1911 Brigham Young University modernism controversy

The 1911 modernism controversy at Brigham Young University was an episode involving four professors at Brigham Young University (BYU), who between 1908 and 1911 widely taught evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, arguing that modern scientific thought was compatible with Christian and Mormon theology. The professors were popular among students and the community but their teachings concerned administrators, and drew complaints from stake presidents, eventually resulting in the resignation of all four faculty members, an event that "leveled a serious blow to the academic reputation of Brigham Young University—one from which the Mormon school did not fully recover until successive presidential administrations."

In 1907, BYU president George H. Brimhall began hiring a new group of faculty to increase the academic reputation of his school. Joseph Peterson was hired to teach psychology, and his brother Henry Peterson hired as the director of the College of Education. Joseph Peterson was the first Ph.D on the faculty of BYU. In 1908 and 1909 Brimhall hired Ralph Vary Chamberlin and his brother William Henry Chamberlin, to teach biology and philosophy, respectively. The Chamberlin and Peterson brothers, while devout Mormons, actively sought to increase the intellectual atmosphere of the university and community, facilitating discussion and debates on evolution and the Bible, and sought to convey that evolutionary ideas and Mormon theology were not mutually exclusive, but rather complementary. Horace H. Cummings, the superintendent of the church schools, felt especially that teaching religion from non-Mormon sources and teaching evolution was contrary to Latter-Day Saint teachings. The four instructors' courses were popular among students and other faculty, but university and church officials accused the professors of promoting heretical views, and in 1911 offered the Petersons and Ralph Chamberlin a choice: alter their teachings or lose their jobs. Privately, Joseph B. Keeler told Ralph Chamberlin privately he could stay, but he refused, as the Petersons weren't given the same offer.

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