Church to Celebrate 40 years since lifting the ban. He is what I hope happens.

[ksfisher]

14 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think as members of the church, and for me especially since I have pioneer ancestry, that we all have some responsibility for the actions of the past.  

How can a person bear responsibility for their ancestors actions?

[hope_for_things]

7 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

23 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think as members of the church, and for me especially since I have pioneer ancestry, that we all have some responsibility for the actions of the past.  

How can a person bear responsibility for their ancestors actions?

Probably by righting the wrongs of the past, and doing our best to make society a better place in the present.  Apologizing is just part of that tapestry of atonement collectively.  I think this concept is highly compatible with Mormon cosmology.  The concept that we can't be saved without our dead, that the dead need us and that we need them and that the entire human family will need to be knitted together in a collective salvation.  An eternal Zion society where we are all of one heart and mind.  

[ksfisher]

24 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Probably by righting the wrongs of the past, and doing our best to make society a better place in the present.  Apologizing is just part of that tapestry of atonement collectively.  I think this concept is highly compatible with Mormon cosmology.  The concept that we can't be saved without our dead, that the dead need us and that we need them and that the entire human family will need to be knitted together in a collective salvation.  An eternal Zion society where we are all of one heart and mind.  

So if one of my ancestors had murdered one of yours, and was never punished for that crime, would the guilt fall on me?  Do I owe you something?  What sort of recompense would you want?

Edited April 19, 2018 by ksfisher

[bluebell]

5 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

It not just "could be evidence to support your point."  It is evidence and I think its quite clear.  If you have evidence from the essay that contradicts this reading or if you have another way of interpreting the wording, could you please explain.  

Help me understand what you mean by "it depends a lot on whether or not the church considered the ban racist."  From my point of view it doesn't matter what the church considers is racist.  The church doesn't get to define the language of our society as a whole.  The word racism has a meaning that is defined by society, not the church.  The ban clearly meets the definition of racism.  

It doesn't really work that way.  For example, society's definition of sexism is discrimination on the basis of sex, but regardless, the church does not consider it sexist to deny women the priesthood.  

Society defines racism as "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."  But does the church consider the ban to have been racist?  I don't know.  The essays go out of its way to disavow the prejudice and antagonism that came with the ban, but does the essay teach that the priesthood ban was not divinely inspired and therefore something that can also be disavowed?  No, the essay doesn't teach that.

Quote

The second part of what you stated about blacks of non African descent receiving the priesthood, how does this support the church not viewing the ban as racist?  I don't understand this.  If the ban excluded just people of African descent, then its still racist against people of African descent.  This is very confusing to me. 

The church allowed some blacks to be ordained but not other blacks.  Is that discriminatory against blacks?  Some people would say yes, some people would say no (so it ends up being like the whole sexist issue where people disagree).  The church's priesthood ban was actually based on lineage and not color.  Is that discriminatory against blacks?  Again, some say yes, other's say no.  

Whether or not you believe the ban "clearly meets the definition of racism' does not have any bearing on whether or not the church believes it meets the definition and therefore can be disavowed.

(And just to clarify:  I'm not say the church believes it does or doesn't.  The church seems to have written the essay in such a way that people from both camps can use it to support their position).

Quote

Lastly they did disavow the ban outright with the statement that I put in bold "Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form."

Nope, they didn't.  That's not an outright disavowal of the ban itself, a fact that has been discussed here and many other places on the internet for years.

Aaron Brown wrote a good article about the ambiguity of the essay, saying in part-

When the LDS Church’s Gospel Topics essay “Race and the Priesthood” was released in late 2013, large numbers of my fellow Mormons — particularly moderates and progressives — rejoiced that the Church had, among other things, finally distanced itself from its long-standing claim that the Church’s pre-1978 priesthood and temple ban was divinely inspired. They pointed to the fact that the essay inundates the reader with historical information and context that grounds the ban in 19th Century racial ideas, suggesting such ideas were its cause.

Other LDS Church members weren’t so sure. Some insisted that the Church wasn’t throwing divine authorship under the bus, per se, since the race essay doesn’t technically claim the ban WASN’T inspired.  (It repudiates earlier LDS leaders’ theological explanations for the ban, but that’s a different issue).  There’s no smoking gun, no unambiguous declarative sentence that definitively settles the question. Ergo, claims of divine origin have not been discarded, they argued.  They are still alive and well, very much a part of the Church’s truth claims.

