Not long after that, the bishop met with Anderson and asked her ever so gently if she would like to discuss reinstatement. 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. 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? West refused to do this, according to Quinn. In the past, many Mormon officials had a sense, he said, that the church must protect its members from "wolves among them.". Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. This is maybe where John and I are very different. 1) I am very proud that, unlike the LDS Church, I have been transparent regarding OSF finances and my own compensation. TV and newspaper reporters came. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. 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 . For her part, Anderson always has felt a great sense of peace that I made a moral decision, an ethical decision, a decision of integrity and conscience, she wrote. 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. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. 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. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. But nothing else has driven him to contribute to the lives of others the way the faith in which he was born and raised once did. [3] She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. Quinn got hate mail. 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. All rights reserved. Not long before Hofmann sold that forged document, he approached Quinn in the church archives, and asked about the succession crisis and the article. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. 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. 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. In 1989, Dallin H. Oaks, the onetime law professor and BYU president who was now an apostle, had given a talk called Alternate Voices at the churchs semiannual General Conference. This friend, Quinn says, told him that the men on the council disagreed about whether Quinn was an apostate, and that President Hanks finally declared that Boyd K. Packer was pressing him to take action, and they needed to do something. Fixed: Release in which this issue/RFE has been fixed.The release containing this fix may be available for download as an Early Access Release or a General Availability Release. "Mormonism was limiting to me, so I needed to test the limits to see who I and the church really might be. The book won an award from the American Historical Association, but it brought Quinn more grief in Utah. Some did not know that they were. The Mormon church holds two different kinds of disciplinary councils: a more elaborate process that is often reserved for those who hold the Melchizedek priesthoodgenerally speaking, all devout adult menand a simpler process mostly used for those who dontmeaning women and men who have not advanced far in the church. 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. She studied "traditional, sacramental Christianity and priesthood," Hanks said this week. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. 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. 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. He left quietly and went to call the LDS Church Office Building to ask about this committee. The other five people who were by then being referred to as the September Six had already faced their courts. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. 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. They didn't say anything. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] But it was a forgery. 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. This new knowledge sent Quinn to the Journal of Discourses, a 26-volume collection of Mormon sermons. How have the members of your ward treated you? He was 32; he and his wife, Jan, were expecting their fourth child. The symposium's "Pillars of My Faith" session will showcase a similar path, said Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstone's interim executive director. If Peggy wanted to do some groundbreaking . Her sincere belief in Jesus and determination to follow him no matter the adversity faced within or without the church should be commended, and this good and faithful servant should be rewarded, he wrote. Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. Find your friends on Facebook. 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. All rights reserved. Paul Toscanos sister-in-law was excommunicated for her writings about the Heavenly Mother, a controversial aspect of Mormon theology. Bradley and Hanks are friends who trod a lot of common ground, Robertson said. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks told The Salt Lake Tribune that year. No way. In the quarter-century since her ouster, Anderson consistently has attended weekly services at her Latter-day Saint congregation, the Whittier Ward. The September Six were six members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who were excommunicated or disfellowshipped by the church in September 1993, allegedly for publishing scholarly work against or criticizing church doctrine or leadership. BYU and Utah State both wanted to hire him. 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. Resolved: Release in which this issue/RFE has been resolved. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. 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. 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. That's a good question. Daryl Peveto/Luceo Images for Slate. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. The seventh son of Taylors third wife, Samuel sympathetically portrays his notorious father, who continued to marry multiple wives well after the LDS church officially renounced polygamy in 1890. The general authority assigned to interview Quinn in the spring of 1976 was Boyd K. Packer. Jay Christian, left, and thousands of other people protest against the passage of Californias Proposition 8 outside the world headquarters of Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 2008 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone Symposium. Fulton has called Quinn a nothing person.. I assured him I did not. 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. When interviewing Quinn in 76, Packer said, I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. One Sunday in February of 1993, Michael Quinn was home sick with a fever when his doorbell rang. 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. (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 . Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. Michael Quinns final disciplinary council was held on Sept. 26, 1993, in the Salt Lake Stake Center, the headquarters for the oldest stake in Utah, founded by Brigham Young in 1847. That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above. The bearded dad, a father of 11 who was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 2015 for apostasy, suggests they sing hymns . 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack June 23, 2015 Many Mormon feminists experienced Kate Kelly's excommunication as a harsh slap felt around the world. McMurrin Differed in Gentler Times. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. [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. 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. The accused is called in, another prayer is offered, and the court proceeds. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. . The main target of the statement, issued in August 1991, was the Sunstone Symposium, an annual gathering started by Sunstone magazine 12 years before. 2012. Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. "She might be a model for others who have been missing their Mormon community.". This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. Peggy Fletcher Stack. By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. 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. 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. It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. The Quarum of 12 Apostles wanted to ex her, but the Quarum of Public Relations blocked their move. He didn't seem to know what footnotes are so he thought I made the whole thing up. During the hiring process, a college dean offered to protect him, Quinn says, from those peoplethe LDS leadersup in Salt Lake., Before he could be hired, though, he had to visit LDS headquarters at 47 East South Temple in downtown Salt Lake and sit for an interview with one of those peoplespecifically, a general authority, one of the 100 or so men who run the church. It was his death and funeral that prompted the couples current bishop to bring up the possibility of her rejoining the church. Maybe, I suggested, he was trying to bring his full self out into the open. McLean invited her, she said, to describe her faith in a letter, which includes her conviction that God cherishes everyone. 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. He was housesitting. [5] She met Mike Stack when he volunteered as a photographer for Sunstone in 1984, and they married in October 1985. For details, go to http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. 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? 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. P The Sunstone Symposium runs July 25-28 at the University of Utah's Olpin Student Union. Some things that are true are not very useful. Its not clear whether Packer read Quinns work before interviewing him, but if he did, it probably would have struck him as less than useful. 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. That night, we went over to our neighbors' house and watched "A Man for All Seasons" and ate popcorn. He has not been since. 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. [4], She won the 2004 Cornell Award for 'Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers' from the Religion Newswriters Association in 2004, an award she also received in 2012, 2017, and 2018. Groundbreaking Emma Smith biographer, a 'giant' in Mormon scholarship, dies at 82. 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. It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. I didn't have to look at the councilmen and wonder what they said about me. At Sunstone, Hanks described her path back to Mormonism as a heros journey, la Joseph Campbell. 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. During Quinns college years, BYUs president, Ernest Wilkinson, organized a student spy ring intended to catch out professors with communist leanings. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. 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. He does not have friends in Rancho Cucamonga. But gradually, pressure on Mormon scholars eased, and today many write and publish without any obvious concern for what their stake presidents might think. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. 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.. The modern Mormon church has become a fairly top-down organization, but most responsibility for attending to its members still resides in local lay leaders. 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. My stake president said in an email, if I [didn't] come forward and tell people that I am not a member in good standing, he would. 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. He makes fun of the church by making fun of himself and stodgy rank and file, as well as cultural absurdities. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. Something similar, if more protracted, took place after September 1993. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for . She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for the Salt Lake Tribune. The bombings and subsequent murder trial cast a pall over the practice of Mormon history. This made some church leaders uneasy. 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. 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. Snuffer was excommunicated. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. 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. The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a . When his mother died in 2007, she left him the condo. 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. 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. [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. (They draw numbers to pick sides.) Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. The term "September Six" was coined by The Salt Lake Tribune and was used in the media and subsequent discussion. As a Mormon, he also knew that same-sex attraction was considered unfortunate at bestsomething to be struggled with, and, if possible, overcome. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack has been reporting on faith and religion since 1991. Stack has received and been nominated for multiple awards. The church reports a worldwide membership of 16 million. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. ", This page was last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21. [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. 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.