Not quite, Nate

Nate’s post on John Taylor is interesting, and he is certainly right that the Taylor sermon contains an “unfortunately racist passage.” But let’s not make it worse than it is. The passage did not say that “a negro, a Hottentot, or an Indian” had “nothing Godlike in them.” When Taylor said, “There is nothing Godlike in them,” he appears to have been referring to swearing and drinking (identified as “these practices” in the prior sentence), not to the groups of people from the prior sentence. In other words, don’t swear or drink, you Mormon men, if you aspire to be like God. Unfortunately, we didn’t add “don’t be a racist” to that list until later.