D. Michael Quinn

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D. Michael Quinn : biography

March 26, 1944 –

The Mormon Hierarchy

The two volumes of The Mormon Hierarchy provide a comprehensive secular organizational history of the church from its founding to modern times, and its influence on current LDS culture and doctrine. The work emphasizes conflict, coercion, and violence, especially during the 19th century (see Danites, Mountain Meadows massacre, Blood Atonement and the Mormon wars). During the 20th century, Quinn asserts his view that the church was increasingly bureaucratized, its role in right-wing anti-Communism during the 1960s, efforts against the Equal Rights Amendment, political work against same-sex marriage and some forms of anti-discrimination legislation, the church’s mid-century financial crisis, conflicts over policies such as the so-called "baseball baptisms" of youth who knew little about the church, presumed disagreements among church Apostles (that Hugh B. Brown was open to rescinding the Negro doctrine in 1963, and attempted to rescind it in 1969, but was blocked from doing so by Harold B. LeeQuinn, D. Michael. The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power Salt Lake City (Signature Books, 1994), p 14.), and extensive business and family interrelationships among leaders.

In a review of The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power for the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Duane Boyce states that there are scholarly deficiencies in the work and refers to it as a "betrayal of trust."

Same-sex dynamics among 19th-Century Mormons

Quinn, who himself is openly gay, has publicly argued that homosexual relationships, between both men and women, were quietly accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its leadership up until the 1940s. This theme has arisen in Quinn’s The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power and is the central topic of Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example. Several LDS scholars have disputed Quinn’s work, calling it a distortion of LDS history and saying he completely misrepresented the facts. They deny any acceptance from previous leaders of homosexuality, suggesting that Quinn conflated an absence of early Church proscriptions of homosexuality with tacit acceptance of same, and state the current leadership of the church “is entirely consistent with the teachings of past leaders and with the scriptures.”

LDS finances and businesses

In 2012, Quinn was reported to be working on a book about Church finances and businesses. He said in that regard, "The Mormon Church is very different than any other church. … Traditional Christianity and Judaism make a clear distinction between what is spiritual and what is temporal, while Mormon theology specifically denies that there is such a distinction." Regarding management of the Church’s considerable investments, Quinn said "[s]everal high-ranking church insiders told him that the church’s finances are so compartmentalized that no single person, not even the president, knows the entirety of its holdings".Winter, Caroline, , Bloomberg Businessweek, July 18, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-31.

Relationship with LDS Church

In September 1993, according to his biographer Lavina Fielding Anderson, his insubordination directed toward church authorities and his publication of his on-going work resulted in his excommunication from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as one of the September Six. Despite his excommunication, Quinn believes in the Latter Day Saint movement, although he is in disagreement with certain policies and doctrines.Anderson, however, states that the divorce was not until 1986 and argues that Quinn’s orientation was not made public prior to his excommunication so had little to do with the estrangement.

Quinn’s research topics, both before and after his excommunication, were in-depth revisions of traditional accounts of Mormon history grounded in primary source material. Three of his most influential books, each of which is the focal point of intense controversy, are Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, and The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power.

In an April 2006 Wall Street Journal article, reporter Daniel Golden wrote that Quinn has become unhirable because almost all the funding for professorships in Mormon studies comes from Mormon donors. In 2003, Brigham Young University threatened to withdraw funding for a conference it was co-sponsoring at Yale if Quinn were allowed to speak. More recently Arizona State University administrators vetoed the department of religious studies in its recommendation to hire Quinn. ASU faculty believe officials fear alienating ASU’s 3,700 LDS students and offending Ira Fulton, a powerful Mormon donor who, according to Golden, has called Quinn a “nothing person.”

In 2007, Quinn was interviewed in the PBS documentary The Mormons.