I always felt that I had Gods sanction and encouragement, so I went ahead following that path. Even early on, a fellow Mormon historian started telling Quinn he must have a death wish regarding his membership in the church. After 20 years, this excommunicated Mormon still attends her LDS ward It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals, church disciplinary actions threatening Mormon feminist Kate Kelly and blogger John Dehlin. It struck him as an old missionarys trick. [5] She then received a fellowship to work in the Church History Division of the LDS Church (then run by Leonard J. 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. There, he tried other kinds of writing, thinking maybe hed put Mormon history behind him. Kelly was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in June. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. I attended the Sunstone Symposium this past summer, held on the University of Utah campus, and many people I spoke to there said that as Packers influence has waned, a more tolerant approach to dissent is taking hold. 1511: Mormon Stories Transparency Q&A for Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". He was housesitting. That came out in early 1993. Whats more, all Mormons are supposed to have a calling in the church, which makes for a wonderfully participatory religion but also discourages casual membership. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. ", Kelly goes on KUER's Radio West "A lot of people are asking me why I came forward [with the news of my disciplinary hearing]. The book, published a decade before, was written by Taylors son Samuel, best known today, perhaps, for writing the short story that became The Absent-Minded Professor. In the early 90s, when he was living in New Orleans, Quinn, nearing his 50th birthday, tried his hand at fiction, going back to the literature he once studied as an undergraduate. Snuffer was excommunicated. Hanks became less diplomatic. In a detailed confession, Hofmann said that he had secretly stopped believing in Mormonism as a teenager and had hatched a plan to embarrass the church by creating fake documents that exposed uncomfortable facts about early Mormon history. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. In 2004, after a series of fellowships and visiting appointments, he was the only finalist for a tenured position at the University of Utah. In 1981, he produced a blessing allegedly given by Joseph Smith to his son Joseph Smith III, declaring him my successor in the Presidency of the High Priesthood. The document was partly inspired, it appears, by The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844, which refers to such a blessing. I felt they were not going to drive me away. During Quinns college years, BYUs president, Ernest Wilkinson, organized a student spy ring intended to catch out professors with communist leanings. He was the first academic to occupy the post, previously held only by high-ranking LDS leaders, and his appointment signaled a broader effort to reorganize the historians office along professional lines. Whether Quinns fate had truly been sealed is hard to say. Quinns status in the church remained unchanged. The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. I feel like I am going by proxy for others who feel too damaged, too hurt and afraid to go. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for . Packer approved Quinns hiring, but he may have come to regret it five years later. At the conference, he spoke about the history of same-sex relationships in the church and the shifting attitudes toward them on the part of Mormon leaders. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks said. Taylor fled to Canada during the congressional hearings for Reed Smoot, a fellowbut monogamousapostle, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate. And it was not popular with those of the brethren that Quinn had already angered with his talk on Mormon history four years before. Earlier this year, Maxine Hanks became the first of the September Six to fully return to the Mormon Church since the conservative outlier Avraham Gileadi was quietly rebaptized almost two decades ago. He has occasionally attended other churches. Dubbed the September Six, the group were mostly left-leaning writers and scholars who had published articles or given talks about the role of women in Mormonism and the way the churchs leaders handle dissent. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. Though the letter from the current First Presidency made up of church President Russell M. Nelson and counselors Dallin H. Oaks and Henry B. Eyring offered no explanation for the rejection, Bowman speculates that there may be at least two possible answers history and dissent. It had since become the premier event for the so-called scholars and intellectuals of Mormonism to gather and exchange ideas. My dad was a bishop twice. In the quarter-century since her ouster, Anderson consistently has attended weekly services at her Latter-day Saint congregation, the Whittier Ward. Her explorations gave Hanks a new level of understanding and "testimony" of Mormonism. Hanks had already held one church court in Quinns absence, in July, at which Quinn was disfellowshipped. This is all lies! he told the friend who showed it to him. (Quinn is known professionally as D. Michael Quinn; the first name on his birth certificate is Dennis.) The church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. Hanks was excommunicated in 1993, one of the "September Six," Mormon writers and scholars who were disciplined by their local LDS officials in the same month. PDF Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. Devout Mormons consider these callings divinely inspired. "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. At first, his timing appeared serendipitous: In 1972, while he was completing a masters in history at the University of Utah, an academic named Leonard Arrington was appointed church historian. 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. So she met with local and high Mormon leaders and, after several months, they set a baptismal date. In 1981, he gave an address to church educators called The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect, which was organized around four cautions. The second of them is this: There is a temptation for the writer or teacher of church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith-promoting or not. 