Personal Essays
Eugene England was one of the founding editors of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. This essay is the editorial he wrote for the journal’s inaugural issue.
That They Might Not Suffer: The Gift of the Atonement
This sermon was one of a series given in early 1966 to introduce Mormonism to friends of LDS students at Stanford University. It shifts the focus of the Atonement from balancing the scales of justice and mercy to the effects it has on our individual souls, inspiring us to faith that changes our hearts and allows us to forgive ourselves and truly change.
Why the Church Is As True as the Gospel
This essay makes the case for the Church being as (or even more) important than the gospel for our salvation because of its role as a “school of love.” Among other things, the way Mormonism organizes its congregations serves us in this way by forcing us to interact with and giving us opportunities to learn to love those we might otherwise never choose to associate with.
This is one of England’s classic essays telling of a long trip across the country with a car that was acting up and threatening to strand the England family. Its central message is a reminder for us to ask for and then acknowledge the Lord’s hand in all things.
Great Books or True Religion: Defining the Mormon Scholar
This is a speech given to the Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society at Brigham Young University in March 1975 in which England explores the wonderful blessing of intellectual gifts, especially if these gifts are employed with faith and in service to what England calls “true religion.”
Perhaps England’s most “personal” of all his personal essays, this brutally honest reflection intersperses both humbling and elevating experiences from trips to New York City and Montreal with confessions of faith, uncertainty, sorrow, and joy, along with the story of a car accident that almost took the life of his father and a “report” from England’s guardian angel.
One of England’s most beautiful essays reflecting on his childhood and formative spiritual experiences, the mysteries of existence, Spirit-inspired activism, and continued service amid uncertainty.
A sermon England gave in March 1970 at a chapel service at St. Olaf Lutheran College in Northfield, Minnesota in which he attempts to change misperceptions about Mormons he had encountered in his first few months on campus.
“Lamanites” and the Spirit of the Lord
This is an essay that was prepared as part of a special theme issue of Dialogue about “Lamanites” in Mormon history, prophecy, and theology. It contains one of the most thorough accounts of England’s early life, with wonderful stories of the faith and devotion of his parents.
Essay that emphasizes the importance of seeking to understand people and situations in their fullness rather than judging based on partial evidence or incomplete characterizations. As he calls all to do better, England shares stories from his own life in which he has fallen short of the Christlike ideal in this area.
Mormon Literature: Progress and Prospects
This essay is the culmination of several attempts England made throughout his life to
assess the state of Mormon literature and letters. The editors of Irreantum claimed in 2001, “Anyone seriously interested in LDS literature could not do better than to use this visionary and bibliographic essay as their curriculum.”
On Fidelity, Polygamy, and Celestial Marriage
This classic essay is a thorough examination of the ideals of marriage that also challenges the assumptions held by many Latter-day Saints that plural marriage will be the dominant order of marriage in the celestial kingdom.
Perfection and Progression: Two Complementary Ways to Talk about God
This essay explores ways of reconciling without contradiction the paradoxical statements well-grounded in both Latter-day Saint scripture and prophetic teaching about God being both “perfect” and eternally “progressing.”
What Covenant Will God Receive in the Desert?
This is an address delivered in March 1993 at St. James Catholic Church in Las Vegas, Nevada, on the occasion of the first Mormon Peace Gathering to protest continued nuclear weapon testing at the Nevada Test Site. It provides a wonderful glimpse at England’s core values and motivations for his activism.
Fasting and Food, Not Weapons: A Mormon Response to Conflict
This essay originated in a speech England gave in November 1984 at a rally at the University of Utah in support of the National Fast Day for Ethiopia.
The most thorough account England gives of the LDS mission to Samoa he and his wife Charlotte served during the first years of their marriage.
An essay published posthumously in which England wrestles with what he believed to be a disturbing trend in Mormonism away from what he saw as Joseph Smith’s and Brigham Young’s doctrine of God as a personal being engaged with us in a tragic universe not of his own making and toward a more absolutistic God similar to the teachings about deity held by Evangelical Christianity.
“No Cause, No Cause”: An Essay toward Reconciliation
An address delivered to the BYU English Department in 1997 (six months before England retired from that university) but not published until after his death. In it, England notes the tensions afflicting the department’s faculty, both in terms of scholarly controversies as well as with England’s activism, and offers his sincere hope that they can all be reconciled in love and trust in each other’s good hearts.
An example of the kinds of articles England wrote for official LDS publications in the mid-1970s. This one, directed at a young Latter-day Saint audience, shares details and reflections about the personal relationship between Brigham Young and Joseph Smith.
