peggy fletcher stack excommunicated

He has not been since. It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. 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. By: Peggy Fletcher Stack. Nor does it read like one. Quinn got hate mail. (He also, as it happens, officiated at the wedding of my parents.) Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. Every morning he worked there was Christmas morning, Quinn says. In California, Quinn had picked up his mail at a P.O. Article type . Peggy Fletcher. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. . 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. 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. It was not the last time he helped to excommunicate people, though. The Version table provides details related to the release that this issue/RFE will be addressed. This is not entirely uncommon in Mormon culture, but Quinn took it sincerely to heart. So she met with local and high Mormon leaders and, after several months, they set a baptismal date. I was not surprised or angry about the outcome, Anderson said Wednesday, and she has no plans to try to open that door again. In 2001, a long-standing effort called the Joseph Smith Papers Project received additional funding and became a major draw to those who wished to study the early days of the church. Former Mormon leader is building a new life -- as a woman - Rick Alan Ross BYU and Utah State both wanted to hire him. The movie was a live-action adaptation of the Nintendo game Super Mario Bros. Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. 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. Years ago, Don Bradley, a longtime scholar of Mormon history, asked to have his name removed from LDS membership rolls when participation became uncomfortable. 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. 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. 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. Two years later, he was called as an apostle. A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. 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. The president in 2012, when Hanks was readmitted, was Thomas S. Monson. [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. Quinn read Hanks letter that night and wrote a detailed response. Peggy Fletcher-Stack. Even in the novels, he noticed, the gay characters came to terrible ends. This is maybe where John and I are very different. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. 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. He wept as he read it aloud to others. 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. 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. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. What I heard was that I would be excommunicated and that I shouldn't go. Once in a while such a case will hit the press. The book opened Quinns teenage eyes to dissent within the highest echelons of LDS leadership, and to the apostles debateand apparent dissemblingabout plural marriage after 1890. Arrington). 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. McLean invited her, she said, to describe her faith in a letter, which includes her conviction that God cherishes everyone. The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a . It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. 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. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. During Sunday school, a man approached him and said, The bishop would like to talk to you. Quinn dreaded what was coming. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. This has been intentional. 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 wrote a short story about two male missionaries in Louisiana who become attracted to each other and are stalked by a religious psychopath. Daryl Peveto/Luceo Images for Slate. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. 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. June 17, 2014 8:59 pm . That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. Packers notion that those writing church history should share only those things that are faith-promoting is not just intellectually offensive nowit has become quaint, the relic of a time when information was not so freely available. One theory on that first day of panic was that the bombings were connected with the business, an investment company called CFS. 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. A church spokesman told him that it did exist, and the First Presidency issued a formal statement about it the following week. He revised the story occasionally over the next decade, submitting it unsuccessfully to the Paris Review and the Atlantic. It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. At the time, he was grieving the death of his son, who had gone missing and was found weeks later hanging from a tree by an extension cord. What's happening is so wrong. 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. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. I didn't have any doubts. I see her articles on here all the time and the Tribune has never really been a friend to the TSCC. 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. ", 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. 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. The main target of the statement, issued in August 1991, was the Sunstone Symposium, an annual gathering started by Sunstone magazine 12 years before. 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. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. He insisted that the September councils were local affairs, but church employees who reported to him had, it turned out, been keeping tabs on the six who were disciplined, and rumors swirled that Packer himself personally insisted that the courts take place. 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. More painfully, as a high councilor in a Utah stake several years later, Quinn was part of courts prompted by personal sinsuch as engaging in homosexual acts. [4] During her time there, she has met and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Gordon B. Hinckley, among others. 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. He hopes that eventually hell manage to sell the condo and will get enough money for it that he could move back to New Orleans and live there for the last couple decades, God willing, of his life. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. Part of what I feel is a calling to be there. 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. Quinn wrote back more harshly this time, listing all the things Hanks had done that troubled him. That was established definitively in 1986 after Hofmann confessed to the murders of Christensen and Sheets as part of a plea to avoid the death penalty. Gileadi, Toscano, Anderson, and Hanks were all excommunicated. 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. Mormonism was as much an identity issue for them as it is for me. 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. [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. (These soon-to-be former Mormons were not required to attend.) PDF Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. 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. Ironically, this testimony only ever deserted him on his Mormon mission. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. [3][4][5] She was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), with her father traveling and speaking as a member of the stake high council. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. Excommunication opened the door to a larger cosmos, inside and outside myself.". While preparing for the retired Brigham Young University artists memorial service, Bishop Mahonri Madrigal read Pauls written testimony, or statements of faith, that the ward had compiled in 2000. The field has grown and appears to have moved on, even though the research that Quinn did, and the fights that he picked, were crucial to what has come in his wake. She did, however, tell her leaders her concerns about church exclusion policies: barring worthy LGBTQ couples who are legally married from full participation; blocking worthy and righteous women from the male-only priesthood; and keeping Mother in Heaven from her place in our understanding.. I don't think I could have done that graciously. 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. 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. An interview from January 1983: Sterling M. McMurrin : mormon She said she was really angry at the church, not at me. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] 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. Excommunicated Mormon to tell how she came back to the faith The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax Feb 17. (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.) They were receptive. He never wrote another work of fiction. Mystery! On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. 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. I love John and I support him, but I have never made any claim against truth claims of the church. 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. Peggy Fletcher. Peggy Fletcher Stack was born and raised in New Jersey; studied at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California; traveled through Africa for two years with her news-photographer husband; and worked at Books and Religion in Manhattan before settling down as a religion writer at The Salt Lake Tribune. Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu . I imagine she walks a careful, thin line to avoid being exed. The [women's] Relief Society president found a way to involve me as a "permanent substitute" for Relief Society pianist. In May, my stake president called me in about it. "Given who I was, there was no place to go but out," Hanks said in 2003, on the 10th anniversary of the excommunications. Dallin Oaks speaking at the General Conference in April 1989. West refused to do this, according to Quinn. Paul Toscano, a combative lawyer, showed up for his, at the Cottonwood Stake Center in the southern part of Salt Lake City. 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. 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. He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone Symposium. Anderson wrote another piece that was again picked up by multiple papers, including the Los Angeles Times, which ran it under the headline Mormons Investigating Him, Critic Says.. 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. 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. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. In it, Harris, who paid for the first printing of the Book of Mormon, tells a story of that books origins strikingly different from Smiths later, official account. Where else would I be but in the church? Once the kids were interested, the missionaries were supposed to contact their parents, with the aim of converting whole families. When he came to understand this aspect of himself, and learned a name for it, he did what was already typical of him at that age: He went to the library. Hymns were sung. It had since become the premier event for the so-called scholars and intellectuals of Mormonism to gather and exchange ideas. [5] She then attended the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for two years, where she studied religious history. I love the gospel. Taylor fled to Canada during the congressional hearings for Reed Smoot, a fellowbut monogamousapostle, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate. Peggy Fletcher Stack - WikiMili, The Best Wikipedia Reader As a Mormon, he also knew that same-sex attraction was considered unfortunate at bestsomething to be struggled with, and, if possible, overcome. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting.She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017 . I had my answers.". Robert Kirby does this also, but much more indirectly. Peggy Fletcher. Sign Up. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Not long before Hofmann sold that forged document, he approached Quinn in the church archives, and asked about the succession crisis and the article. 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. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. "The issues in Mormon doctrine, history and practice highlighted by those facing church discipline are much larger than any one individual," the statement reads. Where a skeptic sees convenience, a believer may see Gods hand. Box 15 miles from where he was staying, and in New Orleans he had it delivered to a receiving center a little ways from his apartment. He stinks.. How have the members of your ward treated you? Paul Toscanos sister-in-law was excommunicated for her writings about the Heavenly Mother, a controversial aspect of Mormon theology. 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. The latter, a smaller school, offered less money, but BYU had its own drawbacks: It was and is a conservative place, politically as well as religiously. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. As Quinn writes, the Manifesto inherited ambiguity, was created in ambiguity, and produced ambiguity.. 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. Quinn is no longer actively seeking an academic job. [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. Instead, he simply took away Quinns temple recommend. Temples, distinct from regular meetinghouses, are reserved for sacred rituals, and require a recommend, a small card indicating ones worthiness, to enter. When I make comments in Sunday school and Relief Society, they are accepted as anyone else's. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. The stake president, who oversees a number of congregations, remained optimistic, she said, zeroing in on the words, at this time., But the writer replied, Theres hope, and then theres experience., Besides, she said, it was a form letter.. Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example, published in 1996, argues that same-sex intimacy was much more accepted by early Mormonsincluding Joseph Smiththan it is today. The stake president shook our hands and was cordial. Quinn had been avoiding this confrontation for nearly five years. 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. . And he based at least one of his forgeries on the work of Michael Quinn. I hate him. She has sat quietly in the same pew as the emblems of the sacrament, or communion, have passed by her more than 1,200 times without being able to partake. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. 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. >Two years after an excommunicated Kate Kelly sought a giant leap, Mormon feminists keep making small steps toward equity . Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home with the work of her late husband, Paul L. Anderson, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. 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. He later got married in the temple, while I sat outside with friends. 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. 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. Quinns religious status wouldofficially, at leastbe decided by his own stake president, not by the higher-ups in Salt Lake City. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks told The Salt Lake Tribune that year. 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. He decided that only 16 of the changes were significant. But it was a forgery. After high school, Christian went to Stanford, and we thought, "This may be where we hear bad news." Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. Dated Oct. 23, 1830, the letter was addressed to an early Mormon convert named W.W. Phelps and signed Martin Harris. Maybe she wants to be, though. Some church leaders continued to marry multiple wives, which is why there was a Second Manifesto in 1904, during the Reed Smoot congressional hearings. Stack is an advisor on religion to the Public Broadcasting Service,[2] and has written two books. This year he completed the third and final volume in his trilogy on the Mormon hierarchy, which examines the churchs business and financial activities from 1830 to 2010. 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. False Prophet Gaining Steam Among a 'Remnant' Church The second thing that happens is members learn to be afraid of leaders, and leaders learn to be afraid of members. 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. 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. 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. But the Churchs case against Twede will never be known: After the Daily Beast story, the council was postponed, and a few weeks later, Twede resigned from the faith. [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. Down in Provo, Avraham Gileadi met more quietly with his local leaders. Peggy Fletcher Stack | The Christian Century (Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.) "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. He froze. 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 . In 2004, after a series of fellowships and visiting appointments, he was the only finalist for a tenured position at the University of Utah.