Mormon higher-ups hold keys to excommunication process against two activists. I said I didn't think members believe general authorities don't make mistakes. The churchs critics find the timing convenient: By 1890, the U.S. government had threatened to seize LDS property if polygamy wasnt renounced. 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. LDS officials disciplined Anderson and five other Mormon intellectuals in and around the fall of 1993. More painfully, as a high councilor in a Utah stake several years later, Quinn was part of courts prompted by personal sinsuch as engaging in homosexual acts. 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. 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. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. He wept as he read it aloud to others. I heard she's not Mormon at all. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman. It will be published next year. 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack | Sep. 5, 2019, 1:20 p.m. | Updated: 11:59 p.m. . 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. Still, he sought out the scriptures first edition himself, and did his own comparison. He also criticized Ezra Taft Benson, then a senior apostle, who had made comments similar to Packers. The movie was a live-action adaptation of the Nintendo game Super Mario Bros. 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. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. At first, his timing appeared serendipitous: In 1972, while he was completing a masters in history at the University of Utah, an academic named Leonard Arrington was appointed church historian. 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. 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 . sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. He went to stay instead with an old college friend, Richard Lambert. See Photos. My parents never blamed me, but they were heartbroken. Hanks became conciliatory, reading On Being a Mormon Historian, and writing to say hed gotten from it deeper insight into your devotion and your dedication to history and the Church. He asked again to meet when Quinn came back to Utah. The Mormon intellectual community far and wide is mourning the loss of Linda King Newell. It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. It sent him down a rabbit hole. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. 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. Ive had more than one therapist Ive talked to about this issue say, Dont you see that you were purposely setting yourself up for this fall? he told me. 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. The modern Mormon church has become a fairly top-down organization, but most responsibility for attending to its members still resides in local lay leaders. These three shocks to Quinns testimonyabout the Book of Mormon, polygamy, and LDS theologyspurred a pursuit to unearth and understand those parts of his religions past that complicated the simpler story of the faith he had learned as a child. Nowadays, anyone can Google Mormon polygamy and learn more than theyd ever need to know about that practice, about its abandonment, the subsequent fallout, and so on. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. News. 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. Denver Snuffer . It went back to his college years. Dave: We remind our listeners about a new way to support Mormon Land. The stake president, who oversees a number of congregations, remained optimistic, she said, zeroing in on the words, at this time., But the writer replied, Theres hope, and then theres experience., Besides, she said, it was a form letter.. A diligent historian, meanwhile, will come to see that the truth of the matter is complicated. This is maybe where John and I are very different. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. Two years later, he was called as an apostle. 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. The men at his door were the local stake president and his two counselors, the men responsible for overseeing all the congregations in the area. I have been taught a vision of a truly cooperative future where men and women are complete equals. Bradley and Hanks are friends who trod a lot of common ground, Robertson said. 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 Peggy Fletcher Stack. They didn't say anything. But that was not how he experienced it. I don't think I could have done that graciously. Mormon author Grant H. Palmer has been summoned to an LDS Church disciplinary hearing on Sunday, facing possible excommunication for apostasy. Look at Steve Benson, I suspect that there was no way they were going to ex him so he exed himself. (Rick Bowmer/AP) This article is more than 8 years old. He put down in words his sincere testimony in the Mormon gospel and in Ezra Taft Bensons status as a true prophet of God. 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. My searching was complete. If her reentry had been approved, Anderson would have been the third of the six the other five are Avraham Gileadi, Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano and Maxine Hanks to be welcomed back into full fellowship with the Utah-based faith. She said hello, but he did not recognize her. Hanks officially came back into the fold in 2012. 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.. He stinks.. He subsequently has . 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. One Sunday in February of 1993, Michael Quinn was home sick with a fever when his doorbell rang. Quinn had spent three years in the military in the late 60s, working in counterintelligence. (These soon-to-be former Mormons were not required to attend.) On the Sunday it was held, Quinn went to a movie theater in downtown Salt Lake and bought a ticket for the first screening he could find, to take his mind off the disciplinary council. It was really important to Paul and me that Christian grow up in a religious community, and the church was the one we chose. . 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. Quinn showed that Brigham Young had a legitimate claim to the calling, though he was not the only one who did. The cabin has no phone access, so I had months [after her initial conversation with the stake president] to think about it. They are called to them by the men at the very top of the hierarchy. This is all lies! he told the friend who showed it to him. 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. Hed better start keeping it to himself. 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?