Some events keep echoing down the decades and centuries with continuing relevance and meaning for later generations. In US history, there is July 4, 1776, December 7, 1941 (a day that will live in infamy, as it was named the next day by FDR), and September 11, 2001. Likewise in LDS history, although the dates can be a little fuzzy. Joseph Smith’s experience out in the grove was in 1820, but the specific day in not known. June 1844 for the day of his assassination, although you probably can’t name the day. June 1978 for the policy change on access to temples and the priesthood for LDS of African descent. But no event seems to carry as much relevance for the current LDS folk of the fringe than September 1993 and the group of excommunicated LDS scholars termed “the September Six.” It is still a strangely relevant event, even thirty years later. Let’s talk about it, using the Fall 2023 issue of Dialogue and its roundtable discussion of the September Six.
That Dialogue issue published a roundtable discussion titled “Contemporary Perspectives on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the September Six,” featuring short essays by five scholars and a short introduction by editor Taylor Petrey. Here’s the opening paragraph of that introduction, giving a quick overview for those who need it.
In September 1993, six people were excommunicated or disfellowshipped from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The events were widely covered in the news media. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, Avraham Gileadi, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn, and Lavina Fielding Anderson were the main figures. Others were summoned to disciplinary councils around the same time, but their excommunications were delayed including David P. Wright in 1994, Janice Merrill Allred in 1995, and Margaret Merrill Toscano in 2000. Gileadi and Hanks returned to the Church over time. Anderson’s request to rejoin was denied by the First Presidency in 2019.
Now let’s pull some quotes from the short essays, trying to get at why that series of events that kicked off in September 1993 is still relevant and what that means for LDS members and scholars who publish stuff about the Church here in 2024 and beyond. I’ll throw one observation out right up front: LDS bloggers (starting around 2002) in particular were in that “publish stuff” category and wondered what the post-1993 rules were (using “rules” rather loosely). As social media became a thing a decade later, a good chunk of the membership now publish stuff about the Church and from time to time get queried about it by their local bishops. In a certain sense — and if you publish stuff about the Church — it’s still 1993. But let’s see what the Dialogue contributors have to say about it.
Jana Riess, “A Question of Authority.”
[Link to the full essay here.] Her first sentence: “I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on September 25, 1993, almost immediately after Lavina Fielding Anderson was forced out of it.” I for one think we are lucky to have Jana, who does the “Flunking Sainthood” column over at Religion News Service and always has interesting things to say. In this essay, she highlighted two things that have changed in the intervening thirty years since 1993. “The first is simply that the Church no longer has any hope of fully controlling its own narrative.” You blog readers are certainly aware of this, but with Twitter/X, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and whatever the next thing to come along is, the problem is getting worse for the Church. AI might throw another curveball at the Church. I’ll bet there are already Sunday School teachers out there who don’t look at the LDS manual anymore, they just ask AI for a summary of the lesson of the week. Seminary students who would rather get a root canal than read five chapters of 2 Nephi, so they ask AI for a three-paragraph summary. Members who win back two weekends a year by skipping General Conference and just asking AI for a quick summary. It’s not just losing control of the narrative. Soon they won’t even be able to get the membership to be bothered with consulting the LDS narrative as published by the Church.
Her second point “is that younger generations of Church members appear to have a different sense of authority than older members do, at least in the United States.” Fewer kids think of religion in general as a positive thing, and fewer LDS kids think it’s so important to follow the counsel and directives of LDS leaders. The LGBT issue has done a lot to make LDS youth question the relevance of counsel from the leadership, but it seems broader than that. Who can blame them when, after almost two centuries, the leadership still can’t give a reasonable explanation why there is anything wrong with drinking coffee?
Patrick Q. Mason, “The September Six and the Lost Generation of Mormon Studies”
[Link to the full essay here.] Mason holds the Arrington Chair in Mormon History at USU. He starts with a straightforward observation: “From the perspective of institutional boundary maintenance, the September Six excommunications were a resounding success. … It was a broadside, a frontal assault on the entire independent Mormon intellectual community.” The result? A “lost generation of Mormon intellectuals” who prudently pursued fields and research topics not likely to stir up conflict with LDS leaders. One odd result was that, a decade later, Mason himself received an endowed chair at only 34 years old, the Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Mason notes that things have gotten better. He recounts some apprehension upon being “invited” to visit with an LDS General Authority, which turned out to be “a wonderful conversation” with a genuinely interested and reflective leader.
