The somewhat defensive, scripted interview with Elder Christofferson after the policy was publicized and before the November 13 “clarification” letter made no claim like President Nelson’s of January 10 with respect to the origin of that policy. Perhaps President Nelson’s statement referred only to the “clarification” letter. If so, then it seems it would amount to little, if anything, more than the Lord’s confirmation to the 15 that, yes, the unfortunate policy should now be cleaned up at least to that extent. So far as I have been able to discover, none of the rest of the 15 have made public statements consistent with President Nelson’s comments on confirmation of the policy as the “mind and will of the Lord.” This is in great contrast to the statements made by members of the 12 after the 1978 revelation. Perhaps President Nelson misspoke. Perhaps others’ keeping quiet on the subject is evidence of disagreement (and unwillingness to publicly disagree) and not evidence of agreement. Perhaps that is a form of “sustaining” President Nelson.

I am grateful that at least President Uchtdorf and Elder Ballard have acknowledged in recent General Conferences that the Church and its leaders have sometimes made mistakes inconsistent with our best principles. So have I.

“You speak of a whole mass of previously unknown evidence which has been brought forward since 1979
which make Esplin’s paper sorely outdated. I must have missed this avalanche of new knowledge disproving his conclusions.” The penultimate paragraph in comment 93 covers the most salient complications to Esplin’s paper that have come to light. Like I said, if you want the most recent work on the subject, you should read W. Paul Reeve’s “Religion of a Different Color” and Russell Stevenson’s “For the Cause of Righteousness.” The footnotes to the Church’s “Race and the Priesthood” also have some excellent sources (and I note that they reference Kimball’s paper several times, while making no mention of Esplin’s).

“Have you added to the standard works, two new books of scripture “Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism”, and “Rough Stone Rolling”.” I am truly at a loss here. Neither of these have even been mentioned in this entire discussion. On the contrary, the canonized standard works have been referenced and examined repeatedly.

“They do a good job of casting doubt into the minds of the unwary.” If quality research and a faithful approach to our history casts doubts into your mind, you might want to reconsider what your faith is based in. Our faith should be in divine perfection, not fallible mortality. My faith has nothing to do with the mistakes of prophets, only that they are called of God. And I know they are. I find it highly unfair that you have repeatedly questioned by insinuation the testimony and loyalty of those who disagree with you. Our discipleship may look different than yours, but that alone is no grounds for assuming that we are somehow less faithful to the kingdom of God. None of us have questioned your faith near as I can tell, so kindly return the favor.

I think you are being disingenuous in dismissing Ronald K Esplin’s paper as being out of date, I could say that some of Edward L Kimball’s own paper uses conclusions from Lester Bush and others which pre-date Dr Esplins’ In fact I conclude that his thesis is given as an alternative way of thinking.to the others. If we are being honest Edward Kimball says that there is no firm evidence that the ban originated with Brigham Young.

You speak of a whole mass of previously unknown evidence which has been brought forward since 1979
which make Esplin’s paper sorely outdated. I must have missed this avalanche of new knowledge disproving his conclusions. That is of course unless you mean the mass of stuff that has come largely from D Michael Quinn and his fellow Signature Book team. If you are relying on this sort of “evidence” you need to look to the source of whence it came..

Anyway this ping-pong game that we are playing is getting very boring to me and I am sure to others who are reading it. You are convinced that Brigham Young made a mistake which the Lord allowed to continue for 126 years which deprived many of His children from sacred temple rights. I am convinced that Presidents’ Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were restating the mind and will of the Lord. So lets leave it to see if the Lord in future vindicates His Prophets or not.Have a good day.

“I would have thought that the findings of this supposed committee would have been documented some where, if so where?” The Church hasn’t released minutes of leadership and committee meetings in many decades. You’re free to ask them why. I wish they were published as much as the next person.

“You say that the Bruce R McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith also said that there was no scriptural evidence of the ban.” Indeed. When pressed by Eugene England in the 1960s, Joseph Fielding Smith conceded that there was no scripture requiring a member to believe that blacks were cursed. “I have always assumed that because it was what I was taught, and it made sense, but you don’t have to believe it to be in good standing, because it is not definitely stated in the scriptures. And I have received no revelation on the matter,” he said. Elder McConkie in 1977 gave President Kimball a long memorandum in which he concluded that there was “no scriptural barrier to a change that would give priesthood to black men.” Both men seemed to have changed their views later in their life.