Still others read the essay as intentionally ambiguous on the matter — the essay neither endorses divine origin nor repudiates it. It is strangely silent on this crucial question (just as the new introductory paragraph to OD-2 released earlier in 2013 was also silent). This was sometimes interpreted to signal a “We don’t know” response to the question of divine authorship.  That the Church was neither willing to embrace nor jettison the notion that God was behind the ban.

You can read the entirety of Brown's article here.

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

I think as members of the church, and for me especially since I have pioneer ancestry, that we all have some responsibility for the actions of the past. 

How in the world or out of the world can one be responsible for actions of the past if those actions were before his or her time?

Glenn

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, Marginal Gains said:

I think just as far back as the Restoration. Why not apologise for it?

The church needs to apologize for the restoration??? 

[hope_for_things]

30 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

So if one of my ancestors had murdered one of yours, and was never punished for that crime, would the guilt fall on me?  Do I owe you something?  What sort of recompense would you want?

I said we bear some responsibility for the actions of the past and I'm talking specifically in reference to the racist policies perpetuated collectively by our religious ancestors.  Individual crimes would be a somewhat different application, and I'm not too interested in trying to go down that hypothetical avenue.  Suffice it to say, these things aren't simple, I'm talking about a concept that I believe in, coming up with exact prescriptions for how to act are more complicated.  

[CA Steve]

There is a difference between the past actions of an individual or even a group of individuals who are no longer alive and the actions of an entity like a state or organized religion which still exists.

 

A better analogy would be perhaps a comparison to how the US treated it's own Japanese citizens during WWII. Do organizations bear responsibility for actions taken in past, even though a different set of people were in control of the organization? Should the US have apologized and even offered compensation like it did?

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Why did you join then? Would the church be less, i.e. if the ban had not been lifted. would would it have invalidated the Book of Mormon or the Angel Moroni, or the first vision?

Glenn

I joined because I believe the Church is true, what other reason would it be. I probably would have not shown any interest if I knew of this policy. It is odd that my views on issues of race would have gotten, and did in the Church I grew up in, Southern Baptist. It is also odd that my views on race meets with much the same in the Faith I have chosen. I am sorry if that is a burden to so many, within my extended family, and my Church family.  

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I watched a news clip the other day with Bro. Gray, so was looking for that, but these popped up so until I find the recent news interview I think these videos are pertinent to Papa's thread here.

Thank you for this...

[Glenn101]

25 minutes ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

I joined because I believe the Church is true, what other reason would it be. I probably would have not shown any interest if I knew of this policy.

Why would that be any different from the ban on women holding the priesthood? Since that subject has become a Cause célèbre, would it be an impediment to you joining the church if you were not a member and were investigating the church?

Glenn

Edited April 19, 2018 by Glenn101
an added thought

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Glenn101 said:

Why would that be any different from the ban on women holding the priesthood?

Glenn

Not the same, we have thousands of years, thousands of pages, and thousands of scripture that address women and the Priesthood. None concerning Blacks and the Priesthood, or should I say, excluding then from holding the Priesthood. Are you suggesting I joined the Church in error, and that there is no place for me? 

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I think as members of the church, and for me especially since I have pioneer ancestry, that we all have some responsibility for the actions of the past.  

I have pioneer ancestry. But why stop there? I should probably apologize to the French as my ancestors fought for the decadent monarchies trying to suppress the revolution. And what about the Britons? My ancestors crossed over with William the Conqueror and took over. Do I owe them an apology too?

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I imagine if God created me and gave me a brain to think with that God has some responsibility for my thoughts about God.  Aren't we all creating God in our own image to some extent, especially in Mormonism where we are taught to anthropomorphize God.  Do you have a clear way of distinguishing your thoughts from God's thoughts, or are any attempts to separate the two ways of thinking just self delusion?  

Yes, we are which is not a good thing. There are ways to distinguish. God is the voice telling me to do hard and sometimes illogical things and whose morality sometimes seems to clash with mine in some ways. If I created the Earth I would have left out cancer for example. God did not. 

If God is just a projection of your own ideals and is entirely subjective then the Assyrians brutally torturing prisoners in the name of their God is as divine as the Good Samaritan helping the wounded man out of the ditch.

[Hamba Tuhan]

9 hours ago, cacheman said:

Ok.  I am capable entertaining the possibility that the Lord really has been in charge of His Church in this area.  So, tell me what you think the purpose(s) was. 

I think one of the obvious consequences was to restrict where the Church proselyted and therefore where it established footholds and grew for the decades the policy was in place. Would you agree that it overwhelmingly kept us out of Africa? And at the same time, it limited the Church's presence in the 'inner city' of many American metropolitan areas. Does the Lord ever have purposes in slowing or limiting the growth of His church in any way? In the email that I mentioned earlier, Pres Packer was reported as having referred to Jacob 5 as one of the purposes He felt the Lord had had for keeping the Church out of Africa for so long.

Earlier you mentioned the impossibility of implementing race-based policies because the 'mechanics' break down. You're absolutely correct. And having a personal opportunity to learn that lesson is priceless. To take just one example, what do you think Church leaders, full-time missionaries who served there, and others learnt about race as a 'biological' construct as they laboured in Brazil? I think my personal hatred for dividing people into 'races' stems from my little boy days in the Church when I learnt that my favourite Sunday school teacher couldn't be married to her husband in the temple. (He was eligible for temple blessings at the time, but she wasn't.)

I know there are still some pockets of racism in the Church. I had the opportunity some years ago to be in the SLC Temple for the endowment/sealing of some of my West Indian friends, and I overheard one of the workers say something terrible about a 'bunch of darkies' on their way down to the change room. I had literally never heard anyone in the Church talk like that before, and it was like a kick to the gut. I actually wanted to take my friends and go to another temple. I certainly didn't want the brother who spoke like that to have any part in performing sacred ordinances for people I love dearly. It was painful. But in retrospect, the incongruity of that with all my other experiences in the Church, past and present, underscores how thoroughly we seem to have learnt our lessons about 'race'.

I have two housemates. All three of us are different races. Where I live that's still an odd situation ... except in the Church. Some years back, one of my Church brothers and I had a regular monthly temple trip together. On one of our visits, I introduced him to my favourite Chinese hole-in-the-wall, where I had been eating for many years. On our first night, the woman who owned the place said, 'Oh, you have brought one of your friends'. I replied, 'He's not my friend; he's my brother'. She looked at him, and then at me, back at him, and again at me ... and walked away shaking her head. We actually laughed at loud. My dear brother said, 'She doesn't get it'. And she didn't. Based on our appearances, she understood that we could be friends, but she just couldn't see how we could be brothers. And that's an important distinction.

When I worked in the West Indies, there was literally a single space anywhere on the island where all races mingled freely. Churches were segregated by colour. I taught at a school where students self-segregated at lunchtime. But in our little branch chapel, black, brown and white mixed so thoroughly that it took me weeks to figure out which children belonged to whom.

Some of our Christian brothers talk about the impossibility of fully keeping the Law of Moses as one of its most instructional purposes. I don't think they're wrong, and I personally see the Church's race-based policy as serving a similar educative function.

I have more, but that's a start. And I've certainly been influenced by my current West African housemate and also a previous one, both of whom are adult converts to the Church, one baptised in Africa, and one here.

[Scott Lloyd]

27 minutes ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

Not the same, we have thousands of years, thousands of pages, and thousands of scripture that address women and the Priesthood. None concerning Blacks and the Priesthood, or should I say, excluding then from holding the Priesthood. Are you suggesting I joined the Church in error, and that there is no place for me? 

Hmm. I don't get that from any of Glenn101's posts. At all.

 

[carbon dioxide]

9 hours ago, cacheman said:

Ok.  I am capable entertaining the possibility that the Lord really has been in charge of His Church in this area.  So, tell me what you think the purpose(s) was. 

That is the issue.  We don't know exactly the origins of the ban.  There is no revelation we can examine.  Was the ban authored by God or Brigham Young?  If God authored it, why?  Since we don't know the answers to the questions it is impossible to decide whether it was right or wrong based on God's standards of right and wrong.  We need a lot more information first to make a good judgement.  Remember the priesthood is not a civil rights issue.  It is not a rights issue period.  God makes all the rules on who get the priesthood, how it is to be used, ect.  If God decides that nobody over 6 feet tall gets the priesthood, then nobody over 6 feet tall gets it.  If God decides that nobody over 250 pounds and is bald gets the priesthood, then nobody gets it who fit that.  This is a hard thing for some to accept.  They think that they are entitled to the priesthood but nobody is entitled. One must qualify for it under the conditions God sets.

Edited April 19, 2018 by carbon dioxide

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Hmm. I don't get that from any of Glenn101's posts. At all.

 

Which part, women and the Priesthood, or Blacks and the Priesthood? 

[Scott Lloyd]

4 minutes ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

Which part, women and the Priesthood, or Blacks and the Priesthood? 

Your very last sentence in which you asked him, "Are you suggesting I joined the Church in error, and that there is no place for me?"

That doesn't strike me as a fair conclusion from anything that Glenn101 wrote.

 

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

9 hours ago, Marginal Gains said:

In what way(s) am I over interpreting 2nd Nephi 5:21? Because I appear, at least to me, to be taking it at face value with no interpretation beyond what it actually says in plain English.

What exactly is 'a skin of blackness'? If the Book of Mormon is a genuinely ancient text, it is necessary to consider that question without applying a current interpretation. For example, as recently as the 16th century, Europeans in what is now northeastern Indonesia described the people of New Guinea as being variously white or black, depending on how far from the coast they lived. And the King of Banda had, according to the Jesuits, a white skin, in contrast to the black skins of his people. So again, what exactly is 'a skin of blackness' if we go even further back in time?

And where exactly in the verse you quoted does it identify this 'skin of blackness' as a sign of cursing. The simplest reading is that it was a marker of undesirability.

And how exactly did 'racial' divisions work in the Book of Mormon as a whole. What exactly happened to Lamanites who converted? And what happened to Nephites who dissented? Hint: if Nephites could become Lamanites simply by dissenting, then we are not dealing with a people whose conceptions of difference were rooted in any kind of biological determinism, including (but not limited to) actual skin pigmentation.

And how many times were the Nephites told by prophets that their hatred of the Lamanites was a sin?

I honestly don't know how to respond to people who see the text of the Book of Mormon as inherently racist when the text so thoroughly deconstructs notions of race and difference from beginning to end.

[Glenn101]

13 minutes ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

Not the same, we have thousands of years, thousands of pages, and thousands of scripture that address women and the Priesthood.

I disagree on the part in bold, and Ordain Women disagree on the whole thing. We have thousands of years where women have not held the priesthood. Those who feel that women should be ordained see similarities to the priesthood ban on blacks. There is no scriptural edict denying the priesthood to women and there are some scriptures in the New Testament that can have been interpreted by some to allow for a woman to have been an apostle.

37 minutes ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

None concerning Blacks and the Priesthood, or should I say, excluding then from holding the Priesthood.

Abraham 1:21-27

41 minutes ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

Are you suggesting I joined the Church in error, and that there is no place for me? 

Not hardly. I am suggesting that if you had shied away from the church because of the ban, it would have been an error, since you and I both are on the same page in that we believe the church is true.

So what would you do if there came a revelation reversing the priesthood roles of men and women??? The patriarchal order was pretty much a necessity when we were in a survival mode but nowadays not so much. 

Glenn

[smac97]

18 hours ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

The Church is going to celebrate the lifting of the Priesthood Ban, for African men and women, which allowed them and their spouses to enter into the Temple, and receive their ordinances.

Yes.

18 hours ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

Some years back the Church issue a letter that listed a number of issues as to why there was such a ban. In the letter it spoke of a few things, but also commented "social issues of that time" as one factor. I joined the Church less than a year after the ban was lifted. I fear that if that had still been policy, I might have never joined.

I can understand and respect that.

18 hours ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

My wish list for this upcoming celebration, is that the joy will also include another letter. A letter that reminds all people everywhere that the pigment of a man or woman's skin, is not the pigment of their soul.

The Church has done that.  I'm not sure there's a need to guild the lilly.

18 hours ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

I hope there will be a letter, noting that the policy was wrong,

As I understand it, the stance of the Church is not that the policy was "wrong," but that uninspired and racist speculations about the origins of the policy were wrong.

It is my understanding that the Church's stance is that the origins of the ban are presently unknown.  

18 hours ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

and had more to do with man's limitations to see beyond, and not our God.

