On February 25th, 2016 Defending Utah had Hannah Stoddard of The Joseph Smith Foundation on our radio program to discuss the now “debunked” poll stating a plurality of BYU students support Bernie Sanders over all of the other presidential candidates.
The program thoroughly exposed the origins of why such a candidate could have actually garnered such support among the youth of a religion whose founder decried socialism and whose leaders have consistently warned against the ideology even calling it a “Satanic threat”.
This broadcast did not escape the eye of socialist BYU professor, Christian Clement, who originally made disparaging remarks against Church leader Ezra Taft Benson, whom he would have had to (to keep his job) sustain as a “prophet, seer and revelator” saying,
“President Benson obviously was not an intellectual giant, so we have to forgive him. I am sure, out there in the afterlife, he is terribly embarrassed about many things he said and wrote”
Perhaps realizing how his statement might be taken, he decided to edit it to instead disparage those that took the word of Church leaders as no less than inspired and perhaps akin to modern scripture. BYU Professor Christian Clement said,
“As a BYU professor, I am deeply disturbed and embarrassed that young people representing the LDS faith (possibly BYU graduates?) are publically displaying such ignorance, indoctrination, and small-mindedness.”
Speaking as an employee of the Church, he felt the need to criticize latter-day saints for actually believing what the leaders of the faith teach, calling it “indoctrination”, essentially calling the leaders quoted “ignorant” and “small minded”.
How would members of the Church feel if they knew sending their children to BYU, they would be sending their kids to a place that has professors expressing (speaking as an employee) such disdain for the teachings of the Church which the university is supposed to be representing?
Harry Reid made similar remarks at BYU in 2007 saying,
““[T]hese people (Church leaders) have taken members of the church down the path that is the wrong path.”
We hope it isn’t becoming a trend among prominent members at BYU to disparage Church leaders.
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