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. 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.
Threat of Excommunication Log In. Find your friends on Facebook. 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. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often.
Timeline of teachings on homosexuality in the Church of Jesus Christ of Stack is an advisor on religion to the Public Broadcasting Service,[2] and has written two books. 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: How I report on Utah's changing faith landscape The Unholy Practice of Excommunication - Exponent II West did not formally revoke the recommend, he just put it in his drawer. Quinn and four othersLavina Fielding Anderson, Maxine Hanks (a distant relative of Paul Hanks, the stake president who showed up at Quinns apartment), Paul Toscano, and Avraham Gileadiwere excommunicated by stake presidents in Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah; a sixth, Lynn Whitesides, was disfellowshipped, meaning that she remained a member of the church but could not fully participate in its rites and activities. 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. 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. The biggest thing that got me was the excommunication of bill reel segment of the Mormon stories podcast. sltrib.com. Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. 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. Snuffer was excommunicated. It was really important to Paul and me that Christian grow up in a religious community, and the church was the one we chose. Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. In May, my stake president called me in about it. Saturday, February 22, 1997. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". Feb 17. If Peggy wanted to do some groundbreaking . That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. ``It was like `We're here to support you, Brother Gileadi,' '' he said of the atmosphere at the . They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. Still, he sought out the scriptures first edition himself, and did his own comparison. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. (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 . Religion Two decades after she was "exed," Utah writer still attends her LDS ward. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. 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. . 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.
False Prophet Gaining Steam Among a 'Remnant' Church [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] [4] During her time there, she has met and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Gordon B. Hinckley, among others. Hanks was accused of apostasy for editing an anthology, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, which included a discussion of the all-male priesthood and womens relationship to it. 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. The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a . He subsequently has . 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. 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. After the church court, when I walked into the chapel, it took about three times longer to get to my seat because so many people hugged me. or. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. Quinn, who later assisted the police in their investigation, did not go home for several days. And it was not popular with those of the brethren that Quinn had already angered with his talk on Mormon history four years before. What to him and others that is so threatening is that this [Ordain Women movement] is coming from a very faithful, devout perspective. From an early age, he felt within himself the presence of God, this burning of the spirit, as he says.
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. Caffeinated Version: He stinks.. 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. He was housesitting. Peggy Fletcher Stack, David Noyce 3/23/2022. It is also worth noting that the church president in 1993 was an ailing Ezra Taft Benson. 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. How is she still a practicing member after all this exposure to the truth? A diligent historian, meanwhile, will come to see that the truth of the matter is complicated. [5] She met Mike Stack when he volunteered as a photographer for Sunstone in 1984, and they married in October 1985. Born in 1924 in Brigham City, Utah, the 10th of 11 children, Packer worked for years as a teacher and administrator in the Church Educational System. However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". The movie was a live-action adaptation of the Nintendo game Super Mario Bros. He compared Packers treatment of Church leaders to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, which is anathema to Mormons. 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?
Excommunicated Mormon to tell how she came back to the faith 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. "Given who I was, there was no place to go but out," Hanks said in 2003, on the 10th anniversary of the excommunications. In 2004, after a series of fellowships and visiting appointments, he was the only finalist for a tenured position at the University of Utah. By Peggy Fletcher Stack After an exhausting six-hour disciplinary hearing Sunday, Mormon leaders temporarily suspended Grant H. Palmer's membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What I heard was that I would be excommunicated and that I shouldn't go.
JDK-8141210 : Very slow loading of JavaScript file with recent JDK It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. "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. 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. She's been covering religion for the paper since 1991 taking on a variety of topics, but mostly the LDS Church. As Quinn writes, the Manifesto inherited ambiguity, was created in ambiguity, and produced ambiguity.. That came out in early 1993. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. The bishops next comment was, Whats wrong with those people up in Salt Lake? He was thrilled to have Quinn in his ward. Packer approved Quinns hiring, but he may have come to regret it five years later. The Strengthening Church Members Committee almost certainly passed along notes about Quinn to his new stake president, Paul Hanks, in early 1993. Excommunication opened the door to a larger cosmos, inside and outside myself.". 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. 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. Mystery! Once the kids were interested, the missionaries were supposed to contact their parents, with the aim of converting whole families. 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. This has been intentional.
How did the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints grow so fast 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. Sign Up. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. He has occasionally attended other churches. My own name remains on the rolls of the church, and I plan to leave it there, though I stopped believing in the Mormon gospel 15 years ago.
After 20 years, this excommunicated Mormon still attends her LDS ward Paul Toscano, a combative lawyer, showed up for his, at the Cottonwood Stake Center in the southern part of Salt Lake City. While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. I see her articles on here all the time and the Tribune has never really been a friend to the TSCC.
Leadership in Difficult Times: Critical Thinking and Wisdom (Part II) Groundbreaking Emma Smith biographer, a 'giant' in Mormon scholarship, dies at 82. The bombings and subsequent murder trial cast a pall over the practice of Mormon history. 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. When his mother died in 2007, she left him the condo. Would love to hear your stories about her. I used to think Steve Benson was a bad person. After high school, Christian went to Stanford, and we thought, "This may be where we hear bad news." 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. With no regular income to speak of, Quinn moved into his mothers condo in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. Bad marriages had women running to and away from . Quinns polygamy essay, meanwhile, produced more trouble for him with LDS leaders. He also mentioned reading Quinns long Dialogue article about the politics of Ezra Taft Benson. Her explorations gave Hanks a new level of understanding and "testimony" of Mormonism. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. 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. He went to stay instead with an old college friend, Richard Lambert. Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu . I feel like I am going by proxy for others who feel too damaged, too hurt and afraid to go. The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. 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. (Quinn is known professionally as D. Michael Quinn; the first name on his birth certificate is Dennis.) 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. 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. [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. Hundreds of other members joined him at gatherings and in small groups, and thus was born the "remnant movement ," which today touts 1000s of adherents. I love the church. Hanks told him he had been excommunicated, and said that the court lasted six hours. He himself did not even stay in town. 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. "Mormonism was limiting to me, so I needed to test the limits to see who I and the church really might be.
Writer excommunicated during 'September Six' purge loses her bid to 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. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. The stake president shook our hands and was cordial. 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.
Mormon higher-ups hold keys to excommunication process against two I am confident that my desire to be worthy of the temple is acceptable of the Lord. (He was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) News. Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. I cannot be anything but a Mormon. 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 . If he doesnt, I have his phone number and I know where he lives. She was also the only one whose disciplinary council was overseen by her bishop, rather than her stake president. (These soon-to-be former Mormons were not required to attend.) 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. 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. 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. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. BYU and Utah State both wanted to hire him. 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. The cabin has no phone access, so I had months [after her initial conversation with the stake president] to think about it. That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above. 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. Ultimately, the events of September 1993 may have helped broaden those borderlands, encouraging other members of the faith to openly question Mormon orthodoxy without entirely leaving the religion behind. Looking back, it was a real blessing. The kindness of my ward members has been really important. 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 . As she entered the building at 47 East South Temple, she happened to pass Boyd K. Packer on his way out. 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. Maybe, I suggested, he was trying to bring his full self out into the open. 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. . 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. It was the papers second article in two weeks about a series of church courts held across 13 days in September and reported in media outlets across the country. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. My guess is she has to be to keep the doors open so people willing to talk to her. After the Newsweek article ran, Quinn got a phone call from Marion D. Hanks. I felt they were not going to drive me away. 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. 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. Quinns mother, on the other hand, was a sixth-generation Mormon: She had an ancestor who converted when the Mormons were still in Nauvoo, Ill., and who is mentioned in Joseph Smiths journals. 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. Denver Snuffer . "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks said. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. He does not have friends in Rancho Cucamonga. 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. She is in the right family. The same month that his essay about post-Manifesto polygamy was published, in April 1985, Quinn and his wife separated. Taking the sacrament because it's an exclusion I feel every single week. Running almost 100 pages and including nearly 400 footnotes, the essay was the fruit of decades of thought and research. Late last year, a friend approached LDS officials to say that Hanks was ready to return to the fold. The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. 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. While such a calling does not officially confer infallibility on the man who receives itand the general authorities are all malepublicly criticizing the men in these positions is strongly discouraged.
How is Peggy Fletcher Stack still Mormon? : r/exmormon - reddit Even in the novels, he noticed, the gay characters came to terrible ends. The accused is called in, another prayer is offered, and the court proceeds. When I make comments in Sunday school and Relief Society, they are accepted as anyone else's. No way. After organizing a massive campaign to pass Proposition 8 and make gay marriage illegal in California, for instance, the church suffered a massive backlash and has since appeared more tolerant toward gay rights activism.
Excommunication Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster Quinn attended that ward in Westwood every week while he was in California. 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. Just before his excommunication, in the spring of 1993, Quinn bore his testimony at the singles ward he was attending each week in Westwood, near UCLA.
'Mormon Land': A scholar who was excommunicated for his - MSN These dangers, Packer said, were the relatively new feminist and gay-lesbian movements, and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals.. Not long before Hofmann sold that forged document, he approached Quinn in the church archives, and asked about the succession crisis and the article. July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . 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.
Peggy Fletcher Stack - WikiMili, The Best Wikipedia Reader The four-day symposium, which begins Wednesday evening, also will include dozens of sessions about Mormonism and politics, about how members grapple with contemporary issues such as gay rights and feminism, building online LDS communities, Mormon Latino views of the church's immigration stance and how the Utah-based faith has developed its "brand" in the past several decades. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Hymns were sung. "She might be a model for others who have been missing their Mormon community.". 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. That, in any case, was his thinking. Peggy Fletcher Stack is the religion columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, and one of the founders of Sunstone. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. [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. 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. At the pinnacle of the Mormon hierarchy is the First Presidencythe churchs prophet and his two counselorsand the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Whether Quinns fate had truly been sealed is hard to say. 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. [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. Being treated like an ordinary person is a gift a ward can give. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. Wearing a bathrobe, he answered after several rings and found three men in suits and ties on his doorstep. At Sunstone, Hanks described her path back to Mormonism as a heros journey, la Joseph Campbell. 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. He then announced that I was not a member in good standing and could not use my temple recommend. 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.
Peggy Fletcher Stack - Wikipedia He has not been since.