by Tim Wirkus
Sérgio licked his lips and then gingerly dropped the milkshake cup over the side of the hot tub. “Salgado-MacKenzie’s work, on the other hand—and Irena Sertôrian especially—feels like the absolute reverse of religion. Cosmology masquerading as fiction. Or at least I see the potential for that kind of transcendent meaning, something shimmering at the edges of all the Sertôrian short stories. Something brought to full light, maybe, in The Infinite Future. And I know—I’ve always known—how much meaning I impose on Sertôrian through sheer force of wanting meaning to exist there, but I’ve also hoped, in a secret part of my mind, that there really was something there, something The Infinite Future could elucidate for me.” Sérgio eased himself down further into the water. “I’m embarrassed by how disappointed I am.”
Harriet took this in, head bowed, nodding slightly.
I made what I hoped was a sympathetic face. I wanted to help.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I remember a couple of years ago—”
But Sérgio held up a hand to stop me. “I appreciate the gesture, Daniel,” he said. “I really do. But there’s a certain kind of existential disappointment you can only experience after you’ve passed the midpoint of your life, and right now I’m not sure if I can listen with much sympathy to your story of youthful travails. I hope you’ll understand.”
“Sure,” I said, although I was getting pretty tired of Sérgio’s moping.
In spite of the snow falling above us, the water was getting uncomfortably warm. I sat up straighter, exposing more of my torso to the freezing autumn air. The snow hadn’t stopped falling since we’d left Jack Phillips’s house, and it was beginning to overwhelm the black asphalt of the parking lot with soft whiteness. It was a strange feeling, being so warm on such a chilly night.
Sérgio had closed his eyes again and lay slouched there with his arms folded, the end of his ponytail dipped halfway into the water. Harriet, presumably as warm as I was, scooted over to the raised part of the underwater bench, adjusting the shoulder straps of her borrowed swimsuit as she did so, the fabric leaving behind a faint impression on her ghostly skin.
Clearing her throat, she said, “Earlier this evening, Daniel was asking me how I knew Craig Ahlgren—that attorney he met with in Salt Lake.” She pushed a clump of loose hair back behind her ear. “I told Daniel that Craig was my bishop once, which is true.”
She paused. Sérgio had opened his eyes and was listening intently. So was I.
Harriet said, “What I didn’t say, because I don’t readily admit this to anybody, is that Craig D. Ahlgren is my archnemesis.”
She said it matter-of-factly, with only a pinch of malice, and even less irony.
“That’s my big secret. Seventeen years ago, he excommunicated me from the Mormon Church. That part’s common knowledge, at least in certain circles, but what I won’t admit publicly is how much I hate him for doing it. When people ask me—at Mormon studies conferences, for instance—if I hate my former bishop for what he did, I tell them no, that what I feel toward him is compassion, that in some ways he’s also a victim of authoritarianism run amok, and that I bear him no ill will.” She shook her head. “None of that is true, but if I say what I really think, that I detest the man, I’m too easily construed as the unhinged malcontent that some church members need me to be.
“And just to clarify, I don’t hate hate Craig Ahlgren. That’s such a heavy thing, and I don’t . . .” She looked away from me and Sérgio and gazed out at the falling snow for a moment before turning back to look at us. “Well, actually I do. I do hate him, but only a little.”
She shrugged, not in apology but in defiance.
• • •
You have to understand (she continued), everything was going so well for me back then. This would have been early 1991—I’d recently been appointed chair of the Mormon studies program at Deseret State University, my biography of Eliza R. Snow, A Variegated Life: Eliza R. Snow and the Birth of Mormonism, had just come out and was getting some nice reviews from the right kinds of journals. I’d recently bought a house, a charming thirties-era bungalow, and to the extent that this is possible for me, I felt very content with my life.
If I had to pinpoint where the trouble started, I’d say it was when Ruth Taylor, the stake Relief Society president, invited me to speak about the Snow biography at a local Church fireside. I accepted the invitation. I was happy to do it, but then a week before the fireside was scheduled to happen, I got a call from Ruth letting me know that the fireside had been canceled. I assumed there must have been a scheduling conflict or something, so I didn’t think too much of it until Ruth said, “Harriet, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my decision.” I asked her what she meant, and she said she’d canceled the fireside by the express instruction of the stake president. He’d told her my research was not an approved subject of discussion for a Church audience, and I was not to speak publicly about it in any official stake gathering.
I thanked Ruth for letting me know, and assured her I didn’t hold it against her. I was tentatively furious, just not with Ruth. I got President Braddock on the phone and asked him why he’d canceled my fireside. He said he’d just received a letter from Church headquarters informing all stake presidents that I was not to be invited to give lectures or firesides relating to my book, A Variegated Life, in any Church-sanctioned settings, nor was I to be invited to speak on more general topics of Church history. President Braddock explained that the letter cited my book’s “unconventional portrayal of the Prophet Joseph Smith” as grounds for the speaking ban, such a portrayal being inappropriate for dissemination among the general Church membership.
