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Originally Posted by All-American
I have had some seminary/BYU religion teachers that fit your description to a T and I have had some that were fantastic. My two favorites were Thomas Wayment and Stephen Robinson. I especially appreciated Robinson for his complete disdain for the way CES operates sometimes. He had formerly been the chair of the religion department, but had little but scorn for the way most Mormons act. He referred to the type of teacher you speak of as "General Authorities in Embryo."
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My favorite religion professor at BYU was Vern Sommerfeld - BOM. The only thing I didn't like about him was he had a "testimony voice". Why do all CES/BYU Religion types cultivate that special testimony voice?
My worst were Bowen (D&C) and Joseph Fielding McConkie. Whenever you would challenge anything Bowen said he would respond "It's the hit bird that flutters". The implication of this self-serving weasel phrase is that anyone that didn't agree with him was in obvious need of repentence because if you were doing everything "the Lords way" then you would of course be in complete agreement. McConkie got up in class the first day and said "This class will be taught from the standpoint that I know more than you do and that you are here to learn from me". That was the first and only day that I sat through a McConkie class. Life is just too short to spend time with "insufferable, self-righteous prigs".
When I was a freshman I had BofM from some weenie BYU Religion teacher. There was a kid in the back of the class that liked to dress kind of "gothic" - black hair, black clothes, pale face, etc. I always felt the teacher kind of picked on this kid because of the way he dressed. One of the class assignments was to provide cross-references for various scriptures that the teacher gave us. When it was Goth's turn to give his cross-references, he used a scripture in Omni that the teacher didn't like. The teacher was being a complete prick. Of course, it's completely subjective about what makes a "good" cross reference. The teacher asked if anyone in the class thought it was a good cross reference. I actually thought it was; however, I was too chicken to raise my hand when nobody else would. To this day, I regret not standing up for that kid...