(This is an updated version of the review. Please destroy other copies.)
Revised Review
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Title: Why the Church is as True as the Gospel
Author: Eugene England
Publisher: Mormon Arts and Letters
Genre: Non-fiction
Year Published: reprinted 2007
Number of Pages: 154
Binding: Quality paperback
ISBN: 978-0-85051-101-7
Price: $15.95
Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle
A quick word before I go any further. Mortality is a test of how well we can perform under the burdens of the flesh. Those who know me personally will attest that I have more than my fair share of flesh -- much more -- and that sometimes one particular part of my flesh -- my brain -- works less well than at other times. This is one of those instances. The publisher gave me copies of books when I was in Utah last August. A rush of literally hundreds of books have arrived since then. It has been my responsibility to provide a timely review of each book, mostly assigning them to members of our review panel, in short order. To the Mormon Arts and Letters group, I have failed miserably. For this, I cannot apologize enough.
Now to the volume at hand. Many readers will have already read this amazing little book by the late Eugene England. So many have benefited from knowing him personally, whether as professor or simply as friend. I met Gene more than a decade ago. We had some mutual friends, and we had a nice discussion about these friends and so many other issues.
We all recall the words from Joseph Smith's History, as recorded in the Pearl of Great Price:
He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.
(Pearl of Great Price | JS-History 1:33)
This certainly came to pass. In an odd way, this could also be said about so many people who have made their way through Mormonism. Ezra Taft Benson -- he's loved, he's hated, but few travel a middle road. Hugh Nibley, Brigham Young -- I could go on. Some people seem to attract admirers and disdainers.
Gene England was no different. Known as a true believer, a man dedicated to his faith and to his church, he was not known to compromise at all. And, to the dismay of some, he insisted that those around him conform to his way of thinking. We know that this really doesn't work. Those inclined to agree with you are going to agree with you whether you insist or not. Those not so inclined will only be driven from your presence by your insistence.
In this volume, Gene England makes his best case for advancing the cause of the institutional church, not in spite of its faults, but because of them. He sees the ongoing tension between the divinity of the gospel, and the humanness of any institution, as a means for growth and advancement along the road to perfection.
Such an idea, of course, is nothing new, and he admits as much in his opening essay. Eastern religions recognized long ago that the conflict between sides, between yin and yang, played a large part in the quest for heaven, for nirvana. I must admit an affinity for this line of reasoning. My travels in religiondom have never led me to a perfect institution. Instead, the road is littered with the tattered remains of human efforts to touch the divine.
Each of the essays in this book has appeared in one form or another prior to this publication. Many are based on talks he's given to various audiences, varying from BYU to Sunstone. Quite a spectrum, eh? Can one person find harmony in the Lord's University and, in some minds, the devil's symposium <grin>, and not go mad? England managed to do this, and more.
Reading these essays is a bit like peering into the mind of a man whose intellect was considerable, but who found it necessary to put limits on his mental map. My last chat with him was at a Sunstone symposium, where we discussed several issues involving our mutual friends and other issues in Mormonism. He impressed me as a man who has been fully baptized in his religion's story, but also as one who was reluctant to wade very far from shore. He found his own safety zone, a quality I admired.
I have memories of a friend who was manager of our local Deseret Industries store. He was looking desperately for a new job -- he just couldn't take the pressure and, in his words, the idiocy of the Church's management policies. I can remember him walking through the store, muttering to himself, "The gospel is true, the gospel is true, the gospel is true..." I wondered what it was all about. I soon learned -- he had to divorce the gospel from the Church if he was survive, not just his job, but his membership in the Church.
England saw such a dichotomy as ill-advised and factually incorrect. You can't separate the two, he would insist. If you want one, you have to take them both. Reading this book, I began to wonder just how many people survive the institution because they believe the gospel. I don't know the mechanics of staying where one is miserable.
Gene England was anything but miserable. He clearly had found his place in the Mormon continuum. His own journey can be mapped in these pages. And while I may not have chosen the same path as Gene, I found myself liking this man very much. Make no mistake -- I would always be an outsider in his circle. But even outsiders, strangers within his gates, were treated with respect and affection.
Aside from the typos, the book is nicely produced. Other volumes in this series, titled "The Mormon Literary Library," carry consistent cover art and color. The binding is solid, the type large and easy to read.
So what of Eugene England? In what sense should the intellectually interested Latter-day Saint find this book and read it?
In one sense, England was, to the end, a true believer. In his essay titled "On Finding Truth and God," England offers what may be considered his summa: "I believe that, together with the scriptures which it plays a major role in preserving and teaching, the Church is one of the major gifts of grace God provides in his promise not to leave us comfortless in a difficult world." (p. 122)
But in another sense, England's passion for truth opens the door for others to go beyond Gene's own self-imposed limitations. It reminds us that there are so many outlets for intellectual stimulation, from approved sources like BYU to what some would consider the more stimulating sources like Sunstone and Dialogue. Gene lived in both worlds comfortably, not because he embraced all that they taught, but because they embraced him. And it is this sense of settled faith, of a sure and unbending knowing, that saturates his writing, pushing each of us to do just a little better and be a little wiser.
Jeff Needle
Association for Mormon Letters
jeff.needle@gmail.com<www.aml-online.org>
<www.LDSBookLovers.com/Needle.html>