It was true that a significant portion of my book dealt with the uncomfortable details of Eliza R. Snow’s marriage to Joseph Smith. It was a secret marriage, at least to some people, including Joseph’s first wife, Emma Hale Smith, although she did find out eventually. But that wasn’t the most significant part of Snow’s life, or my biography of her. The main focus of my book was on the influence she’d had on early Church cultures and structures through her poetry, her essays on Mormon scripture and doctrine, and her administration of the Relief Society and various other women’s organizations. But in the long run, the section of my book dealing with her marriage to Joseph Smith ended up getting the most attention and raising the most hackles among top Mormon brass.
I asked President Braddock if he would send me a copy of the letter in question, and he said no, he couldn’t. It was addressed to stake presidents only, and I was not a stake president, was I? Before I could answer that ridiculous question, or raise a few points of my own, President Braddock told me that if I had a problem with the decision, I should follow the prescribed channels of authority and take this up with my bishop. I told him I certainly would, and then, before I could get another word in, President Braddock hung up on me.
The next day was Sunday, and my bishop, Craig Ahlgren, beat me to the punch. After sacrament meeting, he stopped me in the hall and asked if I had a few minutes to chat. I said I did, that I’d been hoping to speak with him, and so we headed over to his office, a room identical in design and furnishing to hundreds of other Mormon bishops’ offices of a certain mid-century vintage—prickly carpeting on the walls, red upholstered chairs, a dark wooden desk. A large framed print of the Salt Lake temple was hanging on the wall behind the bishop’s desk.
I took a seat in one of the three padded chairs facing the framed picture of the temple, and Craig sat down in the soft red office chair behind the desk.
“Sister Kimball,” he said, folding his hands and resting them on the desk in that universal posture of bishoply concern. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me.”
“I’m happy to,” I said.
Craig responded with a beatific smile, and then compressed his face into an expression of thoughtful concern. He said he’d heard about the speaking ban and wanted to check in with me to
see how I felt about it.
“Not good,” I said.
A sympathetic smile from Craig.
“I’m sure you must have put a lot of work into that book,” he said.
“I did,” I said and then explained my frustration at being muzzled for writing about historically verifiable facts.
Craig said, “You should remember, Sister Kimball, that history’s always up for interpretation.”
“Certainly,” I said as Craig leaned back, arms folded, looking inordinately pleased to have dispensed this historiographic nugget.
I explained, though, that I’d used the utmost rigor in evaluating my sources, that I stood behind the account of Snow’s life that my book presented, that other historians had responded very positively to the book, and although I could see how some details of Snow’s life might dismay some members of the Church, I wrote the book from the position that I continued to occupy, that of a believing Latter-day Saint. It was baffling to me, then, that Church leaders would want to suppress the biography I’d written.
“We’re a religion that’s supposed to love truth,” I said.
“You’re right,” said Craig, “that truth is important. But just because something’s true doesn’t mean it needs to be discussed with everybody. Some truths are just not uplifting, and I have to say that your portrayal of Joseph Smith has the potential to shake some people’s testimonies.”
I tried my best to maintain my composure.
I said, “It’s essential that we know our history.”
“I’ll agree with you on that,” said Craig, although obviously he didn’t, at least not past a certain point. He regarded me with those kind blue eyes of his. “Sister Kimball,” he said. “I can see where you’re coming from. I understand why you’re upset. But I’ve always found in my life that even if I can’t see the wisdom in certain counsel right away, I’m always better off following the Brethren.”
“I appreciate that perspective,” I said, “but I’d like to know what I need to do to get this speaking ban overturned. President Braddock told me to follow the prescribed channels of authority if I wanted to be heard, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m following the rules. I’m talking to you.”
“But I don’t think you’re listening to me,” said Craig, a little less beatific now. “It’s not for us to counsel the Brethren. Their job is to receive revelation from God, and our job is to follow it. What you need to do, then, is examine the state of your heart and figure out what you need to do to change. You’re in a dangerous position, and I’d advise proceeding with caution.”
I recognize a threat when I hear one, and I said as much to Craig.
“Let’s not descend into paranoia,” said Craig. “I’m trying to help you here, Sister Kimball.”
I said that if he really wanted to help me, he would tell me who to talk to to get the speaking ban overturned.
He said, “I don’t think you’re hearing me, Harriet.”
We’d obviously reached an impasse, so I thanked Craig for his time and left his office.
Unfortunately, that first meeting turned out to be more courteous and productive than any that followed. Over the next couple of years, I ended up meeting with Bishop Ahlgren dozens of times as I continued down a path that he deemed dangerously heterodox. Our first meeting had been civil enough, but each time he called me into his office after that, our exchanges grew more adversarial. According to Craig, my offenses were legion. Attending a handful of Mormon women’s rights rallies. Writing a series of frank, factual articles for Sunstone that explained to an intended audience of high school seminary students sticky points from Mormon history, such as Joseph Smith’s polygamy, the Mountain Meadows massacre, and the restriction of priesthood based on race, to name just a few. Joining the Mormon Defense Association, a non-Church-sanctioned group formed to identify and resist abuses of power within Mormonism.
