Joanna Brooks Railing Against The Church. Again.

[smac97]

Here: http://www.salon.com...tner/singleton/

Can the Church of Latter-day Saints accept its racist history?

In defiance of new scriptures, some members are still justifying a ban on black ordination as the will of God

BY JOANNA BROOKS

First, note the loaded question in the article's title. I'll answer it as soon as Joanna Brooks fesses up as to whether she still enjoys torturing kittens for fun.

Second, articles that reference "some people" (or, in this case, "some members") in the subtitle are pretty obviously not going to be actually discussing those people/members. Instead, this is a gimmick used by a mediocre writer to dress up her own opinions as belonging to these unidentified "others," thus giving her an excuse to write about those opinions as if they are newsworthy.

Third, who are these "members" who are "still justifying" the priesthood ban?

Fourth, the "new scriptures" Joanna Brooks is talking about are changed headnotes, not "scripture." This is a seriously sloppy and inaccurate claim by a self-appointed expert on Mormonism.

Fifth, is the author of such an appallingly-titled article a friend to the LDS Church?

There was a moment earlier this spring when longtime observers of Mormonism’s racial politics felt they had reason to celebrate.

A new edition of the LDS scriptures released in March featured a new, more historically specific account of the faith’s historic ban on black ordination. New headnotes to Doctrine and Covenants Offical Declaration 2 read:

“Throughout the history of the Church, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church. During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, a few black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice.”

It was not God who authored the ban, the headnote suggests, but a successor of Joseph Smith. (Brigham Young’s anti-black racist statements to the Utah legislature in the 1850s are a fact of historical record.)

So Joanna Brooks quotes the headnote which specifically states that we do not know the origins of the priesthood ban, and she then uses this to summarily declare that Brigham Young, and not God, was the author of it.

Well, that may be correct. But she abuses her sources when she suggests that this conclusion is "suggested" by the headnote.

And these new March 2013 headnotes seemed to continue a trajectory away from defensive apologetics and towards greater historical responsibility and openness set when LDS Church Public Affairs officials sprung into action to denounce an overtly racist defense of the priesthood ban made by BYU professor Randy Bott to the Washington Post. Any attempt to rationalize the racial segregation of the Mormon priesthood, the Church’s official statement said, should be “viewed as speculation and opinion, not doctrine.”

Wow. Several problems here. First, Joanna Brooks abuses her source, again. The Church's statement did not refer to "rational(ization)" of "racial segregation of the Mormon priesthood," but to attempts "to explain the reason for this restriction." Her article seems to seriously mischaracterize what the Church's statement said.

Second, note once again the loaded terminology she uses. The Church's statement speaks of "a restriction on the priesthood for male members of African descent," but Joanna Brooks uses uglier - and less accurate - terminology ("racial segregation of the Mormon priesthood").

Third, the Church's statement goes on to expressly "condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church," an emphatic point Ms. Brooks fails to mention in her article. Doesn't fit the narrative she's trying to construct, I guess.

More in the next post.

-Smac

Edited May 5, 2013 by smac97

[smac97]

Continued from the previous post:

But that trajectory hit a wall early in April 2013, when at the Saturday afternoon session of the Church’s worldwide semi-annual General Conference, an event closely watched by the Mormon faithful around the globe, Elder John ****son, a high-ranking Church official, delivered a talk that normalized the priesthood ban and its 1978 lifting as divinely-intended chapters in the global spread of Mormonism.

"Normalized the priesthood ban?" Where on earth did she get such an idea from Elder ****son's talk? There is no such thing in it. Only a strained, tendentious, hostile, bound-to-find-something-to-gripe-about reading of his talk could reach such a conclusion.

Gone from Elder ****son’s talk was the historically specific account of the LDS ban on black ordination worked into the latest edition of LDS scriptures by the Church’s professional historians.

Gone too was the implicit acknowledgment that the racist ban may have been the product of human error rather than divine will.

So she's faulting Elder ****son for things he did not say to her satisfication. Wow.

Sources report behind-the-scenes efforts to have the talk edited before its publication in the Ensign, the official LDS Church magazine, in its semi-annual Conference edition.

Right. Unnamed, unidentified "sources." But wait, it gets better!

Some hoped that just as Elder Boyd K. Packer’s controversial October 2010 General Conference on homosexuality had been edited for publication, so too might Elder ****son’s talk be edited to correlate with official scripture.

"Some hoped." Who are the people included in this "some?" Joanna Brooks doesn't say. But wait, it gets even better!