“By the way your last answer to this (Comment 85) to put it bluntly reads like the philosophies of men without much scripture.” The comment is riddled with scripture. It’s an analysis of scripture. It’s literally a discussion about what scripture says. I can’t do any better than that. Dismissing the analysis by implying it is somehow unfaithful without engaging it or even explaining yourself is a cheap tactic.

I read Dr. Esplin’s paper. I’m sure it represented his bast thinking at the time, but it has been more than 30 years and we have learned a lot more about early Church history. For example, the paper does not once deal with the black men who were ordained in the 1830s/40s. This includes Black Pete (1831, OH), Elijah Abel (1835, OH), Joseph T. Ball (1837, MA), Isaac van Meter (before 1837, ME), and Walker and Enoch Lewis (Fall 1843; Nov. 1844, MA). These men’s ordinations were known of by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. In fact, another black man, William McCary, seems to have been ordained in 1846 at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Brigham Young met him several times, and when McCary asked about his holding the priesthood, Young referenced Acts 17:26 (“[He] hath made of one blood all nations of men”) as evidence that there was no problem. Given that Dr. Esplin now works with the JSPP, as you state, I am sure that all of this evidence was simply unknown at the time. Its discovery and incorporation into subsequent work makes the 1979 paper sorely outdated now.

“If we were all to follow this advice there would not be any need to have this discussion, we would all sustain the Prophet and accept that he was speaking the mind and will of the Lord.” No, that’s not what Brigham Young said. If we all followed this advice we would know when the prophet was speaking the mind and will of the Lord and when he wasn’t. By study and by faith I have learned that the priesthood and temple ban was not of God. (Incidentally, that’s another problem that has to be answered: why were black women kept from the temple because of a ban on black men holding the priesthood?) Because of this, ultimately it does not matter when the ban originated. Currently, all relevant evidence that we have points to the ban beginning with Brigham Young and hardening throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But that makes no difference to the witness I have already received.

So the real question we should be discussing is to determine when a Prophet is speaking as a Prophet and not assume that sometimes what they say is not the mind and will of the Lord.. Brigham Young himself I believe gave us an answer:-

“I remembered the words of Brigham Young: Were your faith concentrated upon the proper object, your confidence unshaken. your lives pure and holy, every one fulfilling the duty of his or her calling according to the priesthood and capacity bestowed upon you, you would be filled with the Holy Ghost, and it would be as impossible for any man to deceive and to lead you to destruction as for a feather to remain unconsumed in the midst of intense heat. And then this

:” I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are being led by him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give their leaders if they know for themselves by the revelations of Jesus Christ that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know by the whisperings of the Spirit of God to themselves whether their leaders are walking in the way the Lord dictates or not.”
Elder Harold B. Lee, Conference Report, October 1950, Third Day—Morning Meeting 130.)

If we were all to follow this advice there would not be any need to have this discussion, we would all sustain the Prophet and accept that he was speaking the mind and will of the Lord.

Without being impertinant Jack of Hearts did you enquire of the Lord and receive an answer telling you that Brigham Young originated the Priesthood ban or were you relying on what others said?

I certainly grew up being taught and believing in prophetic infallibility, believing that all (and I mean ALL) general authorities agreed with each other on all points of “doctrine” at all times and across the ages. I am no longer that simple and naïve. Now, I grow frustrated with members who not only espouse those views but who insist that all who don’t hold those views are either apostates or on the express train there.

I’m new to the bloggernacle, but it has helped me immensely to find so many faithful and intelligent people who view the world and the gospel the way I do. It is the best thing that has happened to me in the last year, spiritually and emotionally. At times when the ultraorthodox do things like label people like Teryl Givens a “tare” and try to separate him out from the wheat, I take comfort in the assurance I have that the Church ultimately belongs to us (i.e. the thoughtful). I’m sure that there will be lots of “correlated milk” dispensed on Sundays for the foreseeable future, and I understand many of the reasons for that. I am glad that meat is available in other places, and I thank many of you for providing meat to me on a regular basis, even though I’m still learning to chew.

As demonstrated above, it is apparently possible to believe both the Church’s official position today: (“Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous 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. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”) and to simultaneously believe that some of the theories advanced in the past actually are taught by the scriptures, that the racist ban itself was inspired, etc. I personally think it’s pretty clear that those views are not compatible. I do look forward to the day when all is revealed.

