Terryl Givens

Terryl Lynn Givens is a senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University (BYU). Until 2019, he was a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he held the James A. Bostwick Chair in English.

Givens is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). As a young man, he served a mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and later graduated from BYU with a degree in comparative literature. He did graduate work in intellectual history at Cornell and earned a PhD in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina, working with Greek, German, Spanish, Portuguese and English languages and literature. A longtime collaborator with his wife, Fiona Givens, he is the co-author of The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life and Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith.

The New York Times referred to his work as "polemical" and "provocative" while Harper's praised him for being "fair-minded and unbiased."

Personal life

Givens has served in the LDS Church as a bishop in a local congregation.

Publications

Books

• Dragon Scales and Willow Leaves. Putnam Juvenile, 1997.
• The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. Oxford University Press, 1997.
• By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• The Latter-day Saint Experience in America. Greenwood Press, 2004.
• People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture. Oxford University Press, 2007.
• The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2009.
• When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought. Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism (with Matthew J. Grow). Oxford University Press, 2011.
• The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life (with Fiona Givens). Ensign Peak, 2012.
• The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith (with Fiona Givens). Deseret Book, 2014.
• Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity. Oxford University Press, 2014.
• The Christ Who Heals: How God Restored the Truth that Saves Us (with Fiona Givens). Deseret Book, 2017.
• The Pearl of Greatest Price (with Brian M. Hauglid). Oxford University Press, 2019.
• "All Things New": Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything in Between (with Fiona Givens). Faith Matters Publishing, 2020.
• Mormonism: What Everyone Needs to Know®. Oxford University Press, 2020.
• The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern Mormonism. Chapel Hill: UNC University Press, 2021.

Edited volumes

• Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (with Reid L. Neilson) Oxford University Press, 2008.
• The Columbia Sourcebook of Mormons in the United States (with Reid L. Neilson) Columbia University Press, 2014.
• The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism (with Philip L. Barlow) Oxford University Press, 2015.

Articles and papers

• Mimesis and the Limits of Semblance. Ph.D. Diss. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1988
• "Blind Men and Hieroglyphs: The Collapse of Mimesis." European Romantic Review 2.1 (1991): 61–80.
• "Aristotle's Critique of Mimesis: The Romantic Prelude." Comparative Literature Studies 28.2 (1991): 121–136.
• "Romantic Agonies: Human Suffering and the Ethical Sublime." Romanticism Across the Disciplines (1998): 231–53.
• "'This Great Modern Abomination': Orthodoxy and Heresy in American Religion." Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion (2001).
• "Joseph Smith: Prophecy, Process, and Plenitude." in BYU Studies 44.4 (2005): 55–68.
• "'Lightning Out of Heaven': Joseph Smith and the Forging of Community." BYU Speeches 24 (2005).
• "New Religious Movements and the Orthodoxy: The Challenge to the Religious Mainstream." FARMS Review of Books 19.1 (2007): 201–221.
• "'There Is Room for Both': Mormon Cinema and the Paradoxes of Mormon Culture." BYU Studies 46.2 (2007): 188–208.
• "'Common Sense' Meets the Book of Mormon: Source, Substance and Prophetic Disruption." Revisiting Thomas F. O'Dea's The Mormons: Contemporary Perspectives (2008): 79–98.
• "Joseph Smith's American Bible: Radicalizing the Familiar." Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 18.2 (2009): 4–17.
• "Paradox and Discipleship." Religious Educator 11.1 (2010): 142–155.
• "Fraud, Philandery, and Football: Negotiating the Mormon Image." International Journal of Mormon Studies 4 (2011): 1–13.
• "The Prophecy of Enoch as Restoration Blueprint" Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Series, No. 18 : Utah State University Press, 2013.

References

External links

• Terryl Givens Official Website
• The Mormons PBS Frontline Documentary