The modern Mormon church has become a fairly top-down organization, but most responsibility for attending to its members still resides in local lay leaders. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. Fulton has called Quinn a nothing person.. 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. A diligent historian, meanwhile, will come to see that the truth of the matter is complicated. 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. Vern Anderson, the AP reporter, wrote an 800-word story about the essay in January, just before Hanks showed up at Quinns apartment. Gileadi, Toscano, Anderson, and Hanks were all excommunicated. 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 . By then an assistant district attorney, Lambert later helped prosecute the case against Hofmann. And he was the most strident of the group when it came to denouncing internal critics of Mormon leaders and teachings. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. 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 . 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 . They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. He was in a wheelchair. 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. The nature of religion reporting in Utah is changing. 2012. 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. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax The field has grown and appears to have moved on, even though the research that Quinn did, and the fights that he picked, were crucial to what has come in his wake. Stack has received and been nominated for multiple awards. Two years later, he was called as an apostle. He compared Packers treatment of Church leaders to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, which is anathema to Mormons. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. KRE/AMB END STACK What's it like going to church for two decades as an excommunicated member? 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. They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. He has occasionally attended other churches. When they left, they said, "Have a nice day," to which I replied, "You have just assured that I will not.". Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . He rejected the idea that his writings and his comments to reporters about Mormon history warranted disciplinary action, and he had come to a kind of peace about what he was sure awaited him. Hymns were sung. 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. The kindness of my ward members has been really important. It had since become the premier event for the so-called scholars and intellectuals of Mormonism to gather and exchange ideas. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. Quinn attended that ward in Westwood every week while he was in California. 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. 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. 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. 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? I accuse that committee, England declared, of undermining our Church.. Quinns religious status wouldofficially, at leastbe decided by his own stake president, not by the higher-ups in Salt Lake City. She's been covering religion for the paper since 1991 taking on a variety of topics, but mostly the LDS Church. Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. 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) The same month that his essay about post-Manifesto polygamy was published, in April 1985, Quinn and his wife separated. By: Peggy Fletcher Stack. 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. . I attended the Sunstone Symposium this past summer, held on the University of Utah campus, and many people I spoke to there said that as Packers influence has waned, a more tolerant approach to dissent is taking hold. Denver Snuffer . This has been intentional. In the early 90s, when he was living in New Orleans, Quinn, nearing his 50th birthday, tried his hand at fiction, going back to the literature he once studied as an undergraduate. That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. Peggy Fletcher Stack has been reporting on faith and religion since 1991. 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. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for the Salt Lake Tribune. On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. Ironically, this testimony only ever deserted him on his Mormon mission. There are important aspects of Mormon life, such as temple ceremonies, that are open only to the truly faithful. Quinns polygamy essay, meanwhile, produced more trouble for him with LDS leaders. Hanks rejoined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February. She studied "traditional, sacramental Christianity and priesthood," Hanks said this week. Feb 17. 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. My parents never blamed me, but they were heartbroken. Like Robert Kirby, it would be a shit storm to ex her. Fawn Brodie was related to David O. McKay. The Salt Lake Tribune's Peggy Fletcher Stack, a . She said she was really angry at the church, not at me. 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. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. 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. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. I admire her. But it also betrayed tensions within the church that may never entirely go away. LDS Church wants to light up a temple in a place that prides itself on dark skies, For husband-and-wife team, this new restaurant is the culmination of a decadeslong dream, article she wrote in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, Kate Kelly, was excommunicated in June 2014. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. I have kept my covenants, remained close to the church and have felt that what I have done is accepted by the Lord, the Salt Lake City editor and writer said. 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. I love John and I support him, but I have never made any claim against truth claims of the church. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. Robert Kirby does this also, but much more indirectly. In 1975, partly at Packers urging, Leonard Arringtons role at the church historians office was greatly diminished. The day before, a similar bomb had killed Steve Christensen, a friend and Mormon history enthusiast who had arranged for Quinn to speak at lunch and dinner engagements, paying him with generous gift cards to his fathers clothing store. I couldn't help but wonder if I, too, would be excommunicated if my concerns were made public. Believers in Denver Snuffer's Remnant movement gather in a Sandy, Utah, home for a fellowship meeting on Aug. 13, 2017, to sing songs and partake of the sacrament. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. Devout Mormons consider these callings divinely inspired. This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the 1850s, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor hygiene . Mormons devote one sacrament meeting each month to personal testimonies, and Quinn was sure this would be his last opportunity to offer his in church. From an early age, he felt within himself the presence of God, this burning of the spirit, as he says. Being treated like an ordinary person is a gift a ward can give. She is in the right family. (He also, as it happens, officiated at the wedding of my parents.) 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. 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. 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. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. How is she still a practicing member after all this exposure to the truth? [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. He was troubled by the openness with which materials were being made available to certain individuals other than those authorized, according to Lucile C. Tates admiring 1995 biography, Boyd K. Packer: Watchman on the Tower. There was no process for voluntary withdrawal from the Mormon Church in the 1960s, so each of these kids had to be excommunicatedtechnically, for apostasy. My stake president said in an email, if I [didn't] come forward and tell people that I am not a member in good standing, he would. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. 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. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Many religions have strictures that establish who is in and who is out, but the Mormon church draws a brighter line than most. Supposedly Nelson, like Benson, was a supporter of the John Birch Society, a radically right-wing, conspiracy-mongering, anti-Communist group. [3] She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. Hanks became less diplomatic. I had never been treated as a liar before. Quinn refused. Quinn was so depressed by the experience that for a few weeks he lost his belief in God completely. 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. He also criticized Ezra Taft Benson, then a senior apostle, who had made comments similar to Packers. He was housesitting. Despite his productivity, though, hes never broken back into academia. 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. I don't think I could have done that graciously. There were stretches of time when he was the only deacon, and he and I would exchange glances as he passed the sacrament to our row. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". The general authority assigned to interview Quinn in the spring of 1976 was Boyd K. Packer. The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. Lavina Fielding Anderson, one of the famed September Six writers and scholars disciplined by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1993, got a big no last week to her request for rebaptism from the men who matter most: the faiths governing First Presidency. Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. In May, my stake president called me in about it. For her part, Anderson always has felt a great sense of peace that I made a moral decision, an ethical decision, a decision of integrity and conscience, she wrote. June 17, 2014 8:59 pm . 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. 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. Hi, Peggy. But Packer certainly said similar things before larger audiences. sltrib.com. A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. ", "Guilt, pain, help and hope when Mormon missionaries come home early", "For a string of vivid reports revealing the perverse, punitive and cruel treatment given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University, one of Utah's most powerful institutions. But some simply baptized the boysa few without explaining what the baptisms were for. 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. Today, LDS leaders seem more inclined to recognize, said Wotherspoon, now host of the "Mormon Matters" podcast, "that Zion is made up of people of all types. or. Running almost 100 pages and including nearly 400 footnotes, the essay was the fruit of decades of thought and research. They didn't say anything. Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. . When they did, Quinn, an only child, would go to his room, put on a classical record, and turn the volume up. One Sunday in February of 1993, Michael Quinn was home sick with a fever when his doorbell rang. What to him and others that is so threatening is that this [Ordain Women movement] is coming from a very faithful, devout perspective. As she entered the building at 47 East South Temple, she happened to pass Boyd K. Packer on his way out. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. This puzzled me because I had a lot to say, but the message was absolutely clear. 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. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. 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. 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. 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. The Strengthening Church Members Committee almost certainly passed along notes about Quinn to his new stake president, Paul Hanks, in early 1993. 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. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. 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. [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. I love the gospel. 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. Packers involvement mattered because the Twelve Apostles are considered by devout Mormons to be prophets, seers, and revelators. If they directed the councils, then the excommunications were, essentially, a message from the churchs highest spiritual authorities about what Mormons were allowed to do andpublicly, at leastto say. Ordain Women's Kate Kelly loses last appeal; husband to resign from Mormon church . That night, we went over to our neighbors' house and watched "A Man for All Seasons" and ate popcorn. He said it was apostasy because I believed that general authorities had done something wrong. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. 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. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. Though a lifelong Latter-day Saint, Hanks had not been attending a Mormon ward for several years. I love Jesus. No way. 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. We embedded him as thoroughly in the church as we ourselves had been. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. 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 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. 2) I would very gladly swap my OSF compensation package with any member of the LDS First Presidency, Quorum of the 12 Apostles, or 1st Quorum of the Seventy. Then she was accused of apostasy for editing an anthology, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, which included a discussion of the all-male LDS priesthood and women's relationship to it. I didn't have any doubts. 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. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. . 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. Peggy Fletcher-Stack. It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022. Half of these men speak for the accused, and half for the church. Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu . A candlelight vigil was held outside the Salt Lake City meetinghouse where it took place. People named Peggy Fletcher. Years ago, Don Bradley, a longtime scholar of Mormon history, asked to have his name removed from LDS membership rolls when participation became uncomfortable. [Husband] Paul, Christian [their son] and I sang in the choir that day. 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.
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