Out of respect for the privacy of the parties involved, the reasons for an excommunication are never made public by the Church. The excommunicated person may reveal this if they choose. However, they can give any reason they like for their excommunication and the Church's policy prevents it from defending itself should that person choose not to be honest about the matter. ************** "Alatea: Hiding again .Fawn's story is public knowledge." No, I am not hiding. I am stating fact. What is public is Brodie's side of the story. All you really have to go on is what she says happened. Whether it is accurate or not is not known as the Church does not release the proceedings of its disciplinary councils.

Brodie was excommunicated from the LDS Church in May 1946 for apostasy. Fawn McKay Brodie (September 15, 1915–January 10, 1981) was a historian, biographer, and professor at UCLA, best known for the biographies Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, an early work of psychohistory, and No Man Knows My History, one of the first non-hagiographic biographies of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism. Raised in a devout Latter-day Saint home, her paternal uncle was David O. McKay, a prominent LDS leader. David O. McKay was an Apostle in the LDS church when Brodie was born and he later became the ninth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the University of Chicago, Brodie lost her faith in religion entirely. She recalled this time period to an interviewer in 1975, "It was like taking a hot coat off in the summertime. The sense of liberation I had at the University of Chicago was exhilarating. I felt very quickly that I could not go back to the old life, and I never did." Fawn met Bernard Brodie, who would become an important nuclear weapon strategist, through acquaintances at the University. They were married August 25, 1936, on the same day that Fawn Brodie received her M.A. in English. They were married in an LDS chapel, which offended Bernard Brodie's family. His parents and siblings declined to attend, and only Fawn's mother traveled from Utah. After her first son was born in 1942, Brodie was awarded an Alfred A. Knopf biography fellowship in 1943 to write a biography of Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Called No Man Knows My History, the title alludes to a speech Smith gave shortly before his martyrdom in 1844. Brodie's book was published in late 1945. The biography made many claims contrary to official LDS Church doctrine about Smith's life and teachings. Primarily, it speculated about how Smith may have written the Book of Mormon, which he claimed was translated with divine aid from an ancient record on Golden Plates. She also hypothesized connections between Masonic rituals and LDS temple rituals. Brodie was excommunicated from the LDS Church in May 1946 for apostasy, which included refusing to edit or alter controversial material in her book. She was unsurprised about the excommunication, and proclaimed that she had lost her faith before her work on the book began. Brodie never sought to rejoin the church. Brodie's biography is a favorite among critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One criticism of the biography attacks Brodie's brief treatment of the so-called "Solomon Spalding hypothesis." The Spalding hypothesis supposed that Joseph Smith based the book of Mormon off of the Spalding manuscript, a narrative about pre-Columbian Americans. The theory speculated Smith may have been aided by Sidney Rigdon, who was more formally educated than Smith. Brodie rejected the hypothesis, but the appendix is thought to be less rigorously researched, an afterthought. In spite of its shortcomings, No Man Knows My History is often considered the standard critical biography of Joseph Smith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawn_Brodie

She said that is was for the heresy of writing and publishing "No Man Knows My History" - But, why don't we let Fawn tell us herself, in her own words. Here they are: This interview EXCERPT is adapted from an audio taped interview by California State University at Fullerton's Oral History Library. Fawn McKay Brodie was born in 1915 and died in 1981. Q: What was your mother's reaction to your disbelief in Joseph Smith's divine calling as a prophet? A: Mother was a kind of quiet heretic which made it much easier for me. Her father had been nominally devout but as president of the Brigham Young University he had brought in people like G. Stanley Hall and John Dewey as lecturers, and philosophers and psychologists who were fascinated by the Mormon scene. He was a very open minded man and a fine educator. Some of this rubbed off on my mother and so I say, "My grandfather was not a heretic, but his children were," or rather some of them were. Q: What about your brother and sisters? A: Well, my brother is still a devout Mormon but my sisters are all, what we call, "Jack Mormons," since they are still technically in the church but they are not active and they don't go along with the Mormon dogma. They still count themselves Mormons. Q: Do you? A: Oh, no. I am an excommunicated Mormon. I was officially excommunicated when the biography of Joseph Smith was written and published. About six months after publication, there was a formal excommunication. Q: Would you care to explain more about that? A: I was excommunicated for heresy--and I was a heretic-- and specifically for writing the book. My husband was teaching at Yale at the time and we were living in New Haven, CT. Two Mormon missionaries came to the door and presented me with a letter asking me to appear before the bishop's court in Cambridge, MA to defend myself against heresy. I simply told them, or wrote a letter telling them, that I would not go because, after all, I was a heretic. So then I was officially excommunicated and got a letter to that effect. Q: This was because of writing the book "No Man Knows My History?" A: That is right. END OF EXCERPT - PLEASE USE THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW. http://www.salamandersociety.com/interviews/fawnbrodie/ Attached Images: 1) Church Court Summons Letter. 2) Excommunication Letter from the LDS Church. For a clearer, larger view of these documents please use this link: http://www.salamandersociety.com/x-files/460523brodie_excom.pdf

I give up.