Bad marriages had women running to and away from . A page of the so-called Salamander Letter, forged by Mark Hofmann. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] Soon after, he happened to attend, with some friends, a meeting of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a splinter sect that believes Joseph Smiths son, not Brigham Young, was Smiths rightful successor as prophet. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. West refused to do this, according to Quinn. Robert Kirby does this also, but much more indirectly. At the pinnacle of the Mormon hierarchy is the First Presidencythe churchs prophet and his two counselorsand the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. I didn't have any doubts. 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. Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home with the work of her late husband, Paul L. Anderson, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. 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 was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) Mike Quinn in his Rancho Cucamonga home in California this summer. July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . Quinn was convinced, in any case, that his fate in any disciplinary council was predetermined, that Boyd K. Packer wanted him out of the church and Hanks was going to make it happen. Even in the novels, he noticed, the gay characters came to terrible ends. 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. KRE/AMB END STACK By the time Quinn arrived, the program had been disavowed, and many of these baptisms needed to be undone. Peggy Fletcher Stack was born and raised in New Jersey; studied at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California; traveled through Africa for two years with her news-photographer husband; and worked at Books and Religion in Manhattan before settling down as a religion writer at The Salt Lake Tribune. 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. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. They can't ex someone with that king of lineage. 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. Just go to . Boyd Packer, left, and Dallin Oaks, right, Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wait for the start of the first session of the 181st Semiannual General Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S., on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011. I had a spiritual prompting that summer staying at my cabin that I wasn't to go. The term "September Six" was coined by The Salt Lake Tribune and was used in the media and subsequent discussion. 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. In May, my stake president called me in about it. Experts authenticated the letter, and Christensen, a devout Mormon, bought it from Hofmann, with plans to donate it to the church. 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. The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. [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. . He hopes that eventually hell manage to sell the condo and will get enough money for it that he could move back to New Orleans and live there for the last couple decades, God willing, of his life. 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. 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. But it also betrayed tensions within the church that may never entirely go away. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. I was removed from that situation. Hofmann eventually became, in the words of one expert, the most skilled forger this country has ever seen. For LDS leaders nervous about church history, he was a nightmare personified: a lying, murderous man hell-bent on embarrassing the religion while glorifying and enriching himself. And the Tribune is changing with it. 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 Strengthening Church Members Committee almost certainly passed along notes about Quinn to his new stake president, Paul Hanks, in early 1993. 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. Knowing that our Heavenly Parents are both male and female teaches me that our potential as women is limitless. 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. Sign Up. The four-day symposium, which begins Wednesday evening, also will include dozens of sessions about Mormonism and politics, about how members grapple with contemporary issues such as gay rights and feminism, building online LDS communities, Mormon Latino views of the church's immigration stance and how the Utah-based faith has developed its "brand" in the past several decades. Though a lifelong Latter-day Saint, Hanks had not been attending a Mormon ward for several years. He then announced that I was not a member in good standing and could not use my temple recommend. How is she still a practicing member after all this exposure to the truth? The book, published a decade before, was written by Taylors son Samuel, best known today, perhaps, for writing the short story that became The Absent-Minded Professor. (Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.) He took a fellowship at the Huntington Library, near his hometown of Pasadena, Calif., and began indexing his enormous collection of notes on old Mormon documents, in preparation for his next book. By Peggy Fletcher Stack | Sep. 5, 2019, 1:20 p.m. | Updated: 11:59 p.m. . In many respects, Andersons affirmations mirror those of other members. Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example, published in 1996, argues that same-sex intimacy was much more accepted by early Mormonsincluding Joseph Smiththan it is today. The [women's] Relief Society president found a way to involve me as a "permanent substitute" for Relief Society pianist. As Quinn writes, the Manifesto inherited ambiguity, was created in ambiguity, and produced ambiguity.. The intellectual climate had improved under Oaks, people said. 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. I moved into recognizing the value and power of a lay priesthood in the body of Christ and Christian community. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. Since then, only one Avraham Gileadi, an Old Testament scholar who has spent his life researching and . ``It was like `We're here to support you, Brother Gileadi,' '' he said of the atmosphere at the . The bearded dad, a father of 11 who was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 2015 for apostasy, suggests they sing hymns . (Benson died in 94, Hunter in 95.) Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for the Salt Lake Tribune. On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. Many religions have strictures that establish who is in and who is out, but the Mormon church draws a brighter line than most. She said hello, but he did not recognize her. People named Peggy Fletcher. 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. I cannot be anything but a Mormon. We had a family devotional every night with prayer, singing and scripture reading. While LDS leaders can be defensive about media attention, sustained criticism from the outside world seems to have an effect. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. 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. 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 . One of Ordain Womens founders, Kate Kelly, was excommunicated in June 2014. Her testimony was that of a believer, Madrigal later told her. Find your friends on Facebook. Crucially, much of that project is onlinemore than anything, the Internet has revolutionized the field. The bombings and subsequent murder trial cast a pall over the practice of Mormon history. On March 23, 2018, Andersons husband, Paul, died of heart failure. P The Sunstone Symposium runs July 25-28 at the University of Utah's Olpin Student Union. 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. He subsequently has . (In 1985, an Arizona man filed an $18 million lawsuit against the LDS church for not allowing him to do so. The Mormon church is organized into congregations called wards; a group of these is called a stake. 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. . [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. We embedded him as thoroughly in the church as we ourselves had been. By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. (They draw numbers to pick sides.) My searching was complete. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. 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 . [Husband] Paul, Christian [their son] and I sang in the choir that day. "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. Years ago, Don Bradley, a longtime scholar of Mormon history, asked to have his name removed from LDS membership rolls when participation became uncomfortable. One theory on that first day of panic was that the bombings were connected with the business, an investment company called CFS. 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. Gileadi, Toscano, Anderson, and Hanks were all excommunicated. I love the gospel. 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 . Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. What I heard was that I would be excommunicated and that I shouldn't go. Sometimes Stack refers to Salt Lake City . . [5] She then received a fellowship to work in the Church History Division of the LDS Church (then run by Leonard J. Being treated like an ordinary person is a gift a ward can give. They were eventually published, without Quinns permission, by two prominent anti-Mormon activists, Jerald and Sandra Tanner. 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. 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. The Version table provides details related to the release that this issue/RFE will be addressed. The churchs critics find the timing convenient: By 1890, the U.S. government had threatened to seize LDS property if polygamy wasnt renounced. He went to San Diego to give the keynote address for the annual conference held by Affirmation, a support group for gay and lesbian Mormons, and he stayed in California for several days afterward. All rights reserved. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. 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. The stake president said I was "exed" for apostasy but I didn't really fit the handbook definition. During Sunday school, a man approached him and said, The bishop would like to talk to you. Quinn dreaded what was coming. McLean invited her, she said, to describe her faith in a letter, which includes her conviction that God cherishes everyone. Whether Quinns fate had truly been sealed is hard to say. Once the kids were interested, the missionaries were supposed to contact their parents, with the aim of converting whole families. A history full of benignly angelic church leaders apparently advocated by Elders Benson and Packer would, he said, border on idolatry.. In order to have her blessings fully restored, she had to meet with a general authority at church headquarters. She was told to pass along this message: Im tired of hearing him criticize the church. Like Robert Kirby, it would be a shit storm to ex her. (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. 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. With his background in education, he became interested in how the church taught its own past, and decided he did not like what was going on at the church historians office.