The book won an award from the American Historical Association, but it brought Quinn more grief in Utah. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) In the past, many Mormon officials had a sense, he said, that the church must protect its members from "wolves among them.". A view of the Salt Lake Temple outside Olympic Medals Plaza in Salt Lake City, Utah. 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. I prayed every article I wrote into print, he said, continually asking God what he should do. (These soon-to-be former Mormons were not required to attend.) 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. He acknowledged to me that, of course, it is possible to find outlets for service outside of Mormonism. And he based at least one of his forgeries on the work of Michael Quinn. A box of old photos belonging to Michael Quinn at his home. The stake president, a man named Paul Hanks, tried to step into the apartment as he said hello, Quinn recalls. [9] She started the "Faith" column after a discussion with Tribune editor Jay Shelledy. In 1989, Dallin H. Oaks, the onetime law professor and BYU president who was now an apostle, had given a talk called Alternate Voices at the churchs semiannual General Conference. I admire her. ", "Guilt, pain, help and hope when Mormon missionaries come home early", "For a string of vivid reports revealing the perverse, punitive and cruel treatment given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University, one of Utah's most powerful institutions. The high council also heard from Andersons son, Christian, who offered his personal assessment. He had also just published an article titled The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844, which detailed the confusion about who should succeed Joseph Smith after his assassination. Quinn told friends that he did not want anyone to lobby on his behalf. In Mormon history circles, this period is often called the Camelot years., After those 18 months, Quinn left for Yale to do a Ph.D. and finished it in just three years. Though a lifelong Latter-day Saint, Hanks had not been attending a Mormon ward for several years. That last comment became the caption for a Newsweek photo three months later, when the magazines religion reporter, Kenneth L. Woodward, wrote a 1,000-word story about Quinns talk and the controversy it prompted. The book opened Quinns teenage eyes to dissent within the highest echelons of LDS leadership, and to the apostles debateand apparent dissemblingabout plural marriage after 1890. He makes fun of the church by making fun of himself and stodgy rank and file, as well as cultural absurdities. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. [3][4][5] She was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), with her father traveling and speaking as a member of the stake high council. But Robertson is especially pleased with the "Pillars" session. Wearing a bathrobe, he answered after several rings and found three men in suits and ties on his doorstep. This is maybe where John and I are very different. 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.. He was 32; he and his wife, Jan, were expecting their fourth child. She studied "traditional, sacramental Christianity and priesthood," Hanks said this week. 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. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. 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. Vern Anderson, the AP reporter, wrote an 800-word story about the essay in January, just before Hanks showed up at Quinns apartment. One Sunday in February of 1993, Michael Quinn was home sick with a fever when his doorbell rang. 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. This puzzled me because I had a lot to say, but the message was absolutely clear. Groundbreaking Emma Smith biographer, a 'giant' in Mormon scholarship, dies at 82. [5][8] During her time with the magazine, she helped turn around its finances, saving it from closing. Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for the Salt Lake Tribune. It will be published next year. [Husband] Paul, Christian [their son] and I sang in the choir that day. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. If those top leaders did not know where he lived, then they could not assign him to a particular stake, and his church membership could not be threatened. Nor does it read like one. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home with the work of her late husband, Paul L. Anderson, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. He has occasionally attended other churches. Religion Two decades after she was "exed," Utah writer still attends her LDS ward. He wept as he read it aloud to others. The bearded dad, a father of 11 who was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 2015 for apostasy, suggests they sing hymns . 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. Like Robert Kirby, it would be a shit storm to ex her. 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. After a prayer, the stake president explains to them the details of the case. Anderson was photographed at her Salt Lake City home on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. 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. (Quinn is known professionally as D. Michael Quinn; the first name on his birth certificate is Dennis.) 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. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] 1897 - First Presidency member George Q. Cannon used the media attention on the 1895 conviction and two-year imprisonment of famed Irish poet Oscar Wilde as an opportunity to pu LDS Church wants to light up a temple in a place that prides itself on dark skies, For husband-and-wife team, this new restaurant is the culmination of a decadeslong dream, article she wrote in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, Kate Kelly, was excommunicated in June 2014. http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/symposium. Today my story was picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune in Peggy Fletcher Stack's thoughtful article about excommunication. By: Peggy Fletcher Stack. They divorced soon after. As she entered the building at 47 East South Temple, she happened to pass Boyd K. Packer on his way out. 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. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. Press J to jump to the feed. Whether Quinns fate had truly been sealed is hard to say. 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. 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. (Benson died in 94, Hunter in 95.) 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. Elder Packer, he told Quinn, will never get over this.. I did. 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. 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. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. 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. I used to think Steve Benson was a bad person. All rights reserved. In the field of Mormon history the changes are particularly pronounced. He himself did not even stay in town. He went to stay instead with an old college friend, Richard Lambert. 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. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. 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. 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. 