Homestead High School Track Schedule, Best Hair Salons In Chicago Suburbs 2019, Articles P

On Oct. 16, 1985, Quinn was having a late lunch at a BYU food court when he heard a news report that Mark Hofmann had been blown up by a pipe bomb in Salt Lake City. There would be quite a number of people in the Mormon community who would look unfavorably on that. Later that year, Quinn was recommended for a one-year appointment at Arizona State. 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. Peggy Fletcher. Sunstone The spiritual journey of Maxine Hanks, one of the "September Six,'" comes full circle. I admire her. 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. He looked in the card catalog under pervert, which was the word his grandmother had used after he told her that another kid at church had been groping him. The prophet at the time was Ezra Taft Benson, who, at age 94, was mostly incapacitated. Mystery! That was my decision. 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. 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. Quinn went to Californiahe had another fellowship at the Huntington Librarystaying this time with his mother. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. 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. 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. McMurrin Differed in Gentler Times. After high school, Christian went to Stanford, and we thought, "This may be where we hear bad news." Woodruff himself said in his journal that he was acting for the temporal salvation of the church, and the 1890 Manifestoas his official statement is knownwas not immediately taken to be a divine revelation. 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. 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. Quinn was so depressed by the experience that for a few weeks he lost his belief in God completely. He was housesitting. or. Dallin Oaks speaking at the General Conference in April 1989. By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. All rights reserved. Ill come get him. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. But gradually, pressure on Mormon scholars eased, and today many write and publish without any obvious concern for what their stake presidents might think. Hanks had already held one church court in Quinns absence, in July, at which Quinn was disfellowshipped. 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. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. Article type . Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. Part of what I feel is a calling to be there. 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. In Mormon history circles, this period is often called the Camelot years., After those 18 months, Quinn left for Yale to do a Ph.D. and finished it in just three years. He was 32; he and his wife, Jan, were expecting their fourth child. 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. Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for . By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. 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. A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. 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. A candlelight vigil was held outside the Salt Lake City meetinghouse where it took place. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. I didn't have to look at the councilmen and wonder what they said about me. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. And the Tribune is changing with it. 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. . 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 . 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. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. Grant, an LDS Church president, a granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah, Wallace F. Bennett, and a granddaughter of American physicist Harvey Fletcher. In California, Quinn had picked up his mail at a P.O. By Peggy Fletcher Stack January 3, 2013. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. 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. 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.. c. 2014 Salt Lake Tribune(RNS) The Mormon Church insists that excommunication threats targeting activists Kate Kelly and John Dehlin were generated by their respective LDS leaders in Virginia and northern Utah.Others see the timing as evidence that the two disciplinary hearings are being coordinated from the faith's Salt Lake City headquarters.But this much is certain: If Mormon higher-ups . But it also betrayed tensions within the church that may never entirely go away. I might have lost my soul, but at least I still have my mind. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. . However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. LDS Church wants to light up a temple in a place that prides itself on dark skies, For husband-and-wife team, this new restaurant is the culmination of a decadeslong dream, article she wrote in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, Kate Kelly, was excommunicated in June 2014. The president in 2012, when Hanks was readmitted, was Thomas S. Monson. I love John and I support him, but I have never made any claim against truth claims of the church. The intellectual climate had improved under Oaks, people said. In 1961, when Michael Quinn was a devout Mormon of 17, his best friends girlfriend gave him a copy of Family Kingdom, a biography of the one-time apostle John W. Taylor. There were stretches of time when he was the only deacon, and he and I would exchange glances as he passed the sacrament to our row. 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. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. 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. [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. Whether Quinns fate had truly been sealed is hard to say. By Peggy Fletcher Stack After an exhausting six-hour disciplinary hearing Sunday, Mormon leaders temporarily suspended Grant H. Palmer's membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [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. They were receptive. July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . [3] She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. She said she was really angry at the church, not at me. Hanks became less diplomatic. He put down in words his sincere testimony in the Mormon gospel and in Ezra Taft Bensons status as a true prophet of God. 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. It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. But that was not how he experienced it. 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 . He left it up to local leaders to come up with a reason. He was the first academic to occupy the post, previously held only by high-ranking LDS leaders, and his appointment signaled a broader effort to reorganize the historians office along professional lines. 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. 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. He himself did not even stay in town. It is always harder on the loved one who has to stand by and see someone they love being hurt. All rights reserved. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. Where else would I be but in the church? Saturday, February 22, 1997. The truth is not uplifting. Thats according to Quinnmy request to speak with Packer, whose health has badly deteriorated in recent years, was declined. She studied "traditional, sacramental Christianity and priesthood," Hanks said this week. He froze. As Quinn writes, the Manifesto inherited ambiguity, was created in ambiguity, and produced ambiguity.. (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 . But he could no longer go to the temple. Mormons from around the world have gathered to listen to church leaders during the two-day conference. ", This page was last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21. Peggy Fletcher Stack has been reporting on faith and religion since 1991. Boyd Packer, left, and Dallin Oaks, right, Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wait for the start of the first session of the 181st Semiannual General Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S., on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011. 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 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. I had received a blessing from a former stake president, assuring me that when the time was right, it would come very easily, so I could be at peace. When the men from the stake presidency came to his door in February, Quinn was living three blocks from the Salt Lake Temple and the worldwide headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 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. Quinns polygamy essay, meanwhile, produced more trouble for him with LDS leaders. West did not formally revoke the recommend, he just put it in his drawer. This puzzled me because I had a lot to say, but the message was absolutely clear. The church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. Quinn got hate mail. It's a way for me to participate and contribute, almost like having a calling. 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. Her testimony was that of a believer, Madrigal later told her. 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. 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. How have the members of your ward treated you? Mormonism was as much an identity issue for them as it is for me. Quinn told friends that he did not want anyone to lobby on his behalf. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. 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. He wept as he read it aloud to others. Hanks told him he had been excommunicated, and said that the court lasted six hours. That came out in early 1993. 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. A second bomb that first day killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of one of Christensens former business partners. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. All rights reserved. Just go to . 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. Peggy Fletcher was raised in New Jersey, daughter of physicist Robert Chipman Fletcher and Rosemary Bennett, one of five girls and three boys. Quinn had been avoiding this confrontation for nearly five years. I had my answers.". The kindness of my ward members has been really important. And it was not popular with those of the brethren that Quinn had already angered with his talk on Mormon history four years before. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. That, in any case, was his thinking. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. Hed better start keeping it to himself. . He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone Symposium. 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. See Photos. One Sunday in February of 1993, Michael Quinn was home sick with a fever when his doorbell rang. A beaming Bishop Madrigal said I should expect very soon to get a telephone call scheduling an interview with a general authority, she wrote. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. Quinn read Hanks letter that night and wrote a detailed response. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. 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. 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 decided that only 16 of the changes were significant. He also mentioned reading Quinns long Dialogue article about the politics of Ezra Taft Benson. 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. A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. The institutional churchs position toward its intellectual community has shifted slowly and subtly but in real ways in the past 30 years; it is possible that there is a worry that allowing for her rebaptism would unearth battles the present First Presidency would like to let lie buried and spur a public relitigation of the issue., Secondly, the controversies surrounding Anderson had a great deal to do with feminism in the church and with ecclesiastical dissent, he said. The Mormon intellectual community far and wide is mourning the loss of Linda King Newell. He moved back to Utah and began receiving mail at his actual address. "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. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. In 1981, he gave an address to church educators called The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect, which was organized around four cautions. The second of them is this: There is a temptation for the writer or teacher of church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith-promoting or not. That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. What to him and others that is so threatening is that this [Ordain Women movement] is coming from a very faithful, devout perspective. She was the editor of Hastings Center Report from 1986 until 1991, when she was hired to start the "Faith" column in the Salt Lake Tribune. "Mormonism was limiting to me, so I needed to test the limits to see who I and the church really might be. 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 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 . 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. 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. Running almost 100 pages and including nearly 400 footnotes, the essay was the fruit of decades of thought and research. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. 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 . Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. Peggy Fletcher. Lavina Fielding Anderson may have been excommunicated from the LDS Church for apostasy more than 20 years ago, but don't think for a minute that this Utah writer is now an outsider to her faith. I 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. He found me outside and was kind and helpful. Peggy Fletcher. In the first few days after the bombings, several people who had come into contact with Hofmann feared for their lives. 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. The symposium's "Pillars of My Faith" session will showcase a similar path, said Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstone's interim executive director. And he based at least one of his forgeries on the work of Michael Quinn. 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. While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. I couldn't help but wonder if I, too, would be excommunicated if my concerns were made public. 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. 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. 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.