Ex-LDS Church teacher may face excommunication
He wrote book questioning details of church's origins
Grant Palmer, who was employed by the church for 34 years and served as an LDS Institute director in Los Angeles, northern California and at the Utah State Prison before retiring, is scheduled for a church disciplinary council with leaders of his LDS stake on Sunday. The news was announced in a press release issued this week by Signature Books, publisher of Palmer's 2002 book, "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins."
Palmer told the Deseret Morning News he was aware that a press release had been issued by Signature but that he had not seen it.
His book calls into question the details of key events that LDS Church founder Joseph Smith chronicled in the early history of the faith. The book paints a different portrait than the official LDS version of some details surrounding the translation of the Book of Mormon, Smith's accounts of his visit with an angel named Moroni and the restoration of the faith's priesthood through an appearance of Christ's original apostles.
"I regard myself as heretical regarding some of the church's teachings, but I don't view myself as an apostate," he said.
LDS Church spokesman Dale Bills said the church "considers disciplinary matters to be confidential" and declined further comment. The church disciplines members it considers to be apostate.
Palmer said he attends church meetings and pays tithing.
"I'm not out to attack the church at all. I don't have an agenda, I haven't committed a sin or criticized the general authorities. The book is an honest expression of what happened in the Mormon past," he said.
But some historians and scholars at church-owned Brigham Young University say Palmer's book is more than merely an attempt to explain details about early LDS origins to garden-variety Latter-day Saints.
Daniel Peterson, director of BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, said much of what Palmer writes about has long been known by LDS historians and has been used by critics of the church.
"What's made it effective is that it comes from a retired CES instructor who presents it in a gentle tone," Peterson said. "It's not screeching anti-Mormonism."
Peterson, who often fends off LDS critics on Internet forums, said many of those critics and disaffected Latter-day Saints have seen the book as "something of a godsend that they could give to relatives and friends that would be nonthreatening and have the same or more impact."
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