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. There was no process for voluntary withdrawal from the Mormon Church in the 1960s, so each of these kids had to be excommunicatedtechnically, for apostasy. When he went into his office, the bishop, a man named Tom Andersen, said hed read this article in the L.A. Times, Quinn told me. Sunstone The spiritual journey of Maxine Hanks, one of the "September Six,'" comes full circle. He loves cities, and when he lived in New Orleans in the early 90s, he made friends in bars and in an informal group of gay professionals who gathered once a month. Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, nearly fainted waiting for the Dalai Lama, fasted with Muslims during Ramadan and has reported on 50 consecutive semiannual LDS General Conferences. One theory on that first day of panic was that the bombings were connected with the business, an investment company called CFS. Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. He found me outside and was kind and helpful. 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. Knowing her personally (not closely, but we're acquainted) I get the feeling that she is much more culturally LDS than actually LDS. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. Hofmann eventually became, in the words of one expert, the most skilled forger this country has ever seen. For LDS leaders nervous about church history, he was a nightmare personified: a lying, murderous man hell-bent on embarrassing the religion while glorifying and enriching himself. But nothing else has driven him to contribute to the lives of others the way the faith in which he was born and raised once did. But it also betrayed tensions within the church that may never entirely go away. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. My guess is she has to be to keep the doors open so people willing to talk to her. In Mormon history circles, this period is often called the Camelot years., After those 18 months, Quinn left for Yale to do a Ph.D. and finished it in just three years. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. In an April 1968 talk about military service, he described the restless, unchallenged young people who are repudiating their citizenship responsibilities by avoiding and protesting the draft. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. Hed better start keeping it to himself. She was struck by how frail he appeared, and found herself feeling nothing but compassion and love for a man who had once seemed like an enemy. The church reports a worldwide membership of 16 million. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. Disciplinary councils still happen, though they appear to be less frequent, particularly when it comes to apostasy. Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated in 2014 for her views on gender inequality in the Mormon Church . When his mother died in 2007, she left him the condo. Peggy Fletcher Stack | The Christian Century If he doesnt, I have his phone number and I know where he lives. Just go to . When I make comments in Sunday school and Relief Society, they are accepted as anyone else's. [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. The Strengthening Church Members Committee almost certainly passed along notes about Quinn to his new stake president, Paul Hanks, in early 1993. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. Mormon higher-ups hold keys to excommunication process against two activists. He himself did not even stay in town. Or a great one, if possible: Since childhood, Quinn had been told by his grandmother that someday he would be an apostle of the church. September Six - Wikipedia Leadership in Difficult Times: Critical Thinking and Wisdom (Part II) An interview from January 1983: Sterling M. McMurrin : mormon By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. 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.. [3] She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. 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. We had stake [regional] conference in September. 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. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. 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. The seventh son of Taylors third wife, Samuel sympathetically portrays his notorious father, who continued to marry multiple wives well after the LDS church officially renounced polygamy in 1890. This was almost certainly wrong: Romney has plenty of LDS critics, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. . Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. I couldn't help but wonder if I, too, would be excommunicated if my concerns were made public. He later got married in the temple, while I sat outside with friends. Though a lifelong Latter-day Saint, Hanks had not been attending a Mormon ward for several years. ", 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. [4] During her time there, she has met and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Gordon B. Hinckley, among others. After a prayer, the stake president explains to them the details of the case. Woodwards piece, headlined Apostles vs. Historians, called Quinns talk a stirring defense of intellectual integrity that had put Benson and Packer on the defensive. It was illustrated with a large photograph of Quinn up top, and a considerably smaller one of Packer. 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. I had never been treated as a liar before. Men only become gay in prison, or sometimes in the Navy. Nor does it read like one. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. It's Judgment Day for Far Right: LDS Church Purges Survivalists By Peggy Fletcher Stack By David Noyce For the first time in nearly 30 years, the Mormon church has excommunicated one of its top leaders. 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. [5] She then attended the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for two years, where she studied religious history. He looked in the card catalog under pervert, which was the word his grandmother had used after he told her that another kid at church had been groping him. Peggy Fletcher Stack (@religiongal) / Twitter 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. Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. If the blessing really happened, then Brigham Young, who led the early Mormons to Utah, might have been wrong to seize control of the church after Smiths murder. He subsequently has . They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. A diligent historian, meanwhile, will come to see that the truth of the matter is complicated. When interviewing Quinn in 76, Packer said, I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. This has been intentional. The regional council forwarded her request to church headquarters, with the recommendation that she be approved for rebaptism. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. Peggy Fletcher Stack (Salt Lake Tribune) | Sojourners 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.. Not long after that, the bishop met with Anderson and asked her ever so gently if she would like to discuss reinstatement. We were sitting in the front room of a house owned by a gay couple he knows in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Salt Lake City. They had the responsibility to preserve the doctrinal purity of the church, they said, adding that, because Mormon leaders are constrained by confidentiality rules, the media have relied on information supplied by those disciplined or by their sympathizers. Similar councils occurred more sporadically over the next few years. Hed read the essay about women and the priesthood, and he asked Quinn to speak on the subject at an upcoming fireside, an informal evening meeting often held at Mormon meetinghouses. LDS officials disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals in and around the fall of 1993. He developed a fervent testimony not only that God exists but that God spoke to Joseph Smith face to face and that the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants are, like the Old and New Testaments, divinely inspired. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. Person 2 Person: Peggy Fletcher Stack | KUTV The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. Caffeinated Version: Born in 1924 in Brigham City, Utah, the 10th of 11 children, Packer worked for years as a teacher and administrator in the Church Educational System. They cited a 19th-century revelation to Joseph Smith, in which he spoke of the saints gathering up a knowledge of all the facts, and sufferings and abuses put upon them, and said that perhaps a committee can be appointed to find out these things, and to take statements and affidavits; and also to gather up the libelous publications that are afloat. The First Presidency did not mention that when Smith received this revelation he was in prison in Missouri, where a Mormon extermination order had been decreed by the governor not long before. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. There are other matters that I need to talk with you about that are not related to your historical writings. 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. The bombings and subsequent murder trial cast a pall over the practice of Mormon history. 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. After 18 months, he moved to New Orleans, where it was less expensive to live. Even after that, a few high-ranking Mormons continued to authorize such marriages. (He was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. What I heard was that I would be excommunicated and that I shouldn't go. After the Newsweek article ran, Quinn got a phone call from Marion D. Hanks. Part of what I feel is a calling to be there. Ive had more than one therapist Ive talked to about this issue say, Dont you see that you were purposely setting yourself up for this fall? he told me. After reading Peggy Fletcher Stack's article (linked in April's post), I realized that many of us share Lavina's ongoing concerns, including the exclusion of women from institutional authority and the side-stepping of the Heavenly Mother doctrine. When they did, Quinn, an only child, would go to his room, put on a classical record, and turn the volume up. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. All rights reserved. That was established definitively in 1986 after Hofmann confessed to the murders of Christensen and Sheets as part of a plea to avoid the death penalty. Log In. Hundreds of other members joined him at gatherings and in small groups, and thus was born the "remnant movement ," which today touts 1000s of adherents. 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. At Sunstone, Hanks described her path back to Mormonism as a heros journey, la Joseph Campbell. He insisted that the September councils were local affairs, but church employees who reported to him had, it turned out, been keeping tabs on the six who were disciplined, and rumors swirled that Packer himself personally insisted that the courts take place. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. Groundbreaking Emma Smith biographer, a 'giant' in Mormon scholarship, dies at 82. They were receptive. It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. Quinn had been avoiding this confrontation for nearly five years. What's happening is so wrong. 2012. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. Jay Christian, left, and thousands of other people protest against the passage of Californias Proposition 8 outside the world headquarters of Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 2008 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The general authority assigned to interview Quinn in the spring of 1976 was Boyd K. Packer. She has sat quietly in the same pew as the emblems of the sacrament, or communion, have passed by her more than 1,200 times without being able to partake. The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. All rights reserved. At Yale, while serving as one of two counselors to the local bishop, he found unanswered letters in the wards files from people who wished to leave the church. I didn't have any doubts. She was also the only one whose disciplinary council was overseen by her bishop, rather than her stake president. I had received a blessing from a former stake president, assuring me that when the time was right, it would come very easily, so I could be at peace. In the past, many Mormon officials had a sense, he said, that the church must protect its members from "wolves among them.". BYU and Utah State both wanted to hire him. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. What's it like going to church for two decades as an excommunicated member? >Two years after an excommunicated Kate Kelly sought a giant leap, Mormon feminists keep making small steps toward equity . Former Mormon leader is building a new life -- as a woman - Rick Alan Ross Quinn went over local church rolls and found addresses of kids who didnt come to Sunday services. She talks very vaguely when it comes to personal, specific spiritual beliefs and whether they align with doctrine, but she doesn't hesitate to call the church out on its shit at all. He slept on her futon and had no Internet access or health insurance. It was not the last time he helped to excommunicate people, though. Demographics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. 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) I assured him I did not. That's like solving obesity by turning MacDonald's into a gym. A World of Faith: Stack, Peggy F., Peterson, Kathleen B.: 9781560851622
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