There were the revelations of Mormon financing for Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage (and was subsequently struck down by the Supreme Court). There was scrutiny of the fact that black men were precluded from ordination as Mormon priests until 1978.

But what seems to have touched off the church’s latest hard-line stance is a long-running dispute over the position of women in the church. In October 2012, Mormon leaders announced that women could serve missions at 19, instead of having to wait until 21. (At 21, many Mormon women are nearing graduation, working and marriage. The age for men was also lowered, to 18, from 19.)

Last year, Mormon feminists began a campaign, Let Women Pray, calling for a woman to give a public prayer at the church’s semiannual conference. (The church then did so, while asserting that its decision was not influenced by the campaign.) This year, the May issue of a church publication, the Ensign, published, for the first time, photos of nine female leaders, alongside pictures of more than 100 male counterparts.

But these changes are cosmetic. Internal critics say the church’s longstanding ban on women priests has no explicit basis in church scripture. Ms. Kelly’s “apostasy” seems to be that she is daring to voice her interpretations aloud, and to act on them. “You are entitled to your views, but you are not entitled to promote them,” her bishop told her in explaining the excommunication — an odd rebuke from an organization with tens of thousands of missionaries.

It’s not clear how much the crackdown is emanating from the church’s president, Thomas S. Monson, and other leaders of the church in Salt Lake City. But we do know that Boyd K. Packer, the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the church’s second-highest governing body, who is expected to succeed Mr. Monson, met in 1993 with a local leader involved in the excommunication of a Mormon feminist scholar. That year, he gave an address calling the “gay-lesbian movement,” “the feminist movement” and “the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals” great dangers to the church.