More painfully, as a high councilor in a Utah stake several years later, Quinn was part of courts prompted by personal sinsuch as engaging in homosexual acts. It's a way for me to participate and contribute, almost like having a calling. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. The general authority assigned to interview Quinn in the spring of 1976 was Boyd K. Packer. 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. The main target of the statement, issued in August 1991, was the Sunstone Symposium, an annual gathering started by Sunstone magazine 12 years before. 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. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. In the quarter-century since her ouster, Anderson consistently has attended weekly services at her Latter-day Saint congregation, the Whittier Ward. Salt Lake City Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the LDS Church for being a woman. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. Despite his productivity, though, hes never broken back into academia. 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. The church declined to comment on the decision. In both forms of LDS courts, the accused is typically allowed to bring in character witnesses. July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . All rights reserved. He subsequently has . Following the wave of media attention that greeted the September excommunications, the First Presidency defended what had taken place. Though he maintained a solemn belief in the Mormon gospel and in the sacrament partaken of by the faithful at Sunday services, he stopped attending church altogether. The [women's] Relief Society president found a way to involve me as a "permanent substitute" for Relief Society pianist. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. He has not been since. It really hurt my feelings. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. . On Sunday with similar church disciplinary actions threatening Mormon feminist Kate Kelly and blogger John Dehlin, Anderson discussed her spiritual journey: What triggered the LDS Church's disciplinary action against you? For the faithful, the simplest narrative regarding LDS polygamy is that God wanted Mormons to practice it between 1843when He revealed the doctrine of plural marriage to Joseph Smithand 1890, when He informed one of Smiths successors, Wilford Woodruff, of a change in course. See Photos. 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. Taylor fled to Canada during the congressional hearings for Reed Smoot, a fellowbut monogamousapostle, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate. That's a good question. 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. The regional council forwarded her request to church headquarters, with the recommendation that she be approved for rebaptism. . She said hello, but he did not recognize her. 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 . 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. Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. 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. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . It is also worth noting that the church president in 1993 was an ailing Ezra Taft Benson. Mystery! Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated in 1993 as part of the so-called September Six, has had her request for . Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. 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. His wife Margaret, an English professor and feminist who attracted attention from church leaders before her husband did, was excommunicated in 2000. He also mentioned reading Quinns long Dialogue article about the politics of Ezra Taft Benson. Quinn told friends that he did not want anyone to lobby on his behalf. We were sitting in the front room of a house owned by a gay couple he knows in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Salt Lake City. 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. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. At the pinnacle of the Mormon hierarchy is the First Presidencythe churchs prophet and his two counselorsand the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Part of what I feel is a calling to be there. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack is the religion columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, and one of the founders of Sunstone. 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. Supposedly Nelson, like Benson, was a supporter of the John Birch Society, a radically right-wing, conspiracy-mongering, anti-Communist group. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks said. He was excommunicated in 1911. It had been a difficult year. This has been intentional. The suit was settled out of court and a process for voluntary withdrawal was established in 1989.). 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. Some did not know that they were. 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. And he was the most strident of the group when it came to denouncing internal critics of Mormon leaders and teachings. 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. Today, its Nelson, with a new counselor, Oaks, instead of Dieter F. Uchtdorf. It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. He froze. 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.. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". [5] She then attended the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for two years, where she studied religious history. . A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. My searching was complete. If her reentry had been approved, Anderson would have been the third of the six the other five are Avraham Gileadi, Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano and Maxine Hanks to be welcomed back into full fellowship with the Utah-based faith. We had stake [regional] conference in September. The bishops next comment was, Whats wrong with those people up in Salt Lake? He was thrilled to have Quinn in his ward. But it was a forgery. [5][6], Fletcher initially attended Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, for a year,[1] then transferred to the University of Utah, where she earned a BA in English literature. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. Quinn attended that ward in Westwood every week while he was in California. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. 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. I am confident that my desire to be worthy of the temple is acceptable of the Lord. The prophet at the time was Ezra Taft Benson, who, at age 94, was mostly incapacitated. They are called to them by the men at the very top of the hierarchy. Hanks told him he had been excommunicated, and said that the court lasted six hours. From an early age, he felt within himself the presence of God, this burning of the spirit, as he says. She's been covering religion for the paper since 1991 taking on a variety of topics, but mostly the LDS Church. This is not entirely uncommon in Mormon culture, but Quinn took it sincerely to heart. They don't feel safe enough to keep going it's such a terrible, terrible loss. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. 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. Article type . By Peggy Fletcher Stack. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. 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.. 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. Dubbed the September Six, the group were mostly left-leaning writers and scholars who had published articles or given talks about the role of women in Mormonism and the way the churchs leaders handle dissent. The Mormon church, he said, drew him out of his largely monastic life and compelled him to help the men and women he saw every Sunday. Some things that are true are not very useful. Its not clear whether Packer read Quinns work before interviewing him, but if he did, it probably would have struck him as less than useful. By: Peggy Fletcher Stack. (Quinn is known professionally as D. Michael Quinn; the first name on his birth certificate is Dennis.) I heard she's not Mormon at all. Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. [5] They moved to Utah in 1991 when she was hired to be the religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune, where much of her reporting has focused on the LDS Church. 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. After the Newsweek article ran, Quinn got a phone call from Marion D. Hanks. 