1972–2015

The September Six

Six Latter-day Saint scholars and feminists disciplined in one month, 1993

12 people, ordered by how much of this topic turns on them. Each note describes the person's part in this topic, not a biography — the same person carries a different note on another topic.

LA

Lavina Fielding Anderson

b. 1944

Editor and chronicler

A former Ensign editor and editor of the Journal of Mormon History, Anderson compiled the dated, named record of ecclesiastical pressure on Latter-day Saint intellectuals that she read at the 1992 Sunstone symposium and published in Dialogue in Spring 1993. That article, and the Mormon Alliance she co-founded to document what she called ecclesiastical and spiritual abuse, were the stated grounds of her stake president's concern. She was excommunicated on 23 September 1993, appealed at length, was denied, and has attended her ward continuously ever since.

Wikipedia

DQ

D. Michael Quinn

1944–2021

Historian of the hierarchy

Hired onto Leonard Arrington's History Division as a graduate student in 1972, Quinn became the most prominent scholar among the six. His 1985 Dialogue article on plural marriages authorized after the 1890 Manifesto, and his 1992 essay arguing that Mormon women had held priesthood since 1843, were named by his stake president in the written accusation of apostasy delivered to his door in February 1993. He refused to attend his own council and was excommunicated in September 1993.

Wikipedia

BP

Boyd K. Packer

1924–2015

Apostle; critic of the new history

Packer's 1981 address to Church Educational System teachers, 'The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect,' became the central text of the argument over how Latter-day Saint history should be written. In May 1993 he told the All-Church Coordinating Council that the dangers facing the Church came from the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement and 'the so-called scholars or intellectuals.' Several of the disciplined scholars say their local leaders told them Packer was coordinating the 1993 councils; the Church has denied that general authorities directed those decisions.

Wikipedia Image: Public domain

LA

Leonard J. Arrington

1917–1999

Church Historian, 1972–1982

The first professionally trained historian to hold the office, Arrington opened the Church archives, hired a staff and launched a sixteen-volume history. His decade was later nicknamed 'Camelot.' The projects were curtailed, his title was changed in 1978, his division was moved to Brigham Young University, and he was released in January 1982 without public announcement. Everything that followed in this story runs through the rise and collapse of his History Division.

Wikipedia Image: CC BY-SA 3.0 — Susan Arrington Madsen

PT

Paul James Toscano

b. 1946

Attorney and lay theologian

A Salt Lake City lawyer and co-founder of the Mormon Alliance, Toscano published 'A Plea to the Leadership of the Church: Choose Love not Power' in the same Dialogue issue as Anderson's chronology. His August 1993 Sunstone address, 'All Is Not Well in Zion: False Teachings of the True Church,' was transcribed from a purchased cassette and became the focus of his 19 September 1993 council. His wife Margaret Toscano was excommunicated in 2000 for her writing on Heavenly Mother and women's ordination.

Wikipedia

MH

Maxine Hanks

Feminist historian and editor

Hanks edited Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (Signature, 1992), which gathered feminist writing on Latter-day Saint women's relationship to priesthood. She has said that five of her contributors and she herself faced Church discipline, and that four of them were among the September Six. Excommunicated on 19 September 1993, she later worked as a chaplain and a scholar of Gnosticism and was rebaptized in February 2012 without recanting her work.

Wikipedia

LW

Lynne Kanavel Whitesides

Mormon Women's Forum president

Whitesides spoke publicly on the Mother in Heaven and on women's spiritual authority. Hers was the first council of the month, on 14 September 1993, and the only one held at ward rather than stake level; her bishop barred even her husband from attending. She was disfellowshipped rather than excommunicated, appealed, and was denied. She has since said the discipline opened a spiritual world she had not known was possible.

Wikipedia

AG

Avraham Gileadi

Hebrew and Isaiah scholar

A convert with a doctorate in ancient studies, Gileadi wrote The Last Days: Types and Shadows from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, published by the Church-owned Deseret Book. He is the theological conservative of the group and the one who never discussed his case publicly. Sunstone reported he was told he was excommunicated for teaching false doctrine, for being predatory in teaching his theology, and for believing dead prophets over living ones. He was rebaptized in February 1996.

Wikipedia Image: CC BY-SA 3.0 — Super Rad!

DO

Dallin H. Oaks

b. 1932

Apostle; 'Alternate Voices'

Oaks's April 1989 general conference address 'Alternate Voices' named a category into which independent Mormon publishing and symposia were understood to fall, and it is the text both camps returned to for the next decade. He spoke for the Church on National Public Radio during the 1993 controversy, denying that the councils were a purge. Quinn's memoir reports Oaks telling Steve Benson that the Twelve could not restrain Packer: 'You can't stage manage a grizzly bear.'

Wikipedia Image: CC BY-SA 4.0 — Scott G. Winterton for Deseret News

SM

Sterling M. McMurrin

1914–1996

Philosopher; U.S. Commissioner of Education

McMurrin was the most conspicuous Latter-day Saint intellectual of his generation and the one the hierarchy could not touch, because David O. McKay had personally protected him from excommunication. The Seventh East Press interview in which he denied belief in the First Vision and an ancient Book of Mormon, published 11 January 1983, precipitated the paper's ban at BYU and stands as the opening of the modern conflict.

Wikipedia Image: Public domain

KK

Kate Kelly

b. 1980

Founder, Ordain Women

Kelly, a human-rights lawyer, founded Ordain Women in 2013 and organized women seeking admission to the priesthood session of general conference. She was excommunicated in June 2014; the letter from her bishop cited conduct contrary to the laws and order of the Church and an aggressive effort to persuade other members to her point of view. Her case is the clearest twenty-first-century successor to 1993, and the first fought largely online.

Wikipedia Image: CC BY-SA 3.0 — Maralise Petersen

JD

John Dehlin

b. 1969

Founder, Mormon Stories

Dehlin founded the Mormon Stories podcast in 2005, interviewing believing, doubting and former Latter-day Saints, and later publicly supported Ordain Women and same-sex marriage. He was excommunicated in February 2015. Commentators in Dialogue group his case with Denver Snuffer's (2013) and Kate Kelly's (2014) on the ground that all three founded organizations the Church regarded as rival institutions, rather than merely publishing criticism. He is the owner of the database this synthesis is written for.

Wikipedia Image: CC BY 2.0 — Timothy Vollmer