Part IX of the Sunstone Classics series

Lavina Fielding Anderson was a prolific editor who had a huge impact on LDS journal articles and books over many decades. She was also an extraordinary writer. She was excommunicated in September 1993 for her work on the Mormon Alliance, thus becoming a member of the September Six. (The Church restored her membership in 2024, after her death.) This is an excerpt from a Sunstone article published in 1998. It begins on page 26 of issue 110. 

In the spring of 1994, a gathering of women precious to me began its testimony meeting with Janice Allred and Margaret Toscano sitting on the top row of risers and laughing about being on the edge. Janice, in her gentle, quiet voice, asked a question, “If I’m excommunicated this year, will you still love me?” I have walked with this question ever since.

I have not heard Janice ask that question again, but I have been collecting various answers to it. With terrifying frequency, some answers have been: I can’t love you unless the Church loves you. And the answer of the Church is: This is a court of love. Of course we love you. In the name of love, we cast you out. This answer should lead us all to deeper questions: How is that possible? What kind of love is this? How can we get the Church to love us? What is love purchased at such a price worth? And how can we continue to love the Church?

Those of us associated with Sunstone are about this question: What does it mean to be a Mormon intellectual—to put the fruits of our minds and hands at the service of our faith? But we have other questions: What does God want me to do with my life? What does discipleship mean? How can we be in the world but not of the world? How can we love if we cannot serve, and how can we find ways to serve? What do I do with brothers and sisters who ask different questions or who ask no questions? Does God respect my questions as much as he respects someone else’s answers? And there are deeper questions still: What does it mean to be God? Who is he, or she, or they? What makes me feel like their daughter?

Questions are dangerous. Certainly, some questions we ask are. Do we have to ask questions like this? Do we have to ask questions at all? Isn’t it more comfortable to lean on our certainties or on the certitude of others? Hugh Nibley asked, “Are you ashamed of getting the right answer, just because it’s the same as everyone else’s?” Jesus healed the epileptic son, but he also asked the father, “Do you have faith that I can heal him?” The father answered, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24). Jesus accepted the father’s answer, but what if he really wanted a different answer? John Donne, in his third satire, writes in cautious paradox:

To adore, or scorne an image, or protest

May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way

To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;

To sleepe, or runne wrong, is.

I remember hearing Elouise Bell say, “I don’t apologize for my doubts. I’m not particularly proud of them, either.” Isn’t it just as dangerous to have only questions and no answers as it is to have all the answers and recognize none of the questions?

These aren’t questions to supply easy answers to. These are questions we need to live with, to lie down and rise up with, to take on our journey, sometimes to wrestle with as Jacob wrestled with the angel, and sometimes to dance with.

Consider these metaphors for questions: questions can be treasures, the pearl of great price to be carried in the bosom and protected from thieves; or the faint and flickering light from a candle in a windy place that will show us our path one step ahead while we take that step in faith, trusting that if we continue our journey through the weary night, the sun will rise in the morning, drowning the light of our candle in the glorious light of full day.

A question can be a companion on our journey, just as Paul was accompanied on his journey to Damascus by his question, “Who art thou, Lord?” (Acts 9:5). He received an immediate answer and then spent the rest of his life working out what that answer meant as he shared the glad message with others.

A question can be like a child that we carry within our bodies. We protect it and nurture it as it grows. We have faith that the kicks, swelling, and heartburn will turn into a baby with flawless fingers, toes, and ears. We carry the question in hope, but questions like this make us weary. They give us backaches and headaches. Frequently, they make us sick to our stomachs. And they never stay little and contained. They lead to birth, sometimes rending and tearing as they come forth and take on a life of their own.

Asking questions requires courage. It requires a willingness to open one’s self to incertitude, to doubt, to disparagement, and to discouragement. It is to be willing to die to the old self, sometimes to die little deaths daily, in the confidence that change does not mean to lose oneself but to find oneself. Helen Keller said with sublime confidence:

I cannot understand why anyone should fear death. Life here is more cruel than death—life divides and estranges, while death, which at heart is life eternal, reunites and reconciles. I believe that when the eyes within my physical eyes shall open upon the world to come, I shall simply be consciously living in the country of my heart.

One of the great questions Christianity poses is its paradox that we save our lives only in losing them (Matt. 10:39). We’re uncomfortable with this paradox—which is, no doubt, its purpose. We’re meant to struggle with Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Sometimes we may hope that if we never ask ourselves that question, we will never have to ask ourselves the next question, which is: Is this particular concept a piece of the truth? And then the third question: And if it is true, what does it call me to do? How does it call me to live my life?

I never thought that one of the consequences of being excommunicated would be that I would stop being afraid. More precisely, I never expected that one of the consequences of being excommunicated would be the revelation of how afraid I had been—how much in love I had been with legalisms, rules, and restrictions; how quickly and willingly I had drawn lines to exclude others; how easily I had ranked others by righteousness; how much of my life had been governed by rules: what I ate, drank, and wore, what I could say and how, what I couldn’t say. I was a Pharisee supreme, judging others by how they spoke, walked, dressed, spent their money, acted on their political beliefs, prayed, and thought. There is nothing like being judged to show the dark side of judgment. I tell people that nothing in my personal and family life has changed because of the excommunication—and from one perspective, that’s true. We still have family prayer, read scriptures daily, sing hymns together, attend church weekly, spend our time and money in good causes, and find people who need our service. I had wondered if excommunication would mean a greater interest in smoking and drinking, if I would give myself permission to try the marijuana brownies that I had denied myself as a student at Brigham Young University. None of those things happened.

But an immense internal change has occurred. The fear is gone, and with it, the burden of the rules, regulations, and restrictions. It simply slipped off my back like the burden that Christian, in Pilgrim’s Progress, dropped at the feet of Christ as he passed through the wicket gate of baptism. I no longer feel any need to evaluate my own righteousness or—more important—the righteousness of others according to the rules. I haven’t given up judging as an act of will; a merciful hand has lifted it from me. Was I afraid, all those years, that only a rule stood between me and moral chaos? How could I have had so little faith? And how could I have had so little love that the first thing I wanted to know about others was their righteousness checklist instead of their stories and their hearts? There’s an immense freedom in listening for understanding instead of listening to evaluate, judge, prescribe remedies, and fix in various ways. I can’t think of the difference without feeling my heart well up with praise and gratitude to God.