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Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
School presidents celebrate the value of faith-based higher education
WASHINGTON — Nearly 2 million students attend faith-based colleges and universities, a fast-growing segment of American higher education that now has a new tool to share its story. Over 50 college and university presidents gathered Monday at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the nation's capital and vigorously applauded after watching the first episode of a new BYUtv documentary series, 'Higher Ed: The Power of Faith-Inspired Learning in America." 'Faith-based institutions are the bedrock of American higher education, and we've not paid adequate attention to that role and to that responsibility,' said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education. ACE launched a Commission on Faith-based Colleges and Universities last year and Monday's event drew the presidents of dozens of commission member schools, including Notre Dame, Yeshiva University and Brigham Young University. The event also drew representatives of the U.S. Department of Education, the Faith Angle Forum, the American Enterprise Institute and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, as well as reporters from The Washington Post and other media outlets. The new BYUtv documentary highlights students and presidents at three faith-based schools — Catholic University of America, Taylor University and BYU-Hawaii. 'This is a way of saying, 'Faith institutions have a contribution to make,'' said Elder Clark G. Gilbert, the commissioner of education for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Two additional episodes will be released in August and will include students from other commission schools. Those schools amount to 10% of the nation's colleges and universities and are excited to tell their stories, four presidents said during a panel discussion. Their stories need to be told even to people of faith, said Ryan Burge, the event's keynote speaker and a well-known analyst of data on faith and religion at Eastern Illinois University. Burge said it's a myth that college is a place where students lose their faith. 'College is not antithetical to religion,' he said. 'In some ways, it accelerates religion, enhances religion.' Data shows that the more educated Americans are, the more faithful they are, Burge said. He has found that the more Americans are educated and faithful, the more they flourish in numerous data sets. 'To summarize, education is good. Religion is good. Education plus religion is good,' he said. 'It causes trust. It makes us more loving of our neighbors. It increases our income. It increases all these outcomes.' In the documentary, Isabela Barboza said she decided to attend Catholic University of America because she decided that 'if religion is part of my life, it has to be part of my education and formation.' Taylor University student Hannah Wylie, whose parents attended Harvard and Brown, said she struggled before turning down her own Ivy League offer to attend the small evangelical school in Upland, Indiana. She is grateful she did. 'I wanted to be taught to think deeply about things I was doing,' she said in the documentary. 'I wanted to do things for a purpose.' Every college and university president in America is grappling with data that shows students facing a crisis of meaning in their lives. Rabbi Avi Berman, the president of Yeshiva University, took a moment of gratitude during the panel discussion because he found the documentary powerful. 'Young people are looking to university to find themselves and their values because they are not seeing answers to their deep, existential questions in the ephemeral choices being offered them in other institutions,' he said. Lipscomb University President Candice McQueen said she was grateful the documentary illustrated what colleges and universities like her Churches of Christ school in Nashville, Tennessee, bring to the table. The Rev. Robert Dowd, president of the University of Notre Dame, said his school takes a both-and approach to the holistic growth of its students. 'Notre Dame is a place where we educate the whole person, where both faith and reason are engaged, where matters of the heart as well as the life of the mind are very much valued,' he said. 'We want our students to grow not only in understanding, in knowledge and in technical skills but in wisdom, and we want them to grow in faith, hope and love.' Among those in attendance were BYU President Shane Reese, BYU-Idaho President Alvin Meredith, BYU-Pathway Worldwide President Brian Ashton and Ensign College President Bruce Kusch. BYU-Hawaii President John Kauwe wasn't at the Kennedy Center, but he was seen in the documentary riding a skateboard on the Laie, Hawaii, campus in white Nikes with a black swoosh and a splash of blue. 'What faith-based institutions offer is another type of belonging,' Kauwe says in the 30-minute film. The presidents met in working groups in the morning to learn about best practices around issues like hiring people who fit a school's mission and how to share and elevate stories about their faith-based schools. Elder Gilbert said the Commission on Faith-based Colleges and Universities creates a friendship for every school. 'There is connectivity for those who always feel like the odd man out,' he said.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Latter-day Saint leader invites BYU students to pursue ‘foolishness' instead of fool's gold
PROVO — A Latter-day Saint leader admitted up front Tuesday that he would be the first person to deliver a BYU devotional speech asking students to be fools. Religious leaders, government officials, friends and even family were skeptics of Jesus Christ's messages, mission and motivations, leading the apostle Paul to write of himself and other believers, 'in the eyes of the world we may indeed be fools, for Christ's sake,' said Elder Michael A. Dunn, a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Paul was describing a dumbing down of the divine that has recurred throughout history, said Elder Dunn, a convert and the former managing director of BYUtv who spoke before an estimated 6,143 at the Marriott Center on the BYU campus. He used Don Quixote, Steve Young, Martha Hughes Cannon and Joseph Smith as examples of characters and people who strived to maintain their ideals and pursue noble goals despite the scorn of a society that offers distractions and fool's gold. 'Paul's sardonic tone to the Corinthians suggests that being a fool for Christ is the clearest evidence that we are aligned with the wisdom of God, and for our purposes today I want you to think of foolishness as not just merely a dearth of knowledge, but the all-too-common delusion of having knowledge,' Elder Dunn said. 'Thus, if my deep love for Jesus, along with yours, makes us fools for Christ's sake, then this is one time that I urge you, from this day on, to join me in making complete fools of yourselves.' Elder Dunn said his perspective changed as a teenager when he saw the play 'Man of La Mancha,' based on the classic Miguel de Cervantes novel 'Don Quixote.' Quixote was a nearsighted knight-errant on an absurd mission who remained relentlessly riveted to his task despite being mocked as a fool. He said Quixote embodied perfectly President Russell M. Nelson's teaching that, 'The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives,' calling it a prophetic invitation to not be distracted or deterred by what the world claims is most important. 'It most often glitters and sparkles in irresistible fashion, which can easily distract even the most determined among us. That's the nefarious nature of what's called fool's gold,' Elder Dunn said. He quoted from the song 'The Impossible Dream' from 'Man of La Mancha': 'To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow, and to run where the brave dare not go. To right the unrightable wrong, to love pure and chaste from afar, to try when your arms are too weary, to reach that unreachable star.' Elder Dunn encouraged students to strive to be like the examples he shared of people who were unflinching, undeterred and had a willingness to work. The ultimate example was Christ, he said. 'Jesus Christ battled and beat the unbeatable foes — sin and death. He alone shouldered the full weight of our unbearable sorrows. His Atonement righted the heretofore unrightable wrong,' Elder Dunn said, calling him an example of reaching for unthinkable stars. 'I hope this reminds all of us that the very highest, noblest Christ-like ideals within us, along with every worthy hope and dream that we hold most dear, is well worth clinging to and standing up for, even despite the ridicule and biting scorn of a very naysaying world, a world that even today would dismiss your personal quest for the noble and divine as nothing but a fool's errand,' Elder Dunn said. 'Believers and doers with the courage to do noble needs, champion big ideas and make the impossible possible are still sorely needed, but to really make a difference in the world, we have to live it, we have to be all in, fully vested in the cause, come what may,' he added. Elder Dunn said Christ was the ultimate example as the one who turned the world's perspective upside down with a 'bold, daring and innovative message of the preeminence of love of God and neighbor ... to this day, a message that still ruffles the entrenched and rankles the status quo, leading skeptics to dismiss believers as mere fools.' It's a charge Elder Dunn said he would embrace and asked students to accept. 'If my deep love for Jesus, along with yours, makes us fools for Christ's sake, then this is one time that I urge you, from this day on to join me in making complete fools of yourselves.' Elder Dunn also used Cannon and Young as examples of 'epic, impossible and most would say, improbable quests.' Cannon earned degrees in medicine and pharmacy in the late 1800s, when women were rare in those fields. Then she turned her attention to public policy and politics, defeating her own husband in an election to become the first female state senator ever elected in the United States. In December, her statue was installed at the U.S. Capitol in the Statuary Hall where 100 statues represent two prominent individuals from each state. Young arrived at BYU as the eighth-string quarterback and was told by a coach that he would never play the position because he was a left-handed running quarterback in a program that emphasized right-handed passers. Young persevered, won the starter's job and later a Super Bowl and is a member of the BYU, college football and NFL halls of fame. To watch the devotional, click here.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Conor McGregor just sat courtside at a BYU basketball game. No, really
Conor McGregor is interviewed by BYUtv's Spencer Linton at BYU's basketball game against Baylor on Tuesday, Jan. 28 at the Marriott Center in Provo. | BYU Photo The Marriott Center welcomed perhaps its most unlikely visitor of all time Tuesday night. Irish mixed martial artist, boxer and mega celebrity Conor McGregor sat courtside for BYU basketball's clash with Baylor, and his presence became an even bigger story than the Cougars' tense, overtime victory. McGregor is in Utah doing business with Orem-based sports nutrition brand Bucked Up, with whom he has collaborated for a line of energy drinks. Advertisement 'It's so crazy, it's so fast-paced,' McGregor told BYUtv's Spencer Linton of his Marriott Center visit. 'The crowd is incredible. I'm grateful to be here, so happy to be here and see this. I always wondered what the college (basketball) game would be like, and I'm very, very, very impressed.' Many on social media pointed out that McGregor was a rather shocking figure to see at BYU for a number of reasons, but though he wasn't officially recognized or introduced at the game, he still garnered plenty of attention, snapping countless selfies with fans and even wandering over to BYU's ROC section to lead students in a cheer for the Cougars. McGregor even posed for a photo with BYU players following their 93-89 win over the Bears. Advertisement 'That's probably one of the most famous people I've ever seen,' BYU guard Dawson Baker said of McGregor. 'I was kind of thinking, he's seeing this environment and he's been in some crazy environments himself ... I kind of took a step back and thought, 'Wow, I'm really a part of this,' which was really cool. 'So yeah, it's definitely special. The (Marriott Center) environment was super good tonight. It was so loud and it definitely had an effect on the game.'
