"The issues in Mormon doctrine, history and practice highlighted by those facing church discipline are much larger than any one individual," the statement reads. At the pinnacle of the Mormon hierarchy is the First Presidencythe churchs prophet and his two counselorsand the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. That, in any case, was his thinking. I admire her. If there is unfinished business, its the First Presidencys, not mine.. Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. Quinn attended that ward in Westwood every week while he was in California. Then she was accused of apostasy for editing an anthology, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, which included a discussion of the all-male LDS priesthood and women's relationship to it. 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. . She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. It is always harder on the loved one who has to stand by and see someone they love being hurt. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. He subsequently has . She currently serves on the . Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. 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 know how to avoid people I didnt want to be in contact with, he says. Bad marriages had women running to and away from . He makes fun of the church by making fun of himself and stodgy rank and file, as well as cultural absurdities. The stake president shook our hands and was cordial. She studied "traditional, sacramental Christianity and priesthood," Hanks said this week. Peggy Fletcher-Stack: Hi Dave. 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. 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 . All rights reserved. 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. West did not formally revoke the recommend, he just put it in his drawer. 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.. That was my decision. This is not entirely uncommon in Mormon culture, but Quinn took it sincerely to heart. Mormonism was as much an identity issue for them as it is for me. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated in 2014 for her views on gender inequality in the Mormon Church . 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. They divorced soon after. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. 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. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. Before the first court, Whitesides and Anderson alerted friends and the press, and word spread quickly. 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. Robert Kirby does this also, but much more indirectly. They are called to them by the men at the very top of the hierarchy. . I had my answers.". 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. 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. Today, LDS leaders seem more inclined to recognize, said Wotherspoon, now host of the "Mormon Matters" podcast, "that Zion is made up of people of all types. Hanks had already held one church court in Quinns absence, in July, at which Quinn was disfellowshipped. Quinn was so depressed by the experience that for a few weeks he lost his belief in God completely. 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. The book he was finishing, which would be published in 1994, was called The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. He moved back to Utah and began receiving mail at his actual address. All rights reserved. Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. My searching was complete. The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. Knowing that our Heavenly Parents are both male and female teaches me that our potential as women is limitless. Hed better start keeping it to himself. 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. But it was a forgery. He then expressed his gratitude to the church for providing, throughout his life, a vehicle for service. 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. The entry for perversion said See homosexuality, and he read all the available books in that categorynot a lot in a small public library in 1956, though fairly heady stuff for a 12-year-old: Kinseys Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, some Freud, some Havelock Ellis. The all-male priesthood leaders in his Willow Creek Sandy LDS stake could have excommunicated the 64-year-old author, but chose instead a . Peggy Fletcher Stack. We had stake [regional] conference in September. I have kept my covenants, remained close to the church and have felt that what I have done is accepted by the Lord, the Salt Lake City editor and writer said. [5][7][8] From 1978 to 1986, she was the third editor of Sunstone. We embedded him as thoroughly in the church as we ourselves had been. That came out in early 1993. She was also the only one whose disciplinary council was overseen by her bishop, rather than her stake president. Quinn is no longer actively seeking an academic job. 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. Quinns parents were divorced when he was 4, and he was raised largely by his mothers parents, who frequently fought. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. There are other matters that I need to talk with you about that are not related to your historical writings. When his mother died in 2007, she left him the condo. 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. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. A forum for ex-mormons and others who have been affected by mormonism to get support and share news, commentary, and comedy about the Mormon church. In September, Hanks wrote Quinn another letter, saying that he had listened, twice, to a recording of Quinns paper about the Baseball Baptism Program, delivered at the Sunstone Symposium that summer. During the hiring process, a college dean offered to protect him, Quinn says, from those peoplethe LDS leadersup in Salt Lake., Before he could be hired, though, he had to visit LDS headquarters at 47 East South Temple in downtown Salt Lake and sit for an interview with one of those peoplespecifically, a general authority, one of the 100 or so men who run the church. But he could no longer go to the temple. 2012. Daryl Peveto/Luceo Images for Slate. 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. He revised the story occasionally over the next decade, submitting it unsuccessfully to the Paris Review and the Atlantic. 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. And he was the most strident of the group when it came to denouncing internal critics of Mormon leaders and teachings. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. My dad was a bishop twice. 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. . That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above. Quinn wrote back more harshly this time, listing all the things Hanks had done that troubled him. A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. 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.. 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. The Version table provides details related to the release that this issue/RFE will be addressed. He went to stay instead with an old college friend, Richard Lambert. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. In the field of Mormon history the changes are particularly pronounced. I moved into recognizing the value and power of a lay priesthood in the body of Christ and Christian community. He himself did not even stay in town. Quinn told friends that he did not want anyone to lobby on his behalf. 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. Fawn Brodie was related to David O. McKay. I wouldn't give it up, but promised him I wouldn't use it. I had never been treated as a liar before. Log In. He decided he would suppress that part of himself and be a good Mormon. The prophet at the time was Ezra Taft Benson, who, at age 94, was mostly incapacitated. She declined. West refused to do this, according to Quinn. He left it up to local leaders to come up with a reason. Bradley and Hanks are friends who trod a lot of common ground, Robertson said. 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. 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. According the her Wikipedia page: She is a great-granddaughter of Heber J. The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. The Mormon intellectual community far and wide is mourning the loss of Linda King Newell. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. Quinn was already on the alert for such wrinkles in the churchs history. Going to the temple, but I feel that it's more important to have the temple in me than for me to be in the temple.