It made me sad to learn today that Sam Young is being excommunicated from the LDS church for protesting the LDS church's children interview policies. I was totally sympathetic to his desire to change how the system worked. My own interviews as a child weren't abusive but they were within an abusive system that had a dramatic effect negative effect on me and on my siblings. If you trace how they contributed to a major family tragedy that happened when I was quite young, the worthiness interview system and the ideas that are used to justify that system are probably one of the worst things that ever happened to me and my family with consequences that will probably never fully heal. I am very glad to have left that behind, knowing that my children can mostly escape a recurrence of that kind of psychological abuse.
I never really expected Sam's protest to achieve much and I've been impressed by the amount he did achieve. He had more faith in his leaders than I did. It seemed just a matter of time till he would be excommunicated. He very much was taking up the role of a prophet calling his people to repentance. Its part of being human that nobody really likes being on the receiving end of a prophetic call to repentance. It makes the way this story is ending unsurprising. But that doesn't make it any less sad. We could always hope for better.