Mason’s closing thoughts. “Ideas cannot be quelched by fiat.” And “the pursuit of knowledge resists institutional correlation.” Let’s hope.
Kristine Haglund, “The September Six and the Evolution of Mormon Magisteria”
[Link to the full essay here.] Haglund is the prior editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. It is the original and still, I think, the leading journal of in the general field of intelligent and scholarly reflection on Mormonism. And it is still perceived as “the enemy” by the LDS leadership (publishing at Dialogue still kills one’s chances of being hired at BYU). Connecting the dots, LDS leadership is largely opposed to Mormon thought or Mormons thinking and publishing, unless such activity takes a distant second place to Mormon obedience. Every Dialogue editor has to contend with that challenge. That’s my short commentary. What does she have to say?
Haglund notes that after the dust settled in the years after 1993, a sort of working understanding emerged: “the Church would define policy and prescribe behavior, and scholars who refrained from explicit personal criticism of Church authorities or overt calls for policy change could write quite freely about Church history, scripture, and sociological trends.” Mormon studies programs emerged, a variety of conferences sprang up addressing LDS topics and fields, and a new generation of LDS scholars “largely pursued their interests without fear.” With the Gospel Topics Essays, even the official Church got in the game.
It’s still a somewhat messy and underdefined arrangement. She notes “the lack of a mechanism for declaring official doctrine” as a problem. She calls the evolution of Mormon doctrine a random and inscrutable process. She hopes “a model of respectful disagreement” can emerge, which I take as hopefully applied between the leadership and LDS intellectuals, as well as for Mormons generally amongst themselves. You may recognize the reference in the title to the famous Stephen Jay Gould article about Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA), which Haglund refers to throughout her essay. Read both the essays for more details on that connection.
There are two more essays, which I’m going to cover quickly (just because this is getting kind of long). Benjamin E. Park, “Mormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture.” [Link to full essay here.] He talks about the leadership caution against listening to “alternate voices,” the revelation of the SCMC Committee (the previously secret LDS committee keeping files on LDS who publish about the Church; you might have a file!), and Eugene England’s “J’accuse!” moment. That was the immediate context for the September Six convulsion. He talks about the ERA and Mormon involvement, another contextual link, and the leadership support that came out strongly for “the traditional family,” implicitly marginalizing any non-traditional family arrangement. This is the most historical of these Dialogue essays. Parting shot: “The scars of September Six continued to fester.” It’s still with us.
Finally, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, “She Simply Wanted More: Mormon Women and Excommunication.” [Link to full essay here.] She is the only writer to talk about The Family Proclamation, which came out in 1995, only two years after 1993. Another contextual event (these were busy, messy, noisy times for the Church). “As an outsider to Mormonism, I hope that feminist scholarship continues to flourish …. But insiders need to be able to do this work [publishing on women’s reproductive rights and LBGTQ+ issues] as well.” It’s nice to have an “outsider’s” view. In the 2000s, she sensed “the Church was opening up to its history. … Recently, however, I feel like the Church hierarchy is retrenching.”
Conclusions
So there you have it: reflections on the September Six events and what it means today, thirty years later. My own sense is that the events remain relevant because the LDS disciplinary system hasn’t changed much: it is still largely unregulated, fairly arbitrary, rather dependent on the mindset and views of the particular local leaders involved in a given case, and so forth. There are some active and zealous local leaders who praise the system and describe it as a loving process, but plenty of other participants who see it quite differently. It could and should be done differently and better.
A last observation I would throw out is disappointment with how little “truth” or “facts” or “accuracy” matters in these proceedings, at least in the apostasy trials spurred by doctrinal and historical issues and often instigated by communication from the COB to local leaders. It’s all about loyalty and nothing to do with truth. That is nothing the Church or its leaders ought to be proud of. Again, this could all be done differently and better.