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. Excommunication opened the door to a larger cosmos, inside and outside myself.". The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. 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. 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. Once in a while such a case will hit the press. [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. Packers notion that those writing church history should share only those things that are faith-promoting is not just intellectually offensive nowit has become quaint, the relic of a time when information was not so freely available. On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. 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. [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. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. I wouldn't give it up, but promised him I wouldn't use it. 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. [14] Along with five other reporters, she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 in the Local Reporting category for a series of stories about sexual assault victims at BYU. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) After years of tension between Mormons and gay rights activists -- with political action and theological pronouncements on one . Dated Oct. 23, 1830, the letter was addressed to an early Mormon convert named W.W. Phelps and signed Martin Harris. I was removed from that situation. But the cause didn't really matter because it was pretty clear that Elder [Boyd K.] Packer [of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles] was trying to send a message by targeting certain people, such as historians and feminists. They were receptive. 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 Stack, David Noyce 3/23/2022. Using the familiar Christian metaphor of a lost sheep who listens for the one voice that can guide it back home, Oaks said Mormons should beware of alternate voices whose avowed or secret object is to deceive and devour the flock. Among the voices Oaks warned about were the ones heard in magazines, journals, and newspapers and at lectures, symposia, and conferences. At the same General Conference, another apostle said that a true stalwart of the church would not lend his or her good name to periodicals, programs, or forums that feature offenders who do sow discord among brethren. , When the Sunstone Symposium next convened, in the summer of 92, Lavina Fielding Anderson presented a paper on this growing conflict between leaders and intellectuals. The Salt Lake Tribune . Stack has received and been nominated for multiple awards. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. or. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. "The issues in Mormon doctrine, history and practice highlighted by those facing church discipline are much larger than any one individual," the statement reads. The kindness of my ward members has been really important. With no regular income to speak of, Quinn moved into his mothers condo in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. 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. 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. 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. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. 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. 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. Quinn had spent three years in the military in the late 60s, working in counterintelligence. On Tuesday morning, James J. Hamula was released from his position in the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after disciplinary 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. The handbook doesn't say you can't speak in class, just over the pulpit. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. One theory on that first day of panic was that the bombings were connected with the business, an investment company called CFS. Gileadi, Toscano, Anderson, and Hanks were all excommunicated. These three shocks to Quinns testimonyabout the Book of Mormon, polygamy, and LDS theologyspurred a pursuit to unearth and understand those parts of his religions past that complicated the simpler story of the faith he had learned as a child. I prayed every article I wrote into print, he said, continually asking God what he should do. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. I could listen to the spirit there. The intellectual climate had improved under Oaks, people said. The biggest thing that got me was the excommunication of bill reel segment of the Mormon stories podcast. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was not. At the time, he was grieving the death of his son, who had gone missing and was found weeks later hanging from a tree by an extension cord. 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. Ordain Women's Kate Kelly loses last appeal; husband to resign from Mormon church . Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. Quinn went over local church rolls and found addresses of kids who didnt come to Sunday services. However, we believe that Latter-day Saints who are committed to the mission of their Church and the well-being of their fellow members will strive to be sensitive to those matters that are more appropriate for private conferring and correction than for public debate. There are times, they added, when public discussion of sacred or personal matters is inappropriate., The Statement on Symposia was another tear in the already fraying relationship between church leaders and scholars. Many religions have strictures that establish who is in and who is out, but the Mormon church draws a brighter line than most. In what dissidents have described as a purge, church leaders took severe disciplinary action in September against six Mormon scholars and feminists, the New York Times reported on Oct. 2, 1993. Quinn went to Californiahe had another fellowship at the Huntington Librarystaying this time with his mother. Quinn, who later assisted the police in their investigation, did not go home for several days. 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. (He took the surname from actor Anthony Quinn, whom he knew growing up in the Los Angeles barrio.) He decided he would suppress that part of himself and be a good Mormon. Wearing a bathrobe, he answered after several rings and found three men in suits and ties on his doorstep. The same month that his essay about post-Manifesto polygamy was published, in April 1985, Quinn and his wife separated. He never wrote another work of fiction. 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. But it also betrayed tensions within the church that may never entirely go away. 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. Being treated like an ordinary person is a gift a ward can give. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. He left it up to local leaders to come up with a reason. Press J to jump to the feed. Years ago, Don Bradley, a longtime scholar of Mormon history, asked to have his name removed from LDS membership rolls when participation became uncomfortable. (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. I asked Quinn this past summer if he thought the provocations he penned as a historian might have been fueled on some level by his own inner conflict with Mormon teachingsif perhaps, unconsciously, he wanted to force a showdown with church authorities. 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.. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. ", Hanks is a "genuinely spiritual person and quite insightful, who brings a type of spirituality with her that will resonate with lots of people," he said. By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. This other Quinn was not home when the call came, and a baby-sitter answered the phone. Gileadi, a Hebrew scholar who got into trouble for unorthodox writings about the biblical Isaiah, was rebaptized within several years. 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. This was almost certainly wrong: Romney has plenty of LDS critics, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. 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. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. 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.
Pictures Of Gum Infection After Tooth Extraction,
Apartments For Rent In Waterbury, Ct Utilities Included,
Ebay Used Sewer Jetter For Sale,
Articles P