Several years ago, I wrote a series of posts for the Millennial Star blog regarding Ordain Women.  In the years that followed, Kate Kelly was excommunicated and I can see no evidence that any of those “faithful” women are actually active, believing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today.  I find this disappointing, but I predicted that this would be the inevitable result of participation in that organization. One of the posts was perhaps brashly titled “Apostasy for Dummies,” in which I made the case for the apostasy of the individuals leading Ordain Women as a group.

In revisiting that piece, I find that many of the things discussed therein apply to the public spectacle that is Sam Young.  I am well aware that Young’s 15 minutes are already over, but since he has invited the press and the public to come watch him read a letter from his stake president on Sunday, I thought it might be worth pointing out the obvious to anyone that might still have any doubt.  Young is an apostate.

For those of you who may be unaware, Young was the subject of a disciplinary council on the evening of September 9, 2018, and the results of this council were delivered to him in the form of a letter on the afternoon of September 14, 2018.  Rather than open the letter at that time, he has instead decided to put it in his pocket and travel to Salt Lake City so that he can invite the local media and however many of his friends to come stand on a sidewalk and watch as he opens the letter and reads it aloud for a live facebook audience.  Anybody who cares can tune in and watch as Young sees for the first time that he was actually excommunicated a few days earlier.

Young has been endeavoring to spin his excommunication as something much more than it is.  In a press release he issued today, he claims that his excommunication is an attempt by the Church to “silence [a] growing grassroots movement” and in particular a “whistleblower” in himself. But, apostasy is an individual thing, and excommunications are done one-by-one where the personal circumstances require it.

In my previous post, I discussed a talk given by James E. Faust in the October 1993 General Conference of the Church.  Then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Faust spoke of “Keeping Covenants and Honoring the Priesthood,” and included same guidance of what constitutes apostasy in a priesthood holder.  Among other things, he discussed how the apostate will have a “certain arrogance in thinking that any of us may be more spiritually intelligent, more learned, or more righteous than the Councils called to preside over us.”  Is there any doubt that this applies in the case of Young?  He spent nearly a month standing on a sidewalk in Salt Lake City and demanded that various apostles come to him and do as he bid them. He condemned each in turn for not doing what he deemed that they should.

He not only condemned the individual apostles for not acquiescing to his demands, but he stood to condemn the entire Church.  In his prepared remarks to the press in Salt Lake City and Houston last week, he specifically called the Church a “cold, heartless, money-making institution.” A few weeks previous, he stood in nearly the same spot and stripped down to a bathing suit to dump water over his own head to wash himself from the filthiness of the Church.  This week, in public posts he called the Church the “Church of __________ of Latter-day Saints.”

It is a matter of public record that Young has repeatedly and emphatically acted “in clear, open and deliberate opposition to the Church or its leaders.”  He has been warned by his stake president on many occasions (as reported on his own blog) that he was and is engaged in such activities and should stop.  He has been voting opposed to the brethren for years based on his disagreement with many of the teachings of the Church on a variety of topics, and has been campaigning for others to join him in this. Simply put, Young has been in apostasy for years before his current project ever became a thing.

I believe that the following quote from the aforementioned talk by Elder Faust applies to Young: “those men and women who persist in publicly challenging basic doctrines, practices, and establishment of the Church sever themselves from the Spirit of the Lord and forfeit their right to place and influence in the Church.” In a way, the excommunication that is almost surely memorialized in the letter sitting in Young’s pocket is merely an administrative exercise.  By any objective measure, Young has already cut whatever cords he may have had tying himself to God and His Church by himself.  Removing Young from the records of the Church merely causes those records to reflect Young’s reality.