Terryl Givens


Terryl Lynn Givens is a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he holds the James A. Bostwick Chair in English. He is a visiting fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.
Givens is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 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 a comparative literature PhD at 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" whereas 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