Religion chair is more than meets the eye
According to some students who have taken his courses, Phillip Barlow is an intelligent, mean, lean Bible-thumping machine. Barlow teaches a variety of classes that urge students to rethink their impressions of reality.
“I grew up with six brothers-wrestling, playing football and all manner of wildness. I look scrawny, but I am tougher than I look,” Barlow said, of his tall, lean physique.
Senior liberal arts major Shayla Michel said Barlow, director of the religious studies program and Arrington chair of Mormon history and culture at USU, is intelligent and filled with imagination.
“His classes explore and stretch students’ imaginations, and challenge our deeply held beliefs,” Michel said. She said she learned a lot in his religion and the concept of time class in which he asks students to divorce themselves from what they already believe be open to new ideas about God and faith.
Barlow said he backed into his career. After graduating from high school, he said he originally planned to go into business with his brother and even had an office set aside for himself. But when he met up with a friend studying religion back East, he said he got jealous and decided to continue his education at Harvard Divinity school, where he earned his master and doctorate degrees.
As the Mormon history chair he has written books such as “Mormons and the Bible,” but said his original aim was not necessarily to focus on the religion he was raised with.
While living on the East Coast studying religion, Barlow said he avoided studying Mormonism, because he thought he already understood the religion. By studying other religions, he said he came to realize how little he actually knew about the subject, which encouraged him to delve deeper into the LDS faith.
He said being a Mormon was sometimes met with adversity at other schools. When he taught in the theological studies program at Hanover College in Indiana — a program he was a part of for 17 years — Barlow said he was the first and only Mormon to be appointed to the department, which was unique at a college rooted in Presbyterian beliefs.
“I was definitely a curiosity,” Barlow said. But the curiosity, he said, faded within the first academic year. He found out later when he was due for tenure there was a man on the board of directors who made a fuss about tenuring a Mormon, he added. Barlow later came to USU in 2007.
He said religious studies was a program decades in the making at USU, because there were people who feared the possibility that such curricula could serve as a vehicle for the erosion of the LDS faith. Others, he said, feared that such a program, at a Utah school, could focus too much on Mormonism.
“The study of Mormonism is a fascinating, rich and important academic enterprise — not just for Mormons. Several of the very best scholars of Mormonism are not themselves Mormon,” Barlow said.
He said he is one of the first full-time professors in the nation to have a position such as Mormon history chair. However, because of the importance of Mormonism in the American religious realm, he said many other universities are adding similar positions and emphases.
Barlow teaches a classes like religion and the concept of time and religion, evil and human suffering. He said all academic disciplines are artificially invented ways of approaching intellectual topics, and said he believes it’s important to approach reality by looking at it imaginatively.
“Of all the reasons given for atheism, the most prominent one is the grotesque and unreasonable suffering of humans,” Barlow said, citing an example of what is discussed in his classes. “The world is soaked in blood, despite being filled with beautiful flowers. What is less often noticed is religion itself most often has its genesis in suffering also.”
Barlow said he considers evil and suffering to be two of the world’s most difficult and persistent problems and, thus, worthy of academic study. Barlow also said people are interested in this issue, a point illustrated by a student coming to ask if he could audit the class since he didn’t need the credits but was interested in taking it anyway.
Barlow said he’s currently working on a number projects. He is co-editing a handbook to Mormonism, co-authoring a scholarly exploration of Mormonism, researching a book on Mormonism and homosexuality and is also in the conceptualization stage of two more books.
Ryan Toth, a senior religious studies major, said he really appreciated Barlow in his world religion class.
“I really liked the requirement that the entire class meet with him individually,” Toth said.
Toth said he originally thought the meeting was simply about the class, but it was actually time to connect with Barlow, who made sure each student was not only okay in this class but in others as well.
“I have a lot of respect for Dr. Barlow,” said Sariah Collard, a sophomore majoring in sociology. “He does a great job encouraging his students to think. I have never worked so hard in a class, and I have never learned so much.”
– genevieve.draper@aggiemail.usu.edu