Lavina Fielding Anderson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lavina Fielding Anderson (born in 1944) is a Latter Day Saint scholar, writer, editor, and feminist. Anderson holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. Her editing credits include Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective (1987) and Tending the Garden: Essays on Mormon Literature (1996), as well as the Ensign (magazine), Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Journal of Mormon History, Mormon Women 's Forum Quarterly, and Case Reports of the Mormon Alliance. In 2001, Anderson published a critical edition of Lucy Mack Smith's memoir: Lucy's Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith's family memoir (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2001).

Anderson is one of the original trustees of the Mormon Alliance, founded in 1992 to document cases of spiritual and ecclesiastical abuse in the LDS Church. In 1993, Anderson published a chronology documenting cases of what she regarded as spiritual abuse by LDS church leaders during the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. This article became grounds for her excommunication on charges of apostasy in September 1993, as one of the September Six. Anderson remains as active in the LDS Church as her excommunicant status allows; she has been described by Levi S. Peterson (1996) as exemplary of an emerging "church in exile" composed of faithful excommunicants.

[edit] Bibliography

Anderson, Lavina Fielding. "The LDS intellectual community and church leadership: A contemporary chronology." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, [1] 26(1) Spring 1993, 7-64.
Anderson, Lavina Fielding. "Freedom of Conscience: A Personal Statement." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 26(4) [Winter 1993], 196-202.
Anderson, Lavina Fielding. "A Decade on the Thin Edge." Sunstone, December 2003, 28-31.
Peterson, Levi S. "Lavina Fielding Anderson and the power of a church in exile." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 29(4) [Winter 1996], 169-178.
Maloney, Karen Marguerite. "Saints for all seasons: Lavina Fielding Anderson and Bernard Shaw's Joan of Arc." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 36(3) [Fall 2003], 27-39.
"Six intellectuals disciplined for apostasy." Sunstone, November 1993, 65-73.
Waterman, Bryan and Kagel, Brian. The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998, pp. 258-301.