I don’t pretend to know what the Church’s position on the current “policy” will be decades or centuries from now. It does appear to me that if (and this is a big “if”) the Church at some point comes out and disavows all theories advanced in the past regarding homosexuality, there will be at least some who will continue to argue that the policies themselves were ordained of God even though all of the “reasons” for such policies have been disavowed.

I hope that it is clear that when we talk about the “priesthood ban” we are using that as shorthand for a policy that was more than that, i.e. a policy which among other things prohibited members of a certain race from receiving saving temple ordinances in this life. Most non-members don’t understand that, and we are not quick to highlight it. In that sense, the modern priesthood ban can’t really be compared to the ancient system that limited the priesthood to the tribe of Levi.

From a recent article over on BCC by Mike Austin: God cannot speak to people in ways that go beyond their culture’s understanding of the universe. … Let’s look at an easy example of this phenomenon. In Joshua 10:13, we are told that the Lord, at Joshua’s request, made the sun stand still to give a military advantage to the people of Israel. We know, of course, that no such thing could have happened, since the sun does not actually revolve around the Earth. If the sun, appeared still in the sky, the Lord would have to have made the EARTH stand still. But if the writer of Joshua had said that, nobody would have had the foggiest idea what he meant, since, for most of human history, thinking that the Earth moved around the Sun has been a sure sign of insanity.

We are to the point in history that we can identify at least some of the cultural understandings from the 1800s that may have prevented people from better understanding God. The much harder task is trying to identify the problematic cultural understandings in our day.

I will say one thing (but only one) in Jeff Walsh’s defense. He’s mentioned that he’s from the UK. I think it’s fair to say that people in the UK don’t see race the same way that Americans do. They simply don’t have the same (troubling, to say the least) history with race, nor are the current day aspects of race as contentious in UK society as they are in US society. That cultural difference probably affects the way some of this is understood.

Finally, let me share my personal favorite talk on prophetic fallibility. It’s J. Reuben Clark’s talk, given when he was a member of the FP, entitled When are the Writings and Sermons of Church Leaders Entitled to the Claim of Scripture? The contextual answer, not obvious from the text itself, is this: When JFS (then the lead apostle) published his anti-evolution book and spoke on the same, his writings and sermons were NOT scripture and Pres. McKay sent JRC to politely “correct” him on that point. The talk itself is a fantastic view of scripture, prophets, and the revelatory process. It’s also helpful when some ultraorthodox tries to answer the question with something like “comments BY made to the legislature regarding the priesthood ban are obviously scripture” or “every time any GA speaks its scripture”.

I do not believe that the priesthood ban was based on sound principles, but was an extension of our racist American society and beliefs. It took us a long time to get past it. It is discouraging to see the same teachings come up again in these days.

We need to learn to reinterpret our writings about Cain, Ham, curses, marks, blackness and whiteness, and learn to understand them differently so as not to malign people because of the amount of melanin in their skin. Your post said that “some premortal spirits were less than noble and great. Without any injustice, these lesser spirits were sent to earth through the lineage of Cain…” This promotes a view of humanity that I find offensive and counter to God’s plan for all of us. These are teachings that I thought that we had left behind. These are the teachings that reflect the “limited understanding” that Elder McConkie spoke about. Rather than expend energy defending the indefensible, rather than asking our children to look down on dark-skinned people as the children of Cain, rather than suggesting that black (not white) Africans have “lesser spirits,” we should learn to understand these scriptures in a way that doesn’t offend and insult the dignity of all of us.

It is much, much easier for me to accept that such teachings reflected the uninspired racism of our culture than it is for me to believe in a God that would promote and teach such things. This is the “garbage” that I speak of that must be left behind.

I have just seen your missive so I will take another couple of minutes to respond. Explain trolling to me was this meant to be insulting?

I think you need to reread the whole of Elder McConkie’s address to the institute people where your quotation comes from. You have taken his words out of context, What he said we should forget are the REASONS for the priesthood ban, supposing it was because of conduct in the pre-existence. Not that the ban was a mistake. I think that you need to think hard and long before you accuse Brigham Young and the early Church as being racist, this says to me that you have not done a great deal of research into thw early history. It is a little ironic for someone from the US to be preaching to the UK about being racist.

Just to close I would quote from Edmund Burke in his “Great Thoughts” “The only thing necassary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” I do not pretend to be good but I will not stand by and see the Lord’s annointed prophets maligned. Good Morning.

The historian I was referring to was D Michael Quinn who was employed by Leonard Arrington as a research assistance for a number of years which gave him access to the Church archives. Following a number of articles he wrote and published critical of the Church he was dismissed. He also lost his Job as a proffessor at BYU the reasons for this can be read in an article called “An Open Letter To D Michael Quinn” by Fred C Collier. Decency prevents me from going into details but they are referred to in this article. Because of this he not only lost his job he also lost his family and he became almost unemployable. He was however recruited by George Dempster Smith the proprietor of Signature Books and became a director of the company They publish his books very critical of the Church and which are eagerly bought by the anti-Mormon brigade. He is the one who claims that he found in the archives material which the brethren are covering up and do not want the general membership to know about. What he does not tell is that along with the faithful history of the Church there is a huge collection of diaries, books and other material which the Lord commanded the Church to collect published by enemies of the Church. (D&C Sec 123). Included in this is evidence of all the atrocities comitted against the Church, articles written by disgraced excommunicated apostates such as John C Bennett, William Law, even some once prominent men in the Church such as Oliver Cowdrey, Martin Harris, David Whitmer, Fawn Brodie, Philastus Hurlbut, Ezra Booth along with Eber D Howe’s book, “Mormonism Unveiled” the Tanners etc. etc. My question is why would the Church be interested in publishing this stuff?

This is the reason for the “evidence” in quotes. Oh and by the way it was you who said that the Lord had changed His mind, not me, it seems amusing to me that you would accuse the Lord of making a mistake.

Coming now to your statements that David O McKay supposedly set up a committee to see if there was scriptural evidence for the P/H ban, or was it George Albert Smith who set it up, (see footnote 25) The results of the findings was supposedly overheard by Leonard Arrington or was it Homer G Durham. It all seems like if’s and but’s to me. I would have thought that the findings of this supposed committee would have been documented some where, if so where?. So to base your argument on this is a little tenuous.

You say that the Bruce R McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith also said that there was no scriptural evidence of the ban. You must not have seen Elder Smith’s book “Answers to Gospel Questions where he definitley quotes the Book of Moses and Abraham and says that this was were the ban was instituted. (Vol 2 ps 175-178. Elder McConkie quoted the same in his book Mormon Doctrine (page 527) So much for there being no scriptural evidence. By the way your last answer to this (Comment 85) to put it bluntly reads like the philosophies of men without much scripture.

You reccommended that I read Edward L Kimball’s atricle, jsut to say I am quite familiar with it but by choosing some speculations of his to back up your thesis is a little bit like clutching at straws.

Finally I would rccommend you read Ronald K Esplin’s paper on “Brigham Young and Priestood Denial to the Blacks; an Alternative View”. He happens to be at the head of the Joseph Smith Papers Project so his opinion should carry some weight Toward the end of his paper he says:-

“Finally, if priesthood denial to the Blacks were taught in Nauvoo councils during 1843-1844, and consequently came to the Church (and in 1852 to the public) through Brigham Young and the Twelve, it would hardly be a new or unknown phenomenon. Many of the teachings and practices formalized during Brigham Young’s administration can be traced to private councils where Joseph Smith taught the Twelve in detail about the affairs of the Kingdom. In fact, it seems far more compelling to accept that possibility, one in harmony with what we know of Brigham Young, and of Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, than to continue to believe–in the absence of documentation–that Brigham Young made a fundamental innovation of his own during those tunultuous years of succession, temple building, and exodus, espeially in view of the fact that the private meetings where Joseph Smith taught the full pattern of temple ordinances (and related doctrines) would have provided the ideal forum and the motivaion for discussing it. We know the early brethren were concerned about priesthood lineage and about who would have access to temple ordinances. Even if Joseph did not raise the question himelf, it is not difficult to envision someone asking about the Blacks and Joseph providing the answer. It is my feeling that the doctrine was introduced in Nauvoo and consistently applied in practice at least by 1843, although it would require additional documentation to raise the possibility from the realm of the probable to the certain.
(The Historians Corner, BYU Studies, vol. 19 (1978-1979), Number 3 – Spring 1979 398.)

Like you suggested to me I suggest to you that you read the whole paper.

It is 0:55 in the morning over here in the UK well past my bed time so I will wish you good morning

Remember in the movie “The Empire Strikes Back?”: there is that scene where Han Solo and his airship hide from the Empire by “parking” in the ship’s garbage. When the ship gets ready to fly off, it jettisons the garbage.

When President Kimball announced the new priesthood policy in 1978, he was trying hard to jump into the future, and he hoped that all of the garbage associated with a race-related priesthood ban could be left behind. The racial related garbage was supposed to be left, floating in space, left behind while we jumped ahead. But some of you insist on bringing it back again and again.

Remember what Elder McConkie said about the new priesthood policy:

“… It is time disbelieving people repented and got in line and believed in a living, modern prophet. Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.”

Did you hear that? Forget EVERYTHING!

Please don’t drag up our old garbage about race and the priesthood. Such teachings does us severe damage, because these teaching encourage us to be racists. Please don’t burden future Mormons with this racial garbage. Leave it behind, and jump to the future.

“Proposed Scriptural Basis
Looking for scriptural support, Church leaders found statements in the Bible and the Pearl of Great Price that allowed the conclusion that after the Flood the Pharaoh of Egypt was both black and cursed as to the priesthood, inviting the inference that Pharaoh was cursed as to the priesthood because he was black. The gaps in logic were bridged with supposition.
• God cursed Cain for killing Abel and placed a mark on him.
• Cain’s descendants were black. (The mark, therefore, is assumed to be blackness.)
• Blackness came upon the Canaanites. (They are assumed to be descendants of Cain.)
• Pharaoh, descended from Ham and his wife, Egyptus, had Canaanite blood. (Thus Cain’s bloodline survived the Flood.)
• Pharaoh, although blessed by Noah for righteousness, was cursed as pertaining to the priesthood. (Thus denial of priesthood is independent of righteousness in mortality and must derive from a premortal cause.)
• Some premortal spirits were noble and great (Abr. 3:22). (Thus some premortal spirits were less than noble and great. Without any injustice, these lesser spirits were sent to earth through the lineage of Cain to experience mortality, but without priesthood.[6])

[6]There were and are, however, holes in this line of reasoning. For example:
• Cain’s scriptural punishment was personal, that the earth would not yield its strength to his tillage and that he should be “a fugitive and a vagabond” (Gen. 4:12). Nothing was said in the scriptures about denial of priesthood.
• The mark placed on Cain is not specified and, whatever the mark, it is not identified as a curse, since its purpose was to keep Cain from being killed (Moses 5:39–40).
• No scripture says that either Cain’s punishment or the mark placed on him would pass to his descendants.
• Although it is said that Cain’s descendants were black and shunned by others (Moses 7:22), their blackness is not identified as the mark placed on Cain.
• The scriptures say of the Canaanites that “a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan” (Moses 7:8), and they provide a plausible explanation for the blackness in that they slaughtered the people of Shum (Moses 7:7–8). The scriptures do not identify the Canaanites as descendants of Cain, despite the fact that both groups were in some way “black.” If the mark of Cain were blackness and Canaanites were descended from Cain, as supposed, it does not make sense to speak of blackness “coming upon them” as though it were a new event. Further, there is no reference to priesthood with respect to these Canaanites. Enoch was told not to preach to the Canaanites, but this, too, is in the context of their having slaughtered the people of Shum. Ham’s wife apparently belonged to the Canaanite people (Abr. 1:21–22), because Pharaoh, a descendant of Ham and his wife, Egyptus, was “a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth . . . and thus, from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse [of blackness] in the land” (Abr. 1:21, 24).
• The Book of Abraham speaks of Pharaoh, a king of Egypt, as belonging to a “lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood” (Abr. 1:27). The traditional explanation was that this lineage was the black lineage, but an alternate explanation may be that in a patriarchal society Pharaoh came through a female line, and it was this lineage that deprived him of the right to priesthood. We are told that Pharaoh descended from Noah, through Ham, but his lineage is further described only as coming through Ham’s daughter by Egyptus (Abr. 1:21–25). As Pharaoh claimed a right to priesthood through Ham, he sought to skip the gap in his genealogy, but he could not. In contrast, when Abraham makes claim to priesthood he is careful to trace his own paternal line back to Noah. He says that by his righteous living “I became a rightful heir, a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers . . . even the right of the firstborn . . . through the fathers, unto me” (Abr. 1:2–3). See Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000), 425–28, 578–87 (see 1st ed. at 134–37).”

Thus, the priesthood ban cannot be conclusively proven from this text. Additionally, there is no explanation anywhere to explain why black women were barred from the temple during the same period.