The church has put up a couple interesting gospel topic pages recently on LDS.org. A page on the first vision accounts (yes, plural) went up a few weeks ago. A couple days ago a page went up that addresses race and the priesthood.
A number of people I know and respect seemed pleased by the church’s efforts to distance itself from racism (past and present). Although I’m glad to see the church addressing some of these difficult issues, I was more ambivalent about this latest effort.
For me, there is a difference between “change” and “progress.” I see change in the church as a constant. The church is constantly evolving, and many of those changes are positive, but here’s the problem. Society evolves as well, and from what I can tell, the church has been a generation behind for the past 50 or 75 years, particularly when it comes to social issues. It’s this gap that bothers me. Progress, at least for me, would involve closing this gap. The church’s position on this issue has changed (and in a positive way), but, in general, I’m not convinced it’s making any progress. In fact, given the speed at which society has evolved over the past 50 years, the church seems to be falling further behind.
This latest effort by the church also highlights a different–and more fundamental–problem.
Here is one of the concluding paragraphs of the race and the priesthood page:
Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.
Note that the church disavows “theories” that were “advanced” that linked black skin to divine disfavor and actions in premortal life.
Funny, I don’t see the word “theory” used here:
21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them (2 Nephi 5:21).
And the word “theory” wasn’t used in this statement on the “negro question”:
The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the premortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality (Statement by the First Presidency, August 17, 1949).
Joseph Fielding Smith didn’t use it here:
There were no neutrals in the war in Heaven. All took sides either with Christ or with Satan. Every man had his agency there, and men receive rewards here based upon their actions there, just as they will receive rewards hereafter for deeds done in the body. The Negro, evidently, is receiving the reward he merits (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation).
Bruce R. McConkie didn’t use the word “theory” here:
Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions impose on them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God, and his murder of Able being a black skin . . . . the negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned. . . . (Mormon Doctrine, 1966 edition).
And so on.
This wasn’t a “cultural” issue. This wasn’t a case of church members making up unauthorized “theories” to explain a problematic policy. This was top-down, from-the-prophet-himself doctrine, and this doctrine is preserved (like an insect in amber) in the historical record. The notion that black skin was a divine curse and that blacks deserved their state because of something they did (or didn’t do) before they were born shows up in official statements from the first presidency (see the quote above). These ideas were preached as doctrine from the pulpit in church-wide conferences. They were included in official publications and manuals. And, most importantly, these ideas were perceived (and received) as doctrine by faithful members of the church.
Members who were led by their conscience and/or their own spiritual experiences to speak out against these doctrines and policies were accused of not “following the prophet.” They were told they didn’t have enough faith, that they were engaged in apostasy, that they were being deceived by Satan. They weren’t “real” Mormons. They were ostracized, disfellowshipped and excommunicated.
This raises an interesting question. When does doctrine become “theory”?
The last sentence of the paragraph is even more interesting: “Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”
Does this mean that the church condemns its own racist policies (and the doctrine that supported those policies) prior to 1978?
It states in the article that “after praying for guidance, President McKay did not feel impressed to lift the ban.” Does this mean that God wanted this racist policy to remain in place? If we believe that God wanted the priesthood ban in place, then is it wise to “unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form?” Maybe we should attach an asterisk to this statement that says something like this: “This statement doesn’t apply if we believe God wants us to be racist”?
There is a lot on this gospel topic page that should be discussed (e.g. Why did Joseph Smith ordain black men to the priesthood? Why did Brigham Young stop doing so? Where is the revelation that started the ban? If there isn’t a revelation that started the ban, then why did we need one to end it? If we have a living prophet, why wasn’t the church leading the civil rights movement instead of being dragged reluctantly along in its wake? Etc.).
I heard somebody make the following observation the other day. The Catholics claim the pope is infallible, but they don’t act like it, while Mormons, in contrast, do just the opposite. “Church leaders aren’t infallible,” we tell ourselves, “but then we insist on acting like they are.”
So what we have is a page that just showed up on the “official” church website that states that we now believe that all men are equal. Do we get a cookie for showing up to the party 50 years late?
