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", 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]. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. 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. It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. The truth is not uplifting. Thats according to Quinnmy request to speak with Packer, whose health has badly deteriorated in recent years, was declined. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. 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. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. 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. 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. She was also the only one whose disciplinary council was overseen by her bishop, rather than her stake president. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. If there is unfinished business, its the First Presidencys, not mine.. September Six - Wikipedia That last comment became the caption for a Newsweek photo three months later, when the magazines religion reporter, Kenneth L. Woodward, wrote a 1,000-word story about Quinns talk and the controversy it prompted. Paul usually sits on the outside of the pew, so when the sacrament comes, he shakes his head toward me so we don't have any socially embarrassing moments. That, in any case, was his thinking. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. (KUTV) Peggy Fletcher Stack is the religion writer for the The Salt Lake Tribune.It's the best beat on the paper, she said.Stack fell into the job when she was hired in 1991.I have no degree in . Not long before Hofmann sold that forged document, he approached Quinn in the church archives, and asked about the succession crisis and the article. 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. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. Nor does it read like one. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. In 2004, after a series of fellowships and visiting appointments, he was the only finalist for a tenured position at the University of Utah. He decided he would suppress that part of himself and be a good Mormon. They dont acquire these positions by filling out an application and sending in a rsum. During Sunday school, a man approached him and said, The bishop would like to talk to you. Quinn dreaded what was coming. That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. . A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. Peggy Fletcher-Stack. 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. She said she was really angry at the church, not at me. A second bomb that first day killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of one of Christensens former business partners. Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. McMurrin Differed in Gentler Times. If he doesnt, I have his phone number and I know where he lives. (He was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) Peggy Fletcher Stack (Salt Lake Tribune) | Sojourners When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. Quinn had spent three years in the military in the late 60s, working in counterintelligence. Kelly was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in June. I could listen to the spirit there. And the Tribune is changing with it. The church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. 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. From an early age, he felt within himself the presence of God, this burning of the spirit, as he says. Hanks became less diplomatic. LDS author disfellowshipped - Rick Alan Ross By: Peggy Fletcher Stack. All rights reserved. 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. 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. SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) After years of tension between Mormons and gay rights activists -- with political action and theological pronouncements on one . In the field of Mormon history the changes are particularly pronounced. Salt Lake City Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the LDS Church for being a woman. Today, its Nelson, with a new counselor, Oaks, instead of Dieter F. Uchtdorf. A World of Faith: Stack, Peggy F., Peterson, Kathleen B.: 9781560851622 Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. (He also, as it happens, officiated at the wedding of my parents.) 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. Hanks told him he had been excommunicated, and said that the court lasted six hours. 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. 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. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. Where else would I be but in the church? Ironically, this testimony only ever deserted him on his Mormon mission. ", 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. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. The cabin has no phone access, so I had months [after her initial conversation with the stake president] to think about it. Peggy Fletcher Stack, Author at Religion News Service - Page 2 of 6 After 20 years, this excommunicated Mormon still attends her LDS ward Re: Kate Kelly Shreds Peggy Fletcher Stack for Using Her as "Clickbait" disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals, church disciplinary actions threatening Mormon feminist Kate Kelly and blogger John Dehlin. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. Devout Mormons consider these callings divinely inspired. However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return | Out of Obscurity 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. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. Excommunication is a complicated and multi-layered process for sexual minorities in the church who choose to marry in a way that the church considers a "same sex" marriage. Just before his excommunication, in the spring of 1993, Quinn bore his testimony at the singles ward he was attending each week in Westwood, near UCLA. [5] She then attended the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for two years, where she studied religious history. On Tuesday morning, James J. Hamula was released from his position in the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after disciplinary I heard she's not Mormon at all. 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. But he had a caring bishop that first year and decided on his own to serve a mission. Few people had attended the talk itself, but an independent BYU newspaper ran a story about it, and copies of Quinns remarks, titled On Being a Mormon Historian, began to circulate. His wife Margaret, an English professor and feminist who attracted attention from church leaders before her husband did, was excommunicated in 2000. With no regular income to speak of, Quinn moved into his mothers condo in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone Symposium. The intellectual climate had improved under Oaks, people said. In it, Harris, who paid for the first printing of the Book of Mormon, tells a story of that books origins strikingly different from Smiths later, official account. The suit was settled out of court and a process for voluntary withdrawal was established in 1989.). TV and newspaper reporters came. (Benson died in 94, Hunter in 95.) PDF Peggy fletcher stack excommunicated - World Tile 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, the bishop, and the other counselor held the necessary courts, excommunicating those who wanted out. After 18 months, he moved to New Orleans, where it was less expensive to live. 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. 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 . 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. I assured him I did not. Ordain Women's Kate Kelly loses last appeal; husband to resign from Mormon church . An interview from January 1983: Sterling M. McMurrin : mormon But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. Something similar, if more protracted, took place after September 1993. He does not have friends in Rancho Cucamonga. These dangers, Packer said, were the relatively new feminist and gay-lesbian movements, and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals.. The most threatening thing about Ordain Women to people in the church is that it is coming from faithful, devout, courageous, wonderful women and that's more threatening than anything could be. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. 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. That night, we went over to our neighbors' house and watched "A Man for All Seasons" and ate popcorn. Late last year, a friend approached LDS officials to say that Hanks was ready to return to the fold. Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for the Salt Lake Tribune. 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.. 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 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. By then an assistant district attorney, Lambert later helped prosecute the case against Hofmann. 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. Saturday, February 22, 1997. 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. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. Log In. 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. 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. Knowing that our Heavenly Parents are both male and female teaches me that our potential as women is limitless. 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. But the Churchs case against Twede will never be known: After the Daily Beast story, the council was postponed, and a few weeks later, Twede resigned from the faith. If those top leaders did not know where he lived, then they could not assign him to a particular stake, and his church membership could not be threatened. They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. The charge stems from Palmer's 2002 book, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, which challenges the traditional explanations of the faith's founding . I love Jesus. 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. 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. Despite his productivity, though, hes never broken back into academia. Mystery! Quinn refused. Quinn got hate mail. They don't feel safe enough to keep going it's such a terrible, terrible loss. (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. Why didn't you go to the hearing to defend yourself? 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. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. Maybe, I suggested, he was trying to bring his full self out into the open. 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. I wouldn't give it up, but promised him I wouldn't use it. 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. I did. Ill come get him. [5] They moved to Utah in 1991 when she was hired to be the religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune, where much of her reporting has focused on the LDS Church. 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. The stake president, who oversees a number of congregations, remained optimistic, she said, zeroing in on the words, at this time., But the writer replied, Theres hope, and then theres experience., Besides, she said, it was a form letter.. There, he tried other kinds of writing, thinking maybe hed put Mormon history behind him. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. The Unholy Practice of Excommunication - Exponent II The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. 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. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. . The president in 2012, when Hanks was readmitted, was Thomas S. Monson. Stack is an advisor on religion to the Public Broadcasting Service,[2] and has written two books. 1511: Mormon Stories Transparency Q&A for Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony Caffeinated Version: Whether Quinns fate had truly been sealed is hard to say. Even after that, a few high-ranking Mormons continued to authorize such marriages. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. 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. He was excommunicated in 1911. It sent him down a rabbit hole. 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. 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. While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. [5] She met Mike Stack when he volunteered as a photographer for Sunstone in 1984, and they married in October 1985. Fulton has called Quinn a nothing person.. In the spring, he had published LDS Authority and New Plural Marriages, 18901904, the culmination of his interest in post-1890 polygamy, first prompted a quarter-century before by Family Kingdom. Feb 17. He then announced that I was not a member in good standing and could not use my temple recommend. 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. He then expressed his gratitude to the church for providing, throughout his life, a vehicle for service. I didn't have any doubts. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. 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 Her sincere belief in Jesus and determination to follow him no matter the adversity faced within or without the church should be commended, and this good and faithful servant should be rewarded, he wrote. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. Paul's mother was great. By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. I imagine she walks a careful, thin line to avoid being exed. 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 . Would love to hear your stories about her. Arrington). Like Quinn, hed first become interested in Mormon history when he learned that polygamy had gone on for years after its public abandonmenthe knew about this because his mothers parents were among the secret polygamists. Daryl Peveto/Luceo Images for Slate. In 1997, the acclaimed historian Richard Bushman, who spent much of his career writing on non-LDS topics, began studying his religion again in earnest, and convened an annual seminar that helped attract young scholars who might have pursued other interests.