Peck, Steven L.
Description
"Like some other proposed volumes in this series, Duane Jeffery's (1937-) name may not be commonly known. Jeffery, who earned a PhD in genetics from t
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he University of California Berkeley, joined the faculty at Brigham Young University in 1969. Until his retirement in 2009, he would carry the flag for the theory of evolution on campus through a myriad of controversies over science, Biblical inerrancy, and religious and science education-controversies he stoked by publishing a number of articles maintaining that the Church had no official position on the theory of evolution. This position drew much negative backlash from some Church leaders and professors of religion at the university, and Jeffery nearly lost his job. Undaunted, he expanded his efforts beyond BYU's campus, joined the Board of Directors of the National Center for Science Education in 1994, and engaged in heavily publicized debates over the theory of evolution with prominent evangelical Christian creationists like Duane Gish. His story provides an important opening to telling the story of Mormon intellectual thought in the 20th century. He connects to the early 20th century and the long shadow of the 1911 controversy involving the dismissal and departure of the Chamberlin and Peterson brothers' from BYU, in part for their teaching of evolution. At the same time, the question of modernity is central to Jeffery's life and times: to what extent might a traditionally separatist faith accommodate itself to the trappings of modernity in order to find a home in the United States? In some ways, Jeffery represents that accommodation-not merely through his training in and acceptance of modern biological science, but also through his participation in BYU becoming a modern research university"-- Provided by publisher.
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