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. West did not formally revoke the recommend, he just put it in his drawer. She did, however, tell her leaders her concerns about church exclusion policies: barring worthy LGBTQ couples who are legally married from full participation; blocking worthy and righteous women from the male-only priesthood; and keeping Mother in Heaven from her place in our understanding.. "She might be a model for others who have been missing their Mormon community.". The prophet at the time was Ezra Taft Benson, who, at age 94, was mostly incapacitated. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022. Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. KRE/AMB END STACK 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. Nobody Knows Religion Quite Like Peggy Fletcher Stack By the time Quinn arrived, the program had been disavowed, and many of these baptisms needed to be undone. On Oct. 16, 1985, Quinn was having a late lunch at a BYU food court when he heard a news report that Mark Hofmann had been blown up by a pipe bomb in Salt Lake City. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. . Now I see that he just didn't appreciate the dishonesty associated with his grandpa. For the faithful, the simplest narrative regarding LDS polygamy is that God wanted Mormons to practice it between 1843when He revealed the doctrine of plural marriage to Joseph Smithand 1890, when He informed one of Smiths successors, Wilford Woodruff, of a change in course. [5][6], Fletcher initially attended Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, for a year,[1] then transferred to the University of Utah, where she earned a BA in English literature. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. He also criticized Ezra Taft Benson, then a senior apostle, who had made comments similar to Packers. Even after that, a few high-ranking Mormons continued to authorize such marriages. Quinn told friends that he did not want anyone to lobby on his behalf. A World of Faith: Stack, Peggy F., Peterson, Kathleen B.: 9781560851622 Hymns were sung. I am confident that my desire to be worthy of the temple is acceptable of the Lord. 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. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks told The Salt Lake Tribune that year. Later he was told that despite his request that no one speak for him, a friend had attended and done just that, playing recordings of Quinns presentations at past Sunstone Symposia and reading excerpts from his writings. 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. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. I used to think Steve Benson was a bad person. In the field of Mormon history the changes are particularly pronounced. [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. A diligent historian, meanwhile, will come to see that the truth of the matter is complicated. 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 . Crucially, much of that project is onlinemore than anything, the Internet has revolutionized the field. "The issues in Mormon doctrine, history and practice highlighted by those facing church discipline are much larger than any one individual," the statement reads. In the past, many Mormon officials had a sense, he said, that the church must protect its members from "wolves among them.". Where else would I be but in the church? We had a family devotional every night with prayer, singing and scripture reading. It's Judgment Day for Far Right: LDS Church Purges Survivalists SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . 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. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. Ill come get him. Find your friends on Facebook. Hanks told him he had been excommunicated, and said that the court lasted six hours. On Sunday with similar church disciplinary actions threatening Mormon feminist Kate Kelly and blogger John Dehlin, Anderson discussed her spiritual journey: What triggered the LDS Church's disciplinary action against you? 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. 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. 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. 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. Until 23 years ago, one could not formally leave the church without being excommunicated. He took a fellowship at the Huntington Library, near his hometown of Pasadena, Calif., and began indexing his enormous collection of notes on old Mormon documents, in preparation for his next book. It really hurt my feelings. But it also betrayed tensions within the church that may never entirely go away. I imagine she walks a careful, thin line to avoid being exed. A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. Two of the so-called "September Six" have found their way back into the LDS fold while Anderson though never rebaptized in some ways has never left. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. Following his excommunication, he finished The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power and turned his attention to another scholarly book with deep personal meaning. Peggy Fletcher Stack - The Salt Lake Tribune 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. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. As a Mormon, he also knew that same-sex attraction was considered unfortunate at bestsomething to be struggled with, and, if possible, overcome. September Six - Wikipedia Nor does it read like one. He had, after all, believed for many years that he would someday be a leader of the church, knowing that if this were true he would have to forever suppress an essential part of himself. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. While serving it in England, he was tasked with cleaning up the results of the Baseball Baptism Program, in which missionaries used sports to attract young converts. How did you find out about the impending disciplinary hearing? Timeline of teachings on homosexuality in the Church of Jesus Christ of 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.. An Excommunication, And The Future Of The Church Of Jesus Christ - WBUR In both forms of LDS courts, the accused is typically allowed to bring in character witnesses. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. 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 . Peggy Fletcher was raised in New Jersey, daughter of physicist Robert Chipman Fletcher and Rosemary Bennett, one of five girls and three boys. It struck him as an old missionarys trick. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. 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. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. Lavina Fielding Anderson may have been excommunicated from the LDS Church for apostasy more than 20 years ago, but don't think for a minute that this Utah writer is now an outsider to her faith. Hanks return predated the Ordain Women movement, which pushed for women to join the faiths priesthood, said Latter-day Saint scholar Matthew Bowman, who heads the Mormon studies program at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California. 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 . This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. ``It was like `We're here to support you, Brother Gileadi,' '' he said of the atmosphere at the . . 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.. Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. Quinn showed that Brigham Young had a legitimate claim to the calling, though he was not the only one who did. (Rick Bowmer/AP) This article is more than 8 years old. Once in a while such a case will hit the press. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. [4] During her time there, she has met and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Gordon B. Hinckley, among others. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. This new knowledge sent Quinn to the Journal of Discourses, a 26-volume collection of Mormon sermons. This year he completed the third and final volume in his trilogy on the Mormon hierarchy, which examines the churchs business and financial activities from 1830 to 2010. PDF Peggy fletcher stack excommunicated - World Tile 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. 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. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. After Paul Toscano was excommunicated, Steve Benson, grandson of the then Mormon prophet, met privately with the apostles Dallin H. Oaks and Neal A. Maxwell, and asked them aboutamong many other thingsthe rumor that Packer had something to do with it. 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. Hanks became conciliatory, reading On Being a Mormon Historian, and writing to say hed gotten from it deeper insight into your devotion and your dedication to history and the Church. He asked again to meet when Quinn came back to Utah. Some church leaders continued to marry multiple wives, which is why there was a Second Manifesto in 1904, during the Reed Smoot congressional hearings. But it was a forgery. He said it was apostasy because I believed that general authorities had done something wrong. . 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. [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. He was excommunicated in 1911. Ordain Women's Kate Kelly loses last appeal; husband to resign from Mormon church . July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . It is always harder on the loved one who has to stand by and see someone they love being hurt. After 20 years, this excommunicated Mormon still attends her LDS ward 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. Wearing a bathrobe, he answered after several rings and found three men in suits and ties on his doorstep. The other five people who were by then being referred to as the September Six had already faced their courts. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. 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. The Salt Lake Tribune/June 16, 2014. 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. 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. Excommunication opened the door to a larger cosmos, inside and outside myself.". He later got married in the temple, while I sat outside with friends. The same month that his essay about post-Manifesto polygamy was published, in April 1985, Quinn and his wife separated. 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. Denver Snuffer . This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. In the quarter-century since her ouster, Anderson consistently has attended weekly services at her Latter-day Saint congregation, the Whittier Ward. 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. In California, Quinn had picked up his mail at a P.O. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. He himself did not even stay in town. [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. 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. 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. And he was the most strident of the group when it came to denouncing internal critics of Mormon leaders and teachings. The bearded dad, a father of 11 who was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 2015 for apostasy, suggests they sing hymns . There would be quite a number of people in the Mormon community who would look unfavorably on that. Later that year, Quinn was recommended for a one-year appointment at Arizona State. Michael Quinns final disciplinary council was held on Sept. 26, 1993, in the Salt Lake Stake Center, the headquarters for the oldest stake in Utah, founded by Brigham Young in 1847. He also mentioned reading Quinns long Dialogue article about the politics of Ezra Taft Benson. Some things that are true are not very useful. Its not clear whether Packer read Quinns work before interviewing him, but if he did, it probably would have struck him as less than useful. By Peggy Fletcher Stack January 3, 2013. False Prophet Gaining Steam Among a 'Remnant' Church The timing of his career, which once appeared serendipitous, now seems almost cruel. It will be published next year. 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.. Her explorations gave Hanks a new level of understanding and "testimony" of Mormonism. 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 In 1975, partly at Packers urging, Leonard Arringtons role at the church historians office was greatly diminished. Two years later, he was called as an apostle. I heard she's not Mormon at all. Former Mormon leader is building a new life _ as a woman Caffeinated Version: (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 . 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. 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. How did the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints grow so fast 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. The handbook doesn't say you can't speak in class, just over the pulpit. The general authority assigned to interview Quinn in the spring of 1976 was Boyd K. Packer. 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. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. 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. The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a . In October, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that a threatening phone call had been made to the home of a local man named Michael D. Quinn. The Bible and the Book of Mormon, which depict flawed, human prophets, are, Quinn said, an absolute refutation of the kind of history Packer advocated. Photo by George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images. 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. 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) Hankswhose nephew Paul would show up on Quinns doorstep in 1993was himself a general authority, and he had overseen the two-year Mormon mission Quinn served in England after his freshman year at BYU. In 1981, Quinn was asked by the colleges chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, a national honor society for history students, to respond to The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect. He did not pull his punches. Religion Two decades after she was "exed," Utah writer still attends her LDS ward. After the Newsweek article ran, Quinn got a phone call from Marion D. Hanks. Peggy Fletcher Fletcher (Peggy Bennett Fletcher) See Photos. 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. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. The main target of the statement, issued in August 1991, was the Sunstone Symposium, an annual gathering started by Sunstone magazine 12 years before. The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of Mormon congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an impossible choice: Either return to living as a man or resign her . Some did not know that they were. After it was published, Hugh West, the president of his stake in Salt Lake CityQuinn never moved to Provo, finding the hourlong commute worth it to live in Utahs one metropolisasked to see him. Peggy Fletcher Stack. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. The term "September Six" was coined by The Salt Lake Tribune and was used in the media and subsequent discussion. 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. Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. 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. . Peggy Fletcher Stack: How I report on Utah's changing faith landscape Hebrew scholar Avraham Gileadi has been rebaptized into the LDS Church after being excommunicated for apostasy along with five other writers and scholars in September 1993. He wept as he read it aloud to others. Though a lifelong Latter-day Saint, Hanks had not been attending a Mormon ward for several years. I cannot be anything but a Mormon. On the Sunday it was held, Quinn went to a movie theater in downtown Salt Lake and bought a ticket for the first screening he could find, to take his mind off the disciplinary council. 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. In 2001, a long-standing effort called the Joseph Smith Papers Project received additional funding and became a major draw to those who wished to study the early days of the church. Quinns parents were divorced when he was 4, and he was raised largely by his mothers parents, who frequently fought. Hi, Peggy. He decided that only 16 of the changes were significant. Saturday, February 22, 1997. It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. 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. Independent publicationsmost notably Dialogue (founded in 1966) and Sunstone (1974)provided forums for scholarship and reflection about Mormon history and theology. Quinn had spent three years in the military in the late 60s, working in counterintelligence. Wilkinson was reprimanded, though, and in 1970 he was replaced by Dallin H. Oaks, a law professor at the University of Chicago who had clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren at the U.S. Supreme Court. Packer, the second-most senior among the 12, was the substitute president of the Quorum of the Twelve whenever Hunter was sidelined for medical reasons. 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. I couldn't help but wonder if I, too, would be excommunicated if my concerns were made public. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. It had been a difficult year. . Press J to jump to the feed. 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.

Ano Ang Ginagawa Ng Industriya Sa Mga Hilaw Na Materyales, Articles P

peggy fletcher stack excommunicated