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He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. There are important aspects of Mormon life, such as temple ceremonies, that are open only to the truly faithful. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for rebaptism into the LDS Church rejected by the faith's governing First Presidency after being approved by her local lay leaders. Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. [5] She then received a fellowship to work in the Church History Division of the LDS Church (then run by Leonard J. When he came to understand this aspect of himself, and learned a name for it, he did what was already typical of him at that age: He went to the library. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. I couldn't help but wonder if I, too, would be excommunicated if my concerns were made public. On Friday , during a popular evening session of next week's Sunstone Symposium, an annual meeting for Mormon intellectuals and observers, Hanks will detail her 20-year spiritual sojourn as a feminist theologian and chaplain, which brought her full circle back into Mormonism. Taking the sacrament because it's an exclusion I feel every single week. From that point on, she explored various Christian teachings and practices, assisted clergy with religious services and served as volunteer chaplain at Holy Cross Chapel for 13 years. The [women's] Relief Society president found a way to involve me as a "permanent substitute" for Relief Society pianist. The book won an award from the American Historical Association, but it brought Quinn more grief in Utah. 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. I hate him. 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack January 16, 2015 SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) John Dehlin, known to support same-sex marriage and the Ordain Women movement, said he expects "either disfellowshipment (i.e . . Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. I had never been treated as a liar before. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. In 1989, Dallin H. Oaks, the onetime law professor and BYU president who was now an apostle, had given a talk called Alternate Voices at the churchs semiannual General Conference. If Peggy wanted to do some groundbreaking . The essay, Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843, cites writings by Joseph Smith and other early church documents to argue that women already possess much of the spiritual authority granted to men, and that todays LDS leaders simply fail to recognize this. 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. He never wrote another work of fiction. The second thing that happens is members learn to be afraid of leaders, and leaders learn to be afraid of members. Religion Two decades after she was "exed," Utah writer still attends her LDS ward. In May, my stake president called me in about it. Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example, published in 1996, argues that same-sex intimacy was much more accepted by early Mormonsincluding Joseph Smiththan it is today. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". My parents never blamed me, but they were heartbroken. 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. This is not entirely uncommon in Mormon culture, but Quinn took it sincerely to heart. I asked Quinn this past summer if he thought the provocations he penned as a historian might have been fueled on some level by his own inner conflict with Mormon teachingsif perhaps, unconsciously, he wanted to force a showdown with church authorities. With no regular income to speak of, Quinn moved into his mothers condo in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax Snuffer was excommunicated. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? The church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. In California, Quinn had picked up his mail at a P.O. ", 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. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for rebaptism into the LDS Church rejected by the faith's governing First Presidency after being approved by her local lay leaders. I cannot be anything but a Mormon. Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack / Salt Lake Tribune: High-ranking Mormon official, who twice spoke in General Conference, is excommunicated Check out Mini-memeorandum for simple mobiles or memeorandum Mobile for modern smartphones. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. . 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 . Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. 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's definition of "membership" includes all persons who were ever baptized, or whose parents were members while the person was under the age of eight (called "members . Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. "Mormon facing excommunication makes his living off his podcasts," by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune, February 8, 2015 "On Attempts to Smear (i.e., Being 'Fair Gamed'") by John Dehlin ; Faith Transition episodes on Mormon Stories . The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. 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. The stake president shook our hands and was cordial. 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. They didn't say anything. These three shocks to Quinns testimonyabout the Book of Mormon, polygamy, and LDS theologyspurred a pursuit to unearth and understand those parts of his religions past that complicated the simpler story of the faith he had learned as a child. 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. It really hurt my feelings. But the cause didn't really matter because it was pretty clear that Elder [Boyd K.] Packer [of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles] was trying to send a message by targeting certain people, such as historians and feminists. 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. But he had a caring bishop that first year and decided on his own to serve a mission. Stack is an advisor on religion to the Public Broadcasting Service,[2] and has written two books. This made some church leaders uneasy. It went back to his college years. 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. Peggy Fletcher was raised in New Jersey, daughter of physicist Robert Chipman Fletcher and Rosemary Bennett, one of five girls and three boys. Despite his productivity, though, hes never broken back into academia. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack has been reporting on faith and religion since 1991. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. See Photos. He put down in words his sincere testimony in the Mormon gospel and in Ezra Taft Bensons status as a true prophet of God. Maybe she wants to be, though. All rights reserved. Dallin Oaks speaking at the General Conference in April 1989. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. 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. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. Vern Anderson wrote an AP story about the book, and several Utah papers carried reviews. 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. I was not surprised or angry about the outcome, Anderson said Wednesday, and she has no plans to try to open that door again. Quinn had been avoiding this confrontation for nearly five years. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. Peggy Fletcher. Quinn wrote back more harshly this time, listing all the things Hanks had done that troubled him. But multiple faculty members argued that, in the words of one professor, Mike was not the right person to head up any kind of Mormon history or Mormonstudies program given the fact hes very publicly excommunicated. During Quinns New Orleans years, the First Presidency put out a statement discouraging Mormons from participating in academic conferences and other independent forums devoted to the discussion of their faith. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. In many respects, Andersons affirmations mirror those of other members. or. She has participated as much as she was able playing the piano and singing in the choir and watched as seven lay bishops have come and gone. 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. When Hanks showed up on Quinns doorstep in Salt Lake City that February, he brought a letter citing two of Quinns articles and a statement Quinn made to a reporter in 1991 as evidence that he was an apostate. My dad was a bishop twice. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. When I make comments in Sunday school and Relief Society, they are accepted as anyone else's. Resolved: Release in which this issue/RFE has been resolved. deductible, 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. 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. In 1988 he resigned his position at Brigham Young University, the private college owned and operated by the Mormon church, having decided that his interest in the problem areas of the religions past jeopardized not only his position on the history faculty but his membership in the church itself. 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. His wife Margaret, an English professor and feminist who attracted attention from church leaders before her husband did, was excommunicated in 2000. 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. I know how to avoid people I didnt want to be in contact with, he says. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. BYU and Utah State both wanted to hire him. 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. Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. The fact that we keep going to church is a blessing. There are three areas where members of the church, influenced by social and political unrest, are being caught up and led away, declared Boyd K. Packer, one of the churchs Twelve Apostles, in May 1993. Stack has received and been nominated for multiple awards. Men only become gay in prison, or sometimes in the Navy. West said hed been told by a higher authority to take further action to remedy the situation, Quinn says. He stinks.. 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. But gradually, pressure on Mormon scholars eased, and today many write and publish without any obvious concern for what their stake presidents might think. I don't think I could have done that graciously. Hanks rejoined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February. Vern Anderson, the AP reporter, wrote an 800-word story about the essay in January, just before Hanks showed up at Quinns apartment. For the next year and a half, Quinn spent hours every week in the archives, taking detailed notes on diaries that belonged to 19th-century Mormon leaders, among other documents. Robert Kirby does this also, but much more indirectly. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for . Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. 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. The term "September Six" was coined by The Salt Lake Tribune and was used in the media and subsequent discussion. 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. (Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.) Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. 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. See Photos. A candlelight vigil was held outside the Salt Lake City meetinghouse where it took place. A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. 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. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. Just prior to reading Family Kingdom hed seen an anti-Mormon pamphlet called The Book of Mormon Examined, which highlighted hundreds of changes Joseph Smith made to the Mormon scripture in its first few printings. That was my decision. He also criticized Ezra Taft Benson, then a senior apostle, who had made comments similar to Packers. They never gave me one reason. Many religions have strictures that establish who is in and who is out, but the Mormon church draws a brighter line than most. 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. He has occasionally attended other churches. June 19, 2014 ; 1 of 9; While the simpler approach is handled by a bishop and his two counselors, the more elaborate version is run by a stake president, and it involves not only his two counselors but the stakes high council, a group of 12 men. 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 . 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. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) June 17, 2014 8:59 pm . "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. On March 23, 2018, Andersons husband, Paul, died of heart failure. Sign Up. Peggy Fletcher Stack, David Noyce 3/23/2022. By the time Quinn arrived, the program had been disavowed, and many of these baptisms needed to be undone. Looking back, it was a real blessing. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. (There is no conclusive evidence it took place, Quinn writes, but he does not dismiss the idea of one outright.) I felt they were not going to drive me away. Supposedly Nelson, like Benson, was a supporter of the John Birch Society, a radically right-wing, conspiracy-mongering, anti-Communist group. 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. 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. In the quarter-century since her ouster, Anderson consistently has attended weekly services at her Latter-day Saint congregation, the Whittier Ward. It sent him down a rabbit hole. Photo by George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images. To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. 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. While such a calling does not officially confer infallibility on the man who receives itand the general authorities are all malepublicly criticizing the men in these positions is strongly discouraged. It had been a difficult year. As Quinn writes, the Manifesto inherited ambiguity, was created in ambiguity, and produced ambiguity.. In what dissidents have described as a purge, church leaders took severe disciplinary action in September against six Mormon scholars and feminists, the New York Times reported on Oct. 2, 1993. Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. But it was a forgery. They don't feel safe enough to keep going it's such a terrible, terrible loss. 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. I am confident that my desire to be worthy of the temple is acceptable of the Lord. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. It will be published next year. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. West did not formally revoke the recommend, he just put it in his drawer. [5], The Stacks traveled in Africa for a year,[5] then settled in New York City for five years,[1] where she worked as the editor of the Hastings Center Report while her husband attended film school. Soon after, he happened to attend, with some friends, a meeting of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a splinter sect that believes Joseph Smiths son, not Brigham Young, was Smiths rightful successor as prophet. 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.