peggy fletcher stack excommunicated peggy fletcher stack excommunicated

", Kelly writes in London's Guardian newspaper "For me it is because of my faith and not in spite of it that I have a desire to stand up for myself and my sisters. The church reports a worldwide membership of 16 million. In 1989, Dallin H. Oaks, the onetime law professor and BYU president who was now an apostle, had given a talk called Alternate Voices at the churchs semiannual General Conference. Boyd Packer, left, and Dallin Oaks, right, Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wait for the start of the first session of the 181st Semiannual General Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S., on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011. sltrib.com. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. If the blessing really happened, then Brigham Young, who led the early Mormons to Utah, might have been wrong to seize control of the church after Smiths murder. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. This puzzled me because I had a lot to say, but the message was absolutely clear. 9:30AM EDT 8/29/2017 Peggy Fletcher Stack/RNS. Whats more, all Mormons are supposed to have a calling in the church, which makes for a wonderfully participatory religion but also discourages casual membership. There, he tried other kinds of writing, thinking maybe hed put Mormon history behind him. Quinn had been avoiding this confrontation for nearly five years. 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 found me outside and was kind and helpful. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. 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. He stinks.. During Sunday school, a man approached him and said, The bishop would like to talk to you. Quinn dreaded what was coming. He wrote a short story about two male missionaries in Louisiana who become attracted to each other and are stalked by a religious psychopath. She said she was really angry at the church, not at me. 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. "Mormonism was limiting to me, so I needed to test the limits to see who I and the church really might be. Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. I imagine she walks a careful, thin line to avoid being exed. 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. 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. Report a missed paper by emailingsubscribe@sltrib.comor calling801-237-2900, For e-edition questions or comments, contact customer support801-237-2900or emailsubscribe@sltrib.com. The Mormon church, he said, drew him out of his largely monastic life and compelled him to help the men and women he saw every Sunday. 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. 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. Ill come get him. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. Dubbed the September Six, the group were mostly left-leaning writers and scholars who had published articles or given talks about the role of women in Mormonism and the way the churchs leaders handle dissent. She currently serves on the . sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. That's like solving obesity by turning MacDonald's into a gym. 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. In 1999, she joined the Interfaith Roundtable for the 2002 Winter Olympics, where she enjoyed the association of representatives from various faiths and led the annual Interfaith Week. This is maybe where John and I are very different. The handbook doesn't say you can't speak in class, just over the pulpit. The other five people who were by then being referred to as the September Six had already faced their courts. Fawn Brodie was related to David O. McKay. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. Just go to . 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. 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. He went to San Diego to give the keynote address for the annual conference held by Affirmation, a support group for gay and lesbian Mormons, and he stayed in California for several days afterward. Fulton has called Quinn a nothing person.. During Quinns New Orleans years, the First Presidency put out a statement discouraging Mormons from participating in academic conferences and other independent forums devoted to the discussion of their faith. This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the 1850s, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor hygiene . [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. ``It was like `We're here to support you, Brother Gileadi,' '' he said of the atmosphere at the . What I heard was that I would be excommunicated and that I shouldn't go. . That, in any case, was his thinking. 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. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. And he was the most strident of the group when it came to denouncing internal critics of Mormon leaders and teachings. When I make comments in Sunday school and Relief Society, they are accepted as anyone else's. My searching was complete. 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. I couldn't help but wonder if I, too, would be excommunicated if my concerns were made public. Nowadays, anyone can Google Mormon polygamy and learn more than theyd ever need to know about that practice, about its abandonment, the subsequent fallout, and so on. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. "She might be a model for others who have been missing their Mormon community.". The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. When his mother died in 2007, she left him the condo. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. 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. . These men are often referred to by Mormon faithful as the Brethren. Unlike local lay leaders, who hold secular day jobs and perform their ecclesiastical duties on a voluntary basis, they are full-time employees who oversee the global operations of the church. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. After the Newsweek article ran, Quinn got a phone call from Marion D. Hanks. He later got married in the temple, while I sat outside with friends. Down in Provo, Avraham Gileadi met more quietly with his local leaders. The Version table provides details related to the release that this issue/RFE will be addressed. [Husband] Paul, Christian [their son] and I sang in the choir that day. It was already, in the minds of some, a dangerous pursuit, and it had now become a deadly one, marred by fraud and riddled with errors. 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. She was also the only one whose disciplinary council was overseen by her bishop, rather than her stake president. 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. 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. A year later, David J. McLean, president of the Salt Lake Liberty Stake, reconvened a high council, a body that had excommunicated her 25 years and six months earlier for apostasy, Anderson wrote in a summary of her experience for a forthcoming volume of her essays, Mercy Without End: Toward a More Inclusive Church.. Peggy Fletcher Fletcher (Peggy Bennett Fletcher) See Photos. 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. 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 was excommunicated by the LDS Church in 2013 for refusing to cease publication of his 2011 book, Passing the Heavenly Gift which challenges many points of LDS orthodoxy. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. 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. A beaming Bishop Madrigal said I should expect very soon to get a telephone call scheduling an interview with a general authority, she wrote. (He was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a . Gileadi, a Hebrew scholar who got into trouble for unorthodox writings about the biblical Isaiah, was rebaptized within several years. . 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. It was his death and funeral that prompted the couples current bishop to bring up the possibility of her rejoining the church. . Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. Men only become gay in prison, or sometimes in the Navy. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated in 2014 for her views on gender inequality in the Mormon Church . I love Jesus. He put down in words his sincere testimony in the Mormon gospel and in Ezra Taft Bensons status as a true prophet of God. deductible, Report a missed paper by emailingsubscribe@sltrib.comor calling801-237-2900, For e-edition questions or comments, contact customer support801-237-2900or emailsubscribe@sltrib.com. A member of that sect told Quinn about a since renounced bit of theology once preached by Brigham Young, referred to as the Adam-God doctrine. Youngs notion, roughly speaking, was that God and Adam are one and the same. The nature of religion reporting in Utah is changing. They are called to them by the men at the very top of the hierarchy. He left it up to local leaders to come up with a reason. I didn't have to look at the councilmen and wonder what they said about me. 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. Resolved: Release in which this issue/RFE has been resolved. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. He left quietly and went to call the LDS Church Office Building to ask about this committee. 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. Paul's mother was great. He revised the story occasionally over the next decade, submitting it unsuccessfully to the Paris Review and the Atlantic. She said hello, but he did not recognize her. My guess is she has to be to keep the doors open so people willing to talk to her. He developed a fervent testimony not only that God exists but that God spoke to Joseph Smith face to face and that the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants are, like the Old and New Testaments, divinely inspired. This was almost certainly wrong: Romney has plenty of LDS critics, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I hate him. 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. At first, his timing appeared serendipitous: In 1972, while he was completing a masters in history at the University of Utah, an academic named Leonard Arrington was appointed church historian. Going to the temple, but I feel that it's more important to have the temple in me than for me to be in the temple. 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 . It really hurt my feelings. Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. [5] She then attended the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for two years, where she studied religious history. 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. A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. LDS bloggers issue statement of support More than 70 Mormon bloggers, representing a dozen or more websites, have signed a document, "Room for All in This Church," calling for "clemency" in the upcoming disciplinary councils for Kate Kelly and John Dehlin. He also criticized Ezra Taft Benson, then a senior apostle, who had made comments similar to Packers. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] 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. Grant, an LDS Church president, a granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah, Wallace F. Bennett, and a granddaughter of American physicist Harvey Fletcher. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. Mormonism was as much an identity issue for them as it is for me. 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 . Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 Nov. 2022 To that end, the power that Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger bring is their personal stories of defiance and excommunication. At least, that's how Hall sees it. "It will be a chance for a larger audience to hear this story," she said, and to hear how people can wrestle with their faith and then live it out. ", 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. I moved into recognizing the value and power of a lay priesthood in the body of Christ and Christian community. 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. Knowing her personally (not closely, but we're acquainted) I get the feeling that she is much more culturally LDS than actually LDS. 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. The symposium's "Pillars of My Faith" session will showcase a similar path, said Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstone's interim executive director. But by the fall of 92 he had to return to Salt Lake City to finish research on the book, and he had grown tired of hiding from church authorities. I might have lost my soul, but at least I still have my mind. July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. Now I see that he just didn't appreciate the dishonesty associated with his grandpa. A second bomb that first day killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of one of Christensens former business partners. "Given who I was, there was no place to go but out," Hanks said in 2003, on the 10th anniversary of the excommunications. 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? Quinn went over local church rolls and found addresses of kids who didnt come to Sunday services. 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. They were receptive. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. 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. His hiring was vetoed by the ASU administration, and many observers believe the administration caved to pressure from Ira Fulton, a Mormon donor who between 2003 and 2006 gave at least $155 million to the school. From that point on, she explored various Christian teachings and practices, assisted clergy with religious services and served as volunteer chaplain at Holy Cross Chapel for 13 years. 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. My strong hunch is that she is a cultural Mormon who no longer believes, pays tithing or observes the WoW, and that she's loosey-goosey with her attendance. "We pray that a spirit of clemency will guide the words and actions of everyone especially those who bear the heavy responsibility of ecclesiastical discipline of church members and that the words of President [Dieter F.] Uchtdorf [second counselor in faith's governing First Presidency] will hold sway: "Regardless of your circumstances, your personal history, or the strength of your testimony, there is room for you in this church. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. 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. 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. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for the Salt Lake Tribune. 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. Maybe she wants to be, though. If there is unfinished business, its the First Presidencys, not mine.. During the hiring process, a college dean offered to protect him, Quinn says, from those peoplethe LDS leadersup in Salt Lake., Before he could be hired, though, he had to visit LDS headquarters at 47 East South Temple in downtown Salt Lake and sit for an interview with one of those peoplespecifically, a general authority, one of the 100 or so men who run the church. Not long after that, the bishop met with Anderson and asked her ever so gently if she would like to discuss reinstatement. I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land, it says. I assured him I did not. When interviewing Quinn in 76, Packer said, I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. "The issues in Mormon doctrine, history and practice highlighted by those facing church discipline are much larger than any one individual," the statement reads. They didn't say anything. He normalized what many call "sinful" behavior, by admitting to looking at nudie mags, drinking, smoking, and intimated other transgressions, yet still going on a mission. . Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. Especially considering that in a lot of cases she's the one doing the exposing My guess is she's a let's-reform-this-baby-from-within progressive. 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. 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 came out in early 1993. Feb 17. 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. 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. [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. 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. On March 23, 2018, Andersons husband, Paul, died of heart failure. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. This is all lies! he told the friend who showed it to him. 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. 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. Taking the sacrament because it's an exclusion I feel every single week. What's it like going to church for two decades as an excommunicated member? It was, Quinn told me, an awful, awful year., When he had recovered enough to write, Quinn finished the sequel to The Mormon Hierarchy and revised Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. Years ago, Don Bradley, a longtime scholar of Mormon history, asked to have his name removed from LDS membership rolls when participation became uncomfortable. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . That was my decision. That bright line is one of the reasons Mormons still sometimes seem separate from the mainstream of American life even after a century of assimilation.