Peggy Fletcher Stack. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. Like Robert Kirby, it would be a shit storm to ex her. The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an . After 18 months, he moved to New Orleans, where it was less expensive to live. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. Kelly was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in June. The most threatening thing about Ordain Women to people in the church is that it is coming from faithful, devout, courageous, wonderful women and that's more threatening than anything could be. Crucially, much of that project is onlinemore than anything, the Internet has revolutionized the field. Peggy Fletcher. He developed a fervent testimony not only that God exists but that God spoke to Joseph Smith face to face and that the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants are, like the Old and New Testaments, divinely inspired. Gileadi, Toscano, Anderson, and Hanks were all excommunicated. 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. 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. Many religions have strictures that establish who is in and who is out, but the Mormon church draws a brighter line than most. He was troubled by the openness with which materials were being made available to certain individuals other than those authorized, according to Lucile C. Tates admiring 1995 biography, Boyd K. Packer: Watchman on the Tower. Now I see that he just didn't appreciate the dishonesty associated with his grandpa. Hi, Peggy. At least, that's how Hall sees it. deductible, 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. Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. It sent him down a rabbit hole. 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. He then expressed his gratitude to the church for providing, throughout his life, a vehicle for service. Stack has received and been nominated for multiple awards. Hundreds of other members joined him at gatherings and in small groups, and thus was born the "remnant movement ," which today touts 1000s of adherents. 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. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. 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. Robert Kirby does this also, but much more indirectly. The symposium's "Pillars of My Faith" session will showcase a similar path, said Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstone's interim executive director. They never gave me one reason. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. 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 didn't seem to know what footnotes are so he thought I made the whole thing up. All rights reserved. The same month that his essay about post-Manifesto polygamy was published, in April 1985, Quinn and his wife separated. Peggy Fletcher Fletcher (Peggy Bennett Fletcher) See Photos. He was in a wheelchair. So she met with local and high Mormon leaders and, after several months, they set a baptismal date. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . Fawn Brodie was related to David O. McKay. The Mormon intellectual community far and wide is mourning the loss of Linda King Newell. 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. Quinns parents were divorced when he was 4, and he was raised largely by his mothers parents, who frequently fought. The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. He himself did not even stay in town. Excommunication opened the door to a larger cosmos, inside and outside myself.". 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. 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 . Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. In many respects, Andersons affirmations mirror those of other members. It was, Quinn told me, an awful, awful year., When he had recovered enough to write, Quinn finished the sequel to The Mormon Hierarchy and revised Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. . Photo by George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images. That's like solving obesity by turning MacDonald's into a gym. The bishops next comment was, Whats wrong with those people up in Salt Lake? He was thrilled to have Quinn in his ward. By the time Quinn arrived, the program had been disavowed, and many of these baptisms needed to be undone. Article type . 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. [15], Stack wrote a children's book about religion with artist Kathleen B. Petersen, entitled A World of Faith, published in 1998.[4][16]. He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone 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. What I heard was that I would be excommunicated and that I shouldn't go. Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. A church spokesman told him that it did exist, and the First Presidency issued a formal statement about it the following week. "We pray that a spirit of clemency will guide the words and actions of everyone especially those who bear the heavy responsibility of ecclesiastical discipline of church members and that the words of President [Dieter F.] Uchtdorf [second counselor in faith's governing First Presidency] will hold sway: "Regardless of your circumstances, your personal history, or the strength of your testimony, there is room for you in this church. Packers involvement mattered because the Twelve Apostles are considered by devout Mormons to be prophets, seers, and revelators. If they directed the councils, then the excommunications were, essentially, a message from the churchs highest spiritual authorities about what Mormons were allowed to do andpublicly, at leastto say. 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 . The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax The church keeps fairly careful records of its membership, for one thing, records that play a part in the worldwide effort to bring salvation to all of Gods children. That, in any case, was his thinking. 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. "Given who I was, there was no place to go but out," Hanks said in 2003, on the 10th anniversary of the excommunications. I cannot be anything but a Mormon. After high school, Christian went to Stanford, and we thought, "This may be where we hear bad news." To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. There have always been dissidents in the Mormon ranksthe religion itself is one particularly dramatic dissent from the rest of Christian traditionbut a new community of Mormon intellectuals had coalesced in the 1960s and 70s. 