But the talk will appear in print, unchanged.

So she gins up speculation of a cover-up, only to admit . . . that there was no cover-up (she links to the article, for pete's sake).

But this speculation makes the Church looks sinister, conspiratorial and dishonest. So she included it.

By the way, here are some additional remarks from Elder ****son's talk, which remarks Joanna Brooks conveniently omits from her analysis:

On a personal note, I had just been called as a mission president and Sister ****son and I were about to take our family to Mexico when Elder Richard G. Scott, at the time a member of the Seventy, told me of the coming forth of this special revelation.

I remember tears coming to my eyes as he related to me what had happened. I was pleased beyond words, as I knew it was right

and that the time had come for all mankind to have access to all of the ordinances, covenants, and blessings of the gospel.

That was almost 35 years ago, and little did I know at the time that I would spend several years of my ministry in the Seventy in the Africa West Area of the Church,

among a believing, faithful people

whose lives would be so affected by the 1978 revelation on priesthood. Sister ****son and I have lived there for four years, and the experience has been wonderful and life changing for us.

As a people,

West Africans believe in God, have absolutely no shame in declaring and sharing their belief with others

, and have tremendous leadership capacity. They are coming into the Church by the hundreds, and every week or so a couple of wards or branches are created somewhere in the Africa West Area with, in nearly every case, all-African priesthood and auxiliary leadership.

How I wish you could join the Saints in the temple in Aba, Nigeria, or Accra, Ghana, where

you would sense the commitment of the Saints and come to know the all-African temple presidencies

. Or how I wish I could introduce you to the African Area Seventies, who are assembled with us here in the Conference Center today and are attorneys, professors, and business managers, or have you become acquainted with the African stake and ward leaders and their families.

Across Africa, to join a Sunday School, auxiliary, or priesthood class is a sacred experience, where the Church curriculum is followed and there is great gospel understanding, teaching, and learning by the Spirit.

The gospel in Africa is going to

a happy people, very unencumbered by the trappings that affect the lives of many in the West. They are not concerned about having endless material possessions.

It has been said of Africans that they have very little of that which matters least and a great deal of that which matters most. They have little interest in enormous homes and the finest cars but great interest in knowing their Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and in having eternal families. As a natural result of their faith, the Lord is lifting them in meaningful ways.

Golly! That Elder ****son sure sounds like a fount of racist hatred toward black people, eh?

Keep in mind, folks, that Joanna Brooks is telling the world that Elder ****son's talk reveals race-based hatred in the LDS Church. I find her exegesis of his remarks to be reprehensible and dishonest.

One month. Two high-placed LDS sources. Two very different takes on the faith’s historic racism. One offers no excuses for priesthood segregation. One makes it sound like part of God’s plan.

One "source" (the new headnote) says we don't know. The other (Elder ****son) did not address the origins of the priesthood ban at all. No conflict between these sources at all, but Joanna Brooks nonetheless somehow finds a way to try to make the LDS Church look bad.

More in the next post.

-Smac

[smac97]

Continued from the previous posts:

The events of this spring reveal a Church whose hired historians and high-ranking officials seem at times to be speaking at cross-purposes.

Note, again, the implication of dishonesty and conspiracy.

And note, again, that she is fabricating a controversy here. There are no "cross-purposes." The LDS Church has stated, speaking of the priesthood restriction, that "Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice." Elder ****son's talk did not address the origin of the restriction, and instead focused on his joy at its end.

They also reveal an ongoing struggle within Mormonism to come to terms with objectionable episodes in its own history without troubling too deeply many members’ profound deference to Church leaders revered as prophets.

Here is another fabricated controversy. What is "revealed" in Elder ****son's talk? What is the "struggle?"

The Church's response to the remarks made by Randy Bott was to expressly "condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church." The Church condemns racism, and nothing in Elder ****son's talk was remotely hostile to black people. What in the world is Joanna Brooks smoking?

And they demonstrate how deep-seated is the tradition in American religion of using God to justify historical injustice.

Yet another fabricated controversey. The Church's recent headnote change doesn't say God was the author of the priesthood ban. Nor did Elder ****son (who did not even discuss its origins at all in his talk).

So who in the Church is utilizing this "tradition" of "using God to justify historical injustice?" Joanna Brooks doesn't say, but her implication seems rather clear: That Mormons are inherently, and presently racist.

