Update Of The Essay Of Race And The Lds Church

[Robert F. Smith]

How about it took long enough for God to give the revelation? Don't you think that God could have overruled the brethren and ended the ban much earlier if He really wanted to to so? Did you ever stop to think that for His own heretofore undisclosed reasons God may have allowed the ban to stay in place for all those years that a greater good might ultimately be accomplished? And now the saints are being tested to see who will trust in the Lord and the prophecies of scripture and who will repudiate and revile the Lord's servants and trust in the arm of flesh. Do you not realize this is not the first time the Lord has allowed His people to pass through a trial that would make them very unpopular in the eyes of the world? 

Long before 1978, one theory making the rounds was that the Mormon people were not ready for such a revelation.  Rather than blaming God, we need to do some close self-reflection.

[Russell C McGregor]

Take comfort in knowing that the rationalizations, disavowals, and retractions being used to correct church leaders' racist errors of the past are just setting the template for how the Church will handle future changes to marriage (including gays) and priesthood (including women).

 

Only those who do not understand the difference between what is essential and what is peripheral to the restored Gospel could imagine that there will be any "future changes to marriage (including gays)."

To those who do understand that difference, same sex "marriage" remains a doctrinal impossibility.

[Russell C McGregor]

I think what Teancum meant was if they're really prophets, seers, and revelators in the one true church, they should have been right about the issue all along.

 

Why?

[Teancum]

Most of them didn't.  However, when President David O. McKay tried to lift the ban and begin sending  missionaries to Black Africa, he was stymied by Pres. Joseph Fielding Smith's argument that a revelation was needed first.  These things are complicated.

Yet we are told God sent an angel that threatened Joseph with a flaming sword to compel him into polygamy. But it was complicated to fix the priesthood ban issue and President McKay was stymied by some outspoken apostles.

This does not inspire confidence.

[Teancum]

Only those who do not understand the difference between what is essential and what is peripheral to the restored Gospel could imagine that there will be any "future changes to marriage (including gays)."

To those who do understand that difference, same sex "marriage" remains a doctrinal impossibility.

Boy I wish both of you would drop it. rock pond thinks the church will someday take a position on gay marriage like they have the priesthood ban issue. You think he is off the wall and some wolf in sheep clothing less faithful than you filthy apostate.

We all know this. We have about a thousand posts from you both carping on and on at each other about it.

Move on please.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Teancum

[Robert F. Smith]

Yet we are told God sent an angel that threatened Joseph with a flaming sword to compel him into polygamy. But it was complicated to fix the priesthood ban issue and President McKay was stymied by some outspoken apostles.

This does not inspire confidence.

It does not inspire confidence in infallible prophets.  Of course there is no such thing as an infallible prophet, and God does not dance to some human tune.  In fact, our prophets are all too human, and seek unity rather than alpha-male dominance in their decision-making.  So unlike the world and its expectations . . .

[Russell C McGregor]

Boy I wish both of you would drop it. rock pond thinks the church will someday take a position on gay marriage like they have the priesthood ban issue. You think he is off the wall and some wolf in sheep clothing less faithful than you filthy apostate.

We all know this. We have about a thousand posts from you both carping on and on at each other about it.

Move on please.

Sometime in the unspecified future -- perhaps in 39 years and a few months or so -- some cyber-archaeologist is going to find the record of this board on some archaic magnetic hard drive in someone's garage; and they will wonder why early 21st century Mormons were so startlingly stupid as to expect the Church to fall in with the (by then expired) fad of same sex "marriage."

Fortunately, the record will show that it was just a silly fringe notion.

[rockpond]

It does not inspire confidence in infallible prophets.  Of course there is no such thing as an infallible prophet, and God does not dance to some human tune.  In fact, our prophets are all too human, and seek unity rather than alpha-male dominance in their decision-making.  So unlike the world and its expectations . . .

 

I agree... I just wish that we as a church (speaking collectively, not individually) could give more than just lip service to the important principle you and Teancum bring up here.

[rockpond]

Boy I wish both of you would drop it. rock pond thinks the church will someday take a position on gay marriage like they have the priesthood ban issue. You think he is off the wall and some wolf in sheep clothing less faithful than you filthy apostate.

We all know this. We have about a thousand posts from you both carping on and on at each other about it.

Move on please.

 

I'll honor that request and not respond to Russell's reply.  (Even though I'd really like to.)  

[california boy]

Deleted. Wrong thread.

Ooops!  Were you quoting the pamphlet on being gay will all disolve away in the next life?  And forgot that this thread is about the church radically changing its positions from time to time even when prophets in the past declaired it to be doctrine?  Yeah wrong thread. 

 

It is amazing to me that in one thread you can declare that a pamphlet written by a couple of general authorities is the will of God and unchangable doctrine concerning the eternal plan for gay children of God, and then in another thread defend past prophets and apostles for being wrong and only human concerning another group of God's children and all in the same day.  How do you do that??

Edited October 1, 2015 by california boy

[Calm]

I think it is the new videos included on the side menu including one with Darius Grey.

