252: 'It wasn't God's Will': Reflections on the 4th Anniversary of Kate Kelly's Excommunication

A Thoughtful Faith - Mormon / LDS

In June 2014 Kate Kelly, the vocal spokesperson for Ordain Women, was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for apostasy. Kate Kelly had led a high profile campaign including two actions on Temple Square in order to ask the President of the LDS Church to pray about whether or not women should be ordained. This public petition that eventually included hundreds of women from around the world was met by a resounding silence and denial by the LDS leadership. But it was Kate's excommunication that either catapulted women out of the church or aroused a new awareness in the faithful that the church they had thought of as benevolent had, in this case, acted vindictively and egregiously to support the supremacy of the patriarchy. Katie Langston, Nancy Ross and Brittany Mangleson, women who arrived at an impasse after the excommunication and chose to pursue ordination in other faith traditions join me to discuss the impact of Ordain Women on them and the Mormon feminist community.