Terryl Givens—“an abundant life must engage the heart and mind together”

We’re excited to announce that Terryl L. Givens has returned to the Institute as a Neal A. Maxwell Fellow to oversee the Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture, co-sponsored by the Mormon Scholars Foundation. Givens said he greatly values the opportunity to help the Institute gather and nurture disciple-scholars:

“I believe that academic scholarship and the gospel alike demand rigorous thought, intellectual integrity, the framing of tough questions and a genuine quest for understanding. One vocabulary and one rhetorical approach may not fit both worlds, but I have experienced no collision of the two worlds in my own professional and devotional life. On the contrary, my faith commitments have shaped the questions I ask, and inspired my efforts with the hope that whatever insights and perspectives we acquire through our investigations may find a place in an eternal web of understanding. Joseph’s revelations couldn’t be clearer on this point: an abundant life must engage the heart and mind together. At its most fundamental level, that strikes me as the informing spirit of the Maxwell Institute.”Givens holds the Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English and is Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond.In addition to overseeing the Summer Seminar with Steven Peck, Givens will be working to complete a manuscript, assisted by Brian Hauglid, on the Pearl of Great Price for Oxford University Press. He also hopes to draft a few chapters for his biography of Eugene England. Eric Eliason of Brigham Young University is helping Givens put together an edited collection on Mormon theology as well. Finally, Givens says he’s whittling away at a project called “What Everyone Needs to Know about Mormonism” for a relatively new series produced by Oxford University Press.