How did the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints grow so fast "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks said. Would love to hear your stories about her. (Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.) Arrington). If there is unfinished business, its the First Presidencys, not mine.. 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. The field has grown and appears to have moved on, even though the research that Quinn did, and the fights that he picked, were crucial to what has come in his wake. 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 . Half of these men speak for the accused, and half for the church. 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. But the third bomb, which badly injured but did not kill Hofmann, hinted at a tie to the salamander letter, a disputed historical document that Christensen had purchased from Hofmann a year before and which had inspired Quinns latest research project, a book eventually titled Early Mormonism and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. He had, after all, believed for many years that he would someday be a leader of the church, knowing that if this were true he would have to forever suppress an essential part of himself. In May 1993, apostle Boyd K. Packer said the church's three greatest threats came from feminists, gays and intellectuals. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. 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. [15], Stack wrote a children's book about religion with artist Kathleen B. Petersen, entitled A World of Faith, published in 1998.[4][16]. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". ", This page was last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21. All rights reserved. If Peggy wanted to do some groundbreaking . Excommunication Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster He moved back to Utah and began receiving mail at his actual address. What to him and others that is so threatening is that this [Ordain Women movement] is coming from a very faithful, devout perspective. I didn't have any doubts. 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 . It's Judgment Day for Far Right: LDS Church Purges Survivalists So she met with local and high Mormon leaders and, after several months, they set a baptismal date. Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. 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. 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. West refused to do this, according to Quinn. The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an . 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. . Dallin Oaks speaking at the General Conference in April 1989. Vern Anderson wrote an AP story about the book, and several Utah papers carried reviews. I love John and I support him, but I have never made any claim against truth claims of the church. In the first few days after the bombings, several people who had come into contact with Hofmann feared for their lives. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. 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. This other Quinn was not home when the call came, and a baby-sitter answered the phone. (Rick Bowmer/AP) This article is more than 8 years old. Writer excommunicated during 'September Six' purge loses her bid to TV and newspaper reporters came. At its worst, such talk is sometimes called speaking evil of the Lords anointed.. 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. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. . ", Hanks' rebaptism suggests a difference in LDS leadership from then to now, said Dan Wotherspoon, Sunstone's editor from 2001 to 2008. I was removed from that situation. Following his excommunication, he finished The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power and turned his attention to another scholarly book with deep personal meaning. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion ReportingMid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022. 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. With no regular income to speak of, Quinn moved into his mothers condo in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. The stake president shook our hands and was cordial. Last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Speaking Tubes in the Household of Faith", "A Light Unto the World: Image Building Is Anathema to Christian Living", "From the Editors: Stretching Toward the Light", "From the Editors: A Failure to Communicate", "Church Historian: Evolution of a Calling", "Tales of a true believer: picking up faith along the way", "Books: Mormon Novels Entertain While Teaching Lessons", "Twenty Years Ago in Sunstone: Symbol and Promise", "Peggy Fletcher Stack: Happy 100th to my physicist father, who remains a truth seeker in science and faith", "Utahn who pioneered synthesized stereo sound will receive posthumous Grammy", "Despite Growth, Mormons Find New Hurdles", "Nobody Knows Religion Quite Like Peggy Fletcher Stack", "Religion Newswriters Association honors top religion reporting", "Religion News Association names winners of 2017 Awards for Excellence in Religion Reporting", "Winners named in 2018 RNA Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence", "Journalism Awards - Winners and Articles", "The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Local Reporting: The Salt Lake Tribune Staff", "Religion Newswriters Association announces 2008 contest winners", "Religion Newswriters Association names winners of 2015 Awards for Excellence in Religion Reporting", "Religion News Association names winners of 2016 Awards for Excellence in Religion Reporting", "SL Tribune's Peggy Fletcher Stack wins top religion reporting prize for fifth year", "Dreams, Dollars, and Dr. Pepper: Allen Roberts & Peggy Fletcher Years (19781980)", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peggy_Fletcher_Stack&oldid=1124718303, "Nation's Founders: How Religious Were They? Anderson was excommunicated for an article she wrote in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought that described episodes of what she called ecclesiastical abuse of Latter-day Saint intellectuals. However, I do not see that eternal equality reflected in the contemporary church.". See Photos. He subsequently has . By Peggy Fletcher Stack January 3, 2013. But 90 percent of the ward has changed since my court. Mystery! 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. It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. Peggy Fletcher. 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. This made some church leaders uneasy. 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. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. (He took the surname from actor Anthony Quinn, whom he knew growing up in the Los Angeles barrio.) Where a skeptic sees convenience, a believer may see Gods hand. 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. I go over the temple ceremony and the covenants in my mind and remake them before the Lord often. It was a long time coming: Quinn had known he was gay since he was 12 years old. I imagine she walks a careful, thin line to avoid being exed. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. Crucially, much of that project is onlinemore than anything, the Internet has revolutionized the field. This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the 1850s, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor hygiene . 