December 2004

SALT LAKE CITY On Sunday, December 12, Grant Palmer, a three-time director of LDS Institutes of Religion in California and Utah, will face excommunication for publishing his thoughts on Mormon origins. In his book, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, Palmer offers a frank discussion of the research and controversies surrounding the early history of the LDS church. Palmer has been summoned to a church court at 7:00 p.m. at the Willow Creek Stake Center, 3250 Creek Road, Sandy, Utah, to answer the charge of apostasy. Palmer says he doesn't feel like an apostate.

Over the past thirty five-years, historians have learned quite a bit about the life of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the Mormon prophet's visions, and the evolution of priesthood authority. Palmer suggests that most Latter-day Saints are unaware of the significance of these discoveries, and he gives a brief overview for those who want to know more about the issues. He charges the church with having idolized Joseph Smith, while Palmer praises the church's recent re-emphasis on the life of Jesus and Christian living.

This has irked some within the Mormon hierarchy. Recently Palmer was approached by stake president Keith Adams (comparable to a diocesan bishop) and told that the Holy Spirit had moved Adams to "push things forward" toward excommunicating Palmer. This would prevent Palmer from partaking of the eucharist, speaking or praying from the pulpit, or attending the temple. Palmer, who for thirteen years taught General Christianity to inmates at the Salt Lake Correctional Facility, has expressed concern over the message his church would be sending: "If they throw me out, they would be throwing out a believing Christian." Adams first approached Palmer a year ago after receiving a dossier on Palmer from the church's "Strengthening Church Members Committee," a bureaucratic watchdog group comparable in some ways to the Taliban's "Department of Vice and Virtue"; but Adams chose not to act on the committee's recommendations until now.

This fall marks the eleventh anniversary of the September 1993 purge of six prominent Mormon scholars and extends the tradition of disenfranchising those who fail to endorse the authorized version of Mormon history or whose orthodoxy is not strict enough for the church's hierarchy.