Nope, I was right the first time...brain asleep.  Wayback machine shows the same videos, I just never pay attention to those so they looked new.

 

I wonder if someone misread something or jumped the gun....or wanted to see who was paying attention.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Calm

[Robert F. Smith]

Ooops!  Were you quoting the pamphlet on being gay will all disolve away in the next life?  And forgot that this thread is about the church radically changing its positions from time to time even when prophets in the past declaired it to be doctrine?  Yeah wrong thread. 

 

It is amazing to me that in one thread you can declare that a pamphlet written by a couple of general authorities is the will of God and unchangable doctrine concerning the eternal plan for gay children of God, and then in another thread defend past prophets and apostles for being wrong and only human concerning another group of God's children and all in the same day.  How do you do that??

We don't.  There is a wide array of views on such matters within Mormonism, you being an example of one POV.

[canard78]

Being a prophet , seer and revelator does not mean that you are always right about everything.

It simply does not work that way. Did any of these people explain that their they got these ideas as revelations from the Lord?

They were speculating.

"It is dangerous for teachers of religion to teach as absolute facts that can’t be controverted something that is still in the realm of speculation and theory, and when you find someone who is writing a book in which they speak with a pedantic authority as though it was an accomplished fact and couldn’t be gainsaid, then you put a question mark by it and write “theory.” I will tell you what I do as I read these many books that come (and I think the day is here when we have got to be more discriminating in our reading than ever before). Let me suggest a method. As you read these books, no matter who writes them, read carefully down the record, and where their teaching is in complete agreement with the revelations that the Lord has given us and with the teachings of the scriptures, accept it as being fact, but where they go off into imaginative suppositions or speculations that are not fully proved by the scriptures, write out in the margin the name of the author. It is his idea, you see. Distinguish as between the individual’s idea and that which is supported by scriptures. (Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p. 441)

-Stephen

So if a whole litany of prophets were wrong, time after time and year after year how can you have any confidence in anything they say about anything? We're not talking about getting just a little bit wrong but completely in the wrong direction; teaching as doctrine that which has now been disavowed.

The racist teachings of past prophets is such a spectacular own goal that it baffles me how anyone can have any confidence in prophets, seers and revelatory. It utterly undermines the prophetic model that is taught in scripture and church manuals.

[canard78]

Not.

Unfortunately it's likely that none of us will be alive for it, given how slowly the church seems to move with the times, but given time I think Rockpond will be vindicated.

[canard78]

How about it took long enough for God to give the revelation? Don't you think that God could have overruled the brethren and ended the ban much earlier if He really wanted to to so? Did you ever stop to think that for His own heretofore undisclosed reasons God may have allowed the ban to stay in place for all those years that a greater good might ultimately be accomplished? And now the saints are being tested to see who will trust in the Lord and the prophecies of scripture and who will repudiate and revile the Lord's servants and trust in the arm of flesh. Do you not realize this is not the first time the Lord has allowed His people to pass through a trial that would make them very unpopular in the eyes of the world?

So do you classify the racist rationales for the ban, taught as doctrine, as more of God's revelations that were given to test members and make Mormons unpopular?

Or are you saying that God was behind the revelation to end the ban, even though there is no evidence of revelation to start the ban nor any revelation behind the proposed justifications for having it.

If it was uninspired to start it and uninspired to perpetuate it, what convinces you that inspiration ended it.

Surely all three (starting, perpetuating, ending) are simply symptoms of 15 or so well-intentioned men being blown by the winds of their own perspectives and cultural influences.

[Buckeye]

https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng

 

"Over time, Church leaders and members advanced many theories to explain the priesthood and temple restrictions. None of these explanations is accepted today as the official doctrine of the Church."

 

"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 unrighteous 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."

 

Seems pretty clear to me.  Can we stop putting forward the false teaching that the brethren are caving to social pressure, or that they really still believe the "lineage of Cain" nonsense?

 

Just going off my memory here, but I think the change in this quote (if any) is the addition of a reference to "mixed-race marriages are a sin." The original essay included the statement that the "church disavows" certain theories. I'm quite certain that the original essay disavowed the curse of cain and premortal valiancy doctrines. But the mixed-race marriage stuff may be new. I believe that the statement condemning all racism was also in the original.

 

As for the lineage of cain nonsense, I haven't seen an advancement of this teaching by the "brethren" in my lifetime (I'm nearly 40). There was the professor Bott incident in 2012, but I can't think of anything from church leadership that would advance this belief.

[Buckeye]

This new position appears to require the reinterpretation of some scriptures in the Pearl of Great Price? As long as I've been alive, the "theories" that were advanced were based on some verses in the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham that link skin color, lineage, and denial of the priesthood. How are these verses interpreted in the light of this new position?

 

They're not interpreted. My kids just finished the POGP in seminary. No discussion of these verses at all. They're treated the same way the OT verses commanding genocide or treated: we ignore them.

[jkwilliams]

They're not interpreted. My kids just finished the POGP in seminary. No discussion of these verses at all. They're treated the same way the OT verses commanding genocide or treated: we ignore them.

