Last week, two seemingly unrelated stories appeared in my Facebook feed in rapid succession. The first was the unwelcome update that Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1993, has been denied re-baptism. Anderson's excommunication was caused by her shining a light on what she called "ecclesiastical abuse" in the Church. It was documented in a long, well-researched Dialogue article that chronicled how intellectuals and feminists were being disciplined by Mormon leaders for various things they wrote and said.
And then, Anderson herself was targeted for the things she wrote and said, her excommunication occurring within the famous purge of the "September Six."
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