Church of the Latter Day Saints explains cause of long ban on blacks in priesthood

[james_davis_nicoll]

They were being racist. Accordingly:

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.

Which takes them a long way from the days when this letter was sent to George Romney.

Comments

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

The stories of Spencer W. Kimball and the 1978 revelation are actually quite moving.

Pity they occurred in, you know, 1978.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

One of my most memorable early encounters with racism as an ideological system (as opposed to kids just hating my first-grade teacher for no fathomable reason) was a long conversation with a Mormon kid on the school bus that was right around 1977 or '78, just before Kimball's turnaround.

I don't recall any theological angle to it, though; just a lot of characteristic statements about how you always see black people at "mob scenes" and they can't stop stirring up trouble. It was probably just as much 1970s Northern Virginia white suburbanite racism as Mormon racism (there were actually quite a lot of Mormons in the NoVa suburbs, so the two dovetailed nicely).

[srogerscat.livejournal.com]

I do agree that they took far too long, but to today's college kids, 1978 was two lifetimes ago.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Gee, I can't imagine where Mormons got it from. There's nothing like this in the Bible. I mean it's not like the New Testament is full of admonishments for slaves to obey their masters and not get uppity, or that there are lots of convenient passages for declaring [people you don't like] are descended from [evil Bible guy].

[avitzur.livejournal.com]

Now I want to start a betting pool for what year the Church will similarly accept gay people and disavow their prior discrimination.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Given that it took until 1978 to admit that black people were people...probably sometime in the 2070s when no one remembers that same-sex marriage was once controversial and the first gay president has completed their first term.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

... first out gay president?

--Dave

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I have to give them immense respect for this particular action. "We were wrong, we were wrong for racist reasons, and we perpetuated societal racism."

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Really though? Maybe in the 1970s, possibly in the 1980s, but at this point it's just kind of absurd.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

No, given that I still see racism (though, granted, subtle racism) on a regular and frequent basis[1], I am aware that not everyone is as enlightened as this little corner.

Churches, for example. In another venue, I'll name names, if you want.

I'll give this church credit even forty years later.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Back when Charlies was still around, the exgf and I got the mixed-race couple treatment from their staff. Being clueless it took me a while to work out why service was so bad just for us and why even though the place was pretty much empty they seated us way the hell at the back by the kitchen. It was like a free trip to 1950!

But in defense of the staff at Charlies, they were racists.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Oh, the [1] was going to be a footnote, and then I thought, "Who cares?"

In the same way that I have just written memories of Charlie's and I suddenly thought, "Who cares? They're gone; let them be forgotten," and deleted it. The memories did not contain any pornography (or erotica even), so they did not even have entertainment value for people who are not me.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's like naming the Pope "man of the year" for acting like a somewhat civilised adult.

"You're not being QUITE as much of a giant tool as the Nazi! Cookie for you!"

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

We are in the era of the non-apology apology. A frank "Wow, we screwed up" is rare, and even rarer from a religious community.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but "you did the bare minimum required to avoid scorn! You receive much respect and praise!" doesn't sit well with me.

[srogerscat.livejournal.com]

How will it sit with the Tea Party movement, I wonder. A public admission of error in race relations....

Context is everything, and the Republican Right fringe will not see this as we do.

[sanskritabelt.livejournal.com]

Lots of tea partiers don't recognize mormons as christian anyway.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Oh, they don't get a hero cookie, or even much respect and praise.

But they don't get scorn: they get a recognition that they've advanced.

It's like, oh, if a certain church that my relatives belong to were to say that women could in fact hold church office. (Not be ministers, but at least sit on the board.) Yes, they're still in a hole, but it's not quite as deep a hole and they would deserve acknowledgement that they've pulled themselves up to 1979. There's a distance to go, but at least they aren't quite as far from the treatment of human beings as human beings. It's progress. I might think it's totally awful and horrid that anybody needs to make that progress, but it is actually progress.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Apologies are just words that don't change anything the Mormon church did in the past. All they're doing is giving their members an excuse to pretend that their happiness isn't built upon a century and a half of evil.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

If you are aware that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has access to a time machine, I'm all ears. Seriously. Some apologies, like the posthumous pardons of the Scottsdale Boys, aren't good enough. But they are better, at least from my point of view, than nothing. The options, standing here in 2013, are to say nothing or say something. (Note that the LDS has admitted black people to the priesthood since 1978, so what could be done has been done.) I think what the LDS said was well-said.

I don't think much of the LDS, their theology, or their customs. However, when a major denomination says "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." it's worthy of notice, and I (note personal I) am favorably impressed. I don't like the Southern Baptists, either, and yet I approve their formal apology for both their support of slavery and for their ongoing racism.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

No, there is another option open to them: They quit and find a system of belief that isn't built upon evil.

[srogerscat.livejournal.com]

Another system of belief? Is that possible? I mean, if you dig down, I'm fairly sure all religious systems have an element of Us and Them, if not outright mistreatment of the Other at their base, admitted or not. Doctrinally pure according to founding principals or not. Again, what is the point here?

[srogerscat.livejournal.com]

Sean O'Hara,

Nothing will change the past. What is your point, exactly? That they should stick to the old thinking because well, why not since it will change nothing they had already done by 1978?

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

You're right, no amount of apologizing can change the past. They're stuck with it. If they want to stop doing evil in the future, good on them, though continuing on with the same organization that perpetrated those evils doesn't give me great confidence in that. But don't apologize and expect the rest of the world to forgive them. The things they've done cannot be erased, and so they cannot be forgiven and their apologies are hollow and meaningless.

[srogerscat.livejournal.com]

A very broad statement. Is, then, any apology not hollow and meaningless?

[cofax7]

It sounds like what you're saying is that the point of an apology is forgiveness.

It is not.

The point of an apology is to acknowledge a wrong, to the person or persons injured, and commit to do better in the future. The value of an apology doesn't depend on the other party's forgiving them, but on the wrongdoer's acceptance that what they did was morally wrong.

So I don't care whether any black Mormons (as the party most wronged) ever forgives the LDS church: that's up to them to do or not, as it pleases. But I do appreciate that the church finally, long past time, understands that it was acting wrongly and has apologized for it. If in future they continue to discriminate against blacks, then we will know the apology was meaningless. But in the absence of such foresight, we can't know that.

Such an apology is appropriate. That's how we rebind the social fabric after it has been torn by wrongdoing.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

"You're not being QUITE as much of a giant tool as the Nazi! Cookie for you!"

It sounds bad put like that, but it's a basic method of training children and other small animals. When they do something you like, they get a reward. Sometimes you have to start small, but positive reinforcement of good behavior works.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Huh. That's more straightforward than I expected official LDS word on the matter to be.