New story at the Daily Beast:
A difficult year for progressive members of the Church of Latter-day Saints (LDS) got harder this week. On Jan. 15, two Mormon dissidents, John Dehlin and April Young Bennett, both members of a critical minority that challenges the church’s positions on issues like women’s ordination or LGBT marriage, announced that they had come under the threat of church discipline.
Bennett, a board member of the feminist Mormon group Ordain Women, announced that her local LDS stake leadership (a stake is a group of smaller church wards) had given her an ultimatum: to resign from Ordain Women and delete her writings on women’s ordination or lose her temple recommendation, which allows her to attend temple. As her brother was about to get married in a temple wedding, she resigned.
Dehlin, who founded and hosts the popular podcast series “Mormon Stories,” featuring dissident Mormons and supporters of women’s ordination and same-sex marriage, announced that his stake president was calling him to a disciplinary council meeting on Jan. 25 to face excommunication for apostasy.
