Eugene England was many things, a scholar, a theologian, an essayist, a husband, father, and teacher.

But above all, he defined himself as a disciple of Jesus Christ and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Today, we speak with Harold Givens, a senior research fellow at the Neil A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University,

to discuss his new biography

of Gene England, entitled, Stretching the Heavens, the Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern

Mormonism from the University of North Carolina Press. In our conversation, we discussed

Gene's approach to discipleship, scholarship, and how he wouldn't have separated his pursuit of knowledge and bridge

building from his very core beliefs in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and his desire

to bring people together. Could you do us a favor and review, rate, and subscribe to the Maxwell

Institute podcast wherever you find podcasts? Thank you. Now, without any further ado, let's start our

conversation with Terrell Gibbons.

Terrell Gibbons, welcome to the Maxwell Institute podcast.

Thank you. Good to be here, Joey.

When I first opened the mail and saw your book was entitled Stretching the Heavens,

The Life of Eugene, England, and the Crisis of Modern Mormonism.

My first thought was, what does he mean by the crisis of Modern Mormonism. My first thought was,

what does he mean by the crisis of modern Mormonism? Could you tell us about that?

Yeah. I don't know if this is a universal experience of authors, but I find that I very seldom

am able to select the title for the book that gets published. And in this case, they went with

Stretching the Heavens, but UNC added the subtitle,

which I wasn't terribly happy with for a few reasons, but they persisted. It could just as well

have been called the life of Eugene England and the crisis of Mormon modernism, because really

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