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. She was the editor of Hastings Center Report from 1986 until 1991, when she was hired to start the "Faith" column in the Salt Lake Tribune. Her testimony was that of a believer, Madrigal later told her. Just prior to reading Family Kingdom hed seen an anti-Mormon pamphlet called The Book of Mormon Examined, which highlighted hundreds of changes Joseph Smith made to the Mormon scripture in its first few printings. How is Peggy Fletcher Stack still Mormon? : r/exmormon - reddit Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating, the worldwide effort to bring salvation to all of Gods children, Some things that are true are not very useful, LDS Authority and New Plural Marriages, 18901904, this growing conflict between leaders and intellectuals, Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843, Quinns paper about the Baseball Baptism Program, the responsibility to preserve the doctrinal purity of the church, critical pieces he had written about Mitt Romney, Hanks described her path back to Mormonism, the administration caved to pressure from Ira Fulton. The meaning of EXCOMMUNICATION is an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership. (He was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) Peggy Fletcher Stack - Wikipedia The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. 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.. Peggy Fletcher Stack - The Salt Lake Tribune A church spokesman told him that it did exist, and the First Presidency issued a formal statement about it the following week. There was no process for voluntary withdrawal from the Mormon Church in the 1960s, so each of these kids had to be excommunicatedtechnically, for apostasy. How did you find out about the impending disciplinary hearing? She is in the right family. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. When his mother died in 2007, she left him the condo. The latter, a smaller school, offered less money, but BYU had its own drawbacks: It was and is a conservative place, politically as well as religiously. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Quinns status in the church remained unchanged. After Paul Toscano was excommunicated, Steve Benson, grandson of the then Mormon prophet, met privately with the apostles Dallin H. Oaks and Neal A. Maxwell, and asked them aboutamong many other thingsthe rumor that Packer had something to do with it. He has occasionally attended other churches. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. 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) 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. 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. It sent him down a rabbit hole. In May, my stake president called me in about it. Not long after that, the bishop met with Anderson and asked her ever so gently if she would like to discuss reinstatement. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, nearly fainted waiting for the Dalai Lama, fasted with Muslims during Ramadan and has reported on 50 consecutive semiannual LDS General Conferences. "She might be a model for others who have been missing their Mormon community.". He left it up to local leaders to come up with a reason. Peggy Fletcher. 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. 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. See Photos. But it was a forgery. Packer approved Quinns hiring, but he may have come to regret it five years later. 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. Groundbreaking Emma Smith biographer, a 'giant' in Mormon scholarship, dies at 82. Hed been told it was an unusually accepting congregation. On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. Packer, the second-most senior among the 12, was the substitute president of the Quorum of the Twelve whenever Hunter was sidelined for medical reasons. . Just go to . Peggy Fletcher Stack | The Christian Century [5], The Stacks traveled in Africa for a year,[5] then settled in New York City for five years,[1] where she worked as the editor of the Hastings Center Report while her husband attended film school. Quinn had spent three years in the military in the late 60s, working in counterintelligence. By Peggy Fletcher Stack June 23, 2015 Many Mormon feminists experienced Kate Kelly's excommunication as a harsh slap felt around the world. 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. 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. Despite his productivity, though, hes never broken back into academia. The most senior apostle, Howard W. Hunter, also suffered from serious health problems. Saturday, February 22, 1997. Peggy Fletcher Stack: How I report on Utah's changing faith landscape Within the past few years, Bradley had a change of heart and was rebaptized. The book he was finishing, which would be published in 1994, was called The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted. There are important aspects of Mormon life, such as temple ceremonies, that are open only to the truly faithful. Maybe, I suggested, he was trying to bring his full self out into the open. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. He turned 65 two years later, making him eligible for Social Security and Medicare. The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. 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. "It will be a chance for a larger audience to hear this story," she said, and to hear how people can wrestle with their faith and then live it out. He stinks.. 1511: Mormon Stories Transparency Q&A for Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony It was his death and funeral that prompted the couples current bishop to bring up the possibility of her rejoining the church. 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. 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.. Excommunicated Mormon to tell how she came back to the faith Experts authenticated the letter, and Christensen, a devout Mormon, bought it from Hofmann, with plans to donate it to the church. The Mormon church holds two different kinds of disciplinary councils: a more elaborate process that is often reserved for those who hold the Melchizedek priesthoodgenerally speaking, all devout adult menand a simpler process mostly used for those who dontmeaning women and men who have not advanced far in the church. 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 accused is called in, another prayer is offered, and the court proceeds. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. The book won an award from the American Historical Association, but it brought Quinn more grief in Utah. Re: Kate Kelly Shreds Peggy Fletcher Stack for Using Her as "Clickbait" The most threatening thing about Ordain Women to people in the church is that it is coming from faithful, devout, courageous, wonderful women and that's more threatening than anything could be. 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. Wearing a bathrobe, he answered after several rings and found three men in suits and ties on his doorstep. She talks very vaguely when it comes to personal, specific spiritual beliefs and whether they align with doctrine, but she doesn't hesitate to call the church out on its shit at all. We had stake [regional] conference in September. Hanks was accused of apostasy for editing an anthology, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, which included a discussion of the all-male priesthood and womens relationship to it. He was the first academic to occupy the post, previously held only by high-ranking LDS leaders, and his appointment signaled a broader effort to reorganize the historians office along professional lines. Quinn, who later assisted the police in their investigation, did not go home for several days. Demographics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints