Dissent and Alternative Voices

A confluence of several things the last few days has gotten me thinking about dissent.

First, the protesters at BYU's commencement. I am thrilled that a protest to Cheney was organized and carried out at BYU. BYU is not a monolithic entity and appendage to the GOP. Not completely, anyway, and those students who organized the protest and arranged for an alternative commencement are to be commended. I am proud of them. I wish I could have attended my sister's graduation so that I could participate. I am also glad that BYU is not showing only a wholehearted open armed welcome to Cheney to the world at large.

On the other hand, I find the responses to the protesters distasteful. The SL Trib reported that passersby yelled out "traitors!," "losers!" and "we'll be praying for you!" (suggesting that protest is some kind of sin). Someone also said that the protesters were disrespecting BYU and its graduates. To that, I heartily disagree. BYU should not be in the business of churning out GOP faithful, and by showing disagreement, students were showing that there are differences in political ideology there. Another comment reflects Mormon predisposition to support authority, in all its forms : "I support the office of vice-president."

Second, this week, a friend and I had lunch with a former BYU faculty member who was fired from her position there in the 90's because of one public statement about abortion. She equated her position then to that of Mitt Romney now. She then moved here and began teaching at a local college. After leaving BYU under awful circumstances, she stayed active in the church. It was only a few years ago when she felt compelled to discontinue her church activity. The way she described it, she was concerned about her 12 year old daughter and the messages the church had for her. And she felt like she could no longer reconcile her political beliefs with her church experience. She was a wonderful woman, and we enjoyed visiting together. But, after leaving, I felt sorrow that an articulate, intelligent woman such as her had come to the point in her life where she felt so divided that she could not, in good conscience, maintain a life as both a Mormon and a scholar. I long for role models that have managed to combine the two into one cohesive (not bi-polar) identity.

I've also been thinking about dissent since watching the PBS documentary on the Mormons. I haven't finished watching it yet (hopefully tonight I can watch the last hour). But, with the belief that we are the "only true and living church upon the face of the earth", dissent (and questioning authority) is not encouraged and often not tolerated. In a book about the separation of church and state, I read this:

It would be wrong for the government to coerce someone whose conscience was right about her religious faith, argued New England Puritan John Cotton. But, an erroneous conscience needed to be corrected, by force if necessary, and it would be truly dangerous to allow people who suffered from an erroneous conscience to propagate their sinful views among the innocent and unsuspecting public.

This made me think of the attitudes of many members of the church.