For Kate and John: Let the caravan move on

I just saw the news about Kate Kelly's and John Dehlin's impending disciplinary councils: Two Activists Within Mormon Church Threatened with Excommunication (New York Times). As an excommunicant myself, I'd like to offer the following to Kate and John and their supporters:

I remember how it felt to be contacted--out of the blue--by the local church leadership. Even though I'd always figured that moment was likely to come someday, it was more distressing than I had expected. I felt targeted. I suspected right away that this action was being directed from higher up; and when talking to the stake president first bolstered, then outright confirmed, those suspicions, that revelation intensified the feeling that I was being secretly monitored from afar by some shadowy presence who wanted to get me "under control." "Threatened" (as the New York Times headline puts it) is a good description of what it felt like.

Excommunication is an institution speaking in the name of an entire faith community to say, "We disown you." And even though I had mentally disowned that institution long before (my relationship was, and is, with the Mormon tradition, not with the LDS Church), it's still intimidating when the institution's representatives turn up to declare their intention to formally cut you off. (Linger on that metaphor.) Kate and John appear to feel more invested in the institution than I did at that point, which must make the experience more painful.

Excommunication serves as a kind of smear campaign. Because the institution won't go on record explaining why they disowned you--apart from deliberately vague generalities like "apostasy" or "conduct unbecoming a member of the church"--the LDS faithful are free to cast doubt on whatever you say about what happened and what you did or did not do to "deserve" this action. If your supporters try to give you the halo of martyrdom, suave apologists like Terryl Givens can say, as he said about excommunicated intellectuals for the PBS special The Mormons: Well, you know, since the church can't comment, we're only hearing one side of the story... At which point, the faithful can imagine whatever they want about why you were "really" excommunicated. Maybe it wasn't just because of your podcasts or your public questioning of church policy. Maybe church leaders knew there was something going on in your private life. Maybe that something else--some secret sin you felt a need to rationalize--is the real reason you questioned church teachings... And then they can feel that much more justified in ignoring whatever issues you were trying to raise.

It's a nasty business. I'm scoffing bitterly: Just a day or two ago, inveterate optimists like John Gustav-Wrathall and Joanna Brooks were gushing about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir having sung "Somewhere over the Rainbow" on the same Sunday that gay pride was being celebrated in Salt Lake City... grasping, as they do, for signs that the church is changing, reasons for hope. And now--the same old same-old. We don't know, of course, what's going on behind the scenes. We don't know which individuals at church headquarters may be responsible for these disciplinary councils going forward; we don't know which other individuals at headquarters may have favored a different approach. Maybe the relatively more progressive-leaning folks, or at least more image-conscious folks, will manage to work behind the scenes to get these disciplinary councils indefinitely postponed. But what's happening right now makes clear that the old guard are still on duty.

If any of you out there are surprised by this turn of events--I'm sorry, but you need to get wise. You can't assume good faith on the part of church leadership; you have to always assume that at least some of them are working to figure out how to stab you in the back. If you can't assimilate that picture of church leadership into your worldview--then it's only a matter of time before you get struck on the head by a rock you had no idea someone was getting ready to throw at you.

Okay, I hadn't intended to get that bitter. Let me try to be more... pastoral.

First, to Kate and John: Unsolicited advice from someone whose been in your shoes. Your top priority right now is figuring out how to respond to the disciplinary council in a way that will leave you feeling, at the end, that you have acted with integrity, that you have acted in a way that is spiritually healthy for you, that you have been proactive rather than simply reactive, and that you have no lingering regrets about the way in which you have brought closure to your formal church membership--and you should assume that excommunication will be the outcome. I would urge you not to let your role as public figures play any consideration in how you go about doing those things. This moment is about what you need to do for yourself--period.

Second, to Kate and John and their supporters: These excommunications--if they happen, which, again, you should assume they will--should make no difference whatsoever in how you go about doing your work. Don't let a change in Kate's or John's membership status change anything else. Just go on doing what you've been doing. To paraphrase a famous metaphor of Bruce R. McConkie's: Let the dogs snap at your heels; the caravan moves on. Mormon Stories moves on. Ordain Women moves on. In Christ's name, amen.