[Dion]

Founder of Ordain Women, creator of Mormon Stories website are threatened with excommunication.

Mormon feminist, returned missionary and temple-attending member Kate Kelly cherishes her church — so much so that she desires to play an even bigger role in it.

Now Kelly may lose her place in the faith altogether.

The founder of the Ordain Women movement, which has been asking LDS leaders to let women join Mormonism’s all-male priesthood, has been threatened with excommunication.

Kelly, a human-rights attorney who until recently lived in Vienna, Va., received an email Monday from Mark Harrison, her Mormon bishop, inviting her to attend a June 22 "disciplinary council" to consider "disfellowshipment or excommunication, on the grounds of apostasy."

Kelly, who is staying in Utah until she moves to Kenya shortly with her husband, said Wednesday she was "totally, totally floored" by the email. "It is a deep devastation and sorrow."

For a devout Mormon such as Kelly, excommunication, or loss of church membership, "is a kind of spiritual death," she said. "It means that your ordinances are moot and that you are being forcibly evicted from your eternal family."

To regain full membership, Wheatley wrote, the feminist must take down the Ordain Women website, break ties with the group, and "stop trying to gain a following for yourself or your cause and lead others away from the church."

Kelly replied that she couldn’t do that and be "authentic," and because she no longer lives in Virginia, will not be attending the disciplinary council, which is scheduled to take place in the same Mormon stake where feminist Sonia Johnson was excommunicated in 1979.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58...n-lds.html.csp