A History of (Threatened Racial) Violence
Dear members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
Given the current political environment, for the sake of progress and in the same spirit of questioning that built your religion, I have a simple inquiry — who is the singular, signature figure of your church?
If its Jesus Christ, keep in mind He is the same for many other Christian sects and churches.
If its Joseph Smith, keep in mind he is the same for many offshoots and sects of the Church he founded.
That leaves Brigham Young — church prophet, territorial governor and namesake of many Church-owned institutes of higher education, whose statue at his self-named private university was recently painted red and marked “racist”; amid rumors that the LDS Church was pondering changing the school’s name.
Following this incident, many of LDS faithful were outraged and condemned the vandalizing and scandalizing of his name with the catch phrase “Not my prophet.” My devoted grandmother summed it as:
“He wasn’t a racist.”
While I condemn the demolition, I must condone the label as accurate. As a product of his time, to quote a popular LDS-themed website, “It wasn’t that he was uniquely racist; it’s that he wasn’t uniquely not racist.”
Yet he led others to take it a step further: that associating or empathizing with “the other” could be fatal.
My issue here is that unfortunately Brigham Young’s declared doctrine on race — based on the concept that those with melanin-enriched skin are inferior to those with melanin-deficiency — trickled down through subsequent prophets and apostles to affect my generation is what is now a negative way.
Brigham Young espoused a type of “white privilege” that determined that access to the LDS Church was determined by pre-life righteousness; a preposterous notion seeing as the Church originated among those of European descent; plus, the fact things can go differently even for those born into active LDS families. It created a sort privilege that sheltered my existence growing up in Utah and took living out of state to finally wake up and shake off its lies.
Now is the time for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially in Utah, to wake up and realize that racist doctrines were real, were claimed to be from God, and that accepting this truth is the only way towards true religious freedom — the kind of truth that Jesus said would set us free.
Now is the time to realize personal revelation is sometime more accurate than prophetic revelation; that prophetic revelation for an entire religious organization always moves glacially when compared to personal revelation for organizing self, family and local governance.
Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.
As recorded in the Journal of Discourses, forerunner to publishing LDS Church Conferences in print, Brigham declared the “law of God in regard to the African race” — that they are “the seed of Cain”, the Devil-loving brother of Abel and son of Adam and Eve; that intermarriage was strictly prohibited and its punishment would be “death on the spot”.
While this declaration was shocking for a leader of a Church to pronounce, in a nation built on a premise of freedom of religion, it was certainly his prerogative. Yet makes it more insidious was that Brigham was not only President of the LDS Church, but Governor of Deseret Territory; the precursor to the state of Utah — and that even there he espoused his racist ideology.
In January of 1852, during a territorial legislative session, Young declared:
I will remark with regard to slavery, inasmuch as we believe in the Bible, inasmuch as we believe in the ordinances of God, in the Priesthood and order and decrees of God, we must believe in slavery.
This colored race has been subjected to severe curses, which they have in their families and their classes and in their various capacities brought upon themselves. And until the curse is removed by Him who placed it upon them, they must suffer under its consequences; I am not authorized to remove it.
I am a firm believer in slavery…
I know it is right, and there should be a law made to have the slaves serve their masters, because they are not capable of ruling themselves…
When a master has a Negro and uses him well, he is much better off than if he was free. As for masters knocking them down and whipping them and breaking the limbs of their servants, I have as little opinion of that as any person can have; but good wholesome servitude, I know there is nothing better than that.”
In other words, he viewed slavery as just one of those curses “this colored race” deserved because of the sin of their supposed original ancestor. With that, on the following 4th of February, slavery became legal in the territory with the passing of the ‘Act of Relation to Service’. The next day, Governor Young gave it his religious stamp of approval:
Now I tell you what I know; when the mark was put upon Cain, Abel’s children was in all probability young; the Lord told Cain that he should not receive the blessings of the priesthood nor his see, until the last of the posterity of Able had received the priesthood, until the redemption of the earth. If there never was a prophet, or apostle of Jesus Christ spoke it before, I tell you, this people that are commonly called negroes are the children of old Cain.
