Reconciliation and Atonement

The concept of atonement was central to Eugene England’s religious thought, and he used the term in an idiosyncratic way. He focused on its etymological root—“at–one–ment”—and developed a concept of atonement as the productive unity of disparate ideas and beings. Among the disparate notions he tried to reconcile were “liberal” and “conservative” Mormon theologies; England relied on a strain of Mormon theology that suggests a God capable of eternal progression and learning—omnipotent and omniscient relative to human beings, but not absolutely. Other Mormon thinkers, notably church President Joseph F. Smith and his descendants, held a more absolute view, sometimes characterized as “neo-orthodox.” England’s discussion of “liberal” and “conservative” Mormonism also extended to political convictions; his discussion of the role of believers in politics contains echoes of Reinhold Niebuhr transposed to a Mormon key