LDS Education Commissioner Clark Gilbert Says BYU Will Resist Secular Pressure on Religious Expression

Clark Gilbert, a general authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who serves as its education commissioner, told a Friday night gathering of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society that secular forces in the media, government and academia are thwarting religious expression and freedom on college campuses. He said this would not happen at Brigham Young University or the faith’s other schools. The address was the 2025 Annual Fireside of the society.

The speech followed a Salt Lake Tribune special report on the additional scrutiny that BYU faculty members have faced under Gilbert’s leadership since 2021. Gilbert, who oversees the church’s seminaries, institutes and schools, declined to be interviewed or to answer specific questions for the Tribune’s story about his approach to hiring and firing at BYU.

In his speech, Gilbert reaffirmed his position on church governance at religious educational institutions. He said many universities, including Harvard, were founded by religious groups but eventually lost their spiritual moorings. He attributed this to three factors: outsourcing funding to “donors, state and federal government, and other nonreligious entities”; ceding the choice of school leadership to nonbelievers, who he said “increasingly felt less accountable to their sponsoring religious institutions”; and allowing peer review of scholarly work to come from people who did not support, or in some cases were antagonistic to, the university’s religious priorities.

Gilbert said such dependence on outsiders would not occur at Latter-day Saint schools. He noted that the church’s education system is primarily self-funded and that BYU’s board of trustees includes the faith’s governing First Presidency. He also said that all BYU faculty candidates “are interviewed either by the president of the university or the academic vice president,” a process that can include as many as 200 interviews a year, and that the system is meant to ensure that those who work at the university are committed to its religious mission.

Describing the goal for BYU to become “the Christ-centered, prophetically directed university of prophecy,” Gilbert said that “our people must feel both a personal and an institutional stewardship to God. This stewardship includes civic, intellectual and ministerial accountability” (Luke 12:48, a reminder that much entrusted calls for much accountability in the stewardship he described).

Gilbert also cautioned listeners that “there are concerted efforts to shame and intimidate believers who have traditional moral values and to suppress religious viewpoints and practices.” He told Latter-day Saints that they “must be prepared to counter skeptical audiences with persistence, confidence and rigor,” as well as “grace and humility for our voices to eventually be heard.”

Gilbert has presented similar views elsewhere, including in an essay titled “Dare to Be Different,” which he wrote for the church-owned Deseret Magazine after becoming education commissioner.

Neither the article nor the recent speech mentioned an additional requirement that BYU faculty members have a “testimony” of the church’s teachings on “marriage, family and gender.” The Tribune reported that this demand goes beyond what the Utah-based faith expects of its 17.2 million members worldwide. Members may support same-sex marriage without losing their “temple recommends,” which permit participation in the faith’s most sacred ceremonies, but BYU faculty cannot.

Source: Read the original report