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. 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. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. TV and newspaper reporters came. 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. Paul Toscanos sister-in-law was excommunicated for her writings about the Heavenly Mother, a controversial aspect of Mormon theology. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. 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 left it up to local leaders to come up with a reason. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. These men are often referred to by Mormon faithful as the Brethren. Unlike local lay leaders, who hold secular day jobs and perform their ecclesiastical duties on a voluntary basis, they are full-time employees who oversee the global operations of the church. 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. 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. See Photos. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. He took a fellowship at the Huntington Library, near his hometown of Pasadena, Calif., and began indexing his enormous collection of notes on old Mormon documents, in preparation for his next book. When they did, Quinn, an only child, would go to his room, put on a classical record, and turn the volume up. We had been home about 20 minutes when two high counselors came to our house and delivered a letter, inviting me to a disciplinary hearing two weeks from that day. . Quinn went over local church rolls and found addresses of kids who didnt come to Sunday services. ", 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. 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.. It was already, in the minds of some, a dangerous pursuit, and it had now become a deadly one, marred by fraud and riddled with errors. I was not surprised or angry about the outcome, Anderson said Wednesday, and she has no plans to try to open that door again. A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. I had never been treated as a liar before. 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. Hanks rejoined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. He later got married in the temple, while I sat outside with friends. 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. That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. [5] She met Mike Stack when he volunteered as a photographer for Sunstone in 1984, and they married in October 1985. The church reports a worldwide membership of 16 million. 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. 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. Mormonism was as much an identity issue for them as it is for me. I see her articles on here all the time and the Tribune has never really been a friend to the TSCC. A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. The church's definition of "membership" includes all persons who were ever baptized, or whose parents were members while the person was under the age of eight (called "members . She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. 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. People named Peggy Fletcher. In the summer of 1952, the late Sterling McMurrin, an eminent philosopher and writer, met with two LDS apostles to defend his theological views.With complete candor, McMurrin laid out for Elders Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold . This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. The church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. On March 23, 2018, Andersons husband, Paul, died of heart failure. When interviewing Quinn in 76, Packer said, I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. 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. ", "Guilt, pain, help and hope when Mormon missionaries come home early", "For a string of vivid reports revealing the perverse, punitive and cruel treatment given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University, one of Utah's most powerful institutions. Resolved: Release in which this issue/RFE has been resolved. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. Whats more, all Mormons are supposed to have a calling in the church, which makes for a wonderfully participatory religion but also discourages casual membership. The accused is called in, another prayer is offered, and the court proceeds. . 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. At the pinnacle of the Mormon hierarchy is the First Presidencythe churchs prophet and his two counselorsand the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. sltrib.com. No way. The truth is not uplifting. Thats according to Quinnmy request to speak with Packer, whose health has badly deteriorated in recent years, was declined. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) He visited these homes with his missionary companion and asked the boys if they still wanted to be Mormons. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. 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. I just feel such heartache that the church I love is doing this to people who are sincere and trying to find ways of being Mormon and express their love of the gospel. Quinn showed that Brigham Young had a legitimate claim to the calling, though he was not the only one who did. Arrington). 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 movie was a live-action adaptation of the Nintendo game Super Mario Bros. It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. Quinn read Hanks letter that night and wrote a detailed response. After Quinn finished his lunch at BYU, he decided not to go home. 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. I wrote an article for "Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought" that summarized 133 cases of LDS ecclesiastical abuse, and my pleas to do better to care for the Mormon faithful. Dated Oct. 23, 1830, the letter was addressed to an early Mormon convert named W.W. Phelps and signed Martin Harris. He subsequently has . 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. I love John and I support him, but I have never made any claim against truth claims of the church. 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. Today, its Nelson, with a new counselor, Oaks, instead of Dieter F. Uchtdorf. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. They dont acquire these positions by filling out an application and sending in a rsum. Half of these men speak for the accused, and half for the church. He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. 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. West did not formally revoke the recommend, he just put it in his drawer. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. 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. P The Sunstone Symposium runs July 25-28 at the University of Utah's Olpin Student Union. The prophet at the time was Ezra Taft Benson, who, at age 94, was mostly incapacitated. July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . I heard she's not Mormon at all. (He took the surname from actor Anthony Quinn, whom he knew growing up in the Los Angeles barrio.) By Peggy Fletcher Stack June 23, 2015 Many Mormon feminists experienced Kate Kelly's excommunication as a harsh slap felt around the world. England said he knew about this espionage systemit was called the Strengthening Church Members Committee, and it compiled documents and highlighted statements considered critical of the church. She currently serves on the . While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. Quinn had been avoiding this confrontation for nearly five years. June 17, 2014 8:59 pm . 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. [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. 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. A diligent historian, meanwhile, will come to see that the truth of the matter is complicated. ", Hanks' rebaptism suggests a difference in LDS leadership from then to now, said Dan Wotherspoon, Sunstone's editor from 2001 to 2008. [5] She then received a fellowship to work in the Church History Division of the LDS Church (then run by Leonard J. 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. 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. 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. She declined. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home with the work of her late husband, Paul L. Anderson, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. 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. Paul's mother was great. There, he tried other kinds of writing, thinking maybe hed put Mormon history behind him. He wrote a short story about two male missionaries in Louisiana who become attracted to each other and are stalked by a religious psychopath. 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 . Quinn was shocked that it took that long. 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. 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. The demographics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints include statistical data relating to the church's population and particular groups within it.. He decided that only 16 of the changes were significant. Press J to jump to the feed. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and writing about the biblical oracle Isaiah's prophecies about our time has been rebaptized into the faith. Not long after that, the bishop met with Anderson and asked her ever so gently if she would like to discuss reinstatement. The book he was finishing, which would be published in 1994, was called The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. She's been covering religion for the paper since 1991 taking on a variety of topics, but mostly the LDS Church. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. 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. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. McMurrin Differed in Gentler Times. When they left, they said, "Have a nice day," to which I replied, "You have just assured that I will not.". He, the bishop, and the other counselor held the necessary courts, excommunicating those who wanted out. 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. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Though the letter from the current First Presidency made up of church President Russell M. Nelson and counselors Dallin H. Oaks and Henry B. Eyring offered no explanation for the rejection, Bowman speculates that there may be at least two possible answers history and dissent. But the third bomb, which badly injured but did not kill Hofmann, hinted at a tie to the salamander letter, a disputed historical document that Christensen had purchased from Hofmann a year before and which had inspired Quinns latest research project, a book eventually titled Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. Even after that, a few high-ranking Mormons continued to authorize such marriages. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. It had been a difficult year. Even in the novels, he noticed, the gay characters came to terrible ends. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. The Strengthening Church Members Committee almost certainly passed along notes about Quinn to his new stake president, Paul Hanks, in early 1993. 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. He asked Quinn to come see him in his office after work one day, Quinn says. 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. Two decades ago, Maxine Hanks could not have imagined where her spiritual journey would take her, but she knew this much: She would not likely be walking into the waters of Mormon baptism. Quinn is no longer actively seeking an academic job. If Peggy wanted to do some groundbreaking . A second bomb that first day killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of one of Christensens former business partners. 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. Kate Kelly Shreds Peggy Fletcher Stack for Using Her as "Clickbait" Again, I'm reminded of a scene in "Schindler's List" where the 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.. Dallin Oaks speaking at the General Conference in April 1989. Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. Running almost 100 pages and including nearly 400 footnotes, the essay was the fruit of decades of thought and research. The churchs critics find the timing convenient: By 1890, the U.S. government had threatened to seize LDS property if polygamy wasnt renounced. All rights reserved. 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. 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.

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