I am pasting the entire text of this Salt Lake Tribune article below, so that you can fathom for yourself what makes sense. I have also highlighted the link to the LDS Church's recent announcement.
What I find interesting is the strategy. The Church has faced immense criticism for its prior ban on ordaining blacks. The current position must inevitably be that the ban was wrong and not directed by God. Choosing to repudiate its earlier doctrine, the Church must blame somebody - Joseph Smith or someone else. Joseph Smith followed the teachings of the Old Testament which indisputably forbade blacks to hold priesthood or enter the temples, but once the Church pulls the rug out from under its polygamous founder, the Book of Mormon will doubtless be the next thing to go.
So, for now the Church is indicting polygamist, pioneer and governor, Brigham Young, asserting that he was imperfect and misguided (along with all of his successors through Harold B. Lee). Denouncing a vast body of its own theological underpinnings, I suppose the Church must now rename itself - "The Community of Christ", or "The Church of Latter-day Lemmings", and rename BYU: "Thomas S. Monson University".
Let me tell you what, I believe, is the pathetic fallacy of this latest step. Brigham Young was not perfect. Jesus was/is perfect. Nevertheless, Brigham Young did a great job of preserving and growing the Church. Without Brigham Young, Salt Lake City and the modern Church would not exist. This new message says,
"People, don't put any faith in anything Brigham Young said. He was a kook - - polygamy, Adam-God, blood atonement, denying the priesthood to blacks, preaching against miscegenation, etc., etc. !! Put your trust in the modern, current leaders and in the doctrinal revisions they make. The members of the Church in Brigham Young's day were sorely misguided. They saw him as a 'prophet', and a prophet he wasn't. Contrastingly, you modern-day members are utterly safe. Just follow the utterances of the Kimballs, Hinckleys and Monsons, and you will go straight to the Celestial Kingdom. Thomas S. Monson is a more legitimate prophet than Brigham Young [even though he has never claimed or published a single revelation]."
Renn.
Mormon church traces black priesthood ban to Brigham Young
Religion • Black LDS praise the move; historian calls it another step in the “maturation” of the Utah-based faith.
By peggy fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: December 10, 2013 09:39AM
In the past, the LDS Church has said history isn’t clear on why blacks were banned from its all-male priesthood for more than
a century.
Apparently, it now is.
The
reason, according to a newly released explanation from the Utah-based
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is rooted more
in racism than revelation.
“Race and the Priesthood,” posted Friday on the church’s website, lds.org,
also jettisons any beliefs developed through the years to defend
the prohibition. And those findings are drawing praise from black
Mormons and historians.
“Hallelujah,”
says Catherine Stokes, a black Mormon who joined the LDS Church in
Chicago and now lives in Utah. “I view this as a Christmas
gift to each and every member of the church — black, white or whatever
ethnicity.”
The
ban began under Brigham Young, second LDS president, who was influenced
by common beliefs of the time, reports the article. It did
not exist during the tenure of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, who opposed
slavery and personally ordained several African-Americans.
The
essay is part of an ongoing series of “gospel topics pages” published
by the LDS Church to give Mormons resources for understanding
complex issues such as whether Mormons are Christians and differing,
sometimes-contradictory accounts of Smith’s early visionary experiences.
The
church-produced article on race argues that “there is no evidence that
any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s
lifetime.”
But
the record clearly shows that, in 1852, Young — Smith’s immediate
successor — “publicly announced that men of black African descent
could no longer be ordained to the priesthood, though thereafter blacks
continued to join the church.”
More
than 125 years later, in 1978, the LDS Church, under then-President
Spencer W. Kimball, lifted the ban, but some Mormons have continued
to promote theories used to defend the former exclusion — “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.”
The
new statement says the LDS Church “disavows the theories advanced in
the past ... [and that ] church leaders today unequivocally condemn
all racism, past and present, in any form.”
Margaret
Young, who teaches English at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young
University, believes all Mormons should carry a copy of the statement
with them.
“Make
three-by-five cards of Friday’s church statement on race. Edit
carefully if you need to. Laminate it, and keep it handy —in a purse
or wallet,” Young, who co-produced a documentary on blacks in the
church, wrote to her Facebook friends. “We are now empowered to answer
folks who perpetuate old justifications for the priesthood restriction
in ways they won’t argue with. We are the messengers
to give wings to the statement.”
What is most important about the statement on race to Mormon historian Richard Bushman is its perspective.
“It
is written as a historian might tell the story,” Bushman says from his
home in New York, “not as a theological piece, trying to justify
the practice.”
By
depicting the exclusion as fitting with the common practices of the
day, says Bushman, who wrote “Rough Stone Rolling,” a critically
acclaimed biography of Smith, “it drains the ban of revelatory
significance, makes it something that just grew up and, in time, had to
be eliminated.”
But accepting that, Bushman says, “requires a deep reorientation of Mormon thinking.”
Mormons
believe that their leaders are in regular communication with God, so if
you say Young could make a serious error, he says, “it
brings into question all of the prophet’s inspiration.”
Members
need to recognize that God can “work through imperfect instruments,”
Bushman says. “For many Latter-day Saints, that is going
to be a difficult transition. But it is part of our maturation as a
church.”
Some top Mormon leaders are already pushing in that direction.
“And,
to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in
the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been
things said or done that were not in harmony with our values,
principles or doctrine,” Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the
faith’s governing First Presidency, said in October’s LDS General
Conference. “I suppose the church would be perfect only if
it were run by perfect beings. God is perfect, and his doctrine is
pure. But he works through us — his imperfect children — and imperfect
people make mistakes.”
While
Mormons applaud the statement on race, some believe the church needs to
go much further. Some want an apology; some just want wider
awareness.
“The
disavowal says to the church and to the world, ‘Everything we taught
you justifying the restriction is wrong,’ ” says Marvin Perkins,
a Los Angeles-based Mormon co-author of the DVD series, “Blacks in the
Scriptures.” “But what would be ideal would be for every member to be as
well-versed regarding the truths of the priesthood ban and scriptural
truths regarding skin color and curses as
they are with the Joseph Smith story and the First Vision. We need it
repeated over and over in church curriculum in manuals and over the
pulpit. That’s the way this will be resolved.”
Stokes, though, believes this latest step is worth celebrating.
Indeed,
the website states, “in theology and practice, The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints embraces the universal human family.
Latter-day Saint scripture and teachings affirm that God loves all of
his children and makes salvation available to all.”
This
essay, Stokes says, “should enable people to move forward in concert
with the second great commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
After all, she says, echoing Mormon scripture, “all are alike unto God.”
pstack@sltrib.com
