Requiem for an Apostate: RFM: 407

Radio Free Mormon

He Was Too Honest About Mormon Scripture—So They Made Him Pay! David P. Wright, a brilliant scholar of the Hebrew Bible, once taught at BYU—until his academic integrity put him at odds with LDS orthodoxy. In 1989, he was fired for holding views deemed incompatible with Church doctrine. But the campaign against him didn’t stop there. After securing a position at Brandeis University, a General Authority issued instructions to excommunicate him—all triggered by a scholarly paper showing literary parallels between the Book of Mormon and the New Testament. In this episode, RFM walks you through the evidence—Wright’s own words, the paper that sparked the backlash, and the Church’s behind-the-scenes moves to silence him. This is the story they didn’t want you to know.