Well, maybe, maybe no.  We do not know.

For myself, I lead toward the Brigham-Young-implemented-a-"policy"-around-1852-which-then-through-the-decades-became-entrenched-and-its-specific-provenance-lost-but-it-was-probably-a-product-of-19th-century-perspectives-on-race theory of the Ban's origins.  But I cannot completely foreclose the possibility that it had revelatory origins, either.  There were restrictions/limitations on the priesthood in antiquity, after all.  We even have gender-based restrictions on the priesthood now that plainly have no particular relationship to innate worth or quality.  And yet . . . there it is.

Thanks,

-Smac

18 hours ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

May God give to our leaders to strength of mind, body and soul, and grant them the wisdom to know what to say. 

 Thoughts? 

 

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Your very last sentence in which you asked him, "Are you suggesting I joined the Church in error, and that there is no place for me?"

That doesn't strike me as a fair conclusion from anything that Glenn101 wrote.

 

 

That was from an earlier post, when he asked...Why did you join the Church anyway? 

[Hamba Tuhan]

5 minutes ago, Bill "Papa" Lee said:

That was from an earlier post, when he asked...Why did you join the Church anyway? 

I suspect the answer he was seeking to elicit was 'Because it's true'.

[CV75]

4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Interesting that you'd push back against my statement saying that God is your personal experience as much as God is my personal experience, it seems like a fair statement because of its equal subjectivity.  Perhaps you just misread my statement.  I'm not claiming my experience of God is objectively true and superior to yours, I'm saying our experiences are equally subjective and expressive of our conceptions for God.  

So that concept carries on into all of my other statements.  My experience of God is what God wants the church to do, to apologize.  I never claimed that is your experience of God.  I never sought to "prove the Church should apologize."  I believe my desire for the church to apologize is supported by reasoning, morality and religious precedent though.  

Your last two points, 1. that the revelation was not a wrong.  I never said the revelation was a wrong, not sure where you got that.  I said the practice of racism and the teachings about that practice were wrong. The revelation helps to correct some of that wrong and was one step in the right direction, but others are needed. 

2. Interpreting God's will is another exercise in that subjective experience of God that I just explained.  We all interpret God's will, its a subjective exercise that all religious people practice for the most part.  As for my misrepresenting the motives of church leaders, you still haven't explained how I've done that with any specificity.  I'm think I'm well acquainted with the essay and I'd be interested in seeing you back up this accusation with any specifics. 

I didn’t misread your statement, I’m pointing out that “simply asserting that God wants the church to apologize and atone for wrongs past and present has no bearing on the discussion” about the morality of the ban, or vice versa. This is because there is no precedent for God requiring apologies for social propriety or moral reasons (repentance doesn’t count because that is for the sinner and not the offended; turning the other cheek and forgiveness on the other hand is for the offended; becoming as a little child is for everybody).

That the revelation is not a wrong supports my belief that an apology is not appropriate for its celebration.

Here is where you misrepresented the motives of the Church leaders (I thought it was obvious): Posted 7 hours ago “…church leaders finally realized… their racism.” Nothing of the sort is confessed or conveyed in the essay.

4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I think the essay is a kind of apology, acknowledging past mistakes and disavowing and condemning racism and the theories of the past are in the spirit of an apology.  But I don't think they go far enough, as I explained earlier.  You still haven't provided any specific evidence and I'm confused about what you think I'm misrepresenting or misinterpreting.  I've replied to multiple people in this thread.  If you can point out the specific item you disagree with, that would help, otherwise I can't really respond to your accusations of misrepresentation.  

I don’t agree that it is “kind of an apology” or carries "the spirit of an apology," and I was making sure you recognize that you are not agreeing with me on that point on any level.

Here is where you misrepresented the motives of the Church leaders (I thought it was obvious): Posted 7 hours ago “…church leaders finally realized… their racism.” Nothing of the sort is confessed or conveyed in the essay.

The goodness we know that overshadows an expectation for an apology certainly differs from person to person, but the general sentiment of submission and forgiveness over entitled recompense reflects the fuller spirit of the Gospel, and the Church would be doing a disservice to her members to promote less, especially in connection with a celebration of revelation. She is a true and living Church for true and living people who become true and living saints.

Edited April 20, 2018 by CV75