Lavina Looks Back: BYU Anthropology Professor loses job---relocates to UVU for twenty-two years.
Lavina wrote:
29 October 1992
David Knowlton meets again with his stake president, Kerry Heinz, to discuss the Channel 4 Utah 1992 interview. Heinz has formed his impressions of David’s remarks only from an incomplete transcript, highlighted in yellow, and states, according to David, that “the situation almost obliged him to call a Church court because, in his opinion, I was perilously close to apostasy as a result of what he perceived as a pattern of attacking the Church.”
Still, the meeting which begins and ends with prayer, is held in Heinz’s home, is “more relaxed,” and leaves David optimistic that they are working toward a shared understanding. At David’s invitation, President Heinz meets the next week with David’s department chair for an additional view of issues from an academic perspective.[120]
My notes:
Knowlton, although now retired, has a Facebook post about the recent tragedy that occurred at UVU.
Knowlton, BYU professor of social anthropology, wrote an "objectionable" paper about why leftist terrorists in Latin America were targeting the Church, which seems like it would have been of interest to church authorities.
He also criticized the church's current practice of intimidation against scholars.
[This is a portion of Dr. Lavina Fielding Anderson's view of the chronology of the events that led to the September Six (1993) excommunications. The author's concerns were the control the church seemed to be exerting on scholarship.]
The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology by Dr. Lavina Fielding Anderson
Posted Sep 19, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC