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Mormons to Discipline
Prominent Author
Breaking news: Grant Palmer disfellowshipped!
Once again, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is planning to skewer one of its own. On December 12, 2004, at 7:00 AM, at the Willow Creek Stake Center in the southern Salt Lake suburb of Sandy, Utah, a church disciplinary council will be convened against Grant H. Palmer, author of the book, "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins". Now a retiree, Palmer was a three-time director of LDS Institutes of Religion at colleges in California and Utah. He formerly instructed the high priest group in his local congregation in Sandy, Utah, and has been active in the Mormon History Association and on the board of directors of the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association.
Even though Palmer's book has been sold through the Church's publishing arm, Deseret Book, for two years from its publication in October 2002 until the last week of November 2004, apparently that's not enough to dissuade Palmer's local lay leader, stake president, Keith Adams, an attorney with Seattle-based, Stoel Rives LLP, from convening the disciplinary council for charges of apostasy.
The proceedings were presaged by an unprecedented number of negative reviews in the journals of two LDS Church apologetics groups, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) headquartered at the Church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and the independent Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR), based in Mesa, Arizona.
Persons sympathetic to Palmer's plight were shocked to learn Friday, December 3, in the midst of their open online discussion of the possibility of setting up websites savegrantpalmer and supportgrantpalmer, that FAIR's webmaster and editor, Allen Wyatt, surreptitiously and preemptively registered the addresses for himself.
The actions of the LDS Church continue a string of activity in recent years against intellectual inquiry. In December 2002, author and anthropologist, Thomas W. Murphy was scheduled to have excommunication proceedings brought against him which were cancelled after a flurry of media activity. Murphy authored the article "Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy, and Genetics" (part of "American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon", Dan Vogel & Brent Metcalfe, eds.), in which the Church's claim of a Jewish origin of Native Americans was brought into question. This claim forms the fundamental basis of the narrative of "The Book of Mormon" considered scripture by the LDS Church.
Earlier, the Church took action back in September and October 1993 against six prominent intellectual authors, commonly referred to subsequently as the "September Six": D.Michael Quinn (historian and former BYU professor), Avraham Gileadi (author of works on Isaiah), Paul Toscano (Salt Lake attorney and author), Lavina Fielding Anderson (editor and writer of the Church-published "Ensign" during most of the 1970s), Maxine Hanks (feminist author), and Lynne Kanavel Whitesides (president of the Mormon Women's Forum). All were excommunicated except Whitesides, who was disfellowshipped.
More recent excommunicants over intellectual issues include David Wright (1994, for articles questioning the historicity of the Book of Mormon, Michael Barrett (1994, for writing letters to correct news stories about Mormonism), Brent Metcalfe (1994, for the anthology "New Approaches to the Book of Mormon"), Janice Allred (1997, for submitting theological papers to a Sunstone symposium), Margaret Toscano (2000, for writing on feminist issues), Shane LeGrande Whelan (2002, for his book, "More Than One: Plural Marriage, A Sacred Heritage, A Promise For Tomorrow").
Send a message to Grant Palmer's Stake President, Keith Adams. Send a message to
LDS church headquarters here. About Grant
Palmer's Book
About
Grant Palmer's Service to the Church
Additional information for fact-checkers
Willow Creek Stake Center, 2350 E Creek Rd. (8200 S), Sandy, UT 84093
Link to Grant Palmer's book, "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1560851570/002-3196380-4231233
Contact information for J. Keith Adams:
http://www.stoel.com/asp/resumes/resume.asp?rs_name=JKA033
WHOIS traces for the websites Allen Wyatt is squatting on:
http://www.whois.org/whois.cgi2?d=savegrantpalmer.com
http://www.whois.org/whois.cgi2?d=savegrantpalmer.org
http://www.whois.org/whois.cgi2?d=supportgrantpalmer.com
http://www.whois.org/whois.cgi2?d=supportgrantpalmer.org
Information on Allen Wyatt:
http://www.fairlds.org/info.html
Relevant threads on the Recovery from Mormonism website (www.exmormon.org):
http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/view.php?bn=exmobb_recovery&key=1102197685&newest=1102239524
http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/view.php?bn=exmobb_recovery&key=1102332960&newest=1102355070
Negative reviews in FARMS Review:
1) Statement from the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=510
2) The Charge of a Man with a Broken Lance (But Look What He Doesn't Tell Us)
by: Davis Bitton
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=511
3) Trustworthy History?
by: Steven C. Harper
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=512
4) A One-sided View of Mormon Origins
by: Mark Ashurst-McGee
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=513
5) Prying into Palmer
by: Louis Midgley
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=514
6) Asked and Answered: A Response to Grant H. Palmer
by: James B. Allen
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=533
Information about the September Six:
http://www.lds-mormon.com/sepsix.shtml
Information about Thomas Murphy:
http://www.tungate.com/murphy.htm
Information about additional excommunicants from "Dissident LDS intellectuals say excommunications will continue", Daily Herald/December 11, 2002, by Patty Henetz:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/mormon/mormon89.html
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