Part X of the Sunstone Classics series.

D. Michael Quinn was the author of such classic books of Mormon history as Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview and The Mormon Hierarchy series. He was excommunicated in September 1993, thus becoming a member of the September Six. This is excerpted from a Sunstone article published in 2003. It starts on page 25 of issue 130.

Can there be spiritual life after the spiritual death of excommunication from the true Church of God upon the earth? For me, the answer is both “yes” and “no.” I’ll begin with the negative.

First, to be a Mormon is to be spiritually and socially linked to a tight-knit, yet diverse, community. Often, they are strangers who become your friends as soon as they know you are a Mormon. Thirty years ago this month, my wife and I moved from Utah to Connecticut, where we knew no one. On arrival, I made one phone call, and shortly thereafter people were at our new residence, bringing food to us and asking if they could help us move in. During our first Sunday of LDS meetings, we linked up with a network of compatible personalities who were friends for as long as we lived among them. Active Mormons socialize primarily with other active Mormons, and on these occasions, some or all of their conversation involves the Church.

When you’re excommunicated, these social relationships end for the most part—not because of ill-will by former friends, but because of the awkwardness and sadness that active Mormons feel in your company. They try to avoid social situations where they don’t feel free to talk enthusiastically about the Church. I regret that loss of social fellowship.

Therefore, I appreciate the fellowship I receive from so many Mormons at Sunstone symposiums and similar gatherings. However, academic conferences (for me) cannot substitute for the fellowship of the Church.

Second, as a selfish person, I also miss the opportunities and obligations of service to others that the Church provided me from adolescence to middle age—of monthly visiting several families whom I had not previously known, of administering to the sick and dying, of participating in service projects for widows and the needy, and even of attending boring administrative meetings whose main purpose was to discuss ways of serving fellow Mormons.

Whatever benefit to others may reside in the five books and twenty articles I have published during the past ten years, I do not deceive myself into thinking that academic contributions can substitute for giving care to the sick, the dying, the impoverished, the orphaned, the widowed, and others needing human compassion. Nor have I compensated for those losses by submerging myself in humanitarian service. I’m too selfish to motivate myself to follow the secular example of Albert Schweitzer and countless others who have not needed a church to make them follow the Second Great Commandment. Religious fellowship and compassionate service have ended for me as an excommunicated Mormon, and that has been a profound loss. I have occasionally attended meetings of other churches, but, in truth, I’ve had enough of organized religion of any kind. All my sabbaths are secular.

Which leads to a dimension of my experience that totally surprised me. Even though I did not want to be excommunicated, I felt a profound sense of relief afterwards. With all its truth and authority, the Church has promoted policies and ideologies that I could not support. Because it’s no longer my Church, I feel no obligation to make excuses for it nor to remain silent about matters of disagreement. I remain a Mormon in heritage and worldview—in my dna, if you will—but as an excommunicated Mormon, I’m not required to “sustain” LDS teachings, policies, or prophets when I feel they are wrong. I think that is a good thing.

Nevertheless, I remember what nineteenth-century singer Jenny Lind advised a fellow Protestant who was about to accept Roman Catholic baptism: “[Don’t] expect more of the church on earth than she really can give.” 

Third, there are limits to my detachment from organized Mormonism. I’ve abruptly refused evangelical Protestants who have invited me to endorse their polemical writings about the Church. I’ve explained the faith context and differing viewpoints about Mormon controversies to newspaper reporters who expected me to present only the negative. I’ve been saddened to learn about the deaths of full-time missionaries and of general authorities, both of whom devote their full energy to serving God and humanity as best they understand. And I’ve been pleased whenever I’ve heard that LDS missionaries have been given access to countries where they had previously been forbidden, even though I still have concerns about cultural imperialism in LDS proselytizing.

Has my personal relationship with God changed since my excommunication? Again, “yes” and “no.”

I do not have the same interactive engagement with God as I did while I was a missionary, a branch president, an elder’s quorum president, a temple ordinance worker, a Gospel Doctrine teacher, a counselor in two bishoprics, or a member of a stake high council. These Church callings required me to seek God’s guidance and strength more intensely and diversely than is necessary when you are living your life outside the Church.

However, I still feel the “burning of the Spirit” within me from time to time. I still talk with God as my Heavenly Father, give thanks for his many blessings, seek his guidance, and ask his intervention for myself and others. Although intellectually I believe in Mother in Heaven, spiritually, my relationship on Earth has always been with the Father.

Since adolescence, however, my intense faith has co-existed with a sacrilegious sense of humor. I’m not sure whether there has been an increase in my laughing at religious jokes, retelling them, or giving my own jibes.

I feel the same convictions about the afterlife that I did from my teenage years onward. In view of latter-day revelations, Mormons don’t—or shouldn’t—believe in a “hell” of never-ending punishment and torment. Instead, Latter-day Saints believe in eternal “degrees of glory” for every human being except those who hate God eternally. After death, I expect to be as close to God or as distant from his presence as we are both comfortable to be. If that means we can embrace once or twice, that will be enough. If it means that I will serve him and others worthier than I from a distance throughout all eternity, then I am satisfied. There is nothing wrong with being a “mere” servant to God in the afterlife.

And if my eternal status is like a twinkling star, rather than the brilliant sun of those who are “exalted,” then I will be happy to be in my proper place in companionship with others who are comfortable in my presence. If I am not mistaken, “happy” is the word the founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith used to describe those in the lowest degree of glory.