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. It struck him as an old missionarys trick. On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. Timeline of teachings on homosexuality in the Church of Jesus Christ of The churchs critics find the timing convenient: By 1890, the U.S. government had threatened to seize LDS property if polygamy wasnt renounced. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. Even after that, a few high-ranking Mormons continued to authorize such marriages. Quinn is no longer actively seeking an academic job. Dear Reader: When I began this series of essays on leadership, I never anticipated the final installment would chronicle recent events that have triggered the biggest spiritual struggle of my life. Salt Lake City Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the LDS Church for being a woman. 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.. What do you think about these potential actions against Kate Kelly and John Dehlin? A former BYU professor named David Wright was excommunicated in 1994 after publishing a paper arguing that the Book of Mormon was not an ancient text. Then he made copies of his letter and Hanks letter and dropped them off at the offices of Vern Anderson and Peggy Fletcher Stack, a former Sunstone editor who had become a religion reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. Dave: We remind our listeners about a new way to support Mormon Land. [3] She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. Now I see that he just didn't appreciate the dishonesty associated with his grandpa. Mystery! I had never been treated as a liar before. The Salt Lake Tribune/June 16, 2014. This other Quinn was not home when the call came, and a baby-sitter answered the phone. I moved into recognizing the value and power of a lay priesthood in the body of Christ and Christian community. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. A second bomb that first day killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of one of Christensens former business partners. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. 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. Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. Quinn told friends that he did not want anyone to lobby on his behalf. I just feel such heartache that the church I love is doing this to people who are sincere and trying to find ways of being Mormon and express their love of the gospel. Sign Up. In order to have her blessings fully restored, she had to meet with a general authority at church headquarters. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. Bradley and Hanks are friends who trod a lot of common ground, Robertson said. (Quinn attempted to reach this friend through a third party before my piece was finished, but declined to give me his name before speaking to him.) A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. She was upset that he was not attending church, and so he drove 45 minutes to a singles ward, a Mormon congregation specifically for unmarried adults, near UCLA. The symposium's "Pillars of My Faith" session will showcase a similar path, said Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstone's interim executive director. 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. Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. . [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. I feel like I am going by proxy for others who feel too damaged, too hurt and afraid to go. The handbook doesn't say you can't speak in class, just over the pulpit. TV and newspaper reporters came. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. Press J to jump to the feed. 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. 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. Article type . LDS officials disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals in and around the fall of 1993. 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. This has been intentional. One of the articles came from an anthology called Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, edited by Maxine Hanks, a distant relative of Pauland his uncle Marionand, soon, one of the September Six herself. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? The suit was settled out of court and a process for voluntary withdrawal was established in 1989.). In May, my stake president called me in about it. It was, Quinn told me, an awful, awful year., When he had recovered enough to write, Quinn finished the sequel to The Mormon Hierarchy and revised Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022. Stack is an advisor on religion to the Public Broadcasting Service,[2] and has written two books. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. There have always been dissidents in the Mormon ranksthe religion itself is one particularly dramatic dissent from the rest of Christian traditionbut a new community of Mormon intellectuals had coalesced in the 1960s and 70s. He has occasionally attended other churches. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. PDF Peggy fletcher stack excommunicated - World Tile 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. Quinns parents were divorced when he was 4, and he was raised largely by his mothers parents, who frequently fought. And it was not popular with those of the brethren that Quinn had already angered with his talk on Mormon history four years before. In the summer of 1952, the late Sterling McMurrin, an eminent philosopher and writer, met with two LDS apostles to defend his theological views.With complete candor, McMurrin laid out for Elders Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold . If her reentry had been approved, Anderson would have been the third of the six the other five are Avraham Gileadi, Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano and Maxine Hanks to be welcomed back into full fellowship with the Utah-based faith. In the first few days after the bombings, several people who had come into contact with Hofmann feared for their lives. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. In September, Hanks wrote Quinn another letter, saying that he had listened, twice, to a recording of Quinns paper about the Baseball Baptism Program, delivered at the Sunstone Symposium that summer. My parents never blamed me, but they were heartbroken. Later that evening, having dinner alone, he felt a new sense of relief about what had happened so far and what he believed was about to happen. If he doesnt, I have his phone number and I know where he lives. With no regular income to speak of, Quinn moved into his mothers condo in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. 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. c. 2014 Salt Lake Tribune(RNS) The Mormon Church insists that excommunication threats targeting activists Kate Kelly and John Dehlin were generated by their respective LDS leaders in Virginia and northern Utah.Others see the timing as evidence that the two disciplinary hearings are being coordinated from the faith's Salt Lake City headquarters.But this much is certain: If Mormon higher-ups . I have been taught a vision of a truly cooperative future where men and women are complete equals. PDF Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. 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. Which has also, it seems, made Michael Quinns singular focus on the unspoken parts of the Mormon past less relevant to younger historians, who operate with more freedom and less pressureand who draw far more interest than their predecessors from the wider world, which has suddenly become fascinated by Mormonism. I am confident that my desire to be worthy of the temple is acceptable of the Lord. Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated in 2014 for her views on gender inequality in the Mormon Church . ", 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. He subsequently has . See Photos. Photo by George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images. . Peggy Fletcher Fletcher (Peggy Bennett Fletcher) See Photos. However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". For details, go to http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. We had been home about 20 minutes when two high counselors came to our house and delivered a letter, inviting me to a disciplinary hearing two weeks from that day. Stack has received and been nominated for multiple awards. SCHOLAR REBAPTIZED INTO LDS CHURCH - Deseret News But it was a forgery. And the Tribune is changing with it. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. But that was not how he experienced it. Quinn, who later assisted the police in their investigation, did not go home for several days. When interviewing Quinn in 76, Packer said, I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. The church keeps fairly careful records of its membership, for one thing, records that play a part in the worldwide effort to bring salvation to all of Gods children. Nowadays, anyone can Google Mormon polygamy and learn more than theyd ever need to know about that practice, about its abandonment, the subsequent fallout, and so on. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. Quinn was convinced, in any case, that his fate in any disciplinary council was predetermined, that Boyd K. Packer wanted him out of the church and Hanks was going to make it happen. We had stake [regional] conference in September. All rights reserved. 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. Paul Toscano, a combative lawyer, showed up for his, at the Cottonwood Stake Center in the southern part of Salt Lake City. 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. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. Box 15 miles from where he was staying, and in New Orleans he had it delivered to a receiving center a little ways from his apartment. Maybe, I suggested, he was trying to bring his full self out into the open. There he told a story about the time Packer embarrassed him in front of fellow church leaders as apparent payback for a slight from six years before. After the Newsweek article ran, Quinn got a phone call from Marion D. Hanks. In 1975, partly at Packers urging, Leonard Arringtons role at the church historians office was greatly diminished. Threat of Excommunication "The issues in Mormon doctrine, history and practice highlighted by those facing church discipline are much larger than any one individual," the statement reads. Taylor fled to Canada during the congressional hearings for Reed Smoot, a fellowbut monogamousapostle, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate. "Mormonism was limiting to me, so I needed to test the limits to see who I and the church really might be. I wouldn't give it up, but promised him I wouldn't use it. Caffeinated Version: We embedded him as thoroughly in the church as we ourselves had been. She said hello, but he did not recognize her. He revised the story occasionally over the next decade, submitting it unsuccessfully to the Paris Review and the Atlantic. The noisy nonsense on-screen felt to Quinn like a rough equivalent of what the church was doing to him. It had since become the premier event for the so-called scholars and intellectuals of Mormonism to gather and exchange ideas. Peggy Fletcher. Mormon higher-ups hold keys to excommunication process against two Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. 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. How is she still a practicing member after all this exposure to the truth? At least, that's how Hall sees it. 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 never gave me one reason. Why didn't you go to the hearing to defend yourself? [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. Leadership in Difficult Times: Critical Thinking and Wisdom (Part II) Local TV reporters were filming the session, and the AP reporter Vern Anderson was sitting at the far side of the room about halfway back. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. (Quinn is known professionally as D. Michael Quinn; the first name on his birth certificate is Dennis.) 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. JDK-8141210 : Very slow loading of JavaScript file with recent JDK Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. 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. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Then I went away to my cabin for the summer and he called all the temples in Utah, saying he was canceling my recommend. 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. Where else would I be but in the church? (Benson died in 94, Hunter in 95.) 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) Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. All rights reserved. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for . I know how to avoid people I didnt want to be in contact with, he says. He moved back to Utah and began receiving mail at his actual address. I didn't have any doubts. He was excommunicated by the LDS Church in 2013 for refusing to cease publication of his 2011 book, Passing the Heavenly Gift which challenges many points of LDS orthodoxy. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. While preparing for the retired Brigham Young University artists memorial service, Bishop Mahonri Madrigal read Pauls written testimony, or statements of faith, that the ward had compiled in 2000. Woodruff himself said in his journal that he was acting for the temporal salvation of the church, and the 1890 Manifestoas his official statement is knownwas not immediately taken to be a divine revelation. The men at his door were the local stake president and his two counselors, the men responsible for overseeing all the congregations in the area. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. 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. From an early age, he felt within himself the presence of God, this burning of the spirit, as he says. What's happening is so wrong. Former Mormon leader is building a new life -- as a woman - Rick Alan Ross Last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Speaking Tubes in the Household of Faith", "A Light Unto the World: Image Building Is Anathema to Christian Living", "From the Editors: Stretching Toward the Light", "From the Editors: A Failure to Communicate", "Church Historian: Evolution of a Calling", "Tales of a true believer: picking up faith along the way", "Books: Mormon Novels Entertain While Teaching Lessons", "Twenty Years Ago in Sunstone: Symbol and Promise", "Peggy Fletcher Stack: Happy 100th to my physicist father, who remains a truth seeker in science and faith", "Utahn who pioneered synthesized stereo sound will receive posthumous Grammy", "Despite Growth, Mormons Find New Hurdles", "Nobody Knows Religion Quite Like Peggy Fletcher Stack", "Religion Newswriters Association honors top religion reporting", "Religion News Association names winners of 2017 Awards for Excellence in Religion Reporting", "Winners named in 2018 RNA Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence", "Journalism Awards - Winners and Articles", "The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Local Reporting: The Salt Lake Tribune Staff", "Religion Newswriters Association announces 2008 contest winners", "Religion Newswriters Association names winners of 2015 Awards for Excellence in Religion Reporting", "Religion News Association names winners of 2016 Awards for Excellence in Religion Reporting", "SL Tribune's Peggy Fletcher Stack wins top religion reporting prize for fifth year", "Dreams, Dollars, and Dr. Pepper: Allen Roberts & Peggy Fletcher Years (19781980)", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peggy_Fletcher_Stack&oldid=1124718303, "Nation's Founders: How Religious Were They? >Two years after an excommunicated Kate Kelly sought a giant leap, Mormon feminists keep making small steps toward equity . I cannot be anything but a Mormon. Robert Kirby does this also, but much more indirectly. By then an assistant district attorney, Lambert later helped prosecute the case against Hofmann. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. People named Peggy Fletcher. Former Mormon leader is building a new life _ as a woman He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. In his Yale dissertation, Quinn examined the highest leadership of the LDS church as a social elite, focusing on the extensive family ties within the hierarchy, the considerable wealth of Mormon authorities, and their long-standing involvement in politics. 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. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. Hanks became less diplomatic. The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a .