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 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. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022. BYU and Utah State both wanted to hire him. 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. Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. 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. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] The accused is called in, another prayer is offered, and the court proceeds. Experts authenticated the letter, and Christensen, a devout Mormon, bought it from Hofmann, with plans to donate it to the church. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. Quinn had spent three years in the military in the late 60s, working in counterintelligence. News. By Peggy Fletcher Stack June 23, 2015 Many Mormon feminists experienced Kate Kelly's excommunication as a harsh slap felt around the world. [5] She then attended the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for two years, where she studied religious history. [Husband] Paul, Christian [their son] and I sang in the choir that day. She was upset that he was not attending church, and so he drove 45 minutes to a singles ward, a Mormon congregation specifically for unmarried adults, near UCLA. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. 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. Peggy Fletcher. Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. 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. By: Peggy Fletcher Stack. 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. He asked Quinn to come see him in his office after work one day, Quinn says. Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. 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. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. This is not entirely uncommon in Mormon culture, but Quinn took it sincerely to heart. To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. If there is unfinished business, its the First Presidencys, not mine.. Her testimony was that of a believer, Madrigal later told her. A candlelight vigil was held outside the Salt Lake City meetinghouse where it took place. The Salt Lake Tribune . Knowing that our Heavenly Parents are both male and female teaches me that our potential as women is limitless. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax 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. She currently serves on the . Maybe she wants to be, though. Disciplinary councils still happen, though they appear to be less frequent, particularly when it comes to apostasy. 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. I had my answers.". [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. 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. In his Yale dissertation, Quinn examined the highest leadership of the LDS church as a social elite, focusing on the extensive family ties within the hierarchy, the considerable wealth of Mormon authorities, and their long-standing involvement in politics. 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. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. 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. It is always harder on the loved one who has to stand by and see someone they love being hurt. I prayed every article I wrote into print, he said, continually asking God what he should do. Just go to . LDS officials disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals in and around the fall of 1993. He decided that only 16 of the changes were significant. He slept on her futon and had no Internet access or health insurance. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. 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. Quinn went to Californiahe had another fellowship at the Huntington Librarystaying this time with his mother. Stack is an advisor on religion to the Public Broadcasting Service,[2] and has written two books. 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. This made some church leaders uneasy. In the summer of 1952, the late Sterling McMurrin, an eminent philosopher and writer, met with two LDS apostles to defend his theological views.With complete candor, McMurrin laid out for Elders Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold . On Oct. 16, 1985, Quinn was having a late lunch at a BYU food court when he heard a news report that Mark Hofmann had been blown up by a pipe bomb in Salt Lake City. 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. 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 . Even in the novels, he noticed, the gay characters came to terrible ends. "Mormon facing excommunication makes his living off his podcasts," by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune, February 8, 2015 "On Attempts to Smear (i.e., Being 'Fair Gamed'") by John Dehlin ; Faith Transition episodes on Mormon Stories . Ill come get him. His father was never Mormon: The son of Mexican immigrants, he changed his namethough never legallyfrom Daniel Pea to Donald Quinn, apparently wanting to escape his heritage as well as his poverty. He himself did not even stay in town. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. Right next to Pauls was Lavinas description of her beliefs in Jesus Christ, Mormon founder Joseph Smith, the scriptural text he produced, The Book of Mormon, and the role of prophets. The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an . After the Newsweek article ran, Quinn got a phone call from Marion D. Hanks. With his background in education, he became interested in how the church taught its own past, and decided he did not like what was going on at the church historians office. Until 23 years ago, one could not formally leave the church without being excommunicated. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. She embodies, more than anyone else I know, the ideal of a broken heart and contrite spirit, which has influenced me so strongly that I, the last time I checked, was one of only two of the 21 children of the September Six who is still an active member.. 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. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. (They draw numbers to pick sides.) Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. 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. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. 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. 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. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. When I make comments in Sunday school and Relief Society, they are accepted as anyone else's. 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 are called to them by the men at the very top of the hierarchy. But Packer certainly said similar things before larger audiences. They don't feel safe enough to keep going it's such a terrible, terrible loss. In California, Quinn had picked up his mail at a P.O. For the faithful, the simplest narrative regarding LDS polygamy is that God wanted Mormons to practice it between 1843when He revealed the doctrine of plural marriage to Joseph Smithand 1890, when He informed one of Smiths successors, Wilford Woodruff, of a change in course. Peggy Fletcher Fletcher (Peggy Bennett Fletcher) See Photos. He later got married in the temple, while I sat outside with friends. Hanks worked for the Church Educational System, where Packer had long been an administrator, and Quinn heard that Loren C. Dunn, a friend of Packers and fellow general authority, had spoken to Hanks personally. One Sunday in February of 1993, Michael Quinn was home sick with a fever when his doorbell rang. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. 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. While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. . He stinks.. 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 status in the church remained unchanged. Some church leaders continued to marry multiple wives, which is why there was a Second Manifesto in 1904, during the Reed Smoot congressional hearings. . A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. 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. 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. I heard she's not Mormon at all. 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. 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. I love the church. For details, go to http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. At Sunstone, Hanks described her path back to Mormonism as a heros journey, la Joseph Campbell. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home with the work of her late husband, Paul L. Anderson, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. 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. June 19, 2014 ; 1 of 9; Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. The church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. On the Sunday it was held, Quinn went to a movie theater in downtown Salt Lake and bought a ticket for the first screening he could find, to take his mind off the disciplinary council. disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals, church disciplinary actions threatening Mormon feminist Kate Kelly and blogger John Dehlin. 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. Peggy Fletcher. Quinn went over local church rolls and found addresses of kids who didnt come to Sunday services. Today, its Nelson, with a new counselor, Oaks, instead of Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Mormon higher-ups hold keys to excommunication process against two activists. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. TV and newspaper reporters came. Every morning he worked there was Christmas morning, Quinn says. 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. "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. She has participated as much as she was able playing the piano and singing in the choir and watched as seven lay bishops have come and gone. All rights reserved. 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. 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. 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. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. The Quarum of 12 Apostles wanted to ex her, but the Quarum of Public Relations blocked their move. In order to have her blessings fully restored, she had to meet with a general authority at church headquarters. She has been visited by all her ward and stake leaders since 1993, she said, but this was the first time anyone had ever proposed it. When his mother died in 2007, she left him the condo. 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 . 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. That's a good question. Though he maintained a solemn belief in the Mormon gospel and in the sacrament partaken of by the faithful at Sunday services, he stopped attending church altogether. All rights reserved. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. 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. He had also just published an article titled The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844, which detailed the confusion about who should succeed Joseph Smith after his assassination. Not long before Hofmann sold that forged document, he approached Quinn in the church archives, and asked about the succession crisis and the article. I love the gospel. A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. In the quarter-century since her ouster, Anderson consistently has attended weekly services at her Latter-day Saint congregation, the Whittier Ward. The church declined to comment on the decision. The second thing that happens is members learn to be afraid of leaders, and leaders learn to be afraid of members. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. I had never been treated as a liar before. What's it like going to church for two decades as an excommunicated member? Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. It's a way for me to participate and contribute, almost like having a calling. 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. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. He visited these homes with his missionary companion and asked the boys if they still wanted to be Mormons. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. Saturday, February 22, 1997. He turned 65 two years later, making him eligible for Social Security and Medicare. Quinn refused. However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". 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. The church keeps fairly careful records of its membership, for one thing, records that play a part in the worldwide effort to bring salvation to all of Gods children. The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a . by Peggy Fletcher Stack (Salt Lake Tribune) 06-23-2015. ", 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.
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