Mormonism and Church discipline/Scholars

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Criticism

The Church excommunicates or disfellowships scholars who publish historical information that is embarrassing to Church leaders. These discplinary actions are carried out by local leaders, but are instigated by general authorities. The Church is silencing honest people for telling the truth.

Source(s) of the criticism

• Richard N. and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise, (New York:HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), Chapter 21. ( Index of claims )

Response

Another article that Buerger was preparing for publication apparently caught the attention of the First Presidency of the LDS Church, and he was asked once again to explain his personal religious views to ecclesiastical authorities (p. 7). After this incident, Buerger's ties to the church "became increasingly tenuous. When he presented his paper on the temple endowment ceremony at the August 1986 Sunstone Symposium, he had to borrow a temple recommend from a friend to, as he put it, 'ma[k]e me look like a card-carrying member.' Research became increasingly difficult [for him] when he was officially banned from entering the LDS Church Archives and Library in the summer of 1986" (p. 8). By 1987, the year that his article on the temple endowment was published in Dialogue, Buerger was losing his interest in Mormon history (p. 8). In 1992 he contacted LDS authorities and requested that his name be officially removed from the records of the church (p. 10). - Matthew B. Brown, "Of Your Own Selves Shall Men Arise, Review of The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship by David John Buerger," FARMS Review of Books 10/1 (1998): 97–131. off-site

Conclusion

A summary of the argument against the criticism.