What a strange precedent for both a civic and religious leader to set! This proto-state of Utah became a slave territory, not only for African-Americans but Native Americans too — as one month later, on March 7th, 1852, the ‘Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners ’ was passed regarding their slavery. This type of European superiority was nothing new; our nation was practically built on this principle.
Hence three years later, the New York Herald quoted Brigham Young as stating: “You must not think, from what I say, that I am opposed to slavery. No! The negro is damned, and is to serve his master till God chooses to remove the curse of Ham…”
From this it is clear in his mind, the “negro” was damned to be a slave because he was not only the “seed of Cain” and apparently the curse of Ham, son of Noah, was upon them as well — he who was cursed from the Priesthood… because he was black? Because he married an Egyptian? The answer is no. It was because he saw his father naked because “the Bible tells me so”. (Read your Scriptures, people.)
So, it makes sense in 1897 for Apostle George Q. Cannon to second these notions by writing in his journal:
The question also came up whether a white man who was married to a woman having negro blood in her veins could receive the Priesthood. I explained what President Taylor had taught me when I was a boy in Nauvoo concerning this matter; he had received it from the Prophet Joseph, who said that a man bearing the Priesthood who should marry or associate with a negress, or one of that seed, if the penalty of the law were executed upon him, he and her and the offspring would be killed; that it was contrary to the law of God for men bearing the Priesthood to have association with that seed.”
Come again? A white man marrying a black woman should be killed, his wife murdered, and children annihilated? And apparently, this was trickled down from Joseph Smith, founder and first prophet of the LDS Church, down to John Taylor, third prophet-president and successor to Brigham Young.
Because obviously, African blood is filled with sin. As Apostle Rudger Clawson observed in his diary in 1902:
A young man — a member of the church — had sought the hand of one of the daughters of Zion in marriage. She desired to be sealed in the temple. It was ascertained, however, that his mother was tainted with negro blood — she being one-fourth negro — while his father was the son of a prominent family in Israel. Would that be a bar to his entrance to the house of the Lord? It was decided that he could not have the blessings of the house of God.
This denial of blessing continued almost 40 years later, when Apostle George F. Richards declared publicly in General Conference:
The negro is an unfortunate man. He has been given a black skin. But that is as nothing compared with that greater handicap that he is not permitted to receive the Priesthood and the ordinances of the temple, necessary to prepare men and women to enter into and enjoy a fulness of glory in the celestial kingdom.
What is the reason for this condition, we ask, and I find it to my satisfaction to think that as spirit children of our Eternal Father they were not valiant in the fight.
Apart from believing that the Biblical curses upon Cain and Ham were continued through those of African descent, there is additional justification not found anywhere in the Bible that rears its ugly head: the idea that spirits who were not valiant to God are who inhabit the bodies of humans of African descent. This concept continually led other Church leaders to denounce even marrying such spirits.
In a speech to LDS girls, Apostle J. Reuben Clark warned in 1946:
We should hate nobody, and having said that, I wish to urge a word of caution, particularly to you young girls. It is sought today in certain quarters to break down all race prejudice, and at the end of the road, which they who urge this see, is intermarriage. That is what it finally comes to. Now, you should hate nobody; you should give to every man and every woman, no matter what the color of his and her skin may be, full civil rights. You should treat them as brothers and sisters, but do not ever let that wicked virus get into your systems that brotherhood either permits or entitles you to mix races which are inconsistent. Biologically, it is wrong; spiritually, it is wrong.
None of these statements disagree with Brigham Young in the slightest; if anything, they wholeheartedly agree with the foundation that he laid. Yet that same year, many educated members of the Church began to directly question their leadership’s line of thinking and declared doctrines.