Even so serious a theologian as Jonathan Edwards once claimed the slave trade was the will of God—regrettable but providential, Edwards believed, because it introduced so many Africans to Christianity.

So Joanna Brooks is bringing up a justification for slavery from a Protestant theologian with no ties to Mormonism in an article about the LDS restriction on the priesthood . . . why, exactly? To imply some sort of parity between the two?

For decades before and after the 1978 lifting of the black priesthood ban, LDS people developed folk doctrines to justify a segregationist ordination policy that had no foundation in canonized theology or scripture. Some Mormons held onto these folk doctrines after the end of the ban itself, and even after LDS Church officials like Bruce R. McConkie, who himself had once espoused racist apologetics, asked them to stop.

This is fairly accurate, I suppose, except that she provides no indication as to the scope and number of "LDS people" who developed these "folk doctrines." I was too young to remember the era before or immediately after the 1978 revelation, but my father has told me that he was thrilled with the 1978 announcement, as were most people he knew (he also said he knew some people who harbored racist feelings about the matter).

Elder ****son likewise expressed great joy at the 1978 announcement, as he states in his talk. And Joanna Brooks is painting him as a racist. Appalling.

The publication of ****son’s talk in the Ensign, LDS anti-racist advocates worry, will provide renewed cover for Mormons who would like to avoid reckoning with the human origins and harmful consequences of the faith’s historic racism. And that, they say, is no cause for celebration.

First, who are these "LDS anti-racist advocates?" Joanna Brooks doesn't say but I bet their names are: Joanna Brooks, Joanna Brooks, and Joanna Brooks.

Second, note that she is again fabricating a controversy here. What "renewed cover" for racism could possibly be found in Elder ****son's remarks?

Third, whom is she quoting/paraphrasing when she says "that, they say, is no cause for celebration?"

I am appalled and disgusted at this article, all the more so because Joanna Brooks presents herself as a Latter-day Saint. This article is neither fair nor accurate. It is advocacy journalism against the LDS Church.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Robert F. Smith]

Still talkin smack, I see.

[Scott Lloyd]

This piece of tripe was offensive on a so many points I hardly knew where to begin to describe my disgust with it. Then I came here to MDDB and saw that Smac had already put into eloquent phrasing what bothers me about it. Thank you, Smac, for rendering this service.

[Tacenda]

The title of the article left out "Jesus Christ". Joanna, if you're a mormon through and through you'd know we always include our namesake.

I wish she wouldn't hide behind this guise of being active LDS. There are some of us that do but trying to find their way, me included but she shouldn't use the facade for her personal agendas like, equal rights for women or some such thing, which halls in more followers if they think she's active.

ETA: Oops, it looks like in the original article she had abbreviated it LDS. And the editor apparently wrote it out. Sorry, about that quick judgement. And thanks for those of you to point it out.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Tacenda

[Calm]

So she gins up speculation of a cover-up, only to admit . . . that there was no cover-up (she links to the article, for pete's sake).

I read that actually as wishful thinking that the higherups would have stepped in and correct his alleged error and she was upset that they didn't.

As to the article...it almost appears that after she read the change in the scripture headings, she went looking for something she could use in the conference talks to highlight that change...and making it controversial and thus drawing attention to the change was all the better for her purposes. I am not saying this is what she did...it is what it feels like to me and why it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth so to speak, it just how the article comes across...I haven't a clue how she approached the subject in reality.

I think it takes a lot to infer that Brother Dic-kson is insisting that the Ban itself was God inspired, though I get the reasoning that if one claims a revelation would only be needed in the case of a ban that was revelation...but the fact of the matter is that whatever was needed, whether a policy change or a revelation, it was a revelation that was used. I don't think there is any reason one needs to assume the cause of the ban was a revelation simply because those who were looking to change things at the time felt it needed a revelation to change, especially after having had previous prophets receive inspiration/revelation that the time for the change was not yet.

No one believes that the Apostasy, I would assume, was caused by revelation, yet it took revelation to overcome and remove it. Why can't one assume that revelation was needed for the course correction of the Priesthood ban?

[Nevo]

I am appalled and disgusted at this article, all the more so because Joanna Brooks presents herself as a Latter-day Saint. This article is neither fair nor accurate. It is advocacy journalism against the LDS Church.

Hmm. I didn't find the article particularly objectionable. It would have been nice to have the correct name of the Church in the title, but that probably wasn't Brooks's doing.

Brooks seems to be upset that many Church members, including high-ranking leaders, still regard the ban as being the will of God during the time that it was in place. I don't share that view, but I recognize that I'm probably in the minority—new scripture headings notwithstanding.

