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.