In a letter to one of those members, Virgil Sponberg, the First Presidency — the LDS Church President and his two counselors — under George Albert Smith (a descendant of Joseph Smith’s cousin) replied:
From the days of the Prophet Joseph even until now, it has been the doctrine of the Church, never questioned by any of the Church leaders, that the Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel. Furthermore, your ideas, as we understand them, appear to contemplate the intermarriage of the Negro and White races, a concept which has heretofore been most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs till now. God’s rule for Israel, His Chosen People, has been endogamous.
Modern Israel has been similarly directed. We are not unmindful of the fact that there is growing tendency, particularly among some educators, as it manifests itself in this area, toward the breaking down of race barriers in the matter of intermarriage between whites and blacks, but it does not have the sanction of the Church and is contrary to Church doctrine.”
In other words, it had never been questioned by Church leaders that “Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel”. And in fact, believing themselves to be “modern Israel” they believed God was directing them to do the same.
But how that is related to the Israelite concept of not mixing with the tribes of old Canaan makes no sense in comparison to not mixing with those of African descendant — except they truly believed God was telling them to do the same thing. Your Church truly believed African-Americans were not worthy of the fullness of their Gospel, and that intermarriage was “repugnant” in His God’s sight.
To Dr. Lowry Nelson in that same year, the First Presidency issued the same letter with an added preamble:
“Your position seems to lose sight of the revelations of the Lord touching the preexistence of our spirits , the rebellion in heaven, and the doctrines that our birth into this life and the advantages under which we may be born, have a relationship in the life heretofore.”
It is here that the scriptural curses of Cain and Ham are merged with prophetic commands (“never questioned by any of the Church leaders” — George Albert Smith) and pre-mortality speculation.
That same First Presidency further cemented such ideas when, a few short years later, they issued an extensive proclamation not about families or Jesus Christ, but regarding those of African descent:
The attitude of the Church with reference to the Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the Priesthood at the present time. The prophets of the Lord have made several statements as to the operation of the principle.
“Not a matter of… policy but direct commandment from the Lord”. Jesus Christ was apparently declaring such doctrines to be true. And which the prophet would they cite as evidence? Not John the Baptist or Jesus Christ; Joseph Smith or John Taylor, but Brigham Young.
President Brigham Young said: “Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a skin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their fathers rejecting the power of the holy priesthood, and the law of God.
To add insult to injury, this First Presidency concluded that:
The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the pre-mortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality and that while the details of this principle have not been made known, the mortality is a privilege that is given to those who maintain their first estate; and that the worth of the privilege is so great that spirits are willing to come to earth and take on bodies no matter what the handicap may be as to the kind of bodies they are to secure; and that among the handicaps, failure of the right to enjoy in mortality the blessings of the priesthood is a handicap which spirits are willing to assume in order that they might come to earth.
Now a second declared doctrine comes into play, regarding the conduct of spirits who, for one reason or another, chose to inhabit African bodies and even accepted the condition of being denied the priesthood. They go on to add insult to injury by stating:
Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes.”
No injustice? This was a lie, one perpetuated into the next several decades during which the Civil Rights movement began to gather steam. Yet it was future prophet David O. McKay who actually admitted in a letter around that time: “I know of no scriptural basis for denying the Priesthood to Negroes other than one verse in the Book of Abraham, however, I believe, as you suggest, that the real reason dates back to our preexistent life.”
Strange to deny scriptural basis, when that is exactly what Brigham Young had relied on to justify his racism. Yet decades after his demise, apostles are claiming no scriptural basis for denying Priesthood ordination to men of African descent.
Just a scripture “translated” by Joseph Smith; based on a papyrus that contained nothing of the actual writings of Abraham. McKay further postulates, based on ideas of forerunners who declared it as doctrine publicly and privately:
When, therefore, the Creator said to Abraham, and to others of his attainment “You I will make my rulers,” there could exist no feeling of envy or of jealousy among the million other spirits, for those who were “good and great” were but receiving their just reward, just as do members of a graduation class who have successfully completed their prescribed courses of study. The thousands of other students who have not yet attained that honor still have the privilege to seek it, or they may, if they choose, remain in satisfaction down in the grades.