[Calm]

Brooks seems to be upset that many Church members, including high-ranking leaders, still regard the ban as being the will of God during the time that it was in place.

It seems to me she is placing herself in the position of declaring doctrine when she categorically rejects such an idea to the point of condemning those who supposedly hold it as racist...the idea that God is the source is neither contradicted or supported by the Church's official position (if I understand it correctly) of "we don't know the source of the ban".

[why me]

The title of the article left out "Jesus Christ". Joanna, if you're a mormon through and through you'd know we always include our namesake.

I wish she wouldn't hide behind this guise of being active LDS. There are some of us that do but trying to find their way, me included but she shouldn't use the facade for her personal agendas like, equal rights for women or some such thing, which halls in more followers if they think she's active.

I think that you are correct. Why would she leave out Jesus Christ in the church title? I think that there is a reason for this. She doesn't consider the church to be the church of Christ at all. Also, reading her article, I had the impression that she writes as if she were an independent observer of the lds scene and not a member at all. She does have an agenda and she does play to her audience. But I am also sure that she is a good person. I just think that she is in a difficult situation as she attempts to raise a family that is both mormon and jewish and remain faithful to both faiths.

[Calm]

My understanding is that it is editors that make the decisions about headlines, I think it ill advised to include that issue with the rest of her comments.

[why me]

Hmm. I didn't find the article particularly objectionable. It would have been nice to have the correct name of the Church in the title, but that probably wasn't Brooks's doing.

I think that it could have been her doing. She does have much say on the RD site. And the correct title for the church would have been proper not just out of respect but also so people will know the correct name for the church.

[Calm]

Here is the original article:

http://www.religiond...thin_lds_church

The original title: Shifting Talk on Mormon Racism Reveals Divisions within LDS Church

add-on: from what I could see, their stuff from Brooks was all originally posted in Religion Dispatches. I wonder if they have a deal with Brooks or RD.

Looks like RD:

Salon is proud to feature content fromReligion Dispatches, a daily online magazine that publishes a mix of expert opinion, in-depth reporting, and provocative updates from the intersection of religion, politics and culture.

Brooks is not the only writer they reprint:

http://www.salon.com/search/?q=%22Religion+Dispatches%22

Edited May 5, 2013 by calmoriah

[why me]

My understanding is that it is editors that make the decisions about headlines, I think it ill advised to include that issue with the rest of her comments.

Here is where it originally came from: http://www.religiond...hin_lds_church/ I I think that the problem is in the original title. The editors of the other site changed the name of the title. Unfortunately by using LDS church as a shortform for the title can add to the confusion of non-mormons and also take the name of Christ from the title which many christians would favor anyway. .

Edited May 5, 2013 by why me

[Scott Lloyd]

I think that you are correct. Why would she leave out Jesus Christ in the church title? I think that there is a reason for this. She doesn't consider the church to be the church of Christ at all. Also, reading her article, I had the impression that she writes as if she were an independent observer of the lds scene and not a member at all. She does have an agenda and she does play to her audience. But I am also sure that she is a good person. I just think that she is in a difficult situation as she attempts to raise a family that is both mormon and jewish and remain faithful to both faiths.

To be fair, I will point out that Brooks is one of the contributors to Dan Peterson's "Mormon Scholars Testify." So if we take her at her word, we must conclude she does have a testimony. (I'm posting from an iPod, so it's not convenient for me to search and link to it just now.)

But I have to say it was not until I got to the end of her piece and saw the about-the- author note that I understood it was Brooks writing it (I had not noticed the by-line). It came across to me as being, if not anti-Mormon, at least unfriendly to the Church. It struck me as sophistry: showing enough awareness to make her opinion seem informed and her faulty conclusions appear sound.

I agree with calmoriah about her improperly presuming to declare doctrine. It goes to what I have criticized Brooks for in the past: engaging in what she chides Randy Bott for doing, but coming from the opposite direction.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Scott Lloyd

[Nevo]

It seems to me she is placing herself in the position of declaring doctrine when she categorically rejects such an idea to the point of condemning those who supposedly hold it as racist...

