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This is great! This covers the biggest deficiency with the previous race related press release in that it didn’t touch on the many thoeries for why the priesthood ban except to say that we don’t quite know. Now those racist theories have been officially repudiated. :clap: I recognize that people find racism of any kind and in any time repugnant. But whatever your personal feelings are on the priesthood ban, it does need to be centered in the cultural mores of the day. I like this quote from the comments on the article in By Common Consent that Ray mentioned: Quote:JS comes out looking pretty good here. Sure, pretty much everyone back then, Abraham Lincoln included, was a racist by today’s standards, and that would include Joseph. But by the standards of his time he was pretty progressive on matters of race. (This should not be too surprising, as he was a Yankee.)
The difficult case is BY, who did initiate the ban, and actually flip flopped to do it. We don’t know for sure why he flip flopped, but to me a plausible theory is that he got freaked about by the prospect of miscegenation (what he called “amalgamation”), which concern would have been par for the course in his day. He latched on to a Protestant apologia for the practice of slavery (“curse of Cain”), which to me was the original mistake. To me this is pure culture, which he understood as doctrine. I think it’s a useful reminder to us that even prophets are human and therefore fallible.
This is a pretty impressive statement by the church, especially this part Quote:There is no evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime.
In 1852, President Brigham Young publicly announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood
I’ve been saying this for years, but some have tried to pin it on Joseph. They’re definitely blaming it on Brigham now.
Quote: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.23
They threw Randy Bott under the bus with this statement. I’m also encouraged that the church disavows that mixed-race marriages are a sin, though I think that sentence is a bit clumsy.
Quote:or that blacks
or people of any other race or ethnicityare inferior in any way to anyone else. I also like the fact that this has been said in a time of racist statements over immigration and views of Hispanics in that context.
I have a strange reason for posting this, like others who are enjoying it, so am I. But it touched my heart doubly because when I was 11 years old, 1975 – Eldridge Cleaver, convicted Black Panther leader, arrived in my ward. With no shame or fear he walked in with the missionary’s and sat down nearly front and center in our Sacrament meeting. The block schedule was not in practice then. We only saw him in Sacrament meeting. My dad said he also attended Priesthood. He was an impressive looking man, after the first few weeks, seeing him in the hall became the new norm. My ward, embraced him from day one. He never joined the church, but he investigated with his full heart. That day – ban or no ban – My mormonism became inclusive. Last night as I read the beautiful words, I relived the moment he walked into our all caucasion chapel and proudly took his place as one of us. The world righted itself many years ago – and I’m glad we can all catch up with it now.
Thanks mom3 I thought the following comment from a black member in a Facebook thread I am following was profound: Quote:My experiences of degradation, assault, rejection came in an entirely different form. Yet, I had remarkably similar spiritual experiences to those of Darius (Gray). With remarkably similar results for me personally. These soul-wrenching challenges – racism, inequality, human propensity to abuse power and perpetrate cruelty are inherent in the mortal experience. I wish every person could find the answers to her/his own suffering in the way Darius (and in my case, I) did. I don’t have an answer for how or why some are able to do this and others are not, but I believe that we find God in our extremities. And this, for some, is one of those moments. I hope we find God again. Today.
No single statement, no matter how carefully crafted or dispersed will compensate for the effects of mortality. Ever. No apology will repair the damage done by uninformed or prejudiced people. This is why we have a Savior, an atonement. To make up for all the crap left in the wake of our human failings.
Yes, the Eldridge Cleaver one is interesting. I suspect there is a direct link between 1978 and the militant black power movement of the sixties and early seventies whether MLK, Malcolm X
or the Black Panthers. The Soviet Union capitalized big time on the
treatment of African Americans for Cold War purposes.
However, there is another issue. I’ve heard that there was a big influx
of Brazilians in the 1970s, and they’ve never been shy of intermarriage.
Most Brazilians have black, Portuguese and native ancestry as well as other things. Many Brazilians got TRs and then found out they had African ancestry. The idea of unfrocking them for the “one drop” theory would have been too impractical.
I think BY is to blame. not JS. None of the LDS churches outside the BY lineage practised the ban AFAIK. But there are parts of the BoM and BoA which are directly related to ban.
The impetus provided by missionary work in Brazil is mentioned and explained in the statement, which is a wonderful aspect, frankly. There is another thread on By Common Consent, written by Kristine and entitled “
Bound Hand and Foot with Graveclothes“, that is a fascinating perspective – a connection I like that I have never made. The link is: (
http://bycommonconsent.com/2013/12/08/bound-hand-and-foot-with-graveclothes/ An often overlooked fact – black Pacific Islanders got priesthood long before African people. I suspect that between JS’ death and 1978, a number (not huge) of
priesthood holders had black ancestry somewhere down the line. In South Africa, the USA, Australia etc, whites often used to hide native/non-white ancestry. (conversely most African Americans and many
black Jamaicans etc have white ancestry…)
Anyone from the Mediterranean basin, Iberia, the Middle East…
including Italy, Greece, southern France, and Spain is very likely to
have some remote African ancestry.
The statement actually admits that, Sam. It’s one of the things I like about it. 🙂 Old-Timer wrote:
Seriously, I like this WAY more than an attempt to list every racist statement. This says it’s not important to identify which statements are worthy of repudiation; instead, it says all of the racist ones are, no matter the source.even the book of mormon??
brit-exmo, yes, in the exact same sense as the Biblical ones and the ones in any other record that is said to be of ancient origin, whether historical or fictional. Seriously, the existence of those Book of Mormon statements don’t bother me in the slightest, nor does rejecting them as not being God’s word, for two main reasons:
1) As a history teacher, it would surprise me and raise red flags if there were NOT racist statements in it, given one of the central themes from people raised in the Jewish tradition (even though they weren’t Jews) in a time period where racism was the
de factoview of every people. 2) It helps make a point I believe deeply – that scriptures are NOT inerrant but rather represent the best understanding of the humans of the time.
Again, I see this exactly like I see the racism that is rampant in the Bible – and we (Mormons) accept Those statements as being scriptural but not hos God sees things because we understand the Bible isn’t inerrant, dictated straight from God’s mouth through prophets to the written word. We need to understand the same thing about the Book of Mormon (and the Pearl of Great Price) – that it isn’t our own version of the inerrant Bible of Protestantism, so it is easy for me to read the statement’s condemnation of all racism, regardless of its source, as including that which is found in our scriptures.
That’s what the actual statement says (what the words actually mean), and I applaud the wording.
The one thing that can be said for the BoM compared to BoA is that those who received the skin of darkness intermarried and converted.
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