:rolleyes:
The fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves serves to illustrate the fact that people are flawed. News flash, that.
Was there doctrinal or scriptural reason to exclude blacks from the church? No.
Were there (flawed) people who acted to exclude blacks from the church on the excuse of doctrine? Yes.
Was this (flawed) behavioral trend reversed? Yes.
Not good enough. Women and blacks have been second class citizens since the Mormons started. It is based on a false premise . It is not a throwaway tenet. How anyone could follow a belief system that is fundamentally wrong beats me. It shows a lack of understanding . You can not ignore the history of the church and say so what we got it right now. They were forced to. What they believe behind the church doors may be something different. You can not just decree bigotry away.
I lived in Salt Lake in '78, and most of my family is LDS, and I don’t remember anyone at the time expressing relief or gratitude at the change in doctrine. I do remember one of my uncles casually dropping the word ‘jigaboo’ during a conversation about the Portland Trailblazers one Thanksgiving dinner. Pretty much the whole family was there, and no one said a word or even flinched as far as I could tell. I remember being pretty pissed at him, and even more pissed at myself for not having the guts to say anything to him about it, but I had no illusions that the consensus around the table was going to be on my side.
Actually, LDS Prophets aren’t flawed when it comes to interpreting the will of God.
OK. I’ve never lived in Utah, so what do I know? The people I’ve asked were probably mostly Californians. There are some big cultural differences.
Hm, I’m not sure about that statement. Prophets are people. They have flaws. And they don’t know everything there is to know. I believe that prophets do their best to tell us what God tells them to; that doesn’t mean they know it all. AFAIK God waits around for us to catch up enough that he can give us more knowledge without us screaming too much about it. I’d call the 1978 revelation a case in point, as well as a sharp lesson against the speculation/folk doctrine too many Mormons have indulged in.
Another note: above, I noticed a comment about Mormons being pro-choice or not. You might be interested in this discussion on the question. Personally I would say that you can be ‘pro-choice’ and a faithful Mormon, although Mormons obviously aren’t big fans of it. But many people, including some Mormons, think that abortion is a sad and tragic thing that should be legal for several reasons.
http://www.carm.org/lds/lds_negro.htm
I don’t know but this seems pretty clear about the teaching of Mormons and the blacks.
Oh yes, CARM and the Tanners, those are very objective sources. For a little balance, let’s add BlackLDS.org and the Genesis Group, shall we?
Hello dangermom, nice to hear the point of view of the religious person. In your milieu, what is the opinion of people about women being allowed to serve in the priesthood?
I was an active Mormon in 1978 - 19 years old. In my home, we cried for joy. Looking back at it, I suspect my dad was a little bit less joyful. He was very quietly bigoted; I didn’t know that until Mom let something slip about one of his attitudes.
**Dangermom ** has captured the general Mormon view on this better than I could.
Another quick thought.
Something I remember from my good-Mormon-girl days was the idea that God would reveal stuff as the people became ready for it. I have no idea if there’s any doctrinal or scriptural backing for this. Thus, Mormons were apparently ready to accept blacks in the priesthood in 1978.
How long have you got? 
Opinions cover the whole spectrum, I’d say, but the majority are OK with it. There are certainly women (and men) who feel that it’s an injustice which should be righted, or who feel that things are at least unfair. There are people who feel that it’s not necessary for women to have the priesthood, but that it is necessary to root out sexism within the LDS Church. There are people who are fine with things as they are, though obviously we could all be better to one another, because we always fall short.
I find it hard to explain things like this to people who aren’t LDS, actually–so much context is hard to explain–but I’ll try. I do not personally feel that it’s an injustice or that things have to be changed. When I was younger I did, but I have since changed my thinking. It is my feeling that women and men are equal and interdependent. We need each other. The LDS vision of the universe has marriage as a central ideal, and I think that it’s perhaps easiest to see in marriage. My husband and I need each other; there are things he can’t do without me, and things I can’t do without him. This is a good thing. Luther said that marriage is the school of love–that is, that within a marriage is where you really start to learn to truly practice and understand love (I do not mean romantic love here, but agape). I would extend that to include the church, too (an idea I have blatantly lifted from Eugene England).
Anyway, back to the priesthood. For myself, I do not feel less valued as a woman or a second-class citizen of my church. I do have friends who have struggled, but I also have many more friends who do not feel oppressed. I do not feel that I need to have the priesthood in order to fulfil my potential and to become who I should be. I have other jobs that are just as much my own (if somewhat harder to put a label on) and which are just as important. If it’s important, I do consider myself a feminist of the non-doormat variety.
You might enjoy looking through Feminist Mormon Housewives, which has a broad mix of people annoyed about the status quo and OK with it. I am sometimes exasperated by what some people post, but on the whole it’s an interesting blog which I’ve been known to post to (though not lately, trying to cut down). The current second article, incidentally, is on race issues. You’ll find other feminist-leaning blogs in the Bloggernacle links on the side if you care to go looking.
I hope that helps, fuzzy though it was. I’m happy to try to answer more questions, but I can’t claim to be a great writer or doctrinal scholar.
That’s the general idea. I can’t think of any scriptures about it right now, but if you like I’ll go hunting. You might be interested in this classic essay on the subject: The Mormon Cross.
It made the newswires?
In the linked article, he uses “faith” to mean “Church,” “belief,” and “doctrine.” So as I said, it is hard to know exactly what he is saying. But one thing is very clear from the link: He equivocates and dissembles whenever he is asked a direct question that makes him uncomfortable. So, I repeat. I withdraw my question. Until he can answer simple questions with direct answers it will be impossible to know if he was telling the truth or not.
You mean the announcement back in 1978? AFAICT yes, it did. It was announced in June, so not at one of the big General Conferences (April and October, everybody watches the leaders of the LDS Church on TV, satellite, etc.). Most of the people I’ve asked seem to have heard it over the radio or TV news somehow. But I wasn’t really around so I couldn’t tell you from personal experience.
Huh. Well, to be fair, in 1978, the news on the radio was something that tended to fly underneath my personal radar. I remember hearing about the death of Elvis, and that’s about it.
Yeah, I caught your rephrasing of the question the second time around, but I recognized it only after I responded. Poster’s regret-induced cringe #1.
Later, I realized that if I had used “doctrine” rather than “gospel”, then it would have been less ambiguous. Many people put many different definitions on “gospel”, in my experience. Poster’s regret-induced cringe #2.
In other words, :smack:
In discussing matters of religion, it’s aggravating that there’s so much ambiguity in the vocabulary. All in all, I think I would have been more precise if I had said nothing, since others have made my point far more eloquently than I could have.
At any rate, I think your question has a lot of merit. I have no reason to think that Mitt is inherently racist, but I think poorly enough of his politics that I automatically suspect anything he says. His other statements certainly fail to represent most Mormons I know. It’s a shame that the most visible face of our church at the moment is this pandering buffoon.
Thanks dangermom. I appreciate your point of view, though I don’t agree with the logic that since you don’t personally want to be a member of the priesthood, it’s OK that all women are denied that opportunity.
I asked the question because I was wondering if, years from now, God reveals that it’s OK for Mormon women to become priests, people will be saying that they had secretly wished for this all along.
My thoughts exactly: dangermom, I was wondering if you have any female friends or contacts who would like to be a priest. What do they say to you and what do you say to them?
First, it’s important to understand that holding the priesthood (note the odd turn of phrase) in the Mormon church is different than becoming a priest in the Catholic church. It’s more generic, for want of a better word. All worthy Mormon males hold the priesthood – there’s no vocation or anything like that. Being ordained to certain levels of the priesthood qualify a boy or man for certain types of functions in the church, but it’s all lay-driven and all worthy priesthood holders - males - are expected to participate in some way. For that matter, so are all women, albeit in different functions.
Second (and this is where it becomes obvious that I’m no longer a believer), the Mormon culture is very good at programming its children to accept the roles laid out for us. Are there women in the church who would like to hold the priesthood? Most certainly. Are there many? From my experience, probably not.
I suspect **Dangermom ** will have a slightly different answer.
I don’t think I said that. I tried to say that some people aren’t happy with how things are, and a lot are fine with it.
Dunno. We’ll see when, and if, it ever happens, I guess. Personally I don’t see it happening, but who knows?
I think I said above that I do have some. What do I say to them? Well, I guess mostly I talk about ordinary life stuff with them, just like with all my other friends–LDS or not. These days I live further away from them than I used to; back in the day we had a monthly discussion group where we’d argue and stuff. Now I mostly do my arguing over the Internet. It looks a lot like the Dope, only politer. Or I read Dialogue; I can usually find an old friend there or in Sunstone. 
And I like Exponent II, Segullah, stuff like that.
shrug I dunno. I mean, my parents are converts, and so are a good many of my friends. I wasn’t raised in a “traditional” Utah LDS home (my parents were known as the ward hippies when I was a wee tot), and the LDS Church is now far too large to be able to call stereotypical Utah Mormons ‘typical,’ even if very many of them exist (which I’m not too sure about). I said above that I came to be OK with not having the priesthood after some time–it was actually our little discussion arguey group that did that for me. Anyhow if you like, I’ll ask my one friend–she’s my age and joined the LDS Church in college, after exhausting the missionaries.
Sorry, I misunderstood.
Thank you for the insight, dangermom. A few more questions, if I may, but if you don’t want to answer that’s OK.
Why was it a big deal that black men weren’t allowed to be priests, but it’s not a big deal that women aren’t allowed to be priests? (You said before that “The leadership of the church asked all members to pray for the change” [to allow black men to be priests]). I’m guessing that the leadership is not concerned about women being unable to hold the priesthood.
Are there things that (in your opinion) make a woman unfit to hold the priesthood?
If a friend of yours, let’s suppose a woman who wants to hold the priesthood, asked you to pray for that change in church policy, would you do it?