It was receintly bought up in a private conversation that the state of Utah is over 95% caucasion, and is dominated by the Mormon faith. It was also mentioned that the Mormon religion teaches it followers that African Americans are cursed by God and are all going to hell after death. Is this true? :dubious:
http://www.ondoctrine.com/1mormo23.htm
Black people were/are believed by Mormons to bear the mark of Cain, which was interpreted to mean having “dark skin and flat nose.” Lots more on this page. Worth a read.
I’m practically anti-Mormonism & even I know this is a slander.
LDS Church policy was that blacks could not hold the Priesthood & thus could not attain exaltation to Godhood, tho they could be good C’tians (LDS or otherwise) & obtain a blessed place in the lower two aspects of the Heavenly Kingdom. LDS tradition (it was not as far as I can tell absolute doctrine) held that all souls were present with Father God as the material Creation was being planned & that in the war between Jesus & Lucifer as to who was going to be Savior, some souls held back from taking sides. Those souls would be marked by being born with darker skin. Also, darkening of the skin was used as Divine punishment for great misdeeds, such as Cain’s killing Abel or some of the Israelites in ancient America turning from God & persecuting the faithful. The 1978 decision opened the Priesthood to blacks. Btw, there is evidence that Joseph Smith did endow some blacks with the Priesthood in his earliest days of preaching.
Ted, it still sounds fairly racist to me. The very fact that they had to change the doctrine and all that ‘mark of Cain’ nonsense sort of proves it doesn’t? I don’t think the OP is slanderous as much as misunderstood. It’s not like he made it up out of thin air.
Jarbabyj the inferred slander could come from present/past tense issues. An OP that asked whether the Catholic church imprisons astronomers or whether Massachusetts towns hang witches both imply current rather than historic activity/doctrine.
I agree with that, but I also think there’s a slight difference in confusing something for what happened 300 years ago as apposed to, oh, 24
And what is it that finally prompted this “change in doctrine”?
There are two schools of thought here. The first was that it was the change was revealed by God to the head of the Church at the time. The second is that the Church was way behind the times and had to correct a grievous wrong.
Haj
Officially, it was a revelation from God in 1978 that ended the policy of denying the priesthood to blacks. Critics say that it was pressure from the outside. Mormon apologists respond that the outside pressure had begun to wane by that time, and that if the church was going to change a policy due to outside pressure, they would have done it 5-10 years earlier. Critics respond that this is bunk, or that the church waited as long as it did specifically so they could claim it was a revelation and not due to outside pressure. Etc.
The text of the 1978 revelation is now published in the back of the Doctrine and Covenants as “Official Declaration 2” (Official Declaration 1, in 1890, ended the public practice of polygamy).
Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founder, did ordain at least one black man, Elijah Abel, to the priesthood – the Melchizedek priesthood, in fact, which is the higher Mormon priesthood (the Aaronic Priesthood being the lesser one). But the policy of not ordaining African-Americans seems to have come into being pretty soon after that, and Elijah Abel was eventually advised not to exercise his priesthood, though it was never actually taken from him as far as I know.
Early Mormon leaders and prophets, like Brigham Young, taught that the reason for the denial of priesthood to blacks was because they were descended from Cain, and that people were born black because they were less valiant in the pre-existence – sort of middle-of-the-road between the valiant spirits who fought against Lucifer under the command of Jesus, and the completely lost spirits who actively fought against Jesus under the command of Lucifer.
However, evidently this was never “official” doctrine. The church has not issued anything specifically renouncing this belief, saying that OD2 is sufficient, and thus this is still believed by some – I’ve heard people speculate that perhaps as of 1978 all the spirits who were “neutral” in the pre-existence had been born and today’s blacks are no different from everybody else, or that God has finally forgiven them. Not surprisingly, many people feel that OD2 is not sufficient and that the church needs to specifically refute these beliefs. There was a rumor in the mid-late 1990’s that the church was considering making such a statement, but once this rumor was made public by various newspapers, any chance it had was killed.
Mormon apologists usually point to the fact that it wasn’t a traditional skin-color-based racist policy – it didn’t apply to all nonwhites, only to people with African ancestors. People with extremely dark skin were allowed to hold the priesthood if they weren’t of African descent, and people who looked like your average Caucasian were not allowed to hold the priesthood if they had any African ancestors. This, they say, is analogous to the situation among the ancient Israelites, where only one tribe was allowed to be priests. God was always selective about who he allows to hold his priesthood, the logic went.
