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Mormon Stories Podcast

282: Eugene England’s Life and Legacy Pt. 2

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.55.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2011

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Eugene England (1933–2001) was one of the founders and great leaders in Mormon Studies and independent Mormon discussions. He and four others founded Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, for which he served as its first editor. He was instrumental in the creation of the Association for Mormon Letters, and he is considered the champion of the “personal essay” as a powerful form for Mormon expression. England was a peace activist, whose reflections on having been present in the Vatican during the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II (one of the bullets nicked his hand and left a small burn on his temple as it whizzed past) led him to found “Food for Poland,” a large-scale effort involving students from many college campuses to provide support for the Solidarity movement when it struggling under Polish government crack downs. He was an innovative and highly influential teacher. He revamped “study abroad” programs at both BYU and Utah Valley State College, leading to unparalleled learning experiences for students who traveled with his groups to London. He supported and was an active voice for academic freedom at BYU, championed the rise of Mormon Studies at UVSC, and was an articulate voice and active supporter for nearly every good cause in independent Mormon circles for nearly four decades. More than any of these or many other accomplishments we didn’t name, however, Eugene England was a person of faith and incredible spiritual depth who, along with Leonard Arrington and Lowell Bennion, stands as an example of a committed, faithful life of intellectual and spiritual integrity, maturity, and grace even as he was often misunderstood and under-appreciated. He is important to get to know, and that is the process that this podcast hopes to help start.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome Charlotte. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. As I suggested at the

0:05.0

opening of the first episode we've done so far as we've brought hopefully the

0:09.6

whole audience along with us and they're hanging with us through Eugene

0:13.0

England's biography and his career and certainly in the comments that Jody

0:19.6

and I were kind of offering as we talked you got a feel for some of the

0:24.0

personality characteristics and traits and ideas that animated her dad and

0:29.1

Charlotte's grandfather's life and how he made his way through the gospel and

0:34.4

how he had an active mind as well as a believing heart and so I thought we

0:40.3

take this episode to explore that more depth and kind of look at some of the

0:44.8

principles in the gospel or ideas from secular sources or whatnot that sort of

0:51.8

animated his amazing life of 73 years of teaching and activism that Eugene

0:59.3

Eugene and Hayden that we're celebrating today so if I can just throw Charlotte

1:03.9

the first question Charlotte as we talk about what animated your grandfather's

1:09.7

life what would you what comes your mind first? Well one of the first things

1:13.7

that I think of is the importance of dialogue and everything that he did and I

1:19.3

think it's very poignant to think of first of all that he helped start dialogue

1:23.3

a journal and how much of an influence that had on him and it wasn't just him

1:27.3

that did that of course but I think it's interesting that that's what the

1:30.6

title was chosen as because in that first editorial it gave in dialogue through

1:35.0

all the rest of his writings as I was studying for my thesis that's one of

1:37.9

the things I focused on was the importance of dialogue in his life and how he

1:41.6

saw that as essential to have that dialogue with people especially that you

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