emergence of new justifications for the black priesthood and temple ban

[Glenn101]

11 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Link?

I had already included a link in an earlier post. Hamba Tuhan has followed up.

[jkwilliams]

9 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Latter_Day_Saints'_Messenger_and_Advocate/Volume_2/Number_7/Letter_to_Oliver_Cowdery_from_Joseph_Smith,_Jr._(Apr._1836)

Thanks for that. For years I’ve been told that the curse business was an erroneous assignation of the curse of Canaan to black people, but this makes it clear that it originated with Joseph Smith. 

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Thanks for that. For years I’ve been told that the curse business was an erroneous assignation of the curse of Canaan to black people, but this makes it clear that it originated with Joseph Smith. 

Blacks being cursed through being of the blood of Cain/Ham/Canaan was around long before JS.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Calm said:

Blacks being cursed through being of the blood of Cain/Ham/Canaan was around long before JS.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham

I know that. I’m just saying that seems to be where it began in the church, at least explicitly. 

[carbon dioxide]

15 hours ago, Thinking said:

This.

I believe that a significant number of members can't believe that something as significant as the priesthood ban would be allowed to exist for 100+ years if it was just a mistake. "We don't know why" is not good enough.

We don't know why may not be good enough but attempting to give reasons that turns out to be wrong is not any better. 

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, cinepro said:

I don't know about Joseph and "the rest", but we do know why Brigham Young implemented the ban.  He told us, and he also said the reason was based on "true eternal principals the Lord Almighty has ordained."

That seems to be an important point that gets swept under the rug in our haste to argue "we don't know."

 

What will the world be like when people can't read cursive anymore?

[Thinking]

1 hour ago, carbon dioxide said:

We don't know why may not be good enough but attempting to give reasons that turns out to be wrong is not any better. 

True. This is why the priesthood ban is such a tough stumbling block for some members.

[CV75]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

Blacks being cursed through being of the blood of Cain/Ham/Canaan was around long before JS.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham

And still no proactive or prescriptive connection between these ideas and instituting a ban. These only indicate why, at some point in the LDS ontogeny, leaders began explaining  that blacks were not (no longer) to be ordained.

[CV75]

8 hours ago, Thinking said:

True. This is why the priesthood ban is such a tough stumbling block for some members.

I think bad reasons for explaining the ban can be stumbling blocks because the reasons for transcending feelings of offense have not been heard or accepted. The Church's efforts provide the latter, as do the Genesis Group and other inspired individuals in speaking of their authentic conversion to Christ and how it applies to this topic.

[jkwilliams]

34 minutes ago, CV75 said:

And still no proactive or prescriptive connection between these ideas and instituting a ban. These only indicate why, at some point in the LDS ontogeny, leaders began explaining  that blacks were not (no longer) to be ordained.

It's just interesting that Joseph Smith followed the lead of American and English slave traders who misinterpreted scripture to justify their enslavement of Africans and others. A few  years ago, I read David Goldenberg's The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and he shows pretty clearly that the use of the curse of Ham/Canaan (a curse made by Noah, not God) to justify slavery is a modern invention with no support in antiquity. Yet Joseph Smith incorporated that misinterpretation into the Book of Abraham, essentially retroactively assigning a modern interpretation to the ancients. 

As a political document, Joseph Smith's published letter to Oliver Cowdery makes sense as an attempt to assure non-LDS neighbors, particularly in Missouri, that the church was not pushing abolition. That said, it's a pretty sad document in terms of the morality and logic expressed. It's hard to rationalize the idea that if someone else believes they are doing right, we have no right to judge them, and that abolition would "lay waste the fall States of the South, and set loose, upon the world a community of people who might peradventure, overrun our country and violate the most sacred principles of human society, chastity and virtue." Recognizing those statements as moral cowardice and racism is not an example of presentism.

[mfbukowski]

21 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

It's just interesting that Joseph Smith followed the lead of American and English slave traders who misinterpreted scripture to justify their enslavement of Africans and others. A few  years ago, I read David Goldenberg's The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and he shows pretty clearly that the use of the curse of Ham/Canaan (a curse made by Noah, not God) to justify slavery is a modern invention with no support in antiquity. Yet Joseph Smith incorporated that misinterpretation into the Book of Abraham, essentially retroactively assigning a modern interpretation to the ancients. 

As a political document, Joseph Smith's published letter to Oliver Cowdery makes sense as an attempt to assure non-LDS neighbors, particularly in Missouri, that the church was not pushing abolition. That said, it's a pretty sad document in terms of the morality and logic expressed. It's hard to rationalize the idea that if someone else believes they are doing right, we have no right to judge them, and that abolition would "lay waste the fall States of the South, and set loose, upon the world a community of people who might peradventure, overrun our country and violate the most sacred principles of human society, chastity and virtue." Recognizing those statements as moral cowardice and racism is not an example of presentism.

Disagree, it is.

You are not old enough to remember segregation personally.

You read my mind in that last sentence, anticipating that objection correctly. Except the objection stands imo

 

Edited July 27, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Gray]

On 7/25/2018 at 6:47 PM, CV75 said:

See Posted Saturday at 09:19 AM (edited)

Point 7 does not provide that information (the order to implement the ban). Worse, you're just accepting the OP's commentary as fact, and the facts he bases it on aren't there to support it.

On top of that, you are saying the"informed" would call it a "mistake," not say "we don't know." 

Brigham Young made his views clear. He thought that black people were descended from Cain via Ham, and subject to a priesthood curse. He was wrong. No mystery about why it started.

[Gray]

On 7/25/2018 at 8:33 PM, USU78 said:

Seriously. I get it. You smart. Mormons dumb.

