{"id":47583,"date":"2024-07-15T16:10:10","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T22:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=47583"},"modified":"2024-07-15T16:10:10","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T22:10:10","slug":"the-1978-priesthood-revelation-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/07\/the-1978-priesthood-revelation-process\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1978