A tribute to Leah, Cody, and Brinley Young - Mormon Stories Ep. 1103

When Support Becomes Apostasy: The Excommunication of the Young Family and Questions About Church Discipline

When Leah Young and her family created a support group for progressive and post-Mormon members in central Ohio, they believed they were fulfilling a fundamental religious principle: caring for the spiritually wounded. Eighteen months later, they received excommunication letters. Their crime, according to church records, was apostasy. Their actual offense, according to Jon Dehlin's tribute on Mormon Stories Podcast Episode 1103, was providing compassion where institutional leadership would not. This case raises uncomfortable questions about how the LDS Church defines loyalty, manages dissent, and responds to members who publicly acknowledge their doubts, questions that deserve careful, documented examination.

The excommunication of Leah, Cody, and Brinley Young represents more than one family's faith crisis. It exemplifies a documented pattern in recent LDS Church history: the use of formal disciplinary action against members whose primary transgression is visible questioning or community organizing around progressive values. Understanding this case requires looking beyond headlines to the institutional mechanisms at work.

Background: How a Support Group Became an Excommunicable Offense

The Young family's journey began unremarkably. Leah Young, like thousands of Mormons in recent years, began expressing concerns and doubts about church doctrine and history on social media. These were not isolated heretical claims, they aligned with documented historical scholarship and reflected sincere spiritual confusion shared by many millennials within Mormonism.

Rather than isolate in silence, the Young family took a constructive step: they organized a support community for progressive and post-Mormon individuals in the Columbus, Ohio area who felt unsupported by their local ecclesiastical leaders. The group provided mutual aid, emotional support, and a space for honest conversation about faith transitions.