Ironically, you don't get it.

[mfbukowski]

Even in the north I was raised with the idea that if a black person touched something or drank from a water fountain you did not touch it or drink from that water fountain.

It was totally ridiculous. It was as if they had some horrible communicable disease or were biblical lepers.

It made absolutely no sense. But yet that was the belief and the practice.

Thank God it is now so ridiculous to even imagine that people actually thought that.

But it is a fact that they did. And that was Western New York about a hundred miles from Palmyra, in the 1950s.

Edited July 27, 2018 by mfbukowski

[jkwilliams]

6 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Disagree, it is.

You are not old enough to remember segregation personally.

You read my mind in that last sentence, anticipating that objection correctly. Except the objection stands imo

You might have a point if he had just stopped at justifying slavery, as many people did back then. But it is moral cowardice to suggest that we can't make moral judgments about behavior, as long as the person doing the behavior thinks it's right. NAMBLA doesn't think child abuse is wrong, so by that logic we can't make any kind of judgment about that. 

[USU78]

11 minutes ago, Gray said:

Ironically, you don't get it.

Ridiculous pretentions to depth are not the same as actual depth. 

Pretentious judgment of others is hardly a laudable thing, especially when neither you nor I could carry Joseph's or Brigham's jockstraps.

[mfbukowski]

9 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

You might have a point if he had just stopped at justifying slavery, as many people did back then. But it is moral cowardice to suggest that we can't make moral judgments about behavior, as long as the person doing the behavior thinks it's right. NAMBLA doesn't think child abuse is wrong, so by that logic we can't make any kind of judgment about that. 

Huh?

What does that have to do with presentism?

 

[USU78]

17 minutes ago, Gray said:

Brigham Young made his views clear. He thought that black people were descended from Cain via Ham, and subject to a priesthood curse. He was wrong. No mystery about why it started.

Yes. That's what our inheritance from European protestantism does to us occasionally.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Huh?

What does that have to do with presentism?

You called it presentism when I said that it's moral cowardice to say we can't judge behavior if the person doing the behavior believes it's right. Sorry, that's not presentism, just terrible logic and moral bankruptcy. 

[CV75]

53 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

It's just interesting that Joseph Smith followed the lead of American and English slave traders who misinterpreted scripture to justify their enslavement of Africans and others. A few  years ago, I read David Goldenberg's The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and he shows pretty clearly that the use of the curse of Ham/Canaan (a curse made by Noah, not God) to justify slavery is a modern invention with no support in antiquity. Yet Joseph Smith incorporated that misinterpretation into the Book of Abraham, essentially retroactively assigning a modern interpretation to the ancients. 

As a political document, Joseph Smith's published letter to Oliver Cowdery makes sense as an attempt to assure non-LDS neighbors, particularly in Missouri, that the church was not pushing abolition. That said, it's a pretty sad document in terms of the morality and logic expressed. It's hard to rationalize the idea that if someone else believes they are doing right, we have no right to judge them, and that abolition would "lay waste the fall States of the South, and set loose, upon the world a community of people who might peradventure, overrun our country and violate the most sacred principles of human society, chastity and virtue." Recognizing those statements as moral cowardice and racism is not an example of presentism.

Yes, just "interesting" ... Still, none of this indicates proactive or prescriptive connection between these ideas and instituting a ban. Avoiding addressing that topic may be OK for polemics and rhetoric, but that isn't where I'm going with this.

31 minutes ago, Gray said:

Brigham Young made his views clear. He thought that black people were descended from Cain via Ham, and subject to a priesthood curse. He was wrong. No mystery about why it started.

Simplistic and incomplete explanations (rather, assumptions) based in similarly incomplete evidence is OK for polemics and rhetoric, but that isn't where I'm going with this.

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, CV75 said:

Yes, just "interesting" ... Still, none of this indicates proactive or prescriptive connection between these ideas and instituting a ban. Avoiding addressing that topic may be OK for polemics and rhetoric, but that isn't where I'm going with this.

I was responding to the suggestion made by others that the rationale for the ban was outlined in Joseph's 1836 letter to Oliver Cowdery. The Book of Abraham makes the connection between the "curse" and the priesthood restriction, using the same rationale that Joseph uses in this letter to justify slavery. How it's polemical to point out that obvious connection is beyond me. 

[Gray]

42 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Ridiculous pretentions to depth are not the same as actual depth. 

Pretentious judgment of others is hardly a laudable thing, especially when neither you nor I could carry Joseph's or Brigham's jockstraps.

You continue to personalize and sensationalize, and thus continue to miss the point.

[Gray]

23 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Simplistic and incomplete explanations (rather, assumptions) based in similarly incomplete evidence is OK for polemics and rhetoric, but that isn't where I'm going with this.

No assumptions necessary. Brigham Young was explicit. He was also wrong.

[Gray]

41 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Yes. That's what our inheritance from European protestantism does to us occasionally.

Indeed.

[CV75]

10 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I was responding to the suggestion made by others that the rationale for the ban was outlined in Joseph's 1836 letter to Oliver Cowdery. The Book of Abraham makes the connection between the "curse" and the priesthood restriction, using the same rationale that Joseph uses in this letter to justify slavery. How it's polemical to point out that obvious connection is beyond me. 

I am responding to the various "connections" that do not indicate proactive or prescriptive connection between these ideas and instituting a ban. There is no ban in his letter, any more than there is a ban in the various quotes from Brigham Young that have been shared in this thread. The Book of Abraham likewise imposes no ban; the understanding that there was a restricted lineage was already been in place, even for him. A doctrinal point, correctly understood or not, does not an LDS priesthood ban imposed in the 19th century make.