This is the third and last volume in my revision of Educating Zion, which I was asked to prepare for Brigham Young University’s sesquicentennial. With this volume of Envisioning BYU, I am pleased to welcome the university to the second half of its second century.
I have followed the same format for speeches in this volume as in the previous volumes. I have assembled selections of “key [mission-centric] speeches delivered at BYU by Church and university authorities,”¹ editing some selections for length while making the complete text of all talks available online at speeches.byu.edu/envisioning-BYU. This online resource also allows readers to explore many other inspiring talks about BYU.
I begin this volume with a seminal talk by President Jeffrey R. Holland entitled “A School in Zion.” I have designated it as the preface because it provides a comprehensive overview of the purpose and principles governing BYU.
The first section focuses on BYU as a Zion university. By this I mean that BYU is not only a Church university but a school in which Zion-like attributes are sought after, nurtured, and practiced. A Zion university requires a Zion people. Thus, the talks in this section often refer to the personal qualities that should characterize a Zion university, such as gratitude, temple worthiness, charity, and consecration. Notice how important love and purity of heart are to such a place.
The second section focuses on educating disciples in the disciplines. Historically, education in Church schools has always had a twofold purpose: Latter-day Saints gather in schools both to study the disciplines and to strengthen their discipleship. Early Church leaders said that gathering in a “compact society is absolutely necessary” for education,² and Joseph Smith understood the purpose of education to be more than the transfer of information. He had in mind the kind of education that not merely informs learners but transforms them into more capacious and effective disciples of Christ. So Church schools exist not only to help students learn the disciplines—as important as this is—but to be what Elder David A. Bednar referred to as “Disciple Preparation Centers.”³
The third section looks to the future as BYU strives, under President C. Shane Reese’s inspired leadership, to become the “Christ-centered, prophetically directed university of prophecy.” ⁴ This
section culminates with a devotional given by President Dallin H. Oaks during BYU’s sesquicentennial year.
The fourth section includes eleven brief perspectives that address the themes of the earlier sections, specifically how BYU students, faculty, and staff might come together as disciples to create a university in Zion.
As this volume marks my final contribution to Envisioning BYU, I have taken the liberty of appending as an afterword two brief talks I delivered on campus toward the end of my time as a BYU administrator. The first, “Beehive and Portico,” provides a perspective on why I have endorsed the cover design of these volumes. In the second, “Steer by the Stars,” I encouraged BYU leaders to practice “celestial navigation,” as did the magi, by following the stars that lead to Christ.
I echo this invitation to the readers of these volumes.
— John S. Tanner
Notes
1. John W. Welch and Don E. Norton, eds., Educating Zion (Provo: BYU Studies, 1996), vii.
2. First Presidency message, “To the Saints Abroad,” Elders’ Journal 1, no. 4 (August 1838): 53.
3. David A. Bednar, “Brigham Young University–Idaho: A Disciple Preparation Center,” BYU–Idaho devotional address, 31 August 2004.
4. C. Shane Reese, “Developing Eyes to See,” BYU devotional address, 9 January 2024; see also Reese, “Perspective: Becoming BYU,” Opinion, Deseret News, 11 December 2023, deseret.com/opinion/2023/12/11/23997519/c-shane-reese-what-byu-must-become.
