Eugene England

A biographical sketch introduces the people and events that shaped England’s work and thought. England spent his young boyhood on a farm in Downey, Idaho. His capacity for friendship and the sheer number of people who felt close to him suggest the deep charisma that underlay his thought. His undergraduate years at the University of Utah and his relationship with Lowell Bennion mark the beginnings of his public thinking about Mormonism. He earned a PhD in English at Stanford, while trying to reconcile his conservative religious and liberal political convictions. He was particularly troubled by the LDS church’s racist policy of withholding priesthood from Black men. Most of England’s career was spent teaching at Brigham Young University, where he was popular with students, but clashed with university administrators and LDS church officials. England’s work exemplifies an important engagement of Mormon theology with liberal Christian thought.