Katie Eldredge

Wheatley Roundtable on Family gathered students and faculty from BYU, intrigued community members, and scholars from across the country to discuss philosophical defenses for the family and its value to society. On February 14, Mary Eberstadt gave the conference’s keynote address, “Family & Faith in a Pagan Time,” acutely focused on the societal shift of family and faith in Western civilization. She began, “Once, belief in God and traditional religion were unremarkable. Now increasing numbers seem to think both those things require explanation and also resistance. That difference between cheering God and jeering God is not just a sea change; it is wholly uncharted water.” Eberstadt argues that the shift away from Christianity and towards Paganism has everything to do with the collapse of the family. She explains that there is almost “a rival secularist faith that sees Christianity as a faith to be crushed.” This persistent attack on the traditional moral code has become “an engine of secularization itself,” one that denies any distinction between male and female and therefore the role of mothers and fathers. She continues, “Here is the fundamental question: Why the drive toward androgyny in the first place? Who benefits? What is it about our time that makes this more attractive or desirable to some people than it used to be?” Years of secular attack on the family, protests for a redefinition of marriage, and legislative rulings have fractured the family and created a new kind of cultural system. “The collapse of the family has left a great many people more vulnerable than ever before. It has meant the disappearance in the lives of many children of the one figure meant to protect them from physical harm, their fathers.” This vulnerability does not come without consequence. It forever alters an individual’s life, whether for better or for worse. Decades of breaking down society’s core institution was bound to create unprecedented ripple effects.

“I travel around to countries and meet with oppressed religious minorities, and they say ‘You hold our story up to the world. You give us a voice.’” US Ambassador-at-Large for International Freedom, David Saperstein was sworn in on January 6th, 2015. In the time following, he has traveled around the world to meet with government officials, religious groups, and those affected by religious restrictions. On November 17th, Ambassador Saperstein addressed the BYU campus in a Distinguished Lecture titled, “U.S. Efforts to Promote International Religious Freedom.” He described the current climate of religious freedom around the world. “Three-fourths of the world’s population live in countries that have serious restrictions regarding religious freedom.” Many of these restrictions are disguised as blasphemy laws, laws that severely punish individuals for making core life decisions in accordance to their religious beliefs. Saperstein’s travels have given him the opportunity to meet and work with people from many different faiths and backgrounds. Oftentimes, the countries with the most progress on religious freedom issues are those in which interfaith cooperation flourishes, even when the interfaith efforts are “done at the risk of life and limb.”