Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. 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. One of the central questions in the aftermath of Septembers events was just how involved Packer himself had been in them. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. Hymns were sung. 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. Ordain Women's Kate Kelly loses last appeal; husband to resign from Mormon church .
Excommunicated Mormon to tell how she came back to the faith As she entered the building at 47 East South Temple, she happened to pass Boyd K. Packer on his way out. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. ", 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]. 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.
A Response to Peggy Fletcher Stack about OSF Finances I know how to avoid people I didnt want to be in contact with, he says. 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. But multiple faculty members argued that, in the words of one professor, Mike was not the right person to head up any kind of Mormon history or Mormonstudies program given the fact hes very publicly excommunicated. All rights reserved. We had stake [regional] conference in September. (These soon-to-be former Mormons were not required to attend.) 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. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. When they left, they said, "Have a nice day," to which I replied, "You have just assured that I will not.". He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks said. See Photos. It sent him down a rabbit hole. I attended the Sunstone Symposium this past summer, held on the University of Utah campus, and many people I spoke to there said that as Packers influence has waned, a more tolerant approach to dissent is taking hold. 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. 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. ", 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack January 16, 2015 SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) John Dehlin, known to support same-sex marriage and the Ordain Women movement, said he expects "either disfellowshipment (i.e . (Benson died in 94, Hunter in 95.)
Peggy Fletcher Stack (@religiongal) / Twitter I might have lost my soul, but at least I still have my mind. 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. One of Ordain Womens founders, Kate Kelly, was excommunicated in June 2014. By declining to talk with any priesthood leaders, he wrote, you are cutting yourself off from the blessings of the Temple and the blessings of the priesthood. He insinuated that the churchs problems with Quinn were not all theological. In the past, many Mormon officials had a sense, he said, that the church must protect its members from "wolves among them.". It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. She studied "traditional, sacramental Christianity and priesthood," Hanks said this week. I always felt that I had Gods sanction and encouragement, so I went ahead following that path. Even early on, a fellow Mormon historian started telling Quinn he must have a death wish regarding his membership in the church. 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 truth is not uplifting. Thats according to Quinnmy request to speak with Packer, whose health has badly deteriorated in recent years, was declined. 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. 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. Photo by George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images. In 1997, the acclaimed historian Richard Bushman, who spent much of his career writing on non-LDS topics, began studying his religion again in earnest, and convened an annual seminar that helped attract young scholars who might have pursued other interests. 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.
1511: Mormon Stories Transparency Q&A for Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony 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. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. He got up in front of the congregation and declared his belief in the Mormon gospel, in Joseph Smiths status as a prophet of God, and in the Book of Mormon as divine scripture. 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. 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. Gileadi, a Hebrew scholar who got into trouble for unorthodox writings about the biblical Isaiah, was rebaptized within several years. In the field of Mormon history the changes are particularly pronounced. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. Peggy Fletcher. Then I went away to my cabin for the summer and he called all the temples in Utah, saying he was canceling my recommend. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. 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. 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. But by the fall of 92 he had to return to Salt Lake City to finish research on the book, and he had grown tired of hiding from church authorities. 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. Taylor fled to Canada during the congressional hearings for Reed Smoot, a fellowbut monogamousapostle, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate. He was excommunicated in 1911. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. 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. He went to stay instead with an old college friend, Richard Lambert. 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. 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.. He had, after all, believed for many years that he would someday be a leader of the church, knowing that if this were true he would have to forever suppress an essential part of himself. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. Quinn, who later assisted the police in their investigation, did not go home for several days. ", Hanks' rebaptism suggests a difference in LDS leadership from then to now, said Dan Wotherspoon, Sunstone's editor from 2001 to 2008. . Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say.
Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return | Out of Obscurity "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". My parents never blamed me, but they were heartbroken. For details, go to http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. He wrote a short story about two male missionaries in Louisiana who become attracted to each other and are stalked by a religious psychopath. That bright line is one of the reasons Mormons still sometimes seem separate from the mainstream of American life even after a century of assimilation. 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. Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. Like Robert Kirby, it would be a shit storm to ex her. A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. 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. The accused is called in, another prayer is offered, and the court proceeds. Quinn and four othersLavina Fielding Anderson, Maxine Hanks (a distant relative of Paul Hanks, the stake president who showed up at Quinns apartment), Paul Toscano, and Avraham Gileadiwere excommunicated by stake presidents in Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah; a sixth, Lynn Whitesides, was disfellowshipped, meaning that she remained a member of the church but could not fully participate in its rites and activities. While such a calling does not officially confer infallibility on the man who receives itand the general authorities are all malepublicly criticizing the men in these positions is strongly discouraged. When Benson asked why no one had stopped him, Oaks allegedly replied, You cant stage manage a grizzly bear. Benson resigned his Mormon membership shortly afterward and became a vocal opponent of the church his grandfather ostensibly led. 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. 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 Ill come get him. That, in any case, was his thinking.
memeorandum: High-ranking Mormon official, who twice spoke in General The main target of the statement, issued in August 1991, was the Sunstone Symposium, an annual gathering started by Sunstone magazine 12 years before. 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. There, he tried other kinds of writing, thinking maybe hed put Mormon history behind him.
Peggy Fletcher Stack, Author at Religion News Service He revised the story occasionally over the next decade, submitting it unsuccessfully to the Paris Review and the Atlantic. 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. It had been a difficult year. Gileadi was not part of the Sunstone and Dialogue circles that the others moved in; he had been writing and teaching popular workshops about biblical and Book of Mormon prophecies, which appear to have been deemed false doctrine by LDS leaders. 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. Daryl Peveto/Luceo Images for Slate.
Writer excommunicated during 'September Six' purge loses her bid to Lavina Fielding Anderson, one of the famed September Six writers and scholars disciplined by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1993, got a big no last week to her request for rebaptism from the men who matter most: the faiths governing First Presidency. I did the very best I knew how to do, the thing that I felt was the right thing to do., Donate to the newsroom now. A former BYU professor named David Wright was excommunicated in 1994 after publishing a paper arguing that the Book of Mormon was not an ancient text. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. I have been taught a vision of a truly cooperative future where men and women are complete equals. 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. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. I used to think Steve Benson was a bad person. 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. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. [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. The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. With no regular income to speak of, Quinn moved into his mothers condo in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. 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. Peggy Fletcher-Stack. Like Quinn, hed first become interested in Mormon history when he learned that polygamy had gone on for years after its public abandonmenthe knew about this because his mothers parents were among the secret polygamists. These dangers, Packer said, were the relatively new feminist and gay-lesbian movements, and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals.. It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. Her explorations gave Hanks a new level of understanding and "testimony" of Mormonism. 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. Just prior to reading Family Kingdom hed seen an anti-Mormon pamphlet called The Book of Mormon Examined, which highlighted hundreds of changes Joseph Smith made to the Mormon scripture in its first few printings. The kindness of my ward members has been really important. It is always harder on the loved one who has to stand by and see someone they love being hurt. We embedded him as thoroughly in the church as we ourselves had been. Peggy Fletcher Stack. Kate Kelly Shreds Peggy Fletcher Stack for Using Her as "Clickbait" Again, I'm reminded of a scene in "Schindler's List" where the I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. 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. Part of what I feel is a calling to be there. [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. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. All rights reserved. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. After it was published, Hugh West, the president of his stake in Salt Lake CityQuinn never moved to Provo, finding the hourlong commute worth it to live in Utahs one metropolisasked to see him.
SCHOLAR REBAPTIZED INTO LDS CHURCH - Deseret News Woodwards piece, headlined Apostles vs. Historians, called Quinns talk a stirring defense of intellectual integrity that had put Benson and Packer on the defensive. It was illustrated with a large photograph of Quinn up top, and a considerably smaller one of Packer. Denver Snuffer . The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. He was housesitting. 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. They don't feel safe enough to keep going it's such a terrible, terrible loss. McMurrin Differed in Gentler Times. Many of the shifts in the church administration's position toward intellectuals recently has had to do with history and intellectual openness, while the issues driving Lavinas excommunication are still very much alive and unresolved today., It is possible, Bowman posits, there was fear that allowing for her rebaptism would send a signal on those issues that the First Presidency did not wish to send.. 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. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. Hanks return predated the Ordain Women movement, which pushed for women to join the faiths priesthood, said Latter-day Saint scholar Matthew Bowman, who heads the Mormon studies program at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. Where else would I be but in the church? [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. He also criticized Ezra Taft Benson, then a senior apostle, who had made comments similar to Packers.