Anyway, make of it what you will. I’ve met plenty of racist Mormons – out of nine boys I went to church with as a teenager, six told racist jokes and used racial slurs with regularity. But I don’t think that’s any different from the non-Mormon culture here in the western US, and certainly I haven’t seen any indication that Mormons around here are any different from the rest of the population in this regard.
There have been black members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since very nearly the beginning. The church was organized in 1830. Elijah Abel became a member of the church in 1832 within two years of the churchs organization. By the spring of 1836 he was ordained an elder in the church and in December he became a member of the Seventies (an office of the priesthood, just before apostle). Joseph Smith rescued him from anti-mormon mobs in Missouri. He served at least three missions for the church.
Walker Lewis was ordained to the priesthood in 1844.
William McCary was ordained to the priesthood in 1846.
Enoch Abel (Elijah Abels son) was ordained to the priesthood in November of 1900.
Elijah Abel the son of Enoch and grandson of Elijah was ordained in 1394.
Black members in the Philippine Islands held the priesthood prior to 1958.
Black members in Fiji held the priesthood after 1958.
I am not a scholar or church historian, only an interested member. My personal opinion is that in the early days of the church the color of your skin wasn’t an issue, Joseph Smith encouraged inclusion and baptism for black people. Black members were welcomed, held the priesthood and worshipped in the came congregations as everyone else. Based on what I have learned it seems that Brigham Young (who led the church after Joseph Smith was murdered) held views that were acceptable by most of the country for the time, but now are clearly seen as racism.
I was almost 12 in June of 1978 and quite frankly the membership had been waiting and praying and was pleased and relieved when the revelation was announced. In my little world (admittedly a 12 year olds world is small), it was welcome news and while the news and outside people were calling it controversial. It didn’t feel controversial to me in my little world, it felt good and right.
If you would like the “Straight Dope” so to speak I recommend you check out the official site for black members of the church here.
Additionally while not an official site there is an interesting timeline here.
Finally, if you’re really curious, go have a look, wander into an LDS meetinghouse on a Sunday morning or Wednesday evening. You might be surprised at the diversity you find, particularly outside of Utah. If you live in a predominantly white neighborhood you are likely to find a predominantly white congregation. If you live in a diverse community the congregation is going to reflect that diversity. By the same token local leadership of the church is remarkably similar to the diversity of the people in that area. In our area there are a wide variety of colors and nationalities represented in the priesthood leadership including, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. I am personally acquainted with a number of multiracial families in the church as well as a black man who serves as Bishop of a predominantly white and hispanic congregation. A congregation that is growing under his leadership, by the way. I’d think that indicates, at least in this one area that what you’re hearing is hogwash compared to what is actually happening within the church in practice.
On the other hand, the Pope only recently admitted that they screwed up in the Galileo matter.
I work with a black Mormon. I’d assume the rest of the people at his church like him just fine.
Fortunately he has a sense of humor: he pretty much shrugged it off when I asked him if the Mormon Special Underwear came in a thong model, too.
<south park>
Why would they make that up?
dumb dumb dumb dumb
</south park>
Then again…
“Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up. But I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you’re so high and mighty you couldn’t look past my religion and just be my friend back. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. Suck my balls.” – Gary - South Park - “All About Mormons”
So why have black people not been drawn to the LDS church in Utah? Is Utah more ‘white’ than any other state? If it is, is it purely due to historical settlement?
Here in NZ and in Samoa and Tonga, Pacific Islanders and Maori are drawn to the church and pastors are locals as well. I’m not sure about in the islands or islanders living in NZ but I personally think that in NZ, for Maori, the LDS church offers security, relative wealth protection in terms of housing, education and jobs to an ordinarily underpreviledged group.
The story I heard at the time of the policy change was that the church was afraid the policy was hurting their missionary work in Brazil, where a high percentage of the population is of African descent.
The corollary presumably being that it was a previous revelation from God to institute racism in the first place.
How do people bring themselves to believe this stuff? :smack:
Off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
Wasn’t he one of the Super Friends?
The Catholic church was horribly abusing children in their orphanages in the 20th century, and was molesting children THIS DECADE. I hate when religions play “holier than thou” with each other. There’s good and bad things about every religion, why can’t people just leave it at that?
(Well, I don’t know for a fact if there’s anything good in Satanism, but I don’t know much about it.)
Inasmuch as it is the fruitcakiest quasi-major religion of all time, how can it shock that Mormonism contains a nice chunk of racism?
Purge the meme! Purge the meme!