And to make things worse, we still haven’t grown up enough as a church to admit that our church leaders aren’t infallible, and neither is our doctrine. I’ll be impressed when we, as a church, can admit that to ourselves. Claiming that we’re just dismissing “theories” (or folk beliefs, as another church official put it) isn’t fooling anyone but ourselves (and we’re not even doing a good job of that).
Other posts on the topic:
- Revisiting Blacks and the Priesthood (RadioWest)
- Where church leaders “wrong”? (By Common Consent)
- Mormon, Mandela, and the Race and Priesthood Statement (Patheos)
- Race and the Priesthood (Rational Faiths)
- Mormon church traces black priesthood ban to Brigham Young (The Salt Lake Tribune)
- Mormon Church Explains Past Racism, Ban on Black Priests (The Huffington Post)
- Thoughts on “Race and the Priesthood” (Mormon Iconoclast)
- Making Peace with Prophets (Feminist Mormon Housewives)
- A compendium of essential Dialogue articles related to the priesthood ban (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought)
- What the New Statement on Blacks and the Priesthood Means to Me (connorboyack.com)
- Pulling the Race Band-Aid Off (rationalfaiths.com)
- http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/2013/12/hearing-black-mormon-women-taking-a-crucial-step-to-address-mormonisms-racist-history-and-present/ (Feminist Mormon Housewives)
Great quotes on the topic:
“What is most important about the statement on race to Mormon historian Richard Bushman is its perspective. “It is written as a historian might tell the story,” Bushman says from his home in New York, “not as a theological piece, trying to justify the practice.” By depicting the exclusion as fitting with the common practices of the day, says Bushman, who wrote “Rough Stone Rolling,” a critically acclaimed biography of Smith, “it drains the ban of revelatory significance, makes it something that just grew up and, in time, had to be eliminated.” But accepting that, Bushman says, “requires a deep reorientation of Mormon thinking.” Mormons believe that their leaders are in regular communication with God, so if you say Young could make a serious error, he says, “it brings into question all of the prophet’s inspiration.” Members need to recognize that God can “work through imperfect instruments,” Bushman says. “For many Latter-day Saints, that is going to be a difficult transition. But it is part of our maturation as a church.” [From the The Salt Lake Tribute article linked above; emphasis added.]
“But then I went to college, to BYU, in 1974. And a friend of mine gave me a copy of a talk he’d read, and suggested I read it too. Said, ‘this is great. This is the best thing I’ve ever read.’ It was a talk by Alvin R. Dyer, a prominent Church leader. It was called ‘For What Purpose.’ Here’s the link. I really debated in my mind whether I should link to Brother Dyer’s talk. He was a fine man, a good man, and many people today still hold him in high esteem. And this talk, well, it’s appalling. Three degrees of pre-existent spirits, with racial difference earned by spiritual indifference or rebellion before birth. It’s nonsense, of course. But it was prominent back in my youth–a version of it was published in pamphlet form available for sale in the BYU Bookstore. And I think there’s value in confronting our past. And persistent, omnipresent racism, even at this level, is part of our past, as Americans and as Mormons.” [From the Mormon Iconoclast post linked above.]
Additional Talks (suggested by Derek Lee) to add to the Dialogue compendium linked above:
- “The Fading of the Pharaoh’s Curse: The Decline and Fall of the Priesthood Ban Against Blacks in the Mormon Church” — Armand Mauss (http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V14N03_12.pdf)
- “Black African Jews, The Mormon Denial of Priesthood to Blacks, and Truth and Reconciliation” — Bob Rees (https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/134-62-67.pdf)
- “Dispelling the Curse of Cain Or, How to Explain the Old Priesthood Ban Without Looking Ridiculous” — Armand Mauss (https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/134-56-61.pdf)
- “Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on the Priesthood” — Edward Kimball (http://byustudies.byu.edu/PDFLibrary/47.2KimballSpencerb0a083df-b26b-430b-9ce2-3efec584dcd9.pdf)
Well, at least they can’t use the line ‘prophets can’t lead the people astray anymore’. For obviously they can be very wrong about serious issues and have serious faults like being racist. Brigham also supported slavery. How can a true prophet support such evil and not know it? And lead others to support and do evil too. He can’t, and still be a true prophet. Hopefully this will help a few wake up and realize they are being led astray.
