Robert P. George spoke at the BYU Commencement Ceremony this week where he was given an honorary degree as a doctor of law and moral values. You can watch the whole ceremony here, and read the text here.
George is a well-known conservative author who has written prolifically about religion, morality, and the institution of marriage. He is a powerful voice in favor of a continued role of religion in the public sphere. At his remarks today at BYU, he focused on a message that I thought was both prescient and powerful. He specifically spoke about the purpose of religious institutions of higher education such as BYU and the unique function they serve. While universities more broadly were once focused on teaching and communicating values, today even once nominally religious universities have fully embraced the secular ethos.
George identified four purposes for a university: 1) The production of knowledge through research endeavors; 2) The preservation of knowledge; 3) The transmission of knowledge; and 4) the appropriation of knowledge. George explained that secular universities are really great at the first 3 of those purposes. They engage in research and teach students a wide variety of facts and figures. However, students at many universities never truly appropriate knowledge. The appropriation of knowledge involves coming to understand deeper truths and seeing knowledge in perspective. George wrote a really powerful article several years ago based on the similar premise that schools are teaching student a great deal of facts, but failing to teach the Civics necessary to preserve a democratic society.
As George explained, religious school are uniquely capable of teaching the appropriation of knowledge, because they are able to teach facts in light of eternal truths and with an eternal perspective. Unfortunately, so many schools that were once religious have begun to lose sight of that as they have compromised truth to aspire to prestige.
I am so grateful for my time at BYU, because I have seen how unique an institution based on teaching secular knowledge in light of the Gospel can be. My absolutely favorite moments in law school have been times when teachers were able to bring the gospel into legal education: for instance in criminal law we began discussing David and Urriah and whether what David constituted murder; in national security law we discussed LDS perspectives on war and peace; in 14th Amendment we discussed LDS conceptions of race, gender and sexual orientation. Other moments that I have deeply enjoyed have been when professors have born their sincere testimony. One of the most powerful experiences I have had in law school is when one Professor spoke about the death of his father and bore witness of the his sincere love for him and his faith in God’s plan. In those moment I have felt that I have been able to appropriate the knowledge of a legal education in the light of the Gospel.
Unfortunately, I have felt that these moments have been few and far between. In most classes, aside from an opening prayer on the first day of class the Gospel never comes up. Some professors seem almost ashamed to bring up Gospel related subjects. In at least one class, every time someone mentioned something spiritual the professor seemed to go out of the way to try to steer the conversation away from the Gospel and towards generic norms of ethics. In my time at the law school I have seen some of those same tensions at the Law School that Ralph Hancock wrote about in his article Keeping Faith in Provo.
A recent incident at the Law School illustrates this ongoing tension between the light of the Gospel and the learning and thinking of the world. One of my fellow classmates decided that he wanted to put together a class gift on behalf of our class. Instead of putting money towards a bench (our class gift at Brandeis) or a water fountain, he decided that we should do something meaningful and consistent with the spiritual message of the law school. He decided that we should engrave a plaque with the words of the dedicatory prayer for the BYU Law School offered by Marrion G. Romney a member of the first presidency.
In his prayer, Romney quoted a well-known poem by Josiah Gilbert Holland entitled God give us men which I see as a stirring and powerful invitation for all to strive to live up to the values which the Law School stands for and about which Robert P. George spoke about today:
“GOD, give us men! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.”
As a result, of the inclusion of this poem, several students and faculty members spoke out strongly in opposition against displaying the dedicatory prayer in the law school. Never mind that this poem was written in the mid to late 19th century well before women were involved in law or politics. Never mind that our founding documents repeatedly refer to “men” in the generic sense of all mankind (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .). This was a poem that a member of the First Presidency felt inspired to put into the dedicatory prayer. These were the words of an individual that we sustain as a prophet, seer, and revelator. Yet, because of fear of offending, these words were treated as sexist and derogatory.
In the end, the plaque was made, but it is no longer an official class gift. Instead, it has been given simply by members of the Class of 2015. It was displayed prominently and beautifully during our reception before our convocation ceremony. Yet, its long term placement in the law school is in jeopardy because members of the faculty still stand in opposition to it being given a prominent place (ideally by a new portrait of Marrion G. Romney). There is fear that a prominent placement would send the wrong message and diminish the prestige of the law school. This is precisely the danger that George spoke about so eloquently at today’s graduation ceremony. Fearing the world and hiding our light, rather than fearing the lord and bearing solemn witness.
BYU needs to strongly and unequivocally stand for the Gospel and testify to the world of Jesus Christ, and of his church which was restored to the earth through Joseph Smith. No other institution can offer learning in the light of the restored Gospel. Fortunately, BYU has resisted most of the secularizing tendencies that Professor George spoke, but it is not immune from those temptations. I hope that prophetic and inspired leadership will continue to steer the institution clear of the dangers of secularism. If not, I fear that BYU will lose what makes it such a special institution.