So even the scripture McKay quotes says nothing about segregation, about denying intermarriage and deadly consequences of doing so — just a hunch that some spirits chose to be born pre-prejudiced, and that the Lord God revealed to these prophets that these “down-grades” were those of African descent.
That same year, that same Apostle Richards stated it more directly: “The Negro race have been forbidden the priesthood, and the higher temple blessings, presumably because of them not having been valiant while in the spirit. It does not pay to be anything but valiant.”
Presumably? There is only presumable evidence that LDS Church leaders were right? Yet this line of thinking continued to spread across church culture, from doctrinal books read by members, private Church educational institutes to missionaries serving to the field to media publications for the world at large.
Apostle Bruce R. McConkie defined in his definitive tome Mormon Doctrine:
Negroes in this life are denied the Priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty. (Abraham 1:20–27.) The gospel message of salvation is not carried affirmatively to them . . . negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, particularly the priesthood and the temple blessings that flow therefrom, but this inequality is not of man’s origin. It is the Lord’s doing, is based on his eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate.
Anyone who has ever been to a predominately African-American Church can clearly see that the “gospel message of salvation” is definitely “carried affirmatively to them.” What makes me sick about all this, from Brigham Young to through successors and supporters is this single idea: God is racist.
That this was “the Lord’s doing”. In 1954, speaking off the cuff to teachers of religion at the college level — i.e. Church-paid professors in their private schools — Apostle Mark E. Petersen blasted blatant racist religious and personal beliefs. At this point, it should not be a shock when he rails against intermarriage and proscribes dangerous consequences, quoting, as always, the ubiquitous Brigham Young:
God has commanded Israel not to intermarry. To go against this commandment of God would be in sin. Those who willfully sin with their eyes open to this wrong will not be surprised to find that they will be separated from the presence of God in the world to come. This is spiritual death…
The reason that one would lose his blessings by marrying a Negro is due to the restriction placed upon them. “No person having the least particle of Negro blood can hold the Priesthood”. It does not matter if they are one-sixth Negro or one-hundred and sixth, the curse of no Priesthood is the same. If an individual who is entitled to the Priesthood marries a Negro, the Lord has decreed that only spirits who are not eligible for the Priesthood will come to that marriage as children. To intermarry with a Negro is to forfeit a “Nation of Priesthood holders”.
Then Petersen continues his racist rampage, saying things like “I think I have read enough to give you an idea of what the Negro is after… From this, and other interviews I have read, it appears that the Negro seeks absorption with the white race.”
He then switches gears to justify segregation, giving several instances in the Bible and other LDS publications in which the Lord righteously segregated, claiming:
When the Lord chose the nations to which the spirits were to come, determining that some would be Japanese and some would be Chinese and some Negroes and some Americans, He engaged in an act of segregation…
Who placed the Negroes originally in darkest Africa? Was it some man, or was it God? And when He placed them there, He segregated them…
He even equated skin color with poverty levels:
Now we are generous with the Negro. We are willing that the Negro have the highest education. I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world. But let them enjoy these things among themselves. I think the Lord segregated the Negro and who is man to change that segregation?
It reminds me of the scripture on marriage, “what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Only here we have the reverse of the thing — what God hath separated, let not man bring together again.”
I’m sorry, is this a Grand Wizard of the KKK or an LDS Church Apostle? Was this declared somewhere in the southern United States, or indeed in Utah? The sad fact is, while such statements wouldn’t be out of place with either of those former circumstances, it is the latter. He continues:
This Negro, who, in the pre-existence lived the type of life which justified the Lord in sending him to the earth in their lineage of Cain with a black skin, and possibly being born in darkest Africa–if that Negro is willing when he hears the gospel to accept it, he may have many of the blessings of the gospel.
In spite of all he did in the pre-existent life, the Lord is willing, if the Negro accepts the gospel with real, sincere faith, and is really converted, to give him the blessings of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. If that Negro is faithful all his days, he can and will enter the celestial kingdom. He will go there as a servant, but he will get celestial glory.