Thank you for this post, Heather. You’ve raised some big, important questions here–things that have been on my mind, but I haven’t been able to articulate.
I think this is a smaller thing than the points you mention, but one thing that bothers me about this document is the discussion of ward and stake geographic boundaries as the mechanism by which the church “encourage[s] racial integration” (quoting from the document). I’m no sociologist, but my casual observations show that there’s still a huge amount of de facto geographic segregation in the U.S., or, at least, in the three large cities in California where I’ve spent most of my adult life. At best, geographic wards mirror the communities they are drawn from which, in many cases, are still quite segregated by race. Certainly building geographic wards has other benefits, but in terms of racial integration, I think the best we can say for most areas is that it has the potential to encourage integration.
Well said. Making a statement on the website is one thing, but discussing this issue in church meetings will remain taboo. The faithful know what admitting fallibility means and won’t be able to process it.
Brent’s remarks are what many LDS (and non LDS) have been saying for decades, only now in a context of the church currently, FINALLY, slowly maneuvering in a positive direction. But the fact is that, the LDS prophets can, and did indeed, lead the church astray. They continue to show this as they have always done (Adam God, Blood Atonement, Polygamy, Polyandry, Racism, etc…). The LDS church is always a generation behind in its general world view approach. Oh, the party line is that the Prophets are not infallible and yet they want the perfect obedience and adherence of their members. But to Brent’s point, should not the LDS Prophets be AHEAD of the curve and not holding up the tail end, as they always do without fail. Supposedly they are Living Prophets, Seers and Revelators but what do they really prophecy? What do they really ever “See” anytime BEFORE the rest of the world does? What do they really REVEAL to you? Did they really “SEE” the dawning of the internet and what a game-changer it would mean for the Mormon church and for the whole world? Did they not “See” how the internet would put ALL of the church’s dirty laundry out there for any, and every-one to see? Did they not “SEE” how it would COMPEL the church itself to come clean about theretofore somewhat unknown and very embarrassing history? “Theories”? Really? And still they cannot be fully truthful. Bottom line: Their ever delayed-response M.O. is evidence of a man-made institution. The Mormon Prophets are always behind because they are not Truly “Prophetic”, as would be real and True Prophets of the Living God. LDS prophets are always and ever “reactionary”. As the world moves, the LDS “prophets” are continually tugged reluctantly, along with it. As such, they continually move themselves further into that corner into which the false prophets always place themselves: Contrary to the Word and Will of the Living and True God. But notice, while they do backpedal what they must, they are very careful never to say they were “WRONG”. They must maintain your confidence, Black Mormons. How simple would these things be to say? “We were wrong. We apologize for the awful and wrong things which were declared, and taught as doctrine.” You have been waiting and wanting to hear them for decades but, still, you do not hear them. Ask yourself, is this Jesus Christ? Is all of this His perfect Way and Will and Truth? What say you?
I linked to this web page when I wrote this post http://www.the-exponent.com/confessing-and-forsaking-institutional-sins/ almost two years ago. At the time, the page was about a paragraph long and pretty much blamed god for the priesthood restriction. I am pleased to see that the page is now more honest, although it remains equally unapologetic.
I don’t think there is any way the church can make a century plus of discrimination okay at this point. As you point out, the church was way behind the curve in disavowing racism, and there is nothing that can be done now to change that. However, I appreciate any catch-up the church does. Now, if only church leaders would say, “That was wrong. We’re sorry.” Maybe we can try to do that slightly fewer decades late?
Both critics and the faithful need to move beyond the silly insistence on prophetic infallibility. We also need to move beyond expectations that they will be ahead of the curve on social issues. On their best days, the leadership is able to help us to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. They’ll suck at times at that, as they did with Blacks, as they did with the Indian placement program, as they do now with gays. But most of the time, they do an extraordinary job at teaching us how to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
Consider this. Christ was a generation behind as well. In Matthew 15, when the Canaanite woman (presumed to be a descendant of Canaan, son of Ham and bearer of the curse of hungover Noah) begged him to help with her daughter who was grievously vexed with a devil, he refused to answer her. Ignores her. When his disciples tell him to send her away, still refusing to speak to her directly, he says to his disciples, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the Hosue of Israel.” She worships him more and he finally deigns to speak to her but does so in a way that was surely racist and insulting, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it to dogs.” After she abases herself as a dog, he finally deigns to relieve her daughter’s suffering and acknowledges her great faith.
