How a New Instagram Page is Exposing Apostate BYU Professors
I love BYU. My parents met at BYU. My older brother went to BYU, I grew up in Orem always dreaming about the day I would go to BYU and graduate, and if it was not for a crystal clear personal revelation I had to go to UVU, I would be a senior at BYU right now.
Within that context, it breaks my heart to share with you the grave apostasy that is taking place among the faculty and staff at BYU. My wife goes to BYU and over the past year, she has shared with me the apostate teachings of her professors. One professor taught her that it is 100% okay to masturbate if you have the goal of trying to find out what pleasures you so that you can share that knowledge with your spouse.
It broke my heart to hear that her professors were teaching this. But tonight one of my friends shared a new movement called "Keeping Faith at BYU" with me. (https://www.instagram.com/keeping_faith_at_byu and https://twitter.com/KeepingFaithBYU on twitter). These social media pages are an anonymous place for BYU students to expose the apostate nature of their professors. At first, I figured it would be professors who were progressive/liberal pushing political ideology. But when I looked up the posts they were sharing, it is much worse than simply pushing politics, there is full-blown apostasy going on in Provo. These apostate BYU professors are teaching against the Family Proclamation, denouncing doctrines like personal responsibility, agency, or the law of chastity, and they are using their position within the church to speak out against the Church authorities. I want to share just a few of their posts.
KFBYU has independently confirmed that @BYULaw is recommending "Mormonism and White Supremacy" to incoming law students.
— Keeping Faith at BYU (@KeepingFaithBYU) August 20, 2020
This book was written by @_joannabrooks, who recently advocated the tearing down of statues of Latter-day prophets such as Brigham Young and Ezra Taft Benson. https://t.co/7lk60oXw2I
Reading these posts made my stomach curl, what has happened to BYU? I don't believe all the professors are apostate, but the house needs to be cleaned. We must demand that the gospel is the center and framework for all teaching at BYU.
The gospel contains all truth of every field of study, no truth exists except it is embraced by the gospel. The purpose of BYU is to allow for the study of any given topic from the foundational understanding that restored gospel truth brings. Joseph F Smith taught, "There is no truth in any other religious society or organization, which is not included in the gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and after him by the leaders and elders of this Church; but it requires some effort on our part, some exertion, some devotion, to learn of and to enjoy these things." Yet many times BYU students feel like they can't mingle the gospel with their studies, for example:
This ought not to be at BYU! We must have teachers who embrace the gospel truths in their respective fields and teach the gospel perspective of their fields to their students. John Taylor addressed the need to have good teachers when he said: "Whatever you do, be choice in your selection of teachers. We do not want infidels to mold the minds of our children. They are a precious charge bestowed upon us by the Lord, and we cannot be too careful in rearing and training them. I would rather have my children taught the simple rudiments of a common education by men of God, and have them under their influence, than have them taught in the most abstruse [or complex] sciences by men who have not the fear of God in their hearts."
These professors are not just rogue professors at a state university, they are not even just members pushing their ideas as doctrine, these professors are practicing priestcraft, they are being paid with the tithing funds of the Church. Think about that, the widow's mite is paying professional apostates who are actively teaching the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture! Prophetic are the words of Harold B. Lee that perfectly describe these professors:
There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.”
Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said:
“The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. … He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations.
Harold B. Lee, The Iron Rod, Address delivered at general conference Sunday afternoon, April 4, 1971
As members of the Church, we need to speak up and speak out against the apostate faculty and staff at BYU. We need a cleansing of the inner vessel. Am I calling for these professors to be fired? Yes, I am 100% advocating that BYU fire any and all faculty and staff that are actively teaching against the very organization that they belong to! Not only do I believe those who teach against the gospel should be fired at BYU, when warranted I believe they should be excommunicated for using their position of authority within the church to destroy the testimony of the youth and lead them into apostasy. To quote President Benson, "Watchmen—what of the night? We must respond by saying that all is not well in Zion. As Moroni counseled, we must cleanse the inner vessel (see Alma 60:23), beginning first with ourselves, then with our families, and finally with the Church." Cleansing the inner vessel, General Conference, April 1986.
So what can we do?
We can stand up and make our voices heard. If you have stories of apostate professors share them, You can follow the social media accounts for Keeping Faith at BYU:
Keeping Faith at BYU on Twitter
Keeping Faith at BYU on Instagram
Keeping Faith at BYU on Facebook
You can sign the petition to have BYU retrench (return the roots of the gospel). The petition to retrench at BYU is on change.org
You can also share this blog post, and these pages with your friends and family and raise awareness about what is happening at BYU.
If you are sending your children to BYU, you can encourage them to stand for truth and against professors. Teach them to think critically and value standing for truth more than a grade. There are things more important than GPA's. Encourage them not to simply drop the class with rogue professors and let them preach their false doctrines unopposed, but to stand for truth and challenge the professor.
You can pray for the brave students are standing against their professors, and also pray for the students who are not standing out of fear that they will find the courage to stand up for truth.
I believe in BYU. I believe in its mission. Let us cleanse our personal vessels, family vessels, and then let us do our duty stand up and speak out to help cleanse and maintain the purity of the Church and BYU.
If you liked this article, you might like these other articles about BYU and Brigham Young.
Sounds like not too much has changed. I attended BYU 20 years ago and ran into similar garbage then. I thought I would escape this stuff at BYU but after attending 4 institutions, I have to say that some of the worst anti material I ran into was at BYU.
Both of my parents were BYU graduates and in fact, met there.
Following my mission, it was just assumed that I would also attend BYU, but I felt that I should stay and attend college in my home town -- the Prophet at the time, Spencer W. Kimball was advocating this, encouraging people to stay and build up the institute programs in their local areas, and did exactly that.
I would have loved to have gone to BYU - I was born in Provo, but moved to Washington state at age 5 and have been there ever since. But I love the concept of the BYU devotionals, the temple close by and the fact that though I grew up in Washington, much of my heart is still in Utah County.
And so, this article is very disturbing to me. I remember Jeffrey R. Holland once saying: "If engineering is taught correctly, students should be able to cross the Red Sea, with or without a bridge; which ever they choose."
Brigham Young once stated, that if he had to choose between sending his sons to school or his daugthers, he would send his daughters - for they teach the world; and yet people think he was racist and sexist. Some of the first femal doctors in this country were LDS women - encouraged to go back east to get their medical degrees by Brigham Young.
For the record, the Proclamation on the Family is one of the most inspired and timely docments I have ever read! No wonder it is coming under attack -- and by the very elect; now decieved.
I hope this problem is solved and soon. Elder Boyd K. Packer also stated, some 50 years ago,and I suspect it is still true, should it come down to that: "We are prepared to sacrifice BYU." I hope BYU endures, but if it becomes alligned with the adversary . . .
I bear testimony of the truthfulness of "The Family A Proclamation To The World"!
I can still remember exactly where I was sitting as I heard the words of President Gordon B. Hinckley proclaim the 'Proclamation'...I KNEW it was given of God!!!
At the time I wondered why we needed those words, but I have had my questions answered repeatedly as I have seen the adversary try to tear down families and every other thing that is good.
Thank you for all you do; and your calling out those who are teaching contrary to the words of God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost.
@Kayleen Hunsaker, Exactly. I am about to go off to Rexburg, Idaho aka BYU-I. I hear that BYU Provo has gone bad due to so many liberal teachings and Non Committal Make Out sessions etc etc. It's not good.
Reading those Instagram posts gives me hope for BYU. Lets hope things continue to change in this direction. Thank you for sharing.
@Jason Ford, I sure hope so because I hear things are getting out of control and men and women who are dating are doing non committal make out sessions which doesn't bring anything positive. In fact, it hurts people emotionally. It has to go back on track to being an absolute objective religious school with no tolerance towards inappropriate sexual behavior.
