Tough Religion

I hope this doesn't come across too offensively. I really did like my religion classes, just not the grades I received from them.

As stated in my freshman orientation class, BYU’s top 5 most failed classes for lower classmen are Calculus 112, Economics 110, American Heritage, and Book of Mormon parts I and II. While calculus and economics classes are understandably difficult (they’re like a different language) the difficulty of religion classes takes most students by surprise. I think that most of this has to do with the fact that most of BYU’s students have grown up in the church, are “born of goodly parents” and have been “studying” doctrine a minimum of three hours a week ever since they were born. I do not write this as a freshman who is just starting on their academic experience here at BYU and realizing the daunting task of 14 religion credits that lies before me. I am a senior who has completed the religion requirement, and a returned missionary, a little disgruntled about my GPA due to my difficult religion classes, and who is optimistically preparing for graduation and life as we know it outside of the “Provo Bubble.” Is this really what Brigham Young had intended for his graduates?

“The foundation for the educational philosophy of Brigham Young University was established over a century ago when, in 1875, President Brigham Young called Dr. Karl G. Maeser to go to Provo to assume the principalship of the newly organized Brigham Young Academy. Brother Maeser, who was a convert German schoolmaster and disciplined in the precision of his homeland, asked President Young for his instructions.

“I have only these,” President Young said. “You should not teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God. That is all. God bless you. Good-bye” (‘Student life at Brigham Young’).

And now, 136 years later, the request to have a prayer before every instruction has transformed into 14 credits of religion classes that are too difficult and too time consuming. While these classes have taught me to study, as opposed to casually read, the scriptures, I don’t see myself applying the useless bits of information, such as how many women are mentioned in the Book of Mormon, to my future careers in Corporate America.

I can, however, imagine my future employer going over my resume and GPA report card. He’s not going to know of, or sympathize with ridiculous questions that showed up on a Book of Mormon final. He’s going to see my grades, B‘s, and think that I don’t excel in important matters or that I don’t perform well in areas of my life that I feel define me. How eager is he going to be in hiring me to represent his company? Other than this potential scenario, I don’t see how random facts from religion classes could apply to an office workplace.

I would like to focus on only some of the required religion classes that are here at BYU, namely The Book of Mormon parts I and II. I took these classes in my first year thinking that they would help me to prepare for a mission. While these classes did encourage good habits, such as reading the scriptures every day, I unfortunately was never asked on my mission “How many people did Ammon slay in defending the king’s flocks? (Alma 17:38.)” Or better yet “How and what is the significance in the killing and death of Shiz? (Ether 15:30-31).” The answers to these questions do not strengthen a testimony and are not pertinent to salvation. Nonetheless, I was prepared to answer these kinds of questions thanks to my classes.

Fourteen religion credits is the minimal amount that students are required to take while here at BYU. That’s roughly an entire semester. The average American (non-BYU student) spends four years in obtaining their undergraduate degree, and with this extra semester’s amount of religion credits, it is taking BYU students about four and a half years. Again, the concern at hand here is not the quantity of classes, but the quality. If these classes were structured to promote only good habits such as life-long service to our neighbor, as opposed to simply memorizing large quantities of random, unimportant religion facts, then the average BYU student would have no reservation in adding a few religion credits to an already full-time schedule.

The overall goal of every university is to prepare its students for their careers and promote lifelong study and learning. BYU is not an exception. In preparing students for life after college, universities have student development classes. These classes are geared towards the students and assist them in finding their potential as students, individuals and future employees. There are some religion professors here at BYU that adequately prepare their students for life though their classes. One student on ratemyprofessor.com, in regards to Brother Bott, stated that his class was “more of a life prep class than a mission prep class.”

In perfecting oneself, Jesus taught that you have to lose yourself in order to find yourself. By this he meant that we needed to put others’ needs and wants before our own. In other words, we need to serve others. By serving others, we better understand ourselves and our true potential, and then are blessed as we excel in our fields of study and career paths. That is what Jesus wants for us to do, as well as what BYU wants for its students.

The easiest way to accomplish this is for religion courses to highlight characters in church history and show how they were blessed by their service, and then encourage students to do the same. By doing this students will not only get more applicable and practical meaning from their religion classes, but will also be blessed with a better understanding of themselves as individuals.