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I did a transcript of a Mormon Matters interview discussing the priesthood ban. Marguerite Driessen gave a very interesting perspective. There are many who complain that the Church was too slow in granting the priesthood and temple access to blacks, but Marguerite has a different perspective. She knows the girls that were escorted to school in the Brown vs Board of Education case that allowed integration into white schools. Driessen says that these girls (pre-teens) were yelled at, pelted with rotten food and feces was thrown at them. She feels that if the ban had been lifted sooner, such incidents may have taken place at Mormon churches, and God didn’t want that. It was an interesting perspective, and I wanted to see what you thought? The full post is available at
http://www.wheatandtares.org/2012/06/04/was-1978-the-right-year/ I don’t find it compelling. To me, it’s up there with “God was trying to protect them from falling”.
God didn’t protect Joseph and HyruM, or the people at Hauns Mill, so how would this argument fit His MO?
Persecution has always been part of religion, unfortunately. I think they are grasping at excuses when there is no good rational reason, nor doctrinal reason, for the ban. It is not a flattering part of Mormon history and they need to just come forward with that and own it, not keep looking for excuses that perpetuate or try to justify their past wrongs.
MH, it’s an apologetic argument, full of flaws. The idea that the “church was too slow” begs the question whether the church was indeed correct in EVER discriminating against blacks — it was wrong in doing so the moment BY instituted this bigotry — but this doesn’t answer that. Moreover, Brown v Board of Education enforced its law on all people, whereas Church policy only affects members. It’s completely flawed thinking to suppose that non-members would have protested the LDS church for changing its policy for membership or admittance into the priesthood, as such has no effect whatsoever on nonmembers. I just don’t see the argement in the least: other churches removed their bans long before the LDS church did, and many admitted that discrimination was an error, an artifact of sinful men. The LDS church attempted and some still attempt to justify this as god’s will. Frankly, this paints god as a bigot and should be categorically rejected as anything worth an apologetic response, other than a genuine apology by the church for being wrong.
I don’t buy it. Members like Darius Gray faced stuff that was just as bad from members – really, truly appalling stuff. As I’ve said, I think God threw his hands in the air and said, “When you’ve humbled yourselves sufficiently to ask sincerely and realize you did this all on your own – that it wasn’t my will, let me know.” It’s just that nobody heard Him, because they weren’t asking – until Pres. McKay started to lay the groundwork.
Lame. I don’t know what to think of Marguerite’s argument, but I thought it was an interesting perspective. Wayfarer, I don’t know if you’re aware, but the NAACP was planning to picket General Conference in the 1960s because of the priesthood ban, so non-Members were upset with the ban. If memory serves me correctly, there was some sort of molotav cocktail or something like that in regards to a Stanford-BYU game I believe. Stanford was very critical of the ban and quit playing BYU in athletics to protest the ban. I would be edited and moderated for profanity if I answered the question honestly. 
Yep. I was wondering if you’d comment on this one, Bruce. :wave: I just plain think the leaders and members were wrong about that issue in the past. The reason for the ban was the ignorance and stubbornness (lack of humility) of our people. We changed eventually, along with the changes in the wider culture towards tolerance and diversity, but we changed slower than many other social and religious organizations. That is an embarrassment that will not fade for many generations. I’ll try to be more charitable in response to the proposed explanation by Sister Driessen though. All of us try to come up with the best answers we can to explain things, and to make meaning for us in the present from the past history and events. That answer probably works better for her. She *EXPERIENCED* and was the victim of that kind of racism in her earlier life. She lived the history as it unfolded. I don’t have her life context, or her desires perhaps to preserve more faith in the direct hand of God orchestrating history. I tend to see a much less directly involved God, and tend to think we do all this crap to ourselves for by our own misguided hands.
But Sister Driessen is free to see it the way that makes the most sense to her. I feel like she has more of a claim to that in this regard than I do. I can’t prove her explanation is wrong. I just tend to think in more naturalistic terms. I only remember this stuff vaguely as a young child. I was 9 years old in 1978.
Brian Johnston wrote:I just plain think the leaders and members were wrong about that issue in the past. The reason for the ban was the ignorance and stubbornness (lack of humility) of our people. We changed eventually, along with the changes in the wider culture towards tolerance and diversity, but we changed slower than many other social and religious organizations. That is an embarrassment that will not fade for many generations.
The thing that’s still hard for me about this was that people that were supposed to speak for God, i.e. BY, Mark E Petersen, Harold B Lee, BRMcK, etc. used their ecclesiastical authority to promote and justify the ban and to delay it’s change. It has forever changed the way I look at the pronouncements of GAs. I don’t care how you spin it, they were wrong.
I remember how embarassed I was as a young missionary in 1964 in New Haven, Conn., trying to explain to a dignified elderly black gentleman why there were no young black men as missionaries. When Brian says that it was the “ignoranace and stubborness (lack of humility) of our people” that was the problem I think a good share of the “people” were ok with rescinding the ban but not the leadership and that, I don’t think, can ever be justified. What’s done is done and the past is past but for me it still colors how I see the leadership and it’s claims. Sorry for the rant.
GB, it should affect how we see leaders – even if we sustain them as prophets, seers and revelators. The Priesthood ban should be the flagship of our rejection of infallibility and the anchor of our acceptance of the Restoration as a process rather than an event, imo.
Yes, well said Ray. And this statement here,
GBSmith wrote:…. It has forever changed the way I look at the pronouncements of GAs. I don’t care how you spin it, they were wrong…..
…is considered fighting words for many many devout LDS members.
Now that I’ve taken a few deep breaths it’s occured to be that we don’t hear much in the way of pronouncements anymore. There’s not the political messages like ETB used to deliver or black and white advice on family planning or women working outside of the home. I wonder why. The pendulum is swinging. I’m encouraged by that.
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