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. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. ", Hanks is a "genuinely spiritual person and quite insightful, who brings a type of spirituality with her that will resonate with lots of people," he said. Part of what I feel is a calling to be there. In the past, many Mormon officials had a sense, he said, that the church must protect its members from "wolves among them.". During the hiring process, a college dean offered to protect him, Quinn says, from those peoplethe LDS leadersup in Salt Lake., Before he could be hired, though, he had to visit LDS headquarters at 47 East South Temple in downtown Salt Lake and sit for an interview with one of those peoplespecifically, a general authority, one of the 100 or so men who run the church. On Sept. 30 he called Hanks to ask what the court had decided. He subsequently has . Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett. Nobody Knows Religion Quite Like Peggy Fletcher Stack SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) After years of tension between Mormons and gay rights activists -- with political action and theological pronouncements on one . By Peggy Fletcher Stack June 23, 2015 Many Mormon feminists experienced Kate Kelly's excommunication as a harsh slap felt around the world. Peggy Fletcher was raised in New Jersey, daughter of physicist Robert Chipman Fletcher and Rosemary Bennett, one of five girls and three boys. Paul Toscano, a combative lawyer, showed up for his, at the Cottonwood Stake Center in the southern part of Salt Lake City. ", This page was last edited on 30 November 2022, at 04:21. Whitesides says that Connie Chungs people asked her to take a hidden camera into her court. 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. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. It will be published next year. The LDS church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. He had become a father figure of sorts, even officiating at Quinns marriage ceremony. Woodruff himself said in his journal that he was acting for the temporal salvation of the church, and the 1890 Manifestoas his official statement is knownwas not immediately taken to be a divine revelation. Nor does it read like one. During Quinns college years, BYUs president, Ernest Wilkinson, organized a student spy ring intended to catch out professors with communist leanings. 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. I moved into recognizing the value and power of a lay priesthood in the body of Christ and Christian community. 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. 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. 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. A beaming Bishop Madrigal said I should expect very soon to get a telephone call scheduling an interview with a general authority, she wrote. Saturday, February 22, 1997. Paul Toscanos sister-in-law was excommunicated for her writings about the Heavenly Mother, a controversial aspect of Mormon theology. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ. Crucially, much of that project is onlinemore than anything, the Internet has revolutionized the field. by Peggy Fletcher Stack. Supposedly Nelson, like Benson, was a supporter of the John Birch Society, a radically right-wing, conspiracy-mongering, anti-Communist group. SCHOLAR REBAPTIZED INTO LDS CHURCH - Deseret News As Quinn writes, the Manifesto inherited ambiguity, was created in ambiguity, and produced ambiguity.. She did, however, tell her leaders her concerns about church exclusion policies: barring worthy LGBTQ couples who are legally married from full participation; blocking worthy and righteous women from the male-only priesthood; and keeping Mother in Heaven from her place in our understanding.. 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. My searching was complete. Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated in 2014 for her views on gender inequality in the Mormon Church . Believers in Denver Snuffer's Remnant movement gather in a Sandy, Utah, home for a fellowship meeting on Aug. 13, 2017, to sing songs and partake of the sacrament. They were receptive. 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. Hundreds of other members joined him at gatherings and in small groups, and thus was born the "remnant movement ," which today touts 1000s of adherents. He slept on her futon and had no Internet access or health insurance. When interviewing Quinn in 76, Packer said, I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. 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 . Dave: We remind our listeners about a new way to support Mormon Land. 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 kindness of my ward members has been really important. They didn't say anything. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. 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. Quinn was shocked that it took that long. Excommunication is a complicated and multi-layered process for sexual minorities in the church who choose to marry in a way that the church considers a "same sex" marriage. It was run by William O. Nelson, he said, once an assistant to Ezra Taft Benson who now reported to Boyd K. Packer. He contends that a former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir had openly romantic feelings for men, and highlights a once hushed-up gay affair from the 1940s between a prominent church leader and a 21-year-old Mormon serving in the Navy. Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. We appreciate the search for knowledge and the discussion of gospel subjects, the First Presidency said. Kate Kelly Shreds Peggy Fletcher Stack for Using Her as "Clickbait" Again, I'm reminded of a scene in "Schindler's List" where the Leadership in Difficult Times: Critical Thinking and Wisdom (Part II) [4] During her time there, she has met and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Gordon B. Hinckley, among others. To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. Every morning he worked there was Christmas morning, Quinn says. (Quinn attempted to reach this friend through a third party before my piece was finished, but declined to give me his name before speaking to him.) Maxine Hanks was held in the same stake center one week before, though she did not attend it. 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. All rights reserved. "All they asked me about was my relationship to Jesus Christ.". How did you find out about the impending disciplinary hearing? While Packers precise involvement remains a matter of dispute, what little is known hints at his interference. She studied "traditional, sacramental Christianity and priesthood," Hanks said this week. . He also mentioned reading Quinns long Dialogue article about the politics of Ezra Taft Benson. 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. The church declined to comment on the decision. And he continued to correspond with Paul Hanks, who had written to express his displeasure at seeing his words quoted in the newspaper. When something like [my excommunication] blows up, the first casualty is trust and that never comes back. She declined. 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. Following his excommunication, he finished The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power and turned his attention to another scholarly book with deep personal meaning. 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. This puzzled me because I had a lot to say, but the message was absolutely clear. He froze. 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. Maybe, I suggested, he was trying to bring his full self out into the open. Find your friends on Facebook. Threat of Excommunication Experts authenticated the letter, and Christensen, a devout Mormon, bought it from Hofmann, with plans to donate it to the church. 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. [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. 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. Quinn argued against excommunication, he told me, but he did not have the final say. LDS bloggers issue statement of support More than 70 Mormon bloggers, representing a dozen or more websites, have signed a document, "Room for All in This Church," calling for "clemency" in the upcoming disciplinary councils for Kate Kelly and John Dehlin. By then, Quinn had more or less moved on. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax The Mormon intellectual community far and wide is mourning the loss of Linda King Newell. The same group of local church leaders who participated in Gileadi's excommunication were present at the baptism service. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. 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. Excommunication has played a significant role throughout the churchs history. This new knowledge sent Quinn to the Journal of Discourses, a 26-volume collection of Mormon sermons. After 20 years, this excommunicated Mormon still attends her LDS ward If the blessing really happened, then Brigham Young, who led the early Mormons to Utah, might have been wrong to seize control of the church after Smiths murder. In hindsight, the purge of September 1993 looks like the last big push for a kind of control that LDS leaders will probably never have again. 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. 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. Arrington). High-Ranking Mormon Official, is Excommunicated - Coercion Code [5][6], Fletcher initially attended Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, for a year,[1] then transferred to the University of Utah, where she earned a BA in English literature. Peggy Fletcher Fletcher (Peggy Bennett Fletcher) See Photos. Dated Oct. 23, 1830, the letter was addressed to an early Mormon convert named W.W. Phelps and signed Martin Harris. Hanks told him he had been excommunicated, and said that the court lasted six hours. What's happening is so wrong. Neither Paul nor I nor Christian had to field a single negative comment the next week, when we went to church in our ward. He recounted what his former stake president, Hugh West, had done when he received what Quinn saw as similar orders from above. Grant, a President of the LDS Church and is the granddaughter of United States Senator from Utah Wallace F. Bennett.