We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. Hanks worked for the Church Educational System, where Packer had long been an administrator, and Quinn heard that Loren C. Dunn, a friend of Packers and fellow general authority, had spoken to Hanks personally. [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. The Bible and the Book of Mormon, which depict flawed, human prophets, are, Quinn said, an absolute refutation of the kind of history Packer advocated. Person 2 Person: Peggy Fletcher Stack | KUTV He was in a wheelchair. Quinn got hate mail. Ultimately, the events of September 1993 may have helped broaden those borderlands, encouraging other members of the faith to openly question Mormon orthodoxy without entirely leaving the religion behind. The other five people who were by then being referred to as the September Six had already faced their courts. At the time, he was grieving the death of his son, who had gone missing and was found weeks later hanging from a tree by an extension cord. [4], She won the 2004 Cornell Award for 'Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers' from the Religion Newswriters Association in 2004, an award she also received in 2012, 2017, and 2018. She did, however, tell her leaders her concerns about church exclusion policies: barring worthy LGBTQ couples who are legally married from full participation; blocking worthy and righteous women from the male-only priesthood; and keeping Mother in Heaven from her place in our understanding.. The fact that we keep going to church is a blessing. . Knowing that our Heavenly Parents are both male and female teaches me that our potential as women is limitless. She embodies, more than anyone else I know, the ideal of a broken heart and contrite spirit, which has influenced me so strongly that I, the last time I checked, was one of only two of the 21 children of the September Six who is still an active member.. In 1961, when Michael Quinn was a devout Mormon of 17, his best friends girlfriend gave him a copy of Family Kingdom, a biography of the one-time apostle John W. Taylor. At least, that's how Hall sees it. At least, that's how Hall sees it. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? On Oct. 16, 1985, Quinn was having a late lunch at a BYU food court when he heard a news report that Mark Hofmann had been blown up by a pipe bomb in Salt Lake City. England said he knew about this espionage systemit was called the Strengthening Church Members Committee, and it compiled documents and highlighted statements considered critical of the church. One of the central questions in the aftermath of Septembers events was just how involved Packer himself had been in them. Some church leaders continued to marry multiple wives, which is why there was a Second Manifesto in 1904, during the Reed Smoot congressional hearings. Despite his productivity, though, hes never broken back into academia. The institutional churchs position toward its intellectual community has shifted slowly and subtly but in real ways in the past 30 years; it is possible that there is a worry that allowing for her rebaptism would unearth battles the present First Presidency would like to let lie buried and spur a public relitigation of the issue., Secondly, the controversies surrounding Anderson had a great deal to do with feminism in the church and with ecclesiastical dissent, he said. Report a missed paper by emailingsubscribe@sltrib.comor calling801-237-2900, For e-edition questions or comments, contact customer support801-237-2900or emailsubscribe@sltrib.com. I did. Two years later, he was called as an apostle. All rights reserved. I had my answers.". The Salt Lake Tribune . During Quinns college years, BYUs president, Ernest Wilkinson, organized a student spy ring intended to catch out professors with communist leanings. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. Dallin Oaks speaking at the General Conference in April 1989. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. He didn't seem to know what footnotes are so he thought I made the whole thing up. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and writing about the biblical oracle Isaiah's prophecies about our time has been rebaptized into the faith. Hanks was accused of apostasy for editing an anthology, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, which included a discussion of the all-male priesthood and womens relationship to it. In her paper, she mentioned an internal espionage system that creates and maintains secret files on members of the church. A BYU literature professor named Eugene England rose to speak as soon as Anderson finished. However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. The demographics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints include statistical data relating to the church's population and particular groups within it.. It was the papers second article in two weeks about a series of church courts held across 13 days in September and reported in media outlets across the country. The Mormon church, he said, drew him out of his largely monastic life and compelled him to help the men and women he saw every Sunday. He never wrote another work of fiction. On March 23, 2018, Andersons husband, Paul, died of heart failure. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. What do you think about these potential actions against Kate Kelly and John Dehlin? It was already, in the minds of some, a dangerous pursuit, and it had now become a deadly one, marred by fraud and riddled with errors. On Sunday with similar church disciplinary actions threatening Mormon feminist Kate Kelly and blogger John Dehlin, Anderson discussed her spiritual journey: What triggered the LDS Church's disciplinary action against you? He then announced that I was not a member in good standing and could not use my temple recommend. The movie was a live-action adaptation of the Nintendo game Super Mario Bros. He decided he would suppress that part of himself and be a good Mormon. It's a way for me to participate and contribute, almost like having a calling. In October, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that a threatening phone call had been made to the home of a local man named Michael D. Quinn. In 1999, she joined the Interfaith Roundtable for the 2002 Winter Olympics, where she enjoyed the association of representatives from various faiths and led the annual Interfaith Week. There are other matters that I need to talk with you about that are not related to your historical writings. Many of the shifts in the church administration's position toward intellectuals recently has had to do with history and intellectual openness, while the issues driving Lavinas excommunication are still very much alive and unresolved today., It is possible, Bowman posits, there was fear that allowing for her rebaptism would send a signal on those issues that the First Presidency did not wish to send.. "We pray that a spirit of clemency will guide the words and actions of everyone especially those who bear the heavy responsibility of ecclesiastical discipline of church members and that the words of President [Dieter F.] Uchtdorf [second counselor in faith's governing First Presidency] will hold sway: "Regardless of your circumstances, your personal history, or the strength of your testimony, there is room for you in this church. After high school, Christian went to Stanford, and we thought, "This may be where we hear bad news." See Photos. Two decades ago, Maxine Hanks could not have imagined where her spiritual journey would take her, but she knew this much: She would not likely be walking into the waters of Mormon baptism. September Six - Wikipedia I have been taught a vision of a truly cooperative future where men and women are complete equals. As a Mormon, he also knew that same-sex attraction was considered unfortunate at bestsomething to be struggled with, and, if possible, overcome. Maybe she wants to be, though. The main target of the statement, issued in August 1991, was the Sunstone Symposium, an annual gathering started by Sunstone magazine 12 years before. Snuffer was excommunicated. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. He took a fellowship at the Huntington Library, near his hometown of Pasadena, Calif., and began indexing his enormous collection of notes on old Mormon documents, in preparation for his next book. Some things that are true are not very useful. Its not clear whether Packer read Quinns work before interviewing him, but if he did, it probably would have struck him as less than useful. One Sunday in February of 1993, Michael Quinn was home sick with a fever when his doorbell rang. This was almost certainly wrong: Romney has plenty of LDS critics, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Hanks became conciliatory, reading On Being a Mormon Historian, and writing to say hed gotten from it deeper insight into your devotion and your dedication to history and the Church. He asked again to meet when Quinn came back to Utah. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. Excommunicated Mormon to tell how she came back to the faith And he based at least one of his forgeries on the work of Michael Quinn. But he had a caring bishop that first year and decided on his own to serve a mission. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. "It will be a chance for a larger audience to hear this story," she said, and to hear how people can wrestle with their faith and then live it out. Quinn showed that Brigham Young had a legitimate claim to the calling, though he was not the only one who did. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating, the worldwide effort to bring salvation to all of Gods children, Some things that are true are not very useful, LDS Authority and New Plural Marriages, 18901904, this growing conflict between leaders and intellectuals, Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843, Quinns paper about the Baseball Baptism Program, the responsibility to preserve the doctrinal purity of the church, critical pieces he had written about Mitt Romney, Hanks described her path back to Mormonism, the administration caved to pressure from Ira Fulton. The Mormon church holds two different kinds of disciplinary councils: a more elaborate process that is often reserved for those who hold the Melchizedek priesthoodgenerally speaking, all devout adult menand a simpler process mostly used for those who dontmeaning women and men who have not advanced far in the church. The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an . That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. Still, he sought out the scriptures first edition himself, and did his own comparison. Packer, the second-most senior among the 12, was the substitute president of the Quorum of the Twelve whenever Hunter was sidelined for medical reasons. Peggy Fletcher Stack, Author at Religion News Service - Page 2 of 6 Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. The book opened Quinns teenage eyes to dissent within the highest echelons of LDS leadership, and to the apostles debateand apparent dissemblingabout plural marriage after 1890. They don't feel safe enough to keep going it's such a terrible, terrible loss. She is in the right family. If Peggy wanted to do some groundbreaking . Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated in 2014 for her views on gender inequality in the Mormon Church . In both forms of LDS courts, the accused is typically allowed to bring in character witnesses. In the quarter-century since her ouster, Anderson consistently has attended weekly services at her Latter-day Saint congregation, the Whittier Ward. Kate Kelly Shreds Peggy Fletcher Stack for Using Her as "Clickbait" Again, I'm reminded of a scene in "Schindler's List" where the Quinn and four othersLavina Fielding Anderson, Maxine Hanks (a distant relative of Paul Hanks, the stake president who showed up at Quinns apartment), Paul Toscano, and Avraham Gileadiwere excommunicated by stake presidents in Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah; a sixth, Lynn Whitesides, was disfellowshipped, meaning that she remained a member of the church but could not fully participate in its rites and activities. Packers notion that those writing church history should share only those things that are faith-promoting is not just intellectually offensive nowit has become quaint, the relic of a time when information was not so freely available. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting.She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017 . My stake president said in an email, if I [didn't] come forward and tell people that I am not a member in good standing, he would. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. But gradually, pressure on Mormon scholars eased, and today many write and publish without any obvious concern for what their stake presidents might think. He got up in front of the congregation and declared his belief in the Mormon gospel, in Joseph Smiths status as a prophet of God, and in the Book of Mormon as divine scripture. He stinks.. Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return | Out of Obscurity [10][11][12][13] The American Academy of Religion awarded her a first place Journalism Award in 2014 for her reporting on LDS missionaries who return home early from their volunteer missions. Peggy fletcher stack excommunicated Denver Snufferpersonalbordenver Carlos Snuffer Jr.Religion (Mormon Independent) Restoration Andsupra-Denominational Christian [1] Nationality Americanhome Townmountain House, Idahochildrensisx Daughters and Two Children [2] Alma Materdaniel Webster Junior Collegemcmurry UniversityBrigham Young University (JD, 1980) Quinn refused. He was 32; he and his wife, Jan, were expecting their fourth child. My parents never blamed me, but they were heartbroken. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022. Until 23 years ago, one could not formally leave the church without being excommunicated. This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the 1850s, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor hygiene . Being treated like an ordinary person is a gift a ward can give. Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. He contends that a former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir had openly romantic feelings for men, and highlights a once hushed-up gay affair from the 1940s between a prominent church leader and a 21-year-old Mormon serving in the Navy. In order to have her blessings fully restored, she had to meet with a general authority at church headquarters. This friend, Quinn says, told him that the men on the council disagreed about whether Quinn was an apostate, and that President Hanks finally declared that Boyd K. Packer was pressing him to take action, and they needed to do something. A year later, David J. McLean, president of the Salt Lake Liberty Stake, reconvened a high council, a body that had excommunicated her 25 years and six months earlier for apostasy, Anderson wrote in a summary of her experience for a forthcoming volume of her essays, Mercy Without End: Toward a More Inclusive Church.. By Peggy Fletcher Stack and David Noyce Sep. 7, 2022 What this sociologist (Darron Smith) and Peggy Fletcher Stack fail to recognize is that Mormon racism isn't in the past, it's in the present. It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. LDS officials disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals in and around the fall of 1993. But it also betrayed tensions within the church that may never entirely go away. He later got married in the temple, while I sat outside with friends. Then she was accused of apostasy for editing an anthology, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, which included a discussion of the all-male LDS priesthood and women's relationship to it. was pressured to resign from Brigham Young University and subsequently excommunicated from the faith in 1993 as part of the famed "September Six . By Peggy Fletcher Stack January 3, 2013. And he was the most strident of the group when it came to denouncing internal critics of Mormon leaders and teachings. But some simply baptized the boysa few without explaining what the baptisms were for. One theory on that first day of panic was that the bombings were connected with the business, an investment company called CFS. 1897 - First Presidency member George Q. Cannon used the media attention on the 1895 conviction and two-year imprisonment of famed Irish poet Oscar Wilde as an opportunity to pu ", Hanks is a "genuinely spiritual person and quite insightful, who brings a type of spirituality with her that will resonate with lots of people," he said. Peggy Fletcher Stack - WikiMili, The Best Wikipedia Reader 2) I would very gladly swap my OSF compensation package with any member of the LDS First Presidency, Quorum of the 12 Apostles, or 1st Quorum of the Seventy. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. Especially considering that in a lot of cases she's the one doing the exposing My guess is she's a let's-reform-this-baby-from-within progressive. But he could no longer go to the temple. Sign Up. Disciplinary councils still happen, though they appear to be less frequent, particularly when it comes to apostasy. It really hurt my feelings. I wrote an article for "Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought" that summarized 133 cases of LDS ecclesiastical abuse, and my pleas to do better to care for the Mormon faithful. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks told The Salt Lake Tribune that year. After organizing a massive campaign to pass Proposition 8 and make gay marriage illegal in California, for instance, the church suffered a massive backlash and has since appeared more tolerant toward gay rights activism. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. Quinns mother, on the other hand, was a sixth-generation Mormon: She had an ancestor who converted when the Mormons were still in Nauvoo, Ill., and who is mentioned in Joseph Smiths journals. By declining to talk with any priesthood leaders, he wrote, you are cutting yourself off from the blessings of the Temple and the blessings of the priesthood. He insinuated that the churchs problems with Quinn were not all theological. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. Many religions have strictures that establish who is in and who is out, but the Mormon church draws a brighter line than most. During the hiring process, a college dean offered to protect him, Quinn says, from those peoplethe LDS leadersup in Salt Lake., Before he could be hired, though, he had to visit LDS headquarters at 47 East South Temple in downtown Salt Lake and sit for an interview with one of those peoplespecifically, a general authority, one of the 100 or so men who run the church. (These soon-to-be former Mormons were not required to attend.) (He also, as it happens, officiated at the wedding of my parents.) All rights reserved. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. In hindsight, the purge of September 1993 looks like the last big push for a kind of control that LDS leaders will probably never have again. The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of Mormon congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an impossible choice: Either return to living as a man or resign her . By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. But the third bomb, which badly injured but did not kill Hofmann, hinted at a tie to the salamander letter, a disputed historical document that Christensen had purchased from Hofmann a year before and which had inspired Quinns latest research project, a book eventually titled Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. ", Kelly writes in London's Guardian newspaper "For me it is because of my faith and not in spite of it that I have a desire to stand up for myself and my sisters. I did the very best I knew how to do, the thing that I felt was the right thing to do., Donate to the newsroom now. My own name remains on the rolls of the church, and I plan to leave it there, though I stopped believing in the Mormon gospel 15 years ago. Nobody Knows Religion Quite Like Peggy Fletcher Stack This is not entirely uncommon in Mormon culture, but Quinn took it sincerely to heart. She said hello, but he did not recognize her. I moved into recognizing the value and power of a lay priesthood in the body of Christ and Christian community. Quinns religious status wouldofficially, at leastbe decided by his own stake president, not by the higher-ups in Salt Lake City. With his background in education, he became interested in how the church taught its own past, and decided he did not like what was going on at the church historians office. Photo by George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images. The entry for perversion said See homosexuality, and he read all the available books in that categorynot a lot in a small public library in 1956, though fairly heady stuff for a 12-year-old: Kinseys Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, some Freud, some Havelock Ellis. . Quinn studied English literature in collegehe attended BYUbut during his three-year stint in the military he decided to become a historian, and make what had become a consuming pastime into his profession. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. Those 15 men oversee the multiple Quorums of the Seventy, who in turn direct the stake presidents and bishops who minister to congregations on a part-time, voluntary basis. However, we believe that Latter-day Saints who are committed to the mission of their Church and the well-being of their fellow members will strive to be sensitive to those matters that are more appropriate for private conferring and correction than for public debate. There are times, they added, when public discussion of sacred or personal matters is inappropriate., The Statement on Symposia was another tear in the already fraying relationship between church leaders and scholars. Bradley and Hanks are friends who trod a lot of common ground, Robertson said. Peggy Fletcher Stack has been reporting on faith and religion since 1991. The modern Mormon church has become a fairly top-down organization, but most responsibility for attending to its members still resides in local lay leaders. After it was published, Hugh West, the president of his stake in Salt Lake CityQuinn never moved to Provo, finding the hourlong commute worth it to live in Utahs one metropolisasked to see him. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. The book he was finishing, which would be published in 1994, was called The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. Peggy Fletcher. disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals, church disciplinary actions threatening Mormon feminist Kate Kelly and blogger John Dehlin. Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. An interview from January 1983: Sterling M. McMurrin : mormon Mormons from around the world have gathered to listen to church leaders during the two-day conference. My guess is she has to be to keep the doors open so people willing to talk to her. He makes fun of the church by making fun of himself and stodgy rank and file, as well as cultural absurdities. Peggy Fletcher-Stack. He had also just published an article titled The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844, which detailed the confusion about who should succeed Joseph Smith after his assassination. Peggy Fletcher Stack was born and raised in New Jersey; studied at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California; traveled through Africa for two years with her news-photographer husband; and worked at Books and Religion in Manhattan before settling down as a religion writer at The Salt Lake Tribune. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. His father was never Mormon: The son of Mexican immigrants, he changed his namethough never legallyfrom Daniel Pea to Donald Quinn, apparently wanting to escape his heritage as well as his poverty. The bishops next comment was, Whats wrong with those people up in Salt Lake? He was thrilled to have Quinn in his ward. Once the kids were interested, the missionaries were supposed to contact their parents, with the aim of converting whole families. False Prophet Gaining Steam Among a 'Remnant' Church He said it was apostasy because I believed that general authorities had done something wrong.

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