Did Christ change his mortal ministry? Did he begin speaking to Canaanites or other gentiles? It wasn’t until after his death that Peter received the revelation that it was ok to teach the gentiles, and even then, only after Peter and at least one other apostle quarreled over the subject. The change came a generation after Christ was on the Earth.
I’m sad that I can’t expect more of our leaders, but I don’t know how I could expect more when Christ followed the same pattern. Christ was revolutionary in breaking down some social barriers. In other ways, not so much. The Church is revolutionary in breaking down some social barriers. In other ways, not so much.
I am a member of the Church, my mother joined when I was 4 years old and she taught me to trust in God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. All members are admonished to live worthy to enjoy the blessings of personal revelation. Contention is NOT of God. Too many folks are more worried about others perception and convictions to the Church and maybe should trust that God will sort it all out for us one day and Just maybe we should take a more personal look at ourselves each day to make sure you are being the best person we can be and striving to be like Jesus.
From “The Autobiography of Anson Call”
HOW WAS THE WORLD INHABITED?
On one occasion when Brother Joseph (Smith) was cutting wood, there came to him some brethren and I was among them. We said, ‘Brother Joseph, we have some questions to ask, and we will cut your wood while you answer them’ ‘all right’, said Joseph, and we went into the house. Joseph placed his arms across his knees, bent over as if in meditation, and then said, ‘now for your questions.’
We said to him; ‘what about the creation of the world; how was it inhabited?’ Joseph answered and said; ‘I will tell you how it was. You and I were in the spirit world at the grand council, and there we were spirits together. We saw and heard that council, and heard them talk of formation of the world and we were among those when the morning stars sang together and when the sons of God shouted for joy. We were among those who had more courage than others and therefore we came down here and took bodies. Some who did not have the courage said, ‘Father, we have fought Satan face to face here in the spirit world and helped to cast him down there and now to go down and fight him again face to face, we are afraid we shall never return to thy presence and would prefer a less degree of glory and go some other of your creations where we are sure of -returning.’ ‘Yes, you and I had more courage and came down here of our own agency and choice.’
Now regarding Adam: He came here from another planet – an immortalized being and brought his wife, eve, with him, and by eating of the fruits of this earth became subject to death and decay and he became of the earth earthly, was made mortal and subject to death. 12th Ch. Rev. 7 and on.
Now, after we had proven our worthy before God that we were willing to go through temporal sufferings, privations and trials that we did spiritually, we were chosen or elected, and we merited our prize or reward according to the works we did in the spirit world; but we were not chosen or elected until we had shown by our works to our Heavenly Father that we were willing to go through what He might permit us to, and we were not deprived of our agency.
In the Grand Council in heaven there were some spirits that did not take part in the great rebellion at all. They were called neutral spirits: they were on the fence, and when Cain killed his brother Able, God placed a skin of blackness upon him as the first of Adam’s race and through the posterity of Ham this seed was propagated through the flood. And the neutral spirits in heaven possess these black bodies. And after the flood no doubt Noah must have found him doing some little low trick for he said: ‘cursed, cainaan, a servant of servants shalt thou be to thy brethren.’ And those neutral spirits in heaven preferred to take the body of a negro rather than have no body at all.’
(‘Reflections of John M. Whitaker B.Y.U. Lib. Call # Mar. M270.1 W58r)
Theologically, I don’t think that the Lamanite curse and the curse of Cain are the same thing. I mean, they may both punch the same buttons re: modern sensibilities about race, but as far as I know, Lamanites were not denied the priesthood.
The church that I was raised in makes me weep.
I weep. All I can do is weep. And move on.
thank you for addressing this.
that business from Anson Call was second hand–
at best.
I would refute Joseph if I heard him speaking that, because life isn’t as difficult for many modern LDS as it is for many modern Africans, whether LDS or not–
pretty cushy life–