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Over the past several months, a consistent theme has emerged across campus at BYU. “Our challenge during my administration,” BYU president C. Shane Reese has declared, is “becoming BYU.” This includes “to become the university that prophets have foretold, . . . ‘the fully anointed university of the Lord about which so much has been spoken in the past.’”[1]

The charge for BYU to progress in its journey to become what prophets have envisioned extends to Religious Education. Indeed, echoing President Reese’s message, BYU’s mission statement reinforces the importance of the study of religion within the university. It declares, “All students at BYU should be taught the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Any education is inadequate which does not emphasize that His is the only name given under heaven whereby mankind can be saved.”[2]

In Religious Education, we seek to build on a vision outlined by prophets and the legacy implemented by generations of faculty who have nurtured the faith of students through the study of God’s word. Furthermore, we desire to bless the broader Church through scholarship and public outreach. Doing so is our answer, in part, to the call that Church Commissioner of Education Elder Clark G. Gilbert recently gave for BYU to be “the educational ambassador [that] represents the entire system and the Church in its scholarship, academic programs, and ability to be a light beyond the university.”[3]

We rejoice in the task of helping BYU become the “Christ-centered, prophetically directed university” of the Lord. “Becoming BYU,” President Reese has concluded, “will require that we embrace our religious mission even as we speak to the broader academy with credibility and strength.”[4]

Scott C. Esplin
Dean
BYU Religious Education

Notes

[1] C. Shane Reese, “Becoming BYU: An Inaugural Response” (BYU devotional, September 19, 2023).

[2] “Mission of BYU.”

[3] Clark G. Gilbert, Scott C. Esplin, and Jared W. Ludlow, “Reanchoring Our Purpose to Jesus Christ,” Religious Educator 23, no. 2 (2022): 13.

[4] Reese, “Becoming BYU.”