SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) Â A Mormon blogger — accused of apostasy for writing critical web essays about Mormon history, temple worship and contemporary issues — has been given a reprieve, for now.
The church disciplinary council set for Sunday (Sept. 30) Â to decide whether to excommunicate David Twede has been postponed “due to scheduling conflicts,” Allan Pratt, Twede’s LDS stake president in Florida, said in a statement Thursday. “It will be rescheduled for a later date.”
Twede is managing editor of MormonThink.com, where most of his critical pieces, including ones about GOP presidential nominee and fellow Mormon Mitt Romney, have appeared.
On Sept. 16, officials in the church's Hunters Creek Stake in Orlando, Fla., gave Twede a letter, summoning him to a church disciplinary council for “apostasy,” which they attributed to his writings.
The Florida blogger initially told the news media last week that the threatened church action was due to his comments about Romney. Hours later, Twede told The Salt Lake Tribune his LDS leaders never brought up the candidate in their exchange with him. The next day, Twede returned to “a feeling in (his) gut” that his Romney remarks had triggered the now-delayed disciplinary council.
Twede said he now believes his local Mormon leaders are postponing his disciplinary council “until after the (Nov. 6) election. But that’s just a guess.”
Michael Purdy, a spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has vehemently denied that any Mormon would be disciplined “for having questions or for expressing a political view.”
Others suggested that the action might have been sparked by MormonThink’s section discussing LDS temple ceremonies and their connection to Masonic rites, with links to photos and text of Mormon temple rituals.
(Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.)
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