284: Eugene England’s Life and Legacy Pt. 4

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2011

⏱️ 49 minutes

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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 everybody back to the fourth segment of our interview and celebration and I don't
0:09.2	know what else we want to call it about Eugene England, an introduction to many of you
0:13.2	of the man and his writings and his teachings and sort of guiding principles in his life.
0:20.0	We thought that we'd take this final segment to sort of look now from the perspective of
0:27.0	what's going on today that would show a lasting legacy of Eugene England on the church and on
0:34.1	people and what lives on and what should live on and be resurrected or the volume pumped up or
0:42.1	whatever it is in today's church. What is it that should live on and that we should take away
0:47.8	from his life if we have a desire to, especially I guess if our desire is to stay within the church,
0:53.9	to stay with integrity and in some ways embrace that idea that church life is a school of and
1:01.4	it is like was it you Jody that said something like it's not a picnic or it's not a cake walk or
1:06.6	something that was that that's what life's not about. It's about learning and that's what the
1:12.0	plan of salvation is about is growing a character that's a godlike character that means meeting
1:17.4	people and difficulties and whatnot in a faithful way that says everybody's of worth and every idea
1:25.2	deserves at least respect up until the point where I can persuade them that my idea is better.
1:31.1	You know or something so that might be a way to say that. So I'm rambling here so let's just start.
1:37.2	We have some obvious legacies from Eugene England and we have the journal dialogue which is now
1:43.3	in its 40-something year still producing 40 four issues a year edited by a really cool
1:51.8	person Christine Haglin and she is doing a great job. So dialogue sitting out there the association
1:58.8	for Mormon letters is sort of a niche organization that still is in existence. It doesn't have quite
2:06.8	the size or the reach that dialogue or sunstone does but for those who are interested in Mormon
2:14.9	literature and becoming a writer becoming an SAS becoming a journal writer or a memoirist or whatever
2:22.1	they would be they turn to the association for letters and it's got a journal that's still
	...

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