I accuse that committee, England declared, of undermining our Church.. In 2001, a long-standing effort called the Joseph Smith Papers Project received additional funding and became a major draw to those who wished to study the early days of the church. He got up in front of the congregation and declared his belief in the Mormon gospel, in Joseph Smiths status as a prophet of God, and in the Book of Mormon as divine scripture. [5] She then received a fellowship to work in the Church History Division of the LDS Church (then run by Leonard J. Lavina Fielding Anderson decided not to appear at her court, either, which took place at another Salt Lake meetinghouse a few days afterward. Log In. Truth is, she has never stopped attending her Mormon ward. There is a peace that comes with that kind of clarity. McLean invited her, she said, to describe her faith in a letter, which includes her conviction that God cherishes everyone. "Nobody asked me to disavow my book or stop writing," Hanks told The Salt Lake Tribune that year. 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. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. There have always been dissidents in the Mormon ranksthe religion itself is one particularly dramatic dissent from the rest of Christian traditionbut a new community of Mormon intellectuals had coalesced in the 1960s and 70s. 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. ", Hanks' rebaptism suggests a difference in LDS leadership from then to now, said Dan Wotherspoon, Sunstone's editor from 2001 to 2008. The same month that his essay about post-Manifesto polygamy was published, in April 1985, Quinn and his wife separated. [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. In May, my stake president called me in about it. He then announced that I was not a member in good standing and could not use my temple recommend. Last month, for instance, the Daily Beast reported that a blogger named David Twede was facing excommunication because of critical pieces he had written about Mitt Romney. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. How is she still a practicing member after all this exposure to the truth? This other Quinn was not home when the call came, and a baby-sitter answered the phone. 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 church has control of my membership; I decide whether I'm Mormon or not. This is not entirely uncommon in Mormon culture, but Quinn took it sincerely to heart. As a Mormon, he also knew that same-sex attraction was considered unfortunate at bestsomething to be struggled with, and, if possible, overcome. 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. (Benson died in 94, Hunter in 95.) Quinn told friends that he did not want anyone to lobby on his behalf. 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. 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 church reports a worldwide membership of 16 million. Quinn read fiction, too, including James Baldwins new book, Giovannis Room. After 18 months, he moved to New Orleans, where it was less expensive to live. He froze. 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. 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. During Sunday school, a man approached him and said, The bishop would like to talk to you. Quinn dreaded what was coming. 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. The Bible and the Book of Mormon, which depict flawed, human prophets, are, Quinn said, an absolute refutation of the kind of history Packer advocated. 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. 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. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack - The Salt Lake Tribune 2012. West said hed been told by a higher authority to take further action to remedy the situation, Quinn says. Since I'm there every Sunday, I don't fit their model of an excommunicated member. I was removed from that situation. 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? Running almost 100 pages and including nearly 400 footnotes, the essay was the fruit of decades of thought and research. By Peggy Fletcher Stack. He revised the story occasionally over the next decade, submitting it unsuccessfully to the Paris Review and the Atlantic. They didn't say anything. 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 . [5], In 1975, following discussions with Scott Kenney and others, she helped found Sunstone, an independent magazine of Mormon studies. The symposium's "Pillars of My Faith" session will showcase a similar path, said Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstone's interim executive director. by Peggy Fletcher Stack. Quinn was an ordinance worker, meaning he went to the temple regularly and helped others perform those rites. July 26, 2012 12:03 pm . Nor does it read like one. (Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.) I imagine she walks a careful, thin line to avoid being exed. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. . sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. I didn't have any doubts. In 1981, he produced a blessing allegedly given by Joseph Smith to his son Joseph Smith III, declaring him my successor in the Presidency of the High Priesthood. The document was partly inspired, it appears, by The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844, which refers to such a blessing. 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. Few people had attended the talk itself, but an independent BYU newspaper ran a story about it, and copies of Quinns remarks, titled On Being a Mormon Historian, began to circulate. He asked Quinn to come see him in his office after work one day, Quinn says. To this day, I would have made exactly the same decision. I found this tl/dr written by Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune:. He referred to the pathos that I felt in your private letters to mea plea to not be discarded from something that you love. I want to help resolve that pathos, he added, and a sadness that seems to pervade your private writing to me.. Today, its Nelson, with a new counselor, Oaks, instead of Dieter F. Uchtdorf. 9:30AM EDT 8/29/2017 Peggy Fletcher Stack/RNS. She was struck by how frail he appeared, and found herself feeling nothing but compassion and love for a man who had once seemed like an enemy. Quinn and four othersLavina Fielding Anderson, Maxine Hanks (a distant relative of Paul Hanks, the stake president who showed up at Quinns apartment), Paul Toscano, and Avraham Gileadiwere excommunicated by stake presidents in Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah; a sixth, Lynn Whitesides, was disfellowshipped, meaning that she remained a member of the church but could not fully participate in its rites and activities. While the simpler approach is handled by a bishop and his two counselors, the more elaborate version is run by a stake president, and it involves not only his two counselors but the stakes high council, a group of 12 men. Fawn Brodie was related to David O. McKay. By Peggy Fletcher Stack June 23, 2015 Many Mormon feminists experienced Kate Kelly's excommunication as a harsh slap felt around the world. 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. We embedded him as thoroughly in the church as we ourselves had been. Caffeinated Version: He wrote a short story about two male missionaries in Louisiana who become attracted to each other and are stalked by a religious psychopath. 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. Peggy Fletcher Stack has been reporting on faith and religion since 1991. This made some church leaders uneasy. Quinn went to Californiahe had another fellowship at the Huntington Librarystaying this time with his mother. 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. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. Peggy Fletcher Stack | The Christian Century That higher-ranking leader, James Paramore, had further instructed West to say that the decision was Wests own, and had not come from above. Peggy Fletcher Stack Senior religion reporter. 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. I could imagine the First Presidency thinking that this is not an episode worth revisiting, Bowman wrote in an email. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. The Quarum of 12 Apostles wanted to ex her, but the Quarum of Public Relations blocked their move. 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. A candlelight vigil was held outside the Salt Lake City meetinghouse where it took place. This has been intentional. Quinn was shocked that it took that long.
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