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Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand

Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty

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“Tom Rogers has lived his faith all over the world. The experiences he relates from far-flung places—mingled with thirty-one years as a BYU professor of Russian—give remarkable insight into the hard work always involved when we practice charity, “the pure love of Christ.”

In these essays Rogers is a defender of the faith, but his words move us well beyond typical apologetics. His Mormonism serves as the bedrock for discussions on the life of the mind, the value of literature, and the challenges of religious orthodoxy.”

—Jack Harrell
Author of A Sense of Order and Other Stories

Buy Print (Amazon) $12.95 Buy Digital (Deseret) $7.99

Thomas F. Rogers

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Thomas F. Rogers is a noted playwright, essayist, and scholar who taught Russian at Brigham Young University from 1969 to 2000. He also served as director of the BYU Honors Program in the 1970s. From 1993 to 1996, he was president of the LDS Church’s Russia St. Petersburg Mission, the subject of his memoir A Call to Russia: Glimpses of Missionary Life (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 1999). Subsequently, he and his wife, Merriam, served in the Stockholm Sweden Temple. From 2007 until his release in 2014, Rogers was a traveling LDS patriarch assigned to the LDS Church’s Europe East Area. Tom and Merriam currently live in Bountiful, Utah, where he spends time painting and visiting their seven children and forty grandchildren.
"[Rogers] cares deeply about ideas, and he does not shy away from difficult questions and paradoxes."
Roger Terry, BYU Studies
"...an interesting mix of apologetics, personal memoir, and meditations on gospel and other philosophical themes...commendably honest...a solid addition to the Living Faith series."
Stephen Smoot, Ploni Almoni Blog
"The book is certainly apologetic but not in the usual sense. Rather than offering a straight defense of the faith, Rogers opens up about his reactions and struggles to challenging ideas, as well as honestly engaging with others who find themselves in a similar situation."
Paul Brooks, The Reasonable Mormon Blog
"...there was much to be gleaned from Rogers’ insights. I will continue to engage with the ideas and wrestle with the paradoxes that Rogers addresses, striving for that tentativeness that he promotes, while always hoping to empathize with all, even those I vehemently disagree with because 'divinity is in them too.'"
Conor Hilton, Conor Hilton Blog
"Readers who stick with the book from cover to cover will receive more than they paid for in time, thought, and the price of the book, but it will also serve as a useful reference for personal study, writing ideas, sermons, and topical learning. This compilation casts a long complementary shadow for one of Mormonism’s rare hearts and minds."
Douglas F. Christensen, Association for Mormon Letters
"The main theme that I found in this collection is that of charity—the true love of Christ. Rogers has a unique and clear capacity to find the good in everyone and every situation he encounters, while still being realistic and firm as required."
Ivan Wolfe, Millenial Star Blog

Additional Information

  • Table of Contents

    Foreword

    Author’s Preface

    About the Author

    PART 1: The Just Shall Live by Faith

    It Satisfies My Restless Mind

    Limbs

    On “Fate” and Circumstance

    Letter to a Doubting Former Student

    Letter to My Son

    An Insider’s View of the Missionary Training Center, 1993–1996

    The Miracle of Conversion

    On the Importance of Doing Certain Mundane Things

    PART 2: Now Come, Saith the Lord, and Let Us Reason

    Riding the Edge of the Herd

    Gospel Continuities

    Thoughts about Joseph Smith: Upon Reading Donna Hill’s Joseph Smith: The First Mormon

    Why the Book of Mormon Is One of the World’s Best Books

    Remarks to Members of the BYU Honors Program, Fall 1976

    On the Need for Both Greater Spontaneity and Authenticity in Our Religious Life

    “Bumping”: On Reconciling Contemporary Views of Knowledge and Causation with the Restored Gospel

    PART 3: The Greatest of These Is Charity

    Discovering Ourselves in Others

    Coping with Orthodoxy: The Honors Student Syndrome

    The Difference

    Insights from a Patriarch’s Journal

    What Is Love?

    The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, DC

    “Interconnecting” at Home and Abroad

    PART 4: Out of Zion, the Perfection of Beauty, God Hath Shined

    The Sacred in Literature

    Cokeville

    A Playwright with a Passion for Unvarnished Depictions: An Interview with Tom Rogers, by Todd Compton

    Why I Wrote Huebener

    For the Cast and Production Staff of Huebener

    The Gospel of John as Literature

    The Image of Christ in Russian Literature

    Hearts of the Fathers, Hearts of the Children: Transcendent Familial Ties in Selected Films and in Works by Twentieth-Century Russian Writers

  • Publication Information

    Publication Month: June

    Publication Year: 2016

    Language: English

    ISBN 13: 978-0-8425-2976-1

    Page Count: 349

    Illustration(s): 4

    Price: $ 21.95

    Imprint: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

  • SEE HERE for free access to scripts of Thomas F. Rogers’s plays and contact information for production rights.

  • 2016 AML Awards

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