Mormonism and Church discipline/Scholars

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Questions

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• Critics claim that the Church excommunicates or disfellowships scholars who publish historical information that is embarrassing to Church leaders.
• It is often claimed, despite the fact that these disciplinary actions are carried out by local leaders, that they are in reality instigated by general authorities.
• Critics claim that the Church is silencing honest people for telling the truth.
• The Church is claimed to take a "dim view" of intellectuals.

To see citations to the critical sources for these claims, click here

Response

The "September Six"

Six individuals were disciplined by the Church in September 1993. Supporters of those disciplined and critics of the Church have dubbed them "the September Six." The six individuals were:

• Lavina Fielding Anderson (excommunicated)
• Avraham Gileadi (excommunicated, now back in full fellowship)
• Maxine Hanks (excommunicated)
• D. Michael Quinn (excommunicated)
• Paul Toscano (excommunicated)
• Lynne Kanavel Whitesides (disfellowshipped)

Avraham Gileadi has never spoken publicly about the reasons for his excommunication, was never asked to retract any publications or statements, and has returned to full fellowship. It is probably inaccurate to lump him in with the other individuals here discussed.

The remaining five disciplinees have tended to claim that they were disciplined because of their writing and speaking on such matters as Church history, feminism, and abuses of power within the Church.^[1] Church leaders and officials rarely make the reasons or evidences presented at disciplinary councils public. We must remember, then, that former members are generally free to claim whatever they like about their excommunication, without much fear of contradiction from the Church.

It is useful, however, to compare what these five individuals have said and done publicly, and what others have revealed about them, as we try to assess whether their excommunication was "just" about Church history or related matters.

Lavina Fielding Anderson

Lavina Anderson is the only former member who continues to attend LDS worship services.

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Maxine Hanks

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D. Michael Quinn

Fellow member of the "September Six" Lavina Fielding Anderson wrote of Quinn:

Michael resigned from Signature's board of editors in 1985 and simultaneously announced that he and Jan would be divorcing. I was deeply grieved. I wondered if Jan had found his absorption with Mormon history intolerable....He simply explained that it was a long-standing area of disagreement but one which they had handled so privately between themselves that the divorce had, in fact, caught the children completely off guard....

[After resigning from BYU] Michael called and wrote occasionally during his self-imposed exile in New Orleans and sent me some of the pieces he was writing. I particularly remember a vivid description of a Mardi Gras parade and a highly symbolic short story of two missionaries in Louisiana who were sexually attracted to each other and caught in a web of desire and violence, stalked by a religious psychopath....

When Michael moved back to Utah, there was a new peace about him. He came to dinner and talked with deep serenity about the work he had done in therapy to come to terms with the contradictions and silences in his family's past, in his personal past, and in the sense of acceptance he felt about his personal, ecclesiastical, and sexual paradoxes. He also said that he was through running and hiding.^[2]

It is difficult to avoid the impression that Anderson is here describing Quinn's eventual decision to follow his homosexual inclinations, especially when Anderson later observes that in New Orleans, "He was also trying to come to terms with his gay identity, including intensive work with a therapist. They were years spent in hiding, trying to heal from an emotional battering."^[3]

Michael Quinn has claimed that he has been persecuted and excommunicated for being a "heretic."^[4] "Heresy" has little role in LDS discourse—heresy is about belief, while apostasy is about actions.

Despite the fact that his marriage had ended, and that he had embraced homosexuality, Quinn refused to attend his disciplinary council, telling his stake president that it was "a process which was designed to punish me for being the messenger of unwanted historical evidence and to intimidate me from further work in Mormon history."^[5]

Despite Quinn's claims that this was all about his history, his stake president wrote back on 11 May 1993, saying "There are other matters that I need to talk with you about that are not related to your historical writings. These are very sensitive and highly confidential and this is why I have not mentioned them before in writing."^[6] On May 28, his stake president reportedly visited in person and "demanded that Michael explain the 'moral allegations' [he] had heard about him." Anderson is critical of the stake president for later alluding to Quinn's homosexual behavior even more directly. Writes Anderson:

A week after his earlier letter, Hanks wrote another on 18 May alluding again to the "very sensitive and highly confidential" matters that were not related to Michael's historical writings. He scheduled an appointment two days later and "plead[ed] with you to come and let us resolve this." He added a ham-handed post-script: "Refusal to meet with me as a Priesthood leader is a very serious matter under these circumstances and could lead to further action, out of love and concern for your welfare." The allusion to Michael's sexual orientation, which Michael had not yet made public, was unmistakable.^[7]

Anderson is apparently under the mistaken impression that if one's sins are not public knowledge, Church leaders have no right or obligation to take action if such behavior comes to their attention. Quinn had left BYU by his own choice in 1988, and by Anderson's wholly sympathetic account was already well committed to his homosexual identity and behavior by September 1993. Yet, his stake president is portrayed as pestering Quinn relentlessly about something which Anderson thinks is none of his business. Still, Church members promise that they will not engage in such behavior—if they choose to, they ought to either resign, or they will be excommunicated. Quinn seems willing to do neither. He was put on formal probation, and again encouraged to meet with his leaders. Again, he refused any contact.

Quinn was eventually asked to appear to answer the charges "of conduct unbecoming a member of the Church and apostasy." Quinn claims that inside sources told him that the high council could not agree on the apostasy charge, and he was finally excommunicated for failure to meet with his priesthood leaders.^[8]

Anderson tells us later that "Although [Quinn] is open to a relationship with a partner, this has not happened."^[9] So, Quinn is not kept from an on-going homosexual liaison because he agrees with the Church's stance that such actions are wrong. Following his excommunication, Quinn "came out" as a practicing homosexual.^[10] Quinn also wrote a book claiming that "the Mormon church once accepted and condoned same-sex relationships and that these relationships were practiced by church leaders."^[11] Any doubt of Quinn's position is erased when one reads his announcement that he does not agree with the Church partly "because I claim that the mutual love of two men or of two women is as valid as the mutual love of a man and a woman."^[12]

So, we have here a case in which an individual has criticized current Church leaders for supposedly altering a previously tolerant stance toward homosexuality. Even he and his advocates indicate that he embraced and accepted his own homosexuality, and clearly sees nothing wrong with doing so. All of this is more than sufficient grounds for excommunication. History need not enter the matter at all.

Quinn has also repeatedly attacked the Church and its leaders publicly. For example:

• he called BYU an "Auschwitz of the mind," and compared the Board of Trustees of BYU (which include the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve apostles) to Communist leaders under Stalin.^[13]
• he compared his Stake President's desire to meet with him and possibly impose Church discipline to Saul's decision to stone the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen.^[14]
• Anderson praises Quinn's "ability to find peace despite those who have wronged him in sometimes mean-spirited and bullying ways."^[15] She mentions Elder Boyd K. Packer particularly. This glowing claim ignores, however, Quinn's frequent manipulation of sources related to Elder Packer in his subsequent works.^[16] (For more information, see Quinn on Boyd K. Packer.)

In short, Quinn's problems may have stemmed partly from his historical work, especially given his errors—but, his own behavior, acts, and words were more than sufficient by themselves to merit excommunication by any measure. He also refused to attend his own disciplinary council, and can thus continue to claim that it was all because of his history work—though even favorable accounts, like those by Anderson, make it clear that far more was going on than Quinn would like to admit.

Despite the claims about history, Quinn argues at length that homosexuality is not a sin, insists that the Church and its leaders are wrong to act as if it is, he repeatedly attacks leaders of the Church with ridiculous charges comparing them to Nazis and Stalinists, and he misrepresents the statements of some apostles to make another member of the Twelve (Elder Packer) look bad.

The striking thing is not that Quinn was excommunicated, but that it took as long as it did. His stake president's efforts are recorded with jaundiced eye by Anderson, who describes President Hank's efforts as "sounding plaintive and unjustly accused," "mildly phrased but...threatening," accompanied by "a ham-handed postscript." For Anderson, at best Hanks "was probably sincere," though Quinn's sincerity and rectitude is never questioned for a moment.

Quinn's letters, by contrast, are "temperate...even sympathetic," showing "a tone of genuine weariness," and he is filled with a "calm spirit of peace and comfort at the very center of his being. He crossed the last threshold of fear, the fear that he would not be able to bear what the church would do to him."^[17]

Despite Anderson's one-sided telling, even her account shows a leader trying over months to speak privately with a wayward member who refuses to believe the problem can be with him, and who sees only a conspiracy to suppress historical truth.

Unfortunately for this view, the historical record tells a different story—even when filtered through the lens of another member of the "September Six."

Paul Toscano

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• Brian M. Hauglid, "Review of Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology by Margaret and Paul Toscano," FARMS Review of Books 6/2 (1994): 250–282. off-site
• William J. Hamblin, "The Return of Simon and Helena (Review of The Sanctity of Dissent by Paul Toscano)," FARMS Review of Books 7/1 (1995): 298–316. off-site

Lynee Kanavel Whitesides

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September Six: conclusions

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Next section

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Janice Allred. See:

• Gary F. Novak, "The Return of Ashtoreth to the Groves and High Places: Feminist Ideology, the Politics of Victimization, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Review of: God the Mother and Other Theological Essays)," FARMS Review of Books 12/1 (2000): 67–94. off-site

== Notes ==

1. [note]  See, for example, Paul Toscano, "An Interview with Myself," Sunstone no. (Issue #130) (December 1993), 19. off-site
2. [note]  Lavina Fielding Anderson, "DNA Mormon: D. Michael Quinn," in Mormon Mavericks: Essays on Dissenters, edited by John Sillito and Susan Staker (Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 2002), 329-364.
3. [note]  Anderson, "DNA Mormon."
4. [note]  D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), xiii ( Index of claims )
5. [note]  D. Michael Quinn, Letter to Paul A. Hanks, 7 February 1993; cited in Anderson, "DNA Mormon."
6. [note]  Paul A. Hanks to D. Michael Quinn, 11 May 1993; cited in Anderson, "DNA Mormon."
7. [note]  Paul A. Hanks to D. Michael Quinn, 18 May 1993; cited in Anderson, "DNA Mormon."
8. [note]  Anderson, "DNA Mormon."
9. [note]  Anderson, "DNA Mormon," italics from the charges were in Pres. Hanks' original letter.
10. [note]  Klaus J. Hansen, "Quinnspeak (Review of Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 10/1 (1998): 132–140. off-site, page 132-133.
11. [note]  Publishers Weekly 243/45 (4 November 1996): 47; cited in George L. Mitton and Rhett S. James, "A Response to D. Michael Quinn's Homosexual Distortion of Latter-day Saint History (Review of Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 10/1 (1998): 141–263. off-site
12. [note]  Quinn, quoted in Sunstone (Dec 2003): 27.
13. [note]  "'BYU officials have said that Harvard should aspire to become the BYU of the East. That's like saying the Mayo Clinic should aspire to be Auschwitz. BYU is an Auschwitz of the mind.' When an administrator asked Michael whether he had been quoted accurately, Michael not only confirmed it but added, 'Academic freedom exists at BYU only for what is considered non-controversial by the university's Board of Trustees and administrators. By those definitions, academic freedom has always existed at Soviet universities (even during the Stalin era).'" - "Ex-BYU Professor Claims Beliefs Led to Dismissal," Salt Lake Tribune (30 July 1988): B-1; and Quinn, "On Being a Mormon Historian," 94; cited by Anderson, "DNA Mormon."
14. [note]  D. Michael Quinn, Letter to Paul A. Hanks, 19 May 1993; cited in Anderson, "DNA Mormon."
15. [note]  For examples see Duane Boyce, "A Betrayal of Trust (Review of: The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 9/2 (1997): 147–163. off-site A more detailed examination of Quinn's treatment of Elder Packer's remarks can be found here.
16. [note]  Anderson, "DNA Mormon."

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Answer

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