Again, he quotes verses from Smith’s Book of Abraham, but a direct reading of that scripture says nothing of the sort. It makes no reference to Cain, only to Ham and only as a means of preserving “the blood of Caananites”. As the King of Egypt came from Ham, that bloodline could not be preserved; so apparently those descending from this pharaoh were denied the Priesthood. It seems silly to me that David O. McKay would be clueless about any scriptural basis for this putrid principle.
Again, not those born in “darkest Africa” but descendants of the King of Egypt.
Ancient Egypt, we’re talking about. That’s all.
At the root of all this is the idea of European superiority. LDS racist theology was not constrained to only those of African descent but included Native Americans — seen in Mormon theology as descendants of Lamanites, Jewish offshoots described in the Book of Mormon whose skins were made dark because of their wickedness. Pre-earth life didn’t even factor in, evidence in descriptions that state they were once “white and delightsome” and thus part of the “chosen seed.”
In 1960, Spencer W. Kimball — the same prophet who finally declared the “Negro” could hold Priesthood — spoke in Church-wide General Conference proffering proof of the natives ability to gain ‘whiteousness’:
At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl — sixteen — sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents — on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather.
There was the doctor in a Utah city who for two years had had an Indian boy in his home who stated that he was some shades lighter than the younger brother just coming into the program from the reservation.
These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.
This type of racist culture against anyone not white, not of European descent, became the norm; taught freely to missionaries in the field or freely dispensed to the media inquiring about our beliefs:
“I suppose, and you may often have heard missionaries say it, or have asked the question: “Why is a Negro a Negro?” And you have heard this answer: “They were neither hot nor cold, so the Lord made them Negroes.” This of course, is not true. The reason that spirits are born into Negro bodies is that those spirits rejected the Priesthood of God in the pre-existence. This is the reason why you have Negroes upon the earth.” - Apostle Alvin Dyer, March 18, 1962, Oslo Mission Conference, available for download at https://archive.org/details/ForWhatPurpose
“I would not want you to believe that we bear any animosity toward the Negro. ‘Darkies’ are a wonderful people, and they have their place in our church.” – Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, excerpt from a Look Magazine interview; Oct 22, 1963, p. 7
Consistent with the future LDS involvement with Proposition 8 in California, leaders of the Church even tried to use racist views to affect state government. In a rare 1967 letter between LDS Apostle Delbert Stapley to George Romney (yes, Mitch’s dad!), then governor of Michigan, the former uses his position as a church leader to manipulate Romney religiously and personally regarding his support for Civil Rights:
After listening to your talk on civil rights, I am very much concerned. Several others have expressed the same concern to me. It does not altogether harmonize with my own understandings regarding this subject; therefore, I thought to drop you a note — not in my official Church position, but as a personal friend. Only President McKay can speak for the Church.
As it has been seen, President McKay had spoken on this issue, and he was very much in line with his predecessors. Stapley continues his personal, un-official LDS position by quoting official Church positions on the matter, including two Joseph Smiths: Joseph Smith, Jr. and Joseph Fielding Smith.
Yet the history of threatened racial violence continues in which this Church leader truly believes that anyone who supports social justice and racial equality basically deserves to die:
When I reflect upon the Prophet’s statements and remember what happened to three of our nations presidents who were very active in the Negro cause, I am sobered by their demise. They went contrary to the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith; unwittingly, no doubt, but nevertheless, the prophecy of Joseph Smith, those who are determined to pursue a course, which shows an opposition, and a feverish restlessness against the decrees of the Lord, will learn, when perhaps it is too late for their own good, that God can do His own work, without the aid of those who are not dictated by His counsel,” has and will continue to be fulfilled.
In this respect, let me give you a personal experience. A friend of mine in Arizona — not a Church member — a great champion of the colored race — came to me after my call into the Twelve, and acknowledged President McKay to be a Prophet of God. He wanted me to ask President McKay to inquire of the Lord to see if the Lord would not lift the curse from the colored race and give them the privileges of the Priesthood.
