view things very differently than they do) in coming years. Just look at the reaction by the membership to the Gospel Topics Essays.
Elder Jeffrey Holland’s instructions to the Maxwell Institute last November (2018 Neal A. Maxwell Lecture, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpUN29orJmM ) provides some disturbing context for Spencer Fluhman’s remarks. Regarding intellectual rigor, the Yale Ph.D and former BYU president stated:
“…Friends what we (1st Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve) are asking you to do is difficult. It is demanding. It is among the stiffest challenges we can give you… All we ask is that you pray and fast and strive and sweat to find your way through. And then if there be error, let it be on the side of your covenants and the side of your faith convictions. I promise the board won’t come down on you, saying that you made a mistake in doing so.”
“…Both the believer and the merely curious need to be able to see you as a source for some of the answers to their questions, however different that source material may be. And yes, if after such a balancing act theological warfare still comes, you’ll have to be willing to take sides.”
“…I echo McDonald’s insistence that while we are not obligated to declare everything we believe at any given time, in any one setting, we are also not to even look like we do not believe. The soul that loves the truth, and tries to be true, will know when to speak and when to be silent.”
Bellamy asserts “We both know all but Ostler have been excommunicated for asking hard questions.”
So far as I know, I can ask any question I wish, of any person, with little or no repercussion, provided that it is an actual question and not a public sermon with a question mark at the end. So, yeah, I have a pretty good idea why they got excommunicated and a rose by any other name is still a rose.
“Do you want to change the world? You’re in the right church.”
Really? Is this true? And if so in what specific ways has the Mormon church changed the world? Have those changes made significant, measurable differences in the world? In which areas has Mormonism led in the amelioration and/or elimination of human suffering? In which areas of social justice has the Mormon church been the leader? In which social, economic, civic, religious, or other areas of human endeavor is Mormonism or Mormons the acknowledged leaders of a universal movement beyond their group of believers? Climate change? Women’s rights? Child abuse? Poverty? Human trafficking? Subsistence farming? Criminal justice? Slavery?
I’m with vajra1 on this. That part of the video reminded me of nothing so much as Tom Cruise’s viral Scientology video. That is not a comparison meant to be flattering. In fact, in those words about changing the world is the arrogance I’ve always found to be part of Mormonism’s claim of being special and the one true church. If you took the list that vajra2 writes about the topics of human suffering, etc. and asked, say, 100 people on the street which organizations they associate with helping alleviate each problem, I’d be real money that not one of them would answer “the Mormon Church.”
And ditto to Dave C.’s comment as well. How can Holland say with a straight face that the “soul that loves truth” will be silent at certain points about the truth itself? And that we’ll have to “take sides” (with the implication that taking sides for truth, against the church, is the wrong option)? I swear, I feel like with all these talks about how to “overcome” or “confront” faith challenges, it’s like watching an addict who keeps telling you they’ve hit rock bottom, but they really haven’t yet and they’re just deluding themselves. Until the church comes out, admits all that they don’t know, admits to gaslighting and all of their mistakes, none of this stuff is going to fly. For all of Fluhman’s earnestness, this still feels intellectually dishonest.
“vajra2” Sorry!
Michael I am glad your experience differs from mine.. I was the gospel doctrine teacher when I asked why did Moroni accuse us in (Mormon 8) of polluting the holy church of God and transfiguring the holy word of God. I got released the same week. When I was discussing the meaning of Section 124 in Priesthood .I asked what does it mean when the Lord told the Nauvoo saints that they had lost the fullness of the Priesthood ? There were lotsof unhappy people and I was never asked to teach another lesson in church. Why was Mike Quinn exed.Because he asked the question were there post manifesto polygamist marriage officiate by GA in the temple. The answer was yes. When he wrote a Dialogue article it was curtains for him. When Snuffer was asked by many people leaving the church why does the modern church not show the same spiritual power of the Kirkland era he wrote a book to help people understand and keep them in the church. We know how that turned out. I could examine each case but I won’t. It is all an exercise in futility anyway. Read what the Savior said in 3 Nephi 16 and you may see the awful situation we are already in. The reality is what I told Peggy Fletcher Stack. 40 years ago. You can believe whatever you want to in this church as long as you keep your mouth shut. While that was true then ,back in the days before the Strengthen the Church Members Commitment it is no longer so true. Locally We have had a mass of excommunications based upon not what people said but based upon what they were thought to believe
Brother Fluhman asks, “Why believe or hope or care when the data seems so often stubbornly trailing in other directions?”
