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Among the things Mormon brought into the spotlight by the Sonia Johnson affair, perhaps the least well understood was the LDS notion of “excommunication.” To non-Mormons the process seemed, in Phil Donahue’s widely heard characterization, a “medieval”, anachronism. On the Mormon side, while the notion was hardly a surprise, a remarkable ignorance of the criteria and mechanics was generally evident whenever the faithful tried to “explain” what was going on.

Mormonism has long occupied a unique place in the consciousness of Ameri cans. In the nineteenth century the Mormon Church was all but cast out of America: its prophet-founder ridiculed as a fraud and a…

1936. Sonia Harris is born on the Waushakie Indian Reservation near Malad, Idaho. 

1948. She moves with her family to Logan, Utah, where she graduates from high school, works in a bank for one year and then graduates from Utah State University with a B.A. in English. 

The third child in a family she describes as “five only children” because they were so far apart in years, Sonia traveled from one small town to another in the wake of her father’s seminary teaching career. When she was twelve years old, the family finally settled down in Logan.