Two years later, he was called as an apostle. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. Instead, he simply took away Quinns temple recommend. Temples, distinct from regular meetinghouses, are reserved for sacred rituals, and require a recommend, a small card indicating ones worthiness, to enter. 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. A diligent historian, meanwhile, will come to see that the truth of the matter is complicated. 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. Not long after that, the bishop met with Anderson and asked her ever so gently if she would like to discuss reinstatement. There, he tried other kinds of writing, thinking maybe hed put Mormon history behind him. 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. Nor does it read like one. [10][11][12][13] The American Academy of Religion awarded her a first place Journalism Award in 2014 for her reporting on LDS missionaries who return home early from their volunteer missions. Vern Anderson wrote an AP story about the book, and several Utah papers carried reviews. This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the 1850s, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor hygiene . Something similar, if more protracted, took place after September 1993. 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. She has sat quietly in the same pew as the emblems of the sacrament, or communion, have passed by her more than 1,200 times without being able to partake. 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. Mormons from around the world have gathered to listen to church leaders during the two-day conference. But that was not how he experienced it. When interviewing Quinn in 76, Packer said, I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. McMurrin Differed in Gentler Times. 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 rights reserved. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. 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. The biggest thing that got me was the excommunication of bill reel segment of the Mormon stories podcast. Hanks became less diplomatic. Every morning he worked there was Christmas morning, Quinn says. I did. 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. Once in a while such a case will hit the press. P The Sunstone Symposium runs July 25-28 at the University of Utah's Olpin Student Union. I admire her. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. It really hurt my feelings. 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. Paul's mother was great. 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. ", 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. By then an assistant district attorney, Lambert later helped prosecute the case against Hofmann. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. Experts authenticated the letter, and Christensen, a devout Mormon, bought it from Hofmann, with plans to donate it to the church. Ironically, this testimony only ever deserted him on his Mormon mission. He wrote a short story about two male missionaries in Louisiana who become attracted to each other and are stalked by a religious psychopath. ", Hanks' rebaptism suggests a difference in LDS leadership from then to now, said Dan Wotherspoon, Sunstone's editor from 2001 to 2008. The stake president, who oversees a number of congregations, remained optimistic, she said, zeroing in on the words, at this time., But the writer replied, Theres hope, and then theres experience., Besides, she said, it was a form letter.. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. 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. I love the gospel. My parents never blamed me, but they were heartbroken. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. He froze. 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. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. Where a skeptic sees convenience, a believer may see Gods hand. Find your friends on Facebook. I heard she's not Mormon at all. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. 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 . 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. In order to have her blessings fully restored, she had to meet with a general authority at church headquarters. 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. Dave: We remind our listeners about a new way to support Mormon Land. "Given who I was, there was no place to go but out," Hanks said in 2003, on the 10th anniversary of the excommunications. In the field of Mormon history the changes are particularly pronounced. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. At the pinnacle of the Mormon hierarchy is the First Presidencythe churchs prophet and his two counselorsand the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. 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 compared Packers treatment of Church leaders to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, which is anathema to Mormons. KRE/AMB END STACK West said hed been told by a higher authority to take further action to remedy the situation, Quinn says. How is she still a practicing member after all this exposure to the truth? And it was not popular with those of the brethren that Quinn had already angered with his talk on Mormon history four years before. 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. I wouldn't give it up, but promised him I wouldn't use it. [5] She then attended the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for two years, where she studied religious history. Stack is an advisor on religion to the Public Broadcasting Service,[2] and has written two books. He said it was apostasy because I believed that general authorities had done something wrong. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. I felt they were not going to drive me away. And he was the most strident of the group when it came to denouncing internal critics of Mormon leaders and teachings. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 Nov. 2022 To that end, the power that Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger bring is their personal stories of defiance and excommunication. 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. That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. Excommunication is a complicated and multi-layered process for sexual minorities in the church who choose to marry in a way that the church considers a "same sex" marriage. Peggy Fletcher Stack. 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. He was excommunicated in 1911. Wilkinson was reprimanded, though, and in 1970 he was replaced by Dallin H. Oaks, a law professor at the University of Chicago who had clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren at the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1981, he produced a blessing allegedly given by Joseph Smith to his son Joseph Smith III, declaring him my successor in the Presidency of the High Priesthood. The document was partly inspired, it appears, by The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844, which refers to such a blessing. 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. A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. 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. Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. 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. Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. 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. All rights reserved. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. Hankswhose nephew Paul would show up on Quinns doorstep in 1993was himself a general authority, and he had overseen the two-year Mormon mission Quinn served in England after his freshman year at BYU. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. Supposedly Nelson, like Benson, was a supporter of the John Birch Society, a radically right-wing, conspiracy-mongering, anti-Communist group. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. [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. He then announced that I was not a member in good standing and could not use my temple recommend. After a prayer, the stake president explains to them the details of the case. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. . Maybe, I suggested, he was trying to bring his full self out into the open. Oaks said Packer had met with Toscanos stake president, and acknowledged that this was a mistake. The essay, Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843, cites writings by Joseph Smith and other early church documents to argue that women already possess much of the spiritual authority granted to men, and that todays LDS leaders simply fail to recognize this. Peggy Fletcher Stack / Salt Lake Tribune: High-ranking Mormon official, who twice spoke in General Conference, is excommunicated Check out Mini-memeorandum for simple mobiles or memeorandum Mobile for modern smartphones. 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.
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