The University of Chicago maintains what many would see as a paradoxical tradition of Classical education blended with progressive methods. There is a heavy emphasis on Continental Philosophy as well as the “controversial” brand of religious inquiry known as Process Theology (or, more accurately, Process Philosophy). In an odd twist, Matt–and this may be an interesting reflection on earnest Mormonism–Princeton has more LDS grad students now than the U of C Div School, and I would say that Princeton has also become quite a bit more liberal. (Not the institution as a whole, but its Religious Studies program, especially given the gnostic tendency of its scholars.)

Kevin is right. There has been a burgeoning interest in religious academics by Mormons–a much needed interest–but the Church leadership and CES are still skeptical, and I doubt we will see any return to Church sponsorship of religious academics anytime soon, if ever. It is unfortunate that CES is mildly to acerbically averse to its instructors having advanced degrees in religion; however there is a young group of scholars up and coming within the Religion Department at BYU, like Professor Judd, who graduated with a PhD in religious studies from Duke, and Professor Wayment, who graduated from Claremont Divinity School. I only know things by hearsay, but apparently there is a division among the faculty in the Religion Department at BYU over this issue. It is sad because the quality of religious education at BYU is generally weak. I don’t mean to display undue negativity toward a department I may find myself seeking employment in, but in its current condition the Department of Religion would be better reduced to the status of an adjunct seminary or institute of religion. It’s rather embarrassing to call it a full-blown Department of Religion at a very well-respected institution. Although, I bet if you look at the background of most LDS grad students in religion you would find that they came out of schools other than BYU and/or from programs other than religious studies. I myself came out of the Classics and Comparative Literature departments, and everyone I know personally who is engaged in advanced religious studies has a similar background in language, philosophy and literature.

After reading this thread, I found myself longing to have grown up in Swensen’s era. But there are enough of us now that perhaps BYU and CES will change in time; we need a stronger younger generation for this to be accomplished. I’m actually optimistic; only, it may be decades before we see any significant changes.

How does it discourage its teachers and why whould it do so?

The Maxwell Institute at BYU on the other hand derives largely from the Nibley tradition, and is committed to rigorous academic scholarship. I just saw the latest Insights with an extensive list of Nibley fellows, who receive modest stipends for their graduate studies in religion; it was an impressive list, including several from the Bloggernacle.

I think that certainly speaks to the more pragmatic aspect, but I was more refering to the ideological side of things–do you think the church will return to an openness toward scholarship that it once was willing to explore (although the article made clear that such openness was never completely there)? It seems that part of the issue is that CES changed the way it viewed “Education”–from knowledge about our tradition to social participation in our tradition. In your opinion, what caused this change (other than the implications of the factors outlined in the article)?

1. CES these days actually discourages its teachers from getting these kinds of advanced degrees, so it would take quite a sea change in the System for institutional support of such degrees to occur.

2. There are already more LDS grad students in religious studies fields than could be absorbed by BYU and its related institutions, and if the Church can get this kind of talent without having to pony up for it, then it certainly isn’t going to subsidize this kind of schooling.

I would read it but the interface is so frustrating that I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m sorry.

a random john,

I use a little perl script (a totally non-elegant, quick, and dirty script) to create a pdf when I want to read a Dialogue article. The pdf is large (6 megs for this article) but it is quite readable and prints nicely. For this article, the script looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $base = “http://content.lib.utah.edu/cgi-bin/getimage.exe?” .
“CISOROOT=/dialogue&CISOPTR=”;
my $size = “&DMWIDTH=1024&DMHEIGHT=1600″;
my $beg = 5202;
my $end = 5212;

for (my $i=$beg; $i

Should work on most Linux boxen. I just modify the beginning and ending page for each article ($beg and $end).