To truly clean the inner vessel, one cannot hide in anonymity. There needs to be a formal complaint with names, subjects, and titles. We cannot expect perfection, but we cannot accept false doctrine.
@Lili, Glad I have names and can probably dig up what my teacher said on an online discussion. 🙂
I attended BYU in the 70s, while it was strictly a religious college to become one of the best schools in the country, for business and law educations. I'm shocked to see what it has become now.. These professors and staff needs to be fired and excommunicated for their apostasy and dragging our young people down the road to destruction. While there has always been those who were trying to destroy the Church from within, they were soon discovered and ousted. But this seems to be firmly fixed and needs to be changed.
It is ridiculous to complain about these things on a blog. If you have a problem like the ones mentioned, go top the head of the department. If that person is the one you are having a problem with, go to the administration. I suspect these things have always been an issue at BYU, but with the internet, they are magnified.
The purpose of this post was to get the news out about the page, which gathers stories to then take to the administration, who then deals with the professors.
I am just now realizing the damage these professors are doing to young impressionable minds and it makes me cry. Can't the Peophet and Apostles do anything about this?
From what I've been told they are acting and at least one of these professors had been disciplined.
@Ginny Gross, Elder Holland just spoke about this topic recently and it gave me hope for when I go back to BYU after my mission. I'm never going to let a professor get in the way of God's plan again.
I couldn't agree more. We have to keep the doctrine pure! We cannot let our young people be exposed to outside ideas that don't fall within the correlated material! We can't let them think that gay people deserve equal rights now or in heaven. And we certainly can't let them get the idea in their head that our Great Leaders are fallible and make mistakes. That is a dangerous road to go down. Once people start thinking for themselves, or hearing contrary ideas, the inevitable next step is apostasy and we cannot let that happen!
Carter,
Are you kidding me? Your rant sounds as though you are goading believers. Shutting down thought is never a good idea. Gospel doctrine and true principles must be upheld for BYU to remain as a light to the world.
I'm pretty sure Carter is trying to put up a strawman example of what he thinks someone concerned about this stuff thinks.
Its disingenuous, and hateful. He sounds like a bigot, which is what he's trying to smear the rest of us with.
I read your article and the several comments. My oldest son attended BYU and is still active but there is no doubt that more and more of the professors at BYU are just as capable as becoming polluted in their thinking as professors at any secular institution. They can become more interested in the pride of their profession than in the correctness of the doctrines revealed to the Lord's prophets. Early church leaders were interested in having an institution of higher learning which would allow our younger members to obtain degrees of learning that were recognized by other secular schools for excellence. Thus, members of the church would become well positioned in business, academia and politics. While this is probably a worthy goal, there are risks and we are seeing the consequences. The institutions which control every field of science, law and sociology are controlled by those who are antagonistic to our religious doctrines. If we seek to be accepted by the "worldly" we must accept their ideology. We should strengthen our youth to help them realize that many of those in the classroom at BYU are dangerous to their religious beliefs. Perhaps even more dangerous than what they may encounter at another school because those professors at BYU are wolves in sheep's clothing. I am not happy about the situation and certainly object that tithing funds are being used to support BYU, if that is true. I wonder if we will see the church separating from BYU just like we have seen the church separate from the Boy Scouts of America.
I was in a meeting with BYU's MPA dean, very kind and loving woman. Very smart and who cared deeply about the students.
When the honor code changed a year or so ago and all the confusion about same gender attraction and gay marriage was running rampant she went around and met with every class under her care.
She basically hinted that this might be the catalyst for major change of doctrine in the church as a whole. I reminded her, and the entire class, that doctrine doesn't change. Policy and expression of doctrine does, but but doctrine doesn't change. She rambled for about twenty minutes about how she hoped it would, and how it might be a new day for BYU and the church as a whole.
Again, this is a very kind and loving woman who I have felt the spirit with on multiple occasions. She was just hoping that a good thing in her mind might happen. Problem is I fear she laid the seeds of doubt and decent in the minds of most of the people in that class. I know at least three or four of them have since graduation, left the church over LGBTQ issues, and what they saw as a betrayal when the clarification letter came out the very next morning.
The problem is, these stories don't "expose" anything. POST THE NAMES OF THE PROFESSORS.
The stories highlighted the issue to the point that the Admin started looking into these issues.
I've had an experience with this, and I honestly thought I was going crazy when I first heard a professor say things like this. I had a professor basically tell me that I was stupid and racist on an online class discussion when I stated a statistical fact that black immigrants in America are better off financially than black Americans in inner cities because of different --cultural-- priorities (i.e. family and hard work). I had done research on the particular topic for months because I wanted to get a truthful idea of why certain demographics were better off than others, and she dismissed it all by saying I clearly hadn't done any research. I spent most of that night awake, crying, because of how horrible the accusation was. I wanted to reply, but with the masks, and the fact that responses were turned off after the due date, I just didn't have it in me to respond during the class. She also actively used class activities to undermine conservative beliefs and to teach students to trust obviously politically biased sources like the New York Times. I've regretted not responding and will be adding a post on the FB page to expose this pseudo-professor. Glad I have other brothers and sisters fighting with me. 🙂
I agree, excommunicate them all and make their names public for the rest of the Church, to be known as enemies of the Gospel and disturbers of the work of God. They are evil and prideful every one of them. They are in league with ideas originated by the devil and designed to destroy truth and goodness itself.
I had similar experiences as these, though not at a BYU campus. I went to school at Southern Virginia University. A school not owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but that claimed to espouse the teachings of it.
Before I state some of my negative interactions with hypocritical member professors or virtue-signaling nonmember professors I did have more positive experiences than negative with professors that shared my religion and those who didn't (two in that latter category made huge impacts on my professional career choices). Many of my spiritual, academic, and life experiences that I've received there are invaluable and I'd do it all again just for those experiences (including finding my wife).That being said...
There was a history teacher and a business teacher who took every opportunity the could to make the LDS kids uncomfortable about their faith, take subtle jabs at Christianity in general, or just blatantly attack it. One professor who was a member and author told the students that if they abandoned many of the core beliefs of the church they'd be happier and several times openly attacked any attempts by the heads of the school to enforce the honor code. And if any student dared defend the church or the honor code he'd basically spend the rest of class explaining why they were blind and wrong. Another member professor, the day after Uchtdorfs "Doubt your doubts" talk, made it sound like he said "don't ask questions".
The most infuriating to me was someone on the opposite side of the "apostate spectrum" I was concerned about how rude and unsportsmanlike the SVU home crowd was being at home games (this coming from someone who's been attending sports games his whole life up to that point)000 and that they were misrepresenting the church. I brought it up to the athletic director and he said something to the effect of 'Well, we're mistreated everywhere we go because we're Mormons. So I'm going to allow it". And then said, and I quote, "I wish we could be good Mormons but..." shrugs and then walks away. I might add that this man repeatedly cursed at, insulted, and belittled any staff at athletic events AND constantly turned a blind eye to honor code violations of his favorite sports teams' players while enforcing it on other athletes.
Students who openly opposed the honor codes chastity standards, who weren't members of the church (or who left), were allowed to stay at the school while members who broke the honor code usually were met with harsher punishments. Those same people who opposed took every opportunity to ridicule members, Christians, and/or conservatives. To the point of saying out right that they were "Banking on (the church) being wrong" and then would get overly offended at the slightest insensitivity to there own views and report it to the school authorities.
I had discussions with others who were active in the church and who were annoyed by it, and as far as we could tell, the only reason they were allowed to do these things was because of so many members trying to make sure that nonmembers could be heard there and that they are allowed to worship "how, who, or what they may." More than a little Ironic me thinks.