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If you haven’t heard about this, the printed Come Follow Me Book of Mormon Manual contained the following quote by Joseph Fielding Smith: “The dark skin was placed upon the Lamanites so that they could be distinguished from the Nephites and to keep the two peoples from mixing,” the book explains, citing a statement made some 60 years ago by then-apostle and future church President Joseph Fielding Smith. “The dark skin was the sign of the curse. The curse was the withdrawal of the Spirit of the Lord. … Dark skin … is no longer to be considered a sign of the curse.”
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/01/18/error-printed-lds-church/ The has been described as a mistake and oversight. I think it highlights a huge problem in the Church that I have not seen addressed and I think needs to be discussed. Our doctrine has changed significantly, especially with race and sexuality. These have been recent changes and dramatic shifts in our teaching and theology. However, there is no room in our theology for these kinds of changes (because prophets are never wrong and speak with God), so we go on pretending that our doctrine has never changed and spin the previous doctrine as folk doctrines, cultural norms and policies. I am confident the manual printing was not an error or oversight, it was just assembled and approved by people (probably at least one apostle) who had not gotten the memo that this doctrine had changed.
A similar thing happened with Randy Bott in 2012. He was asked by the Washington Post why the Church had a priesthood ban. He repeated the rationales that he had heard from Church leaders in conference, in church and in his educational training. Unfortunately for him, he had not gotten the memo that this had changed and the Church rebutted his statement and he was asked to retire early (thrown under the bus).
I think the honest thing to do would be to make a major pivot in how we talk about doctrine and policy and acknowledge that doctrines change and that prophets are men who do their best but do not always get it right. This would be painful and force us to concede mistakes, but I think it is the right thing to do and will go a long way to facilitating future change. Right now we try to pretend all the things we don’t like were not doctrine and it does not take much research to figure out that these were core doctrines.
Yes, We have been discussing it. http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9705&start=10 I agree with you that this was not a mistake. It is the result of racial ideas that have been pretty well established since the foundation of our church shifting in real time. The “Memo” was the essay on race and the priesthood which had two big omissions considering the current issue, 1) It was not clear in taking ownership for specific racist ideas and labeling them as wrong and 2) It did not address the racist stuff from the BoM towards the Lamanites. I had read the essay multiple times and I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about progressive issues within the church and I would not have known that the church stance on this issue had changed if not for this story.
Also, the new church stance is as follows:
Quote:The Book of Mormon also states that a mark of dark skin came upon the Lamanites after the Nephites separated from them. The nature and appearance of this mark are not fully understood. The mark initially distinguished the Lamanites from the Nephites. Later, as both the Nephites and Lamanites each went through periods of wickedness and righteousness, the mark became irrelevant as an indicator of the Lamanites’ standing before God.
Sooo the new position is that we do not know. The mark of dark skin was initially used to tell the difference between two groups of people and God apparently cared an awful lot about being able to distinguish but in a relatively short amount of time it became a non-issue. This is just one of those things that will remain a mystery and that we shouldn’t spend too much time dwelling on it.
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