"With careful detail, brilliant analysis, and generous empathy, The September Six is both page turning and deeply moving. It is an impressive work of scholarship that illuminates nearly two-hundred years of history while also speaking to some of the most pressing questions of belief, authority, identity, and belonging today. Patterson's book is a remarkable achievement."--Neil J. Young, contributing columnist for The Week magazine and author of We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics

"I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September of 1993, precisely when the church was purging members who seemed a lot like me. I wish I'd had Sara Patterson's book years ago to help me make sense of that tumultuous era. Patterson has expanded my understanding of the September Six, challenging the narrative that the 1993 disciplinary actions were an anomaly. Rather, she takes the long view of a gifted historian, understanding those and other excommunications in the context of a vigorous late-twentieth-century purity culture that placed a premium on obedience to authority."--Jana Riess, senior columnist for Religion News Service and author of The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church

"Well-researched and deftly written, The September Six situates the infamous excommunications within a longer history of church surveillance. As such, her book is indispensable for understanding how the LDS Church defended and continues to defend orthodoxy against challenges from feminists, scholars of color, and intellectual dissidents. This book is the story of generations of scholars who saw their research as an extension of their faith but found themselves under scrutiny when their conclusions pushed too strongly against established orthodoxy."--Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, author of Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific

"This is a serious book about a serious subject for anyone wishing to understand modern Mormonism and the complexities within the contemporary church. The ultimate realization of the restoration inevitably involves a struggle between the past and the future, between those who see their primary charge as preserving and protecting what Patterson calls the Latter-day Saint "purity system" and those who at times feel called by their discipleship to respectfully challenge certain aspects of that same system."--Robert A. Rees, editor, Why I Stay: The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons

"'The September Six' is a catchy moniker for the feminists and intellectuals whom the LDS church excommunicated or disfellowshipped in September 1993. Still, it threatens to obscure that month's events as isolated anomalies. Patterson skillfully situates the six within the larger era as church leaders and members clashed over which narratives of the Restoration were okay to publish. This book provides an accessible and illuminating view of historical tensions still felt in the church today."--Katie Ludlow Rich, writer at Exponent II and independent scholar of Mormon women's history