Lavina Fielding Anderson


Lavina Fielding Anderson is a Latter-day Saint scholar, writer, editor, and feminist. Anderson holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. Her editing credits include Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective and Tending the Garden: Essays on Mormon Literature, as well as the Ensign, , Journal of Mormon History, Mormon Women's Forum Quarterly, and Case Reports of the Mormon Alliance. In 2001, Anderson published a critical edition of Lucy Mack Smith's memoir: Lucy's Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith's family memoir.
Anderson is one of the original trustees of the Mormon Alliance, founded in 1992 to document allegations of spiritual and ecclesiastical abuse in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1993, Anderson published a chronology documenting cases of what she regarded as spiritual abuse by LDS Church leaders during the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. This article became grounds for her excommunication on charges of apostasy in September 1993, as one of the September Six. Anderson remains as active in the LDS Church as her excommunicant status allows; in 1996, she was described by Levi S. Peterson as exemplary of an emerging "church in exile" composed of faithful excommunicants.
She was married to Paul L. Anderson from 1977 until his death in 2018.