Although the material circumstances prompting each meeting may have varied, our ensuing disagreements consistently pivoted on a question that continues to vex Mormonism: To what degree should public dissent be allowed within the Church?
As he’d stated in our first meeting, Craig felt that any public departure from the policies and teachings espoused by the Church’s leaders constituted an open rebellion before God that damaged both the offending individual and the good name of the Church. On the other hand, I believed—and still believe—that free and open discourse is vital to the health of any community, and that Mormonism will never truly thrive as long as its leaders insist on suppressing dissenting opinions.
Early on, our debates were fairly academic, emotions and tempers kept well in check, but over time we gnawed at each other’s patience until all that remained was acrimony and bile. I’m pretty sure that sooner or later we would have reached a crisis point on our own, but the process was sped along when, in the fall of 1993, six prominent Mormon intellectuals were formally disciplined by their local leaders—one of them disfellowshipped and the other five excommunicated. Over the previous months, each of the three women and three men had produced scholarship—ranging from feminist critiques of church hierarchy to heterodox interpretations of the Book of Isaiah, to detailed examinations of sticky moments in Mormon history—that had infuriated many Church leaders. A few of the six had also agitated publicly for Church reform.
Just to give you an idea, Sérgio, of how serious a punishment this was: Other offenses that merit excommunication include murder, rape, and child abuse, and the ecclesiastical consequences are accordingly dire. Your baptism is nullified, for starters, and if you’ve received ordinances in the temple, those are nullified as well. For couples, that includes your eternal marriage, which means that unlike other Mormons who marry in the temple, you will no longer be with your spouse after you die.
There are more immediate consequences as well. You’re still allowed to attend church meetings—you’re encouraged to, in fact—but you can’t pray publicly, give talks, or take the sacrament, among other things. It’s very serious, but it’s not necessarily permanent, as apologists for the practice are quick to point out. And if, after at least one year, you’ve shown sufficient remorse for your offense, and met the conditions posited by your local leaders, the disciplinary council may consider your case and allow you to be rebaptized. That’s a lot of ifs, though, and in cases involving ideological conflicts, rebaptism becomes even more elusive.
And so, the September Six, as the Salt Lake Tribune dubbed them, became the focal point of heated debates within Mormonism. Some felt that the disciplinary actions represented a miscarriage of church justice, a disturbing abuse of power that encouraged unthinking, unquestioning loyalty in rank-and-file church members. Others felt bad for the Six, but ultimately believed that their leaders had not been wrong to excommunicate them—it was the prerogative of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve to dictate inspired doctrines and policies for the Church, and lay members, no matter how well educated they might be, had no right to assume that role for themselves. Other members had even less patience for the disciplined scholars—they got what was coming to them and probably deserved worse.
There were also plenty of Mormons who really didn’t care that much about it one way or the other.
I made my own position very clear and very public in an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times—the excommunications represented an abuse of power on the part of the bishops and stake presidents who actually carried out the councils, as well as irresponsible leadership on the part of senior Church officials, whose condemnatory rhetoric regarding Mormon historians and cultural critics fostered the environment of antagonism and oppression that had made the excommunications possible.
About two weeks after the editorial ran, Craig summoned me to his office for another meeting. He told me that this time I’d crossed an indisputable line—to so harshly and publicly criticize the Lord’s anointed servants was a clear sign o
f personal apostasy. I was hurting myself, potentially leading others astray, and damaging the good name of the Church.
I told him I was doing no such thing. If the Church’s good name was suffering damage, it was due to the reckless and reactionary authoritarianism exercised by the bishops, stake presidents, and general authorities responsible for the excommunications of the September Six.
Craig asked me if I truly believed that. I told him I did and that a healthy church depends on a free and open dialogue between its members and its leaders. Craig took this in, giving me one of those long, sincere, bishopy looks before saying, “Sister Kimball, it’s clear to me that you believe you’re doing the right thing here. What’s just as clear to me, though, is that you are not doing the right thing. You’re in a state of personal apostasy, and for your own sake and the sake of others, you need to begin the process of repentance. Because I believe you think your heart is in the right place, I’m not going to convene a disciplinary council at this point. Instead, the first step we’re going to take together is an informal probation. As long as this probation’s in effect, you won’t partake of the sacrament. I’m going to release you as ward music coordinator, and you’ll surrender your temple recommend to me.”
I stopped him right there. In case you’re wondering, Sérgio, informal probation is a real thing. I think it’s viewed as a more merciful action than a disciplinary council because it doesn’t show up on your permanent membership record. It didn’t feel more merciful to me, though. It felt like Craig was throwing aside what little due process exists in the Church for someone accused of major transgression.
