D. Michael Quinn - Relationship With LDS Church

Relationship With LDS Church

In September 1993, according to his biographer Lavina Fielding Anderson, his insubordination directed toward church authorities and his publication of his on-going work resulted in his excommunication from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as one of the September Six. Despite his excommunication, Quinn believes in the Latter Day Saint movement, although he is in disagreement with certain policies and doctrines.

Quinn's research topics, both before and after his excommunication, were in-depth revisions of traditional accounts of Mormon history grounded in primary source material. Three of his most influential books, each of which is the focal point of intense controversy, are Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, and The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power.

In an April 2006 Wall Street Journal article, reporter Daniel Golden wrote that Quinn has become unhirable because almost all the funding for professorships in Mormon studies comes from Mormon donors. In 2003, Brigham Young University threatened to withdraw funding for a conference it was co-sponsoring at Yale if Quinn were allowed to speak. More recently Arizona State University administrators vetoed the department of religious studies in its recommendation to hire Quinn. ASU faculty believe officials fear alienating ASU’s 3,700 LDS students and offending Ira Fulton, a powerful Mormon donor who, according to Golden, has called Quinn a “nothing person.”

In 2007, Quinn was interviewed in the PBS documentary The Mormons.