But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. During Quinns New Orleans years, the First Presidency put out a statement discouraging Mormons from participating in academic conferences and other independent forums devoted to the discussion of their faith. He 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. Some, perhaps, simply regretted the bad press. What do you think about these potential actions against Kate Kelly and John Dehlin? 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. Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. No way. He wept as he read it aloud to others. Whether Quinns fate had truly been sealed is hard to say. He froze. In hindsight, the purge of September 1993 looks like the last big push for a kind of control that LDS leaders will probably never have again. 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. I cannot be anything but a Mormon. The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. He said it was apostasy because I believed that general authorities had done something wrong. (Quinn attempted to reach this friend through a third party before my piece was finished, but declined to give me his name before speaking to him.) But Packer certainly said similar things before larger audiences. Quinn wrote back more harshly this time, listing all the things Hanks had done that troubled him. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks said. Those 15 men oversee the multiple Quorums of the Seventy, who in turn direct the stake presidents and bishops who minister to congregations on a part-time, voluntary basis. 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 . Hed read the essay about women and the priesthood, and he asked Quinn to speak on the subject at an upcoming fireside, an informal evening meeting often held at Mormon meetinghouses. Find your friends on Facebook. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. That came out in early 1993. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. That, in any case, was his thinking. Dave: We remind our listeners about a new way to support Mormon Land. Peggy fletcher stack excommunicated Denver Snufferpersonalbordenver Carlos Snuffer Jr.Religion (Mormon Independent) Restoration Andsupra-Denominational Christian [1] Nationality Americanhome Townmountain House, Idahochildrensisx Daughters and Two Children [2] Alma Materdaniel Webster Junior Collegemcmurry UniversityBrigham Young University (JD, 1980) 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. Late last year, a friend approached LDS officials to say that Hanks was ready to return to the fold. 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.. While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) 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. Quinn was so depressed by the experience that for a few weeks he lost his belief in God completely. 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. See Photos. 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. ", This page was last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21. I love John and I support him, but I have never made any claim against truth claims of the church. 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 never been treated as a liar before. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] 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. Resolved: Release in which this issue/RFE has been resolved. Excommunication opened the door to a larger cosmos, inside and outside myself.". 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. 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. Despite his productivity, though, hes never broken back into academia. This is all lies! he told the friend who showed it to him. Being treated like an ordinary person is a gift a ward can give. 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. However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". Knowing her personally (not closely, but we're acquainted) I get the feeling that she is much more culturally LDS than actually LDS. [4] During her time there, she has met and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Gordon B. Hinckley, among others. Independent publicationsmost notably Dialogue (founded in 1966) and Sunstone (1974)provided forums for scholarship and reflection about Mormon history and theology. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. 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. Something similar, if more protracted, took place after September 1993. A beaming Bishop Madrigal said I should expect very soon to get a telephone call scheduling an interview with a general authority, she wrote. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. But he could no longer go to the temple. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. The church reports a worldwide membership of 16 million. Mormons from around the world have gathered to listen to church leaders during the two-day conference. 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. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. There are important aspects of Mormon life, such as temple ceremonies, that are open only to the truly faithful. He stinks.. Maybe she wants to be, though. 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. 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 The regional council forwarded her request to church headquarters, with the recommendation that she be approved for rebaptism. The temple president tried to make it as good an experience as he could for my parents, Paul, Christian and Marina [his bride] and me. Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. Kelly was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in June. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. I know how to avoid people I didnt want to be in contact with, he says. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. "Mormonism was limiting to me, so I needed to test the limits to see who I and the church really might be. 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. 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.. Wearing a bathrobe, he answered after several rings and found three men in suits and ties on his doorstep. By the time Quinn arrived, the program had been disavowed, and many of these baptisms needed to be undone. After the church court, when I walked into the chapel, it took about three times longer to get to my seat because so many people hugged me. 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. He asked Quinn to come see him in his office after work one day, Quinn says. McLean invited her, she said, to describe her faith in a letter, which includes her conviction that God cherishes everyone. Mormons devote one sacrament meeting each month to personal testimonies, and Quinn was sure this would be his last opportunity to offer his in church. Few people had attended the talk itself, but an independent BYU newspaper ran a story about it, and copies of Quinns remarks, titled On Being a Mormon Historian, began to circulate. If you've picked up a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune in the last 26 years, you know Peggy Fletcher Stack's name. . Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. (Quinn is known professionally as D. Michael Quinn; the first name on his birth certificate is Dennis.) Arrington). 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. He went to stay instead with an old college friend, Richard Lambert. They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. She's been covering religion for the paper since 1991 taking on a variety of topics, but mostly the LDS Church. They were receptive. Ill come get him. The four-day symposium, which begins Wednesday evening, also will include dozens of sessions about Mormonism and politics, about how members grapple with contemporary issues such as gay rights and feminism, building online LDS communities, Mormon Latino views of the church's immigration stance and how the Utah-based faith has developed its "brand" in the past several decades. (Benson died in 94, Hunter in 95.) In his Yale dissertation, Quinn examined the highest leadership of the LDS church as a social elite, focusing on the extensive family ties within the hierarchy, the considerable wealth of Mormon authorities, and their long-standing involvement in politics. The fact that we keep going to church is a blessing. Hymns were sung. (Rick Bowmer/AP) This article is more than 8 years old. 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.. 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. As a Mormon, he also knew that same-sex attraction was considered unfortunate at bestsomething to be struggled with, and, if possible, overcome. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. I had my answers.". Excommunication is a complicated and multi-layered process for sexual minorities in the church who choose to marry in a way that the church considers a "same sex" marriage. Quinn 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. In her paper, she mentioned an internal espionage system that creates and maintains secret files on members of the church. A BYU literature professor named Eugene England rose to speak as soon as Anderson finished. While the simpler approach is handled by a bishop and his two counselors, the more elaborate version is run by a stake president, and it involves not only his two counselors but the stakes high council, a group of 12 men. 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. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. He decided he would suppress that part of himself and be a good Mormon. Paul's mother was great. Photo by George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images. He makes fun of the church by making fun of himself and stodgy rank and file, as well as cultural absurdities. 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. 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 . 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. 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. 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. The timing of his career, which once appeared serendipitous, now seems almost cruel. 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. "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. He has continued to publish articles about Mormon history and to participate in the Sunstone Symposium. 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. And it was not popular with those of the brethren that Quinn had already angered with his talk on Mormon history four years before. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. 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. ", "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. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. The Mormon intellectual community far and wide is mourning the loss of Linda King Newell. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks told The Salt Lake Tribune that year. 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. 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.. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? [5] She then received a fellowship to work in the Church History Division of the LDS Church (then run by Leonard J. Where a skeptic sees convenience, a believer may see Gods hand. 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. Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. This other Quinn was not home when the call came, and a baby-sitter answered the phone. 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. Dated Oct. 23, 1830, the letter was addressed to an early Mormon convert named W.W. Phelps and signed Martin Harris. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. He didn't seem to know what footnotes are so he thought I made the whole thing up. The men at his door were the local stake president and his two counselors, the men responsible for overseeing all the congregations in the area. As she entered the building at 47 East South Temple, she happened to pass Boyd K. Packer on his way out. 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. 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. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. We had a family devotional every night with prayer, singing and scripture reading. 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. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. 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. Just go to . Quinn got hate mail. In the late 60s, he was called to preside over the churchs missionary efforts in New England, and moved with his family to Cambridge, Mass. ", 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]. All rights reserved. Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. 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. Gileadi, Toscano, Anderson, and Hanks were all excommunicated. They dont acquire these positions by filling out an application and sending in a rsum. 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. Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. I see her articles on here all the time and the Tribune has never really been a friend to the TSCC. He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. Now I see that he just didn't appreciate the dishonesty associated with his grandpa. 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. Vern Anderson wrote an AP story about the book, and several Utah papers carried reviews. Press J to jump to the feed. In the first few days after the bombings, several people who had come into contact with Hofmann feared for their lives. By Chris Jorgensen and Peggy Fletcher Stack The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is purging hundreds of Mormon dissidents who church officials say are preoccupied unduly with Armageddon. 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. 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.

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