Amen Brother Fluhman! Why indeed? I have yet to hear a good answer to this question. If the evidence and data seem to point so overwhelmingly and so convincingly to the church’s truth claims being other than what they claim to be, then why reject that evidence and believe anyway? Is it just a nice club to belong to that has the potential for doing good in the world and alleviate suffering? If so, then that is promising and perhaps a good reason to remain but so do many other groups but they don’t require specific proclamations of beliefs to belong nor demand strict adherence to pharisaical rules as worthiness indicators nor create a pervasive culture of shame and guilt.
I’d like to believe that the church is worth sticking around for despite its difficult to maintain truth claims but the focus seems to be so persistently on these truth claims rather than being a force for good in the world, sometimes suffocatingly so. I like Brother Fluhman. The church would be better off if more had his open and optimistic views. It just hasn’t been my lived experience. Not even close.
Michael,
When the new endowment came out, I thought it was such an improvement that I suggested to the ward newsletter person they put a note in the newsletter that the new endowment was much less sexist, but to check with the bishop. Next Sunday I was called into the bishops office and told it was unacceptable to say the church was or had been sexist. And that I could not be trusted to give talks or teach lessons if I thought like that. Consequences?
I have a TR interview coming up, and expect problems because I had to have the SP ask him to interview me. He refused to interview me last time.
I thought I was commending a change, but it was taken as criticism. You think there are no negative consequences to speaking your mind at church. Freedom of speech is very much curtailed in my ward. My bishop is a school teacher, but has different meanings for words like sexism and racism, and discrimination.
Agree with vijrah about the church not leading the world.
I’m not exactly sure how to comment on Fluhman’s talk, but here goes. His description of BYU I doubt matches reality. I have no problem including spirituality in college, but I doubt the things he talks about are the focus of religion classes. Ethics, morality of poverty, etc. are not emphasized while scripture minutiae is.
I like Fluhman’s emphasis on helping the poor. But this is hardly a focus as previous commenters have pointed out. Overall, I agree with Fluhman’s message. Just not the reality.
DoubtingTom writes: “I’d like to believe that the church is worth sticking around for despite its difficult to maintain truth claims but the focus seems to be so persistently on these truth claims rather than being a force for good in the world, sometimes suffocatingly so.”
Amen. Amen. And ouch.
in reply to GEOFF -AUS who wrote: “I thought I was commending a change, but it was taken as criticism.”
I have had some compliments backfire because of the implicit criticism of everything preceding and this is particularly so for persons whose emotions dominate combined with some insecurity.
It took me a long time and I still usually do not get it right. “I like the color of your {article of clothing}” is usually safe since I am judging ME, but “You look nice” is a judgment of YOU.
“My bishop is a school teacher, but has different meanings for words like sexism and racism, and discrimination.”
As very likely so do I and in varying degrees everyone else on planet Earth. Another area of considerably variance is moral weight of any of these words; their goodness or badness. Everyone discriminates; just look at upvotes and downvotes. Nearly everyone is sexist; if you do anything different because someone is male or female, you are sexist. Is that bad? By itself it is nothing; merely a description.
Michael, My response wss to your claim that you could say what you want at church without consequences Taking them out of that context, and then saying; year nothing to see here is poor.
I certainly have to censor what I say at church, and even then I am effectively disfellowshipped (no talks, no callings). These are extreme consequences to a prrson who served on bishoprics for 30 years, 10 years on missions etc For you to make light of them is very offensiv.e.
Vajra, I appreciate your point and am with you. But what I do see, having lived long enough now is families going from poverty and abuse to accomplishment and enfranchisement within a generation, sometimes two, within the church. People start to question their forebears behaviour, and start to find it wanting, and strive to do and be better. At least that’s the way it’s been in my family. I’m sure other religions produce similar fruits, but it has been interesting to me to observe.
handlewithcare I, too, have observed that religious conversions often result in improved behaviors. One of the most common seems to be that people are often able to free themselves from substance addiction which is not just a benefit for the convert but also to their families, friends, and communities. In fact we all benefit. As your remark implied this isn’t unique to Mormons, nor indeed is there any evidence to conclude that the LDS community is a world leader in this regard.
Brother Fluhman is in a pickle. No doubt his personal convictions are sincere. He has to balance them with the marching orders the Maxwell Insitute was given by Elder Holland in November 2018. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Institute employees were dressed down for being a bit too academic with their communications with members (as opposed to other academics).
There was a very strong intimation that their overseers (his word) would not be pleased if this were not corrected and that those Maxwell Institute employees that were found to be not in compliance would be looking for other work.
You can find an article in the Church News.
churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/be-faithful-disciple-scholars-even-in-difficulty-elder-holland-says-at-maxwell-institute?lang=eng
The entire talk is on the Maxwell Institute Youtube channel.
youtube.com/watch?v=qpUN29orJmM
I wouldn’t want to be in Brother Fluman’s, or any other Maxwell Institute scholar’s, position.
Would you?