I have been doing that for 18 years. (He also, as it happens, officiated at the wedding of my parents.) Earlier this year, Maxine Hanks became the first of the September Six to fully return to the Mormon Church since the conservative outlier Avraham Gileadi was quietly rebaptized almost two decades ago. He turned 65 two years later, making him eligible for Social Security and Medicare. I assumed there was a way to work it out. Then I went away to my cabin for the summer and he called all the temples in Utah, saying he was canceling my recommend. 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. 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. Knowing her personally (not closely, but we're acquainted) I get the feeling that she is much more culturally LDS than actually LDS. In 1975 Stack helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies, and steered it for its first eleven years. 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. He never wrote another work of fiction. Find your friends on Facebook. 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. Men only become gay in prison, or sometimes in the Navy. 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. ", This page was last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21. Every morning he worked there was Christmas morning, Quinn says. Ironically, this testimony only ever deserted him on his Mormon mission. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. This made some church leaders uneasy. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Down in Provo, Avraham Gileadi met more quietly with his local leaders. To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. [Husband] Paul, Christian [their son] and I sang in the choir that day. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. But he had a caring bishop that first year and decided on his own to serve a mission. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. That was established definitively in 1986 after Hofmann confessed to the murders of Christensen and Sheets as part of a plea to avoid the death penalty. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. 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. What's happening is so wrong. 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. Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated in 2014 for her views on gender inequality in the Mormon Church . Running almost 100 pages and including nearly 400 footnotes, the essay was the fruit of decades of thought and research. 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. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. [5] She met Mike Stack when he volunteered as a photographer for Sunstone in 1984, and they married in October 1985. 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 am confident that my desire to be worthy of the temple is acceptable of the Lord. I was not surprised or angry about the outcome, Anderson said Wednesday, and she has no plans to try to open that door again. Later that evening, having dinner alone, he felt a new sense of relief about what had happened so far and what he believed was about to happen. 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack By David Noyce For the first time in nearly 30 years, the Mormon church has excommunicated one of its top leaders. My dad was a bishop twice. 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. But some simply baptized the boysa few without explaining what the baptisms were for. It went back to his college years. 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. He visited these homes with his missionary companion and asked the boys if they still wanted to be Mormons. Her explorations gave Hanks a new level of understanding and "testimony" of Mormonism. It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. But Packer certainly said similar things before larger audiences. In an April 1968 talk about military service, he described the restless, unchallenged young people who are repudiating their citizenship responsibilities by avoiding and protesting the draft. I cannot be anything but a Mormon. Peggy Fletcher Stack. The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of Mormon congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an impossible choice: Either return to living as a man or resign her . He moved back to Utah and began receiving mail at his actual address. "Given who I was, there was no place to go but out," Hanks said in 2003, on the 10th anniversary of the excommunications. 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. He normalized what many call "sinful" behavior, by admitting to looking at nudie mags, drinking, smoking, and intimated other transgressions, yet still going on a mission. The church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. This year he completed the third and final volume in his trilogy on the Mormon hierarchy, which examines the churchs business and financial activities from 1830 to 2010. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. If Peggy wanted to do some groundbreaking . He subsequently has . The cabin has no phone access, so I had months [after her initial conversation with the stake president] to think about it. Quinn wrote back more harshly this time, listing all the things Hanks had done that troubled him. 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. But Robertson is especially pleased with the "Pillars" session. 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. Hanks worked for the Church Educational System, where Packer had long been an administrator, and Quinn heard that Loren C. Dunn, a friend of Packers and fellow general authority, had spoken to Hanks personally. Hebrew scholar Avraham Gileadi has been rebaptized into the LDS Church after being excommunicated for apostasy along with five other writers and scholars in September 1993. For her part, Anderson always has felt a great sense of peace that I made a moral decision, an ethical decision, a decision of integrity and conscience, she wrote. Quinn attended that ward in Westwood every week while he was in California. 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) But nothing else has driven him to contribute to the lives of others the way the faith in which he was born and raised once did. He compared Packers treatment of Church leaders to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, which is anathema to Mormons. The charge stems from Palmer's 2002 book, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, which challenges the traditional explanations of the faith's founding . The biggest thing that got me was the excommunication of bill reel segment of the Mormon stories podcast. He does not have friends in Rancho Cucamonga. And the Tribune is changing with it. For details, go to http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. Saturday, February 22, 1997. I have been taught a vision of a truly cooperative future where men and women are complete equals. 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. She embodies, more than anyone else I know, the ideal of a broken heart and contrite spirit, which has influenced me so strongly that I, the last time I checked, was one of only two of the 21 children of the September Six who is still an active member.. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. . 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. Mormons from around the world have gathered to listen to church leaders during the two-day conference. The suit was settled out of court and a process for voluntary withdrawal was established in 1989.). Quinn went over local church rolls and found addresses of kids who didnt come to Sunday services. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. Why didn't you go to the hearing to defend yourself? 2012. In 1997, the acclaimed historian Richard Bushman, who spent much of his career writing on non-LDS topics, began studying his religion again in earnest, and convened an annual seminar that helped attract young scholars who might have pursued other interests. Log In. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. He then announced that I was not a member in good standing and could not use my temple recommend. 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. He was 32; he and his wife, Jan, were expecting their fourth child. All rights reserved. My guess is she has to be to keep the doors open so people willing to talk to her. The regional council forwarded her request to church headquarters, with the recommendation that she be approved for rebaptism. 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. Today, its Nelson, with a new counselor, Oaks, instead of Dieter F. Uchtdorf. 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. Once the kids were interested, the missionaries were supposed to contact their parents, with the aim of converting whole families. 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. They dont acquire these positions by filling out an application and sending in a rsum. West did not formally revoke the recommend, he just put it in his drawer. I did. 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 . A second bomb that first day killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of one of Christensens former business partners. In the early 90s, when he was living in New Orleans, Quinn, nearing his 50th birthday, tried his hand at fiction, going back to the literature he once studied as an undergraduate. 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. It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. The Salt Lake Tribune . TV and newspaper reporters came. 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. The prophet at the time was Ezra Taft Benson, who, at age 94, was mostly incapacitated. 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. When he went into his office, the bishop, a man named Tom Andersen, said hed read this article in the L.A. Times, Quinn told me. Hi, Peggy. There are important aspects of Mormon life, such as temple ceremonies, that are open only to the truly faithful. Quinns polygamy essay, meanwhile, produced more trouble for him with LDS leaders. 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. I could listen to the spirit there.