It still seems strange to me that post-Biblical notions of race (used to justify slavery, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century America) ended up in scripture that is supposed to have been written thousands of years ago. It suggests to me that modern LDS scripture is as subject to the environment in which it emerges as any other opinion or theory espoused by church leaders.

Edited October 1, 2015 by jkwilliams

[HappyJackWagon]

CFR that prophets, seers and revelators are always right.

You ask for the strangest CFR's.

 

The point he was making, and I think this is pretty clear, is that we have a level of confidence in the prophets because we assume they are speaking for God. Why do we assume this? Because we are told the prophet is God's mouthpiece.

 

Are you suggesting that we shouldn't have confidence that the prophet speak the truth? Are you suggesting that we shouldn't make any assumptions that the prophet is right?

 

If so, what good is it to have a prophet?

[Gray]

Right.

 

Abr 1: 26

"Pharaoh, being a righteous man, established his kingdom and judged his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the blessings of the earth, and with the blessings of wisdom, but cursed him as pertaining to the Priesthood."

 

In another revelation in the Book of Moses, it says that the Cainites, the descendants of Cain, the son of Adam, were "black" (Moses 7:22).

 

From the early days of the church members have interpreted these verses as saying that blacks, being of the Cainite/Hamitic bloodline, would not be allowed to hold the Priesthood until the Abelites first had the opportunity. 

 

The article on Race and the Priesthood doesn't mention these scriptures at all. So like jkwilliams asked, are there other interpretations for these scriptures now?

 

From the essay:

 

 

"The justifications for this restriction echoed the widespread ideas about racial inferiority that had been used to argue for the legalization of black “servitude” in the Territory of Utah.¹⁰ According to one view, which had been promulgated in the United States from at least the 1730s, blacks descended from the same lineage as the biblical Cain, who slew his brother Abel.¹¹ Those who accepted this view believed that God’s “curse” on Cain was the mark of a dark skin. Black servitude was sometimes viewed as a second curse placed upon Noah’s grandson Canaan as a result of Ham’s indiscretion toward his father.¹² Although slavery was not a significant factor in Utah’s economy and was soon abolished, the restriction on priesthood ordinations remained."

 

 

The essay is really interesting in that it identifies these ideas as American cultural racist ideas about blacks. But at the same time we find these ideas in the Pearl of Great Price. Is this a first step at taking a more realistic view of the POGP, not as a translation of an ancient document but as modern scripture, with the same kinds of (sometimes problematic) cultural influences scripture has always had? Is this our first tentative step away from fundamentalism? 

Edited October 1, 2015 by Gray

[HappyJackWagon]

Actually they weren't last.  Mormon congregations were never segregated, and the Southern Baptists and others took much longer to apologize for their blatant racism of hundreds of years standing.  Indeed, Joseph Smith was a pioneer in calling for the freeing of the slaves during his 1844 political run for the U.S. Presidency.  Joseph and his brethren also ordained black men.  After he died, Mormons became backsliders for a while.

That's not correct.

 

See footnote 3 from the race and priesthood essay.

 

 

• At some periods of time, reflecting local customs and laws, there were instances of segregated congregations in areas such as South Africa and the U.S. South.

 

https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng

[Gray]

So do you classify the racist rationales for the ban, taught as doctrine, as more of God's revelations that were given to test members and make Mormons unpopular?

Or are you saying that God was behind the revelation to end the ban, even though there is no evidence of revelation to start the ban nor any revelation behind the proposed justifications for having it.

If it was uninspired to start it and uninspired to perpetuate it, what convinces you that inspiration ended it.

Surely all three (starting, perpetuating, ending) are simply symptoms of 15 or so well-intentioned men being blown by the winds of their own perspectives and cultural influences.

 

Well, these are important questions. I think we've gotten a lot of our notions about what prophets are by taking a fundamentalist reading of old Bible stories. But a prophet is not a fortune teller or a sooth sayer. A prophet is, when acting in his or her best/highest capacity, a wisdom teacher. That's really all there is to it. God is not literally whispering instructions into anyone's ear. 

[Gray]

It still seems strange to me that post-Biblical notions of race (used to justify slavery, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century America) ended up in scripture that is supposed to have been written thousands of years ago. It suggests to me that modern LDS scripture is as subject to the environment in which it emerges as any other opinion or theory espoused by church leaders.

 

Well, the conclusion should be clear - this is modern scripture written in the style of ancient scripture. That's really the takeaway of the essay on race and the priesthood, if you pay close attention. 

[jkwilliams]

Well, the conclusion should be clear - this is modern scripture written in the style of ancient scripture. That's really the takeaway of the essay on race and the priesthood, if you pay close attention.

Sort of like the original version of D&C 104, which was modern scripture but presented as if it were ancient. Makes sense. Thanks for that.

[BlueDreams]

Well, the conclusion should be clear - this is modern scripture written in the style of ancient scripture. That's really the takeaway of the essay on race and the priesthood, if you pay close attention. 

....or we filtered it through our modern american/european assumptions about race....one of the two.