“Well, I’m About to Find Out”

This chapter chronicles Sonia Johnson’s excommunication from the LDS church in the wake of her ERA activism. It first details the LDS church’s veiled role in LDS women’s anti-ERA activism that Johnson exposed and opposed in the national press. Tracing the twists and turns in Johnson’s excommunication by her bishop, Jeffrey Willis, and other church leaders, the chapter argues that the process illustrated the power of priesthood authority in the LDS church to contain and silence many members’ feminist activism. Johnson used the press throughout the process, exposing the church’s use of patriarchal and priesthood power against her political voice, and talked publicly about her excommunication as a microcosm of how the church deceived and dismissed all women.