I explained to him that the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro, which denied him the Priesthood; therefore, it was the Lord’s responsibility — not man’s — to change His decision. This friend of mine met a very tragic end by drowning. He was a most enthusiastic advocate of the colored cause and went about promoting for them all the privileges, social opportunities, and participation enjoyed by the Whites.
Let’s not forget his KKK-like clause:
It is not right to force any class or race of people upon those of a different social order or race classification. People are happier when placed in the environment and association of like interests, racial instincts, habits, and natural groupings.
What irks me is how Stapley plays innocent, like he is not trying to manipulate government decisions — except that because the governor is a member of his religion, he gives him a silence threat of mortal danger and death if he decides, perchance, to run contrary to the Lord. He concludes with as much:
Please understand I have a great respect and admiration for you, but because of my feelings I thought I should express myself as I have so you will know my personal position.
This letter is for your personal use only (also Lenore) , and is not to be used in any other way. It does not require an answer.
With best wishes and success to you and Lenore always, I am
Faithfully your friend and brother,
Delbert L. Stapley
Sorry Delbert, you issued a veiled threat to your “friend and brother” George Romney. I can only imagine Marlon Brando reading that letter, in short: “If you support civil rights, you may meet a fate like JFK. You might drown, who knows… but hey, these are just my feelings. No reply necessary.” This chilling letter feels more like a mafia shakedown than a profession of personal feelings.
What sickens me most is that during a time of civil rights progress in our nation, leaders of the LDS Church outright opposed to it. They sincerely believed doing so would doom individuals and nation — instead of actually listening to educated members of their congregation who knew better, instead of actually listening to civil rights leaders as George Romney did, they buried their head in doctrinal sand until forced to reckon with the11th hour, 1978 announcement that the ban on African-American men receiving the Priesthood and temple ordinances was lifted by President Kimball.
Yet that same year, when stopped outside of LDS Church headquarters, Apostle LeGrand Richards issued the most ignorant lie of the era:
“The Lord has never indicated that black skin came because of being less faithful.”
As has been proven, all claims of pre-mortality unfaithfulness leading to African heritage were declarations form the Lord. Yet adding insult to injury, in the same breath he admits — admits! — racism towards Native Americans; despite the fact both peoples were historically believed to be racially and spiritually inferior by the very same Church to which he belonged!
“Now, the Indian; we know why he was changed, don’t we? The Book of Mormon tells us that; and he has a dark skin, but he has a promise there that through faithfulness, that they all again become a white and delightsome people. So, we haven’t anything like that on the colored thing…”
This bullshit untruth is what current members of the LDS Church like to propose: we never had racist ideology, we never felt those of African descent were inferior, Joseph Smith loved African-Americans, blah, blah, blah — but forget or are uniformed of instances of legal slavery in Utah, doctrinal decrees and bodily harm direct and veiled regarding those who believe in racial equality, intermarriage and all around refuse to believe the melanin in someone’s skin determines past righteousness and future privileges.
Which leads to the impact of this on my life. Born in 1983 in Utah, one year after my birth a book entitled A Way to Perfection was published; espousing ideas by Joseph Fielding Smith, former Apostle and Church president that sums up everything taught from Brother Brigham to Bruce McConkie; from Joseph Smith to Fielding Smith himself:
Not only was Cain called upon to suffer, but because of his wickedness he became the father of an inferior race. A curse placed upon him and that curse has been continued through his lineage and must do so while time endures. Millions of souls have come into this world cursed with a black skin and have been denied the privilege of Priesthood and the fullness of the blessings of the gospel. These are the descendants of Cain. Moreover, they have been made to feel their inferiority and have been separated from the rest of mankind from the beginning. We will also hope that blessings may eventually be given to our negro brethren, for they are our brethren — children of God — notwithstanding their black covering emblematical of eternal darkness.”
Wrong. Plain evil and wrong. Black skin is not a sign of inferiority, it is a sign of ferocity. It is not a disadvantage but a biological advantage to those born near the equator of this world or descended from the same. In this sense, it is not “emblematical of eternal darkness” but of eternal sunshine and light for skins that block out sunlight because their bodies are filled with an abundance of that life-giving goodness.
Yet that does not mean their souls are not filled with the most incredible amount of light this world has ever seen. You cannot tell me that souls like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Angelou, Darryl Rucker, even the one and only Beyoncé are not filled with the greatest light and holiest spirits possible. If they were not valiant spirits in the world before our own, then we are all “cursed” and “damned.”
All of that now irks me to the core when I read statements from my 1999 patriarchal blessing — a blessing I received from a man who barely knew me, that would form the foundation of my youth, called by the Church to be a “patriarch” like Abraham of old — that say things like:
You were valiant and faithful in the spirit world and earned the privilege and the right to come down into this world with the gospel at your fingertips…”
I understand what caused this man to declare his knowledge of my previous spiritual life, one that even myself could not remember: the fact I was born of European ancestry, based on what his lifelong Church leaders had preached from the pulpit, stated in speeches and used to guide governmental decisions.
But having “the gospel at my fingertips” (read: LDS Church doctrine) almost didn’t occur; as I was born to a less-active LDS mother and father who at the time wanted nothing to do with the Church. The only reason for my baptism was long before I was eight years old, my father eventually joined the Church to be sealed to his new LDS wife and then got legal custody of us.
It makes me think: If I hadn’t joined the Church, if I didn’t have their gospel at my fingertips, would it mean I had actually been less valiant to the Lord in the life before this one?
That was LDS thinking before I had even been born regarding those of African and Native American descent; that either righteousness in pre-earth life or mortal existence is what determines skin color; and that skin color could ultimately determine their degree of righteousness in this life — a perfect catch-22.
What’s next — confirming the “doctrine” that “women” are not allowed to hold the Priesthood based on scriptural precedent? Nadine Hansen, an LDS feminist, confirms the selectiveness of LDS leaders in choosing, for example, which Pauline sexist ideas they believe in and which they reject (Women and Priesthood, Dialogue, Vol. 14, No 4). But often they double back and like McKay did, declare a lack of scriptural precedent and simply say they aren’t sure why, just that God wants it that way — take for instance when LDS Church spokesperson Michael Otterson told the BBC: “Holding offices such as Bishop and Apostle — there is no scriptural precedent for that, and so we don’t ordain women to those positions.”
Or what follows, the idea that those of the LGBTQ community were unrighteous spirits? Or that they chose their sexuality as a “spiritual handicap” but through faithfulness they can become ‘straighteous’? What a precarious and slippery slope early LDS Church leaders established — no wonder current leaders are in a hurry to distance themselves from such notions; and yet segregationist and biased thinking remains.
Brothers and sisters, for we are all brothers and sisters before God, it is time to accept that YES, Brigham Young and Joseph Smith and John Taylor and many beloved apostles of this church were indeed RACIST.
Should this word be emblazoned in crimson at base of their statues? NO. But should the Church rename institutes of higher education called after racists and even places where actual racist remarks were voiced and heard, and derisive doctrines were actively preached? I think the answer should be a resounding YES.
Should I also get a new patriarchal blessing, one in which my righteousness in this life is not determined by a past I can’t even remember, but by the good I can do in this live alone? Perhaps, but first I must rejoin the Church I left over doctrines such as this that I know to be out of line with Gods of Light and Love.
My personal revelation and the revelations of many of our so-called “woke”, Millennial Mormons is at this point more in line with a kind and just God than the glacially-paced prophetic revelations for an older generation unwilling to change their minds and hearts, having had their minds made up by the unrepentantly racist LDS prophets and apostles who shepherded their spiritual upbringing.
Then again, perhaps the Church someday call as patriarchs the elderly versions of this generation; those who reject past racist notions and violent threats — those who will be able to tell any child of God from any nation, with any shade or tone of skin color that they too “…were valiant and faithful in the spirit world and earned the privilege and the right to come down into this world with the gospel at your fingertips…”
