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"Three men and three women have been charged with apostasy for their writing and speaking about Mormon subjects. Paul Toscano, Avraham Gileadi, D. Michael Quinn, Maxine Hanks and Lavina Fielding Anderson were excommunicated. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was disfellowshiped..."
"During the council, Ms Whitesides was accused of 'creating fiction' with her Mormon feminist statements on television. She also was charged with failure to support church leaders by saying, also on T.V., she couldn't 'find any evidence of Christ in [Elder] Packer's last speech.' "
"She was disfellowshipped...for 'conduct contrary to the laws of the church.'..."
"Lavina Fielding Anderson was excommunicated for a single article in the Independent Mormon journal, Dialogue. The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership chronicled episodes of intimidation against Mormon thinkers for the past 20 years..."
"LDS historian D. Michael Quinn has had three such councils within the last four months..."
"While he didn't attend the council, he wrote a defense."
" 'I vowed I would never again participate in 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,' he wrote."
"But he did reaffirm his faith that 'Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph Smith was God's prophet of the Restoration and that Ezra Taft Benson is the prophet, seer and revelator on the Earth today.' "
"The council was kind. They put him on probation. But in July, the punishment was upgraded to disfellowship. This week, while he was in California, his stake leaders excommunicated him..."
Avraham Gileadi, a conservative theologian and writer, was excommunicated for his writings about the Apocalypse and the Book of Isaiah. He...declined to talk with the press about his experience.
Source: Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 2, 1993.
For some more articles on this subject.
Joseph Smith had this to say about free thought. The Church would be wise to return to this belief.
The Mormon Church of this century has a very different message to convey.