Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand
Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty
“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
The Collected Plays of Thomas F. Rogers
SEE HERE for free access to scripts of Thomas F. Rogers’s plays and contact information for production rights.
"[Rogers] cares deeply about ideas, and he does not shy away from difficult questions and paradoxes."
"...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."
"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."
"...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.'"
"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."
"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."
About the Author
Thomas F. Rogers
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.
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