Do you think Brooks is calling Elder ****son a racist? I didn't get that from the article. She interprets his remarks as an "attempt to rationalize the racial segregation of the Mormon priesthood"—something she *thought* the Church had disavowed. Is attributing a racist ban to God (if indeed this is Elder ****son's view) equivalent to being a racist? I'm not sure even Brooks would go that far.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Nevo

[why me]

Do you think Brooks is calling Elder ****son a racist? I didn't get that from the article. She interprets his remarks as an "attempt to rationalize the racial segregation of the Mormon priesthood"—something she *thought* the Church had disavowed. Is attributing a racist ban to God (if indeed this is Elder ****son's view) equivalent to being a racist? I'm not sure even Brooks would go that far.

I think that the article more or less does this by implication. It is a small step from rationalization of racism to racism. Here is a part of her article that gives the implication:

One month. Two high-placed LDS sources. Two very different takes on the faith’s historic racism. One offers no excuses for priesthood segregation. One makes it sound like part of God’s plan.

The events of this spring reveal a Church whose hired historians and high-ranking officials seem at times to be speaking at cross-purposes. They also reveal an ongoing struggle within Mormonism to come to terms with objectionable episodes in its own history without troubling too deeply many members’ profound deference to Church leaders revered as prophets.

And they demonstrate how deep-seated is the tradition in American religion of using God to justify historical injustice. Even so serious a theologian as Jonathan Edwards once claimed the slave trade was the will of God—regrettable but providential, Edwards believed, because it introduced so many Africans to Christianity.

[Nevo]

I think that the article more or less does this by implication. It is a small step from rationalization of racism to racism.

I think it's possible to rationalize a policy that was discriminatory to black people without being personally prejudiced against black people. I think a lot of Mormons fall into this category, actually.

[omni]

While I think the ban was originally instituted for racist reasons, I think her singling out Bro ****son was a little unfair. Reading the rest of his talk it is obvious the love and respect he has for the African people.

[Calm]

Do you think Brooks is calling Elder ****son a racist? I didn't get that from the article. She interprets his remarks as an "attempt to rationalize the racial segregation of the Mormon priesthood"—something she *thought* the Church had disavowed. Is attributing a racist ban to God (if indeed this is Elder ****son's view) equivalent to being a racist? I'm not sure even Brooks would go that far.

Brooks may not have, but I have heard another when it first came out on RD take her comments that way (and agreed with such an interpretation/inference, not challenge it as here) and this may been what I was thinking of.

[Bikeemikey]

Here is where it originally came from: http://www.religiond...hin_lds_church/ I I think that the problem is in the original title. The editors of the other site changed the name of the title. Unfortunately by using LDS church as a shortform for the title can add to the confusion of non-mormons and also take the name of Christ from the title which many christians would favor anyway. .

Most non-Mormons know my religious faith by the title LDS or more often Mormon. If I say the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints they have no idea.

This line of criticism is just silly. Extrapolating the name of the church used in the title (which may or may not been her call, and is a name that is both common and recognized) and attacking her faith in god, faith in the church, faith in Christ on such logic is embarrassing.

[cinepro]

Hmm. I didn't find the article particularly objectionable. It would have been nice to have the correct name of the Church in the title, but that probably wasn't Brooks's doing.

Depending on how Jesus feels about the priesthood ban, he might not mind so much in this case.

[Tacenda]

Most non-Mormons know my religious faith by the title LDS or more often Mormon. If I say the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints they have no idea.

This line of criticism is just silly. Extrapolating the name of the church used in the title (which may or may not been her call, and is a name that is both common and recognized) and attacking her faith in god, faith in the church, faith in Christ on such logic is embarrassing.

I probably started it. It was harsh, and if you look back on that post I state where I was in error.

[why me]

Most non-Mormons know my religious faith by the title LDS or more often Mormon. If I say the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints they have no idea.

This line of criticism is just silly. Extrapolating the name of the church used in the title (which may or may not been her call, and is a name that is both common and recognized) and attacking her faith in god, faith in the church, faith in Christ on such logic is embarrassing.

I don't think that it is silly. People will never know the title of the church if the media and members leave out the title. What we then can have are people referring to the church as The Church of Latter Day Saints. The point is simple: members writing in the media have an obligation to refer to the church by its correct name.

[why me]

While I think the ban was originally instituted for racist reasons,.

I think that the reasons may have to do with polygamy and marriage. We need to look into Black Pete taking it upon himself to marry several white women in a polygamous relationship with these women. I believe that BY and Orson Hyde saw the dangers of intermarriage for the church and in a black man marrying several white women. The mobs would have loved to wipe out the lds for this alone. Now does this have to do with the priesthood ban? I don't know. But there could be a reason found in polygamy.