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? [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. A candlelight vigil was held outside the Salt Lake City meetinghouse where it took place. Looking back, it was a real blessing. It was held by the stake high council, and so my bishop and ward members took the position that that was their doing. We had been home about 20 minutes when two high counselors came to our house and delivered a letter, inviting me to a disciplinary hearing two weeks from that day. 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. He subsequently has . Independent publicationsmost notably Dialogue (founded in 1966) and Sunstone (1974)provided forums for scholarship and reflection about Mormon history and theology. It is also worth noting that the church president in 1993 was an ailing Ezra Taft Benson. He said it was apostasy because I believed that general authorities had done something wrong. Where a skeptic sees convenience, a believer may see Gods hand. By then an assistant district attorney, Lambert later helped prosecute the case against Hofmann. But some simply baptized the boysa few without explaining what the baptisms were for. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". Following his excommunication, he finished The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power and turned his attention to another scholarly book with deep personal meaning. Find your friends on Facebook. The nature of religion reporting in Utah is changing. Years ago, Don Bradley, a longtime scholar of Mormon history, asked to have his name removed from LDS membership rolls when participation became uncomfortable. This was hard on Paul [who works at Brigham Young University]. 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. Devout Mormons consider these callings divinely inspired. The seventh son of Taylors third wife, Samuel sympathetically portrays his notorious father, who continued to marry multiple wives well after the LDS church officially renounced polygamy in 1890. Denver Snuffer . "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. I moved into recognizing the value and power of a lay priesthood in the body of Christ and Christian community. The [women's] Relief Society president found a way to involve me as a "permanent substitute" for Relief Society pianist. Most people don't know I've been excommunicated. The prophet at the time was Ezra Taft Benson, who, at age 94, was mostly incapacitated. How did you find out about the impending disciplinary hearing? Which has also, it seems, made Michael Quinns singular focus on the unspoken parts of the Mormon past less relevant to younger historians, who operate with more freedom and less pressureand who draw far more interest than their predecessors from the wider world, which has suddenly become fascinated by Mormonism. Disciplinary councils still happen, though they appear to be less frequent, particularly when it comes to apostasy. [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. 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. After reading Peggy Fletcher Stack's article (linked in April's post), I realized that many of us share Lavina's ongoing concerns, including the exclusion of women from institutional authority and the side-stepping of the Heavenly Mother doctrine. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. This has been intentional. Paul Toscanos sister-in-law was excommunicated for her writings about the Heavenly Mother, a controversial aspect of Mormon theology. (He was delivering the third bombto whom it is not entirely clearwhen it blew up accidentally.) The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. 2012. "She might be a model for others who have been missing their Mormon community.". (He also, as it happens, officiated at the wedding of my parents.) 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. The intellectual climate had improved under Oaks, people said. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. "But when I got to the point of priestly ordination, I pulled back. It took several hoursa vigil was held outside for the first few, with candles and hymns and hot chocolate. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. By Peggy Fletcher Stack June 23, 2015 Many Mormon feminists experienced Kate Kelly's excommunication as a harsh slap felt around the world. The stake president shook our hands and was cordial. In both forms of LDS courts, the accused is typically allowed to bring in character witnesses. He was excommunicated by the LDS Church in 2013 for refusing to cease publication of his 2011 book, Passing the Heavenly Gift which challenges many points of LDS orthodoxy. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. He left it up to local leaders to come up with a reason. 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. Running almost 100 pages and including nearly 400 footnotes, the essay was the fruit of decades of thought and research. That has been a blessing truly fulfilled. Hed better start keeping it to himself. was pressured to resign from Brigham Young University and subsequently excommunicated from the faith in 1993 as part of the famed "September Six . Log In. (He took the surname from actor Anthony Quinn, whom he knew growing up in the Los Angeles barrio.) 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. . 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. She said hello, but he did not recognize her. 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. The Quarum of 12 Apostles wanted to ex her, but the Quarum of Public Relations blocked their move. Quinn got hate mail. On March 23, 2018, Andersons husband, Paul, died of heart failure. Mormons from around the world have gathered to listen to church leaders during the two-day conference. 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. Mystery! He revised the story occasionally over the next decade, submitting it unsuccessfully to the Paris Review and the Atlantic. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. 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. 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 . 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. Bradley and Hanks are friends who trod a lot of common ground, Robertson said. And it was not popular with those of the brethren that Quinn had already angered with his talk on Mormon history four years before. It was not the last time he helped to excommunicate people, though. Many people do reside in the borderlands between Mormon and not. I had never been treated as a liar before. This was almost certainly wrong: Romney has plenty of LDS critics, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Peggy Fletcher Stack. He has not been since. 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. But it was a forgery. In a detailed confession, Hofmann said that he had secretly stopped believing in Mormonism as a teenager and had hatched a plan to embarrass the church by creating fake documents that exposed uncomfortable facts about early Mormon history. 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. ", Kelly goes on KUER's Radio West "A lot of people are asking me why I came forward [with the news of my disciplinary hearing]. 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. [Excommunicated Mormons are not supposed to take communion.] By Peggy Fletcher Stack. 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. ``It was like `We're here to support you, Brother Gileadi,' '' he said of the atmosphere at the . The main target of the statement, issued in August 1991, was the Sunstone Symposium, an annual gathering started by Sunstone magazine 12 years before. That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above.
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