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Why didn't you go to the hearing to defend yourself? In hindsight, the purge of September 1993 looks like the last big push for a kind of control that LDS leaders will probably never have again. Quinns status in the church remained unchanged. 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. 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. In the field of Mormon history the changes are particularly pronounced. 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. It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. By then an assistant district attorney, Lambert later helped prosecute the case against Hofmann. At the conference, he spoke about the history of same-sex relationships in the church and the shifting attitudes toward them on the part of Mormon leaders. The 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 . But Packer certainly said similar things before larger audiences. 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. I could listen to the spirit there. I love John and I support him, but I have never made any claim against truth claims of the church. 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. Even after that, a few high-ranking Mormons continued to authorize such marriages. There, he tried other kinds of writing, thinking maybe hed put Mormon history behind him. He has not been since. The general authority assigned to interview Quinn in the spring of 1976 was Boyd K. Packer. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for . The Version table provides details related to the release that this issue/RFE will be addressed. He referred to the pathos that I felt in your private letters to mea plea to not be discarded from something that you love. I want to help resolve that pathos, he added, and a sadness that seems to pervade your private writing to me.. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. The nature of religion reporting in Utah is changing. In California, Quinn had picked up his mail at a P.O. See Photos. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. During Sunday school, a man approached him and said, The bishop would like to talk to you. Quinn dreaded what was coming. These are very sensitive and highly confidential and this is why I have not mentioned them before in writing. Hanks alluded to these matters in subsequent letters, but never explicitly said that he had Quinns sexuality in mind. . 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. These three shocks to Quinns testimonyabout the Book of Mormon, polygamy, and LDS theologyspurred a pursuit to unearth and understand those parts of his religions past that complicated the simpler story of the faith he had learned as a child. Groundbreaking Emma Smith biographer, a 'giant' in Mormon scholarship, dies at 82. I know how to avoid people I didnt want to be in contact with, he says. A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. (He took the surname from actor Anthony Quinn, whom he knew growing up in the Los Angeles barrio.) 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. 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. 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. I accuse that committee, England declared, of undermining our Church.. He turned 65 two years later, making him eligible for Social Security and Medicare. Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. (They draw numbers to pick sides.) Quinns parents were divorced when he was 4, and he was raised largely by his mothers parents, who frequently fought. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . Men only become gay in prison, or sometimes in the Navy. Hebrew scholar Avraham Gileadi has been rebaptized into the LDS Church after being excommunicated for apostasy along with five other writers and scholars in September 1993. He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone Symposium. The intellectual climate had improved under Oaks, people said. He loves cities, and when he lived in New Orleans in the early 90s, he made friends in bars and in an informal group of gay professionals who gathered once a month. was pressured to resign from Brigham Young University and subsequently excommunicated from the faith in 1993 as part of the famed "September Six . In both forms of LDS courts, the accused is typically allowed to bring in character witnesses. 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. 9:30AM EDT 8/29/2017 Peggy Fletcher Stack/RNS. He was in a wheelchair. I am confident that my desire to be worthy of the temple is acceptable of the Lord. That's like solving obesity by turning MacDonald's into a gym. [5] She then received a fellowship to work in the Church History Division of the LDS Church (then run by Leonard J. In the late 60s, he was called to preside over the churchs missionary efforts in New England, and moved with his family to Cambridge, Mass. 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. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. 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. The Salt Lake Tribune's Peggy Fletcher Stack, a . To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. Peggy Fletcher. Today, LDS leaders seem more inclined to recognize, said Wotherspoon, now host of the "Mormon Matters" podcast, "that Zion is made up of people of all types. Quinn, who later assisted the police in their investigation, did not go home for several days. It will be published next year. Hanks rejoined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February. She declined. Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. Something similar, if more protracted, took place after September 1993. Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. 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 also criticized Ezra Taft Benson, then a senior apostle, who had made comments similar to Packers. Soon after, he happened to attend, with some friends, a meeting of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a splinter sect that believes Joseph Smiths son, not Brigham Young, was Smiths rightful successor as prophet. I love the church. Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, nearly fainted waiting for the Dalai Lama, fasted with Muslims during Ramadan and has reported on 50 consecutive semiannual LDS General Conferences. It did not happen overnight, but many LDS leaders seemed to regret the furor and the hurt that surrounded those excommunications. At least, that's how Hall sees it. Then I went away to my cabin for the summer and he called all the temples in Utah, saying he was canceling my recommend. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. 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. 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. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. ", Hanks' rebaptism suggests a difference in LDS leadership from then to now, said Dan Wotherspoon, Sunstone's editor from 2001 to 2008. As the historian Ross Peterson said at the time, Comparing Sunstone and Dialogue folks to people who were shooting Mormons in 1839 Missouri is unfair. Peterson, after speaking about Mormon temple rites in the press, had been shown his own file during a conversation with local church leaders. It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. . 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. If there is unfinished business, its the First Presidencys, not mine.. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for rebaptism into the LDS Church rejected by the faith's governing First Presidency after being approved by her local lay leaders. . 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. How is she still a practicing member after all this exposure to the truth? 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. In the spring, he had published LDS Authority and New Plural Marriages, 18901904, the culmination of his interest in post-1890 polygamy, first prompted a quarter-century before by Family Kingdom. But he had a caring bishop that first year and decided on his own to serve a mission. He decided he would suppress that part of himself and be a good Mormon. 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. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. Hanks became conciliatory, reading On Being a Mormon Historian, and writing to say hed gotten from it deeper insight into your devotion and your dedication to history and the Church. He asked again to meet when Quinn came back to Utah. [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. 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. No telephone call came., On Aug. 27, McLean delivered the First Presidency denial. Supposedly Nelson, like Benson, was a supporter of the John Birch Society, a radically right-wing, conspiracy-mongering, anti-Communist group. He asked Quinn to come see him in his office after work one day, Quinn says. 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. 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. The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. It was really important to Paul and me that Christian grow up in a religious community, and the church was the one we chose. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks said. His wife Margaret, an English professor and feminist who attracted attention from church leaders before her husband did, was excommunicated in 2000. "Given who I was, there was no place to go but out," Hanks said in 2003, on the 10th anniversary of the excommunications. What do you think about these potential actions against Kate Kelly and John Dehlin? 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. 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. or. 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. On March 23, 2018, Andersons husband, Paul, died of heart failure. I wouldn't give it up, but promised him I wouldn't use it. It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. 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. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. 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. Two of the so-called "September Six" have found their way back into the LDS fold while Anderson though never rebaptized in some ways has never left. Mystery! 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. 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. But he could no longer go to the temple. 1897 - First Presidency member George Q. Cannon used the media attention on the 1895 conviction and two-year imprisonment of famed Irish poet Oscar Wilde as an opportunity to pu Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. It sent him down a rabbit hole. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. My searching was complete. He was excommunicated in 1911. I didn't have any doubts. What to him and others that is so threatening is that this [Ordain Women movement] is coming from a very faithful, devout perspective. Where else would I be but in the church? 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. One of the articles came from an anthology called Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, edited by Maxine Hanks, a distant relative of Pauland his uncle Marionand, soon, one of the September Six herself. At least, that's how Hall sees it. 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. Experts authenticated the letter, and Christensen, a devout Mormon, bought it from Hofmann, with plans to donate it to the church. Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu . 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. 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. It had since become the premier event for the so-called scholars and intellectuals of Mormonism to gather and exchange ideas. 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. 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. A forum for ex-mormons and others who have been affected by mormonism to get support and share news, commentary, and comedy about the Mormon church. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. 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. The cabin has no phone access, so I had months [after her initial conversation with the stake president] to think about it. . 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. She's been covering religion for the paper since 1991 taking on a variety of topics, but mostly the LDS Church. She was also the only one whose disciplinary council was overseen by her bishop, rather than her stake president. 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. 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. Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. In her paper, she mentioned an internal espionage system that creates and maintains secret files on members of the church. A BYU literature professor named Eugene England rose to speak as soon as Anderson finished. 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.. 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. What I heard was that I would be excommunicated and that I shouldn't go. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. The timing of his career, which once appeared serendipitous, now seems almost cruel. ", Kelly goes on KUER's Radio West "A lot of people are asking me why I came forward [with the news of my disciplinary hearing]. . This made some church leaders uneasy. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. Her explorations gave Hanks a new level of understanding and "testimony" of Mormonism. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. Following his excommunication, he finished The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power and turned his attention to another scholarly book with deep personal meaning. Snuffer was excommunicated. [10][11][12][13] The American Academy of Religion awarded her a first place Journalism Award in 2014 for her reporting on LDS missionaries who return home early from their volunteer missions. That's a good question. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. The bombings and subsequent murder trial cast a pall over the practice of Mormon history. "The issues in Mormon doctrine, history and practice highlighted by those facing church discipline are much larger than any one individual," the statement reads. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". 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. Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. He froze. The stake president shook our hands and was cordial. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack. We embedded him as thoroughly in the church as we ourselves had been. Saturday, February 22, 1997. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. 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. 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. (Quinn attempted to reach this friend through a third party before my piece was finished, but declined to give me his name before speaking to him.) At Yale, while serving as one of two counselors to the local bishop, he found unanswered letters in the wards files from people who wished to leave the church. Dave: We remind our listeners about a new way to support Mormon Land. But gradually, pressure on Mormon scholars eased, and today many write and publish without any obvious concern for what their stake presidents might think. Being treated like an ordinary person is a gift a ward can give. That, in any case, was his thinking. She talks very vaguely when it comes to personal, specific spiritual beliefs and whether they align with doctrine, but she doesn't hesitate to call the church out on its shit at all. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. He also mentioned reading Quinns long Dialogue article about the politics of Ezra Taft Benson. Quinn read Hanks letter that night and wrote a detailed response. KRE/AMB END STACK 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. 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? Nor does it read like one. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. 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. They divorced soon after. That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. They had the responsibility to preserve the doctrinal purity of the church, they said, adding that, because Mormon leaders are constrained by confidentiality rules, the media have relied on information supplied by those disciplined or by their sympathizers. Similar councils occurred more sporadically over the next few years. 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. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] I prayed every article I wrote into print, he said, continually asking God what he should do. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. This puzzled me because I had a lot to say, but the message was absolutely clear. Paul Toscanos sister-in-law was excommunicated for her writings about the Heavenly Mother, a controversial aspect of Mormon theology. [14] Along with five other reporters, she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 in the Local Reporting category for a series of stories about sexual assault victims at BYU.