Thomas Rogers has written acclaimed plays, directed the BYU honors program (where he taught for over three decades), served as a Mission President in St. Petersburg, Russia and then as a traveling Patriarch for the church in eastern Europe.

Rogers has taken his share of “risks” in his professional, ecclesiastical, intellectual and personal life. In this Conversation with Terryl Givens, he shares some of what he has learned and experienced along the way.

In 2016, The Neal A Maxwell Institute published Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity and Beauty, a wonderful collection of Rogers’ essays and letters. It won a special award that year from the Association of Mormon Letters.

In his review of the book, Jack Harrell wrote:

“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.”