So go read these essays at Dialogue if you haven’t already. It will be worth your time.
- What does “the September Six” mean to you today, in 2024?
- Did anything in the essays strike a chord with you? (And I couldn’t cover most of the material.)
- Any living memories of the events of September 1993 you might share?
- Did anyone shy away from Mormon Studies in their professional life because of the post-1993 tension around such pursuits?
- Alternatively, did anyone become *more* interested in those edgy LDS topics because of the attendant publicity?
Wheat & Tares 
I noticed that the COJCOLDS recently released a statement about AI. It reminded me of previous statements it has made about the Internet. The general idea is that these technological innovations can be used for good (i.e., to expand the Kingdom / Gospel, etc.) but that care must be taken because they can unleash evil forces (i.e., pornography, anti-Church narratives, etc.).
My view is that what the Church says about these technologies is irrelevant to most of us. But they say it because there’s a few who will choose to not take advantage of these tools in order to keep themselves safe. My other view is that were it not for the Internet, we would have more versions of Sept. 6. But with the Internet the Church is largely afraid to take us on. I’ll believe this until RFM gets excommunicated.
I would add Kate Kelly of ordain women to your list.
The whole thing is just discouraging. The old men are not willing to consider any wisdom except their own. Particularly from women.
Read. Mercy Without End, Chosen Path, Ordinary Equality, Mormonism in Crisis, etc. etc.
The Church leaders have lost their credibility. The “flip flop” on LGBT Exclusion and the SEC scandal are two recent events that come to mind. I l stopped believing years ago that they are “mouthpieces” for Jesus Christ.
In 1993 I was a BYU student and one of the Six was in my home ward – it created a for/against dynamic in the ward in regards to this person and critical thinking at large. And I am more nuanced if not PIMO now so my perspective has changed.
The excommunications completely backfired. They reduced efforts of faithful scholars in examining problematic issues. They made the church look like the 16th century Roman church. They strengthened fundamentalist black and white thinking and groups, which led to the epidemic of faith crises of today. They harmed six individuals and their families. And nothing tantalizes like forbidden books and subjects.
I was a student at BYU during this time. The September Six event sobered several of my professors in a way that is hard to describe and was an event that ratcheted up my interest in “edgy topics” that seemed to scare the church.
At the time, I was working with one of my professors on a book review we were co-authoring and planning to submit to Sunstone. A religion faculty member had written a book who had recently finished a requisite (and likely enabled) PhD from BYU in sociology. The book was based on the religion faculty member’s dissertation research, and, well, it was just so awful. When I say awful, I mean Brad Wilcox awful (e.g., “studies show non-believers won’t help others in the plane crash”). The religion professor’s research was bogus, and the message he was advancing based on his research was tropey and stylized. My professor and I wrote a pointed review–not only did we shred the author’s arguments, but the approach generally of sermonizing under the guise of social research findings. Findings, in this case, which were counterfeit.
Sunstone had responded positively and we were in the final stages of polishing the review in late October, about a month after the September Six had been excommunicated. One day I went to my professor’s office where I kept a desk (I was also his TA), and he greeted me with a serious look. He said he had been talking to some of the other faculty in my graduate program (we all shared some similar interests) and he said the concern about the SCMC was real. As the ramifications of the September Six distilled across the department, several moved to a more cautious position. My professor said they were quite certain the SCMC might be tracking everything they considered to be critical of the mission of the church or those working under its brand. Some in my department suggested I should not put my name on the review, largely because of my age and interests I had in pursuing a career in scholarship at that time. In the end, we shelved the review. While it was fun and biting, and made a point that extended beyond the book, we decided it the risk wasn’t worth the payoff. I guess you could say the September Six chilled that small project.
The Cecilia Konchar Farr controversy was running in parallel to the September Six, if I recall correctly. One of the concerning issues about her dismissal is that it was thought to be mandated by BYU’s board of education instead of by her department or university administration.
Looking back, it seems obvious the church was entrenching during that time in ways that extended even beyond the September Six. BYU would dismiss Farr, Knowlton, and Houston that year, and rewrite its academic freedom policies, substantially narrowing them (which received a fair amount of negative press). The brilliant but edgy fiction author Brian Evenson, an English department faculty member, would be pushed out a couple of years later, and within another few years, Eugene England would be shown the door. After BYU provost Bruce Hafen was called into the Seventy around that time, BYU eliminated the office of Provost altogether (traditionally the advocate of faculty to administration) and Bateman, who had replaced Rex Less as president, would introduce even more orthodox policies, and be the first president of BYU to also concurrently serve as a church general authority.
Seems a lot was happening at that time to stifle critical scholarship which focused on the church.
I agree with Jana Riess that there are generational shifts going on regarding authority. I have wondered from time to time whether subtle things like removing the punishments from the endowment in 1990 have contributed. I experienced the endowment in 1991, so I only know the prior version by hearsay, but it seems like it would instill a certain sort of fear that the newer versions do not.
I agree that the church discipline system is a mess. Excommunication may be necessary in some situations, but it should be very rare. There’s also a mismatch between how easy it is for a local leader to excommunicate someone, and how onerous the process is for rebaptism. The power to do one is diffuse, the other is concentrated at church headquarters. Either local leaders should have broad leeway to authorize rebaptism, or, preferrably, they should not be involved at all in excommunication, other than possibly making referrals. If church headquarters wants to review every rebaptism, they should do the same for excommunication. I might not agree with their decisions, but they would probably be more consistent, and much rarer.
Adding to Chet and BigSky’s comments, I was a student at BYU in the early/mid-1990s. While rather naive and not well-read, I definitely knew about the September 6 and all the English-department firings. When I headed to graduate school a few years later, I purposely chose a field that did not connect with Mormon studies at all. Without the chilling effect of the early 90s, I would have pursued Mormon studies. I know of others who did the same. We are part of Patrick Mason’s lost generation of Mormon scholars. We pursued other professions and do good work there, but there’s no reclaiming the work and contributions that never happened in the wake of the September 6.
“folk of the fringe”
Nice use of the term. Orson Scott Card would be proud.
Quentin, I think the attitude toward authority has been a gradual shift, starting with the hippies and boomers and the rebellion against the WWII generation and their following of authority. There has been a huge change from the time when I was a child and our elders expected obedience and respect. The hippies started a rebellion, with “never trust annyone over 30” and gradually the rest of the boomers agreed. It was the boomer generation that started objecting to the penalties, and caused the church to eventually change them. But I agree that the control of “authority” has gradually gotten less with younger generations. So, rather than causing a decrease in respect for authority, the penalties were removed because of questioning the kind of rule by fear they represented.
I was a student at the time, split between London and Tokyo, so was less aware of events than I might have been. I do remember the Institute director in London was required to remove all unapproved material from the Institute library which had been built up over years, and had included books such as Mormon Enigma, the biography of Emma Smith. Included in the material that had to go were issues of BYU Studies, of all things. Yep, even that didn’t fit the category of approved material.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
There was a time maybe ten years ago when I thought the Church had moved on and wouldn’t be dumb enough to revert to the “excommunication as a solution” habit again. I thought we were past all that. Then came the John Dehlin and Kate Kelly excommunications, which made it clear I was mistaken. The Church essentially learned nothing from the September Six episode. Or it learned the wrong things.
I agree with Patrick Mason on the issue. In terms of rigid boundary maintenance and intimidating intellectuals who might openly challenge many core elements of church tradition, Sept. 6 was a success. I find the phenomenon of believing intellectuals to be ever so intriguing. It amazes me that as a person develops a reputation and builds a life around commitment to an institution, their takes on controversial issues become increasingly less trustworthy. The younger have the flexibility to take more brash and critical positions. They don’t have reputations and careers to kill. If I know someone works at BYU and has written many articles in defense of church tradition, what kind of answer should I expect from them regarding things like women and the priesthood, BOM historicity, Joseph Smith and polygamy, etc.? I know that they feel that they have to be guarded about what they say and fear provoking strong reactions from leadership.