The September Six
This Event Started Boyd K. Packer's War on Mormon Intellectuals
Although Doctrine and Covenants Section 93 states that “the Glory of God is Intelligence,” the recent history of the Mormon church has been one of suppressing intellectuals who use their intelligence to write truthfully about the history of the church.
Elder Boyd K. Packer, a former member of the First Presidency, led the effort to ex-comunicate six scholars who were members of the Mormon church in September of 1993.
The six academics ex-communicated for telling the truth about church history would become known as the September Six. Critics of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints point to this and the more recent dis-fellowshipping of Grant Palmer, author of An Insider's View of the Mormon Origins, as proof that the Mormon church is anti-intellectual.
The Mormon Leadership Regresses on the Intellectual Front
The early Mormon church valued knowledge and went to great lengths to set up Brigham Young University after the Mormons settled in Utah. The Web has made information available freely, making it easier to discover aspects of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that are not faith promoting.
Elder Boyd K. Packer stated that feminists, homosexuals, and so-called intellectuals were a danger to the church a year after the scholars and authors that comprised the September Six were ex-communicated.
The exommunications of intellectuals who write truthfully about the history of the Mormon church shows a backwards trend among the Mormon leadership which has made great advances in other areas, particularly overcoming racist policies like the ban on people of African descent holding the priesthood.
A List of the September Six
Although the excommunications of the Mormon historians and intellectuals took place in September of 1993, the full church disciplinary procedures extended several months afterwards. Many of the people who were removed from the church membership just published books with Signature Books.
- D. Michael Quinn
- Maxine Hanks
- Paul Toscano
- Lavina Fielding Anderson
- Lynne Kanavel Whitesides
- Avraham Gileadi
Ironically, Signature books was set up in an attempt to increase intellectual debate and scholarship among Mormons.
The Near Excommunication of Thomas Murphy
The Mormon leadership held few Courts of Love for anyone who challenged Mormon teachings on intellectual grounds for over a decade. The church announced that members who attended Sunstone symposiums would be subject to church discipline, which prompted the magazine to change the structure of these events.
It was not until Thomas Murphy published an otherwise little-regarded paper that the Mormon church would make another attack on an intellectual. Thomas Murphy, a university professor in Oregon, wrote a paper that stated one of the core doctrines of the church had little or no scientific evidence. The little-known Oregon scientist brought to light the issue of one of the Book of Mormon's most controversial claims. Thomas Murphy wrote a paper that flat out stated that Native Americans were not ancestors of Israelites who fled before the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem.
Increasing media attention to what would otherwise have been a largely ignored church disciplinary matter shed light on the recent trend of the Mormon church to be anti-intellectual when the accuracy of its doctrines or the accepted faith-promoting history that members are taught is challenged.
The Church Turning Against Intellectual Thought Is a Recent Change
Many things have improved for the better since the founding of the church in the 1830s. The war on intellectuals that has been waged by Mormon leadership during the last part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first is one area where the Mormon leadership seems to be moving backwards.
Resources:
LDS-Mormon.com – The September Six
“Five Scholars Excommunicated Over Their Books.” Phyllis Trickle. Publisher's Weekly
“Mormon Leaders Give Reprieve to a Skeptic.” Jim Carlton. Wall Street Journal. New York, NY
A Statue of the Angel Moroni
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