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. She declined. 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. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. He decided he would suppress that part of himself and be a good Mormon. Hed better start keeping it to himself. 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. 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 . Mormonism was as much an identity issue for them as it is for me. The kindness of my ward members has been really important. I have been doing that for 18 years. 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 Peggy Fletcher Stack January 3, 2013. When he went into his office, the bishop, a man named Tom Andersen, said hed read this article in the L.A. Times, Quinn told me. This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the 1850s, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor hygiene . [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] 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. 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. Kelly was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in June. He slept on her futon and had no Internet access or health insurance. >Two years after an excommunicated Kate Kelly sought a giant leap, Mormon feminists keep making small steps toward equity . 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. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. During Sunday school, a man approached him and said, The bishop would like to talk to you. Quinn dreaded what was coming. Some church leaders continued to marry multiple wives, which is why there was a Second Manifesto in 1904, during the Reed Smoot congressional hearings. No telephone call came., On Aug. 27, McLean delivered the First Presidency denial. 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. That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. 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. 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. 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. Even in the novels, he noticed, the gay characters came to terrible ends. "She might be a model for others who have been missing their Mormon community.". Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . Looking back, it was a real blessing. 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. Crucially, much of that project is onlinemore than anything, the Internet has revolutionized the field. Packer approved Quinns hiring, but he may have come to regret it five years later. 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. And the Tribune is changing with it. Hanks told him he had been excommunicated, and said that the court lasted six hours. Most memorably, Harris says that the spirit who appeared to Smith and directed him to the golden platesfrom which Smith claimed to have translated Mormonisms founding scriptureappeared as a white salamander and struck Smith three times. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. It was his death and funeral that prompted the couples current bishop to bring up the possibility of her rejoining the church. Fixed: Release in which this issue/RFE has been fixed.The release containing this fix may be available for download as an Early Access Release or a General Availability Release. Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. by Peggy Fletcher Stack. She said hello, but he did not recognize her. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. So she met with local and high Mormon leaders and, after several months, they set a baptismal date. That came out in early 1993. . 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. Anderson was excommunicated for an article she wrote in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought that described episodes of what she called ecclesiastical abuse of Latter-day Saint intellectuals. 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 been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. I was removed from that situation. [4] During her time there, she has met and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Gordon B. Hinckley, among others. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. Peggy Fletcher Stack, David Noyce 3/23/2022. All rights reserved. Peggy Fletcher Stack. [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. He wept as he read it aloud to others. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. Sunstone The spiritual journey of Maxine Hanks, one of the "September Six,'" comes full circle. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Fawn Brodie was related to David O. McKay. It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. 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. 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. Her explorations gave Hanks a new level of understanding and "testimony" of Mormonism. "Mormonism was limiting to me, so I needed to test the limits to see who I and the church really might be. . After reading Peggy Fletcher Stack's article (linked in April's post), I realized that many of us share Lavina's ongoing concerns, including the exclusion of women from institutional authority and the side-stepping of the Heavenly Mother doctrine. 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. 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 is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. They don't feel safe enough to keep going it's such a terrible, terrible loss. 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 didn't seem to know what footnotes are so he thought I made the whole thing up. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. (He was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. 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. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. 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 . At least, that's how Hall sees 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. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. 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. Some did not know that they were. 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. 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. 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.. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. He stinks.. [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. The September Six were six members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who were excommunicated or disfellowshipped by the church in September 1993, allegedly for publishing scholarly work against or criticizing church doctrine or leadership. This was almost certainly wrong: Romney has plenty of LDS critics, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. ``It was like `We're here to support you, Brother Gileadi,' '' he said of the atmosphere at the . 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 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. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. He left quietly and went to call the LDS Church Office Building to ask about this committee. Religion Two decades after she was "exed," Utah writer still attends her LDS ward. 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. I had never been treated as a liar before. Feb 17. Quinn wrote back more harshly this time, listing all the things Hanks had done that troubled him. McMurrin Differed in Gentler Times. The bishops next comment was, Whats wrong with those people up in Salt Lake? He was thrilled to have Quinn in his ward. All rights reserved. They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. The LDS archives became more open to scholars than ever before, and Arrington oversaw research and writing by fellow academics and graduate studentsincluding Quinn, then 28, whom he hired as an assistant. After a prayer, the stake president explains to them the details of the case. I assured him I did not. He does not have friends in Rancho Cucamonga. 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. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. (These soon-to-be former Mormons were not required to attend.) 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. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. It was really important to Paul and me that Christian grow up in a religious community, and the church was the one we chose. 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. McLean invited her, she said, to describe her faith in a letter, which includes her conviction that God cherishes everyone. But Robertson is especially pleased with the "Pillars" session. SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) After years of tension between Mormons and gay rights activists -- with political action and theological pronouncements on one . It had been a difficult year. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. was pressured to resign from Brigham Young University and subsequently excommunicated from the faith in 1993 as part of the famed "September Six . Quinns status in the church remained unchanged. The second thing that happens is members learn to be afraid of leaders, and leaders learn to be afraid of members. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. He himself did not even stay in town. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. In both forms of LDS courts, the accused is typically allowed to bring in character witnesses. By Chris Jorgensen and Peggy Fletcher Stack The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is purging hundreds of Mormon dissidents who church officials say are preoccupied unduly with Armageddon. Using the familiar Christian metaphor of a lost sheep who listens for the one voice that can guide it back home, Oaks said Mormons should beware of alternate voices whose avowed or secret object is to deceive and devour the flock. Among the voices Oaks warned about were the ones heard in magazines, journals, and newspapers and at lectures, symposia, and conferences. At the same General Conference, another apostle said that a true stalwart of the church would not lend his or her good name to periodicals, programs, or forums that feature offenders who do sow discord among brethren. , When the Sunstone Symposium next convened, in the summer of 92, Lavina Fielding Anderson presented a paper on this growing conflict between leaders and intellectuals. Resolved: Release in which this issue/RFE has been resolved. (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 . She's been covering religion for the paper since 1991 taking on a variety of topics, but mostly the LDS Church. Or a great one, if possible: Since childhood, Quinn had been told by his grandmother that someday he would be an apostle of the church. That night, we went over to our neighbors' house and watched "A Man for All Seasons" and ate popcorn. Peggy Fletcher Stack. Quinns religious status wouldofficially, at leastbe decided by his own stake president, not by the higher-ups in Salt Lake City. Quinn attended that ward in Westwood every week while he was in California. 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. After Quinn finished his lunch at BYU, he decided not to go home. That was my decision. 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. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone Symposium. In the first few days after the bombings, several people who had come into contact with Hofmann feared for their lives. 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 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) 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. Bradley and Hanks are friends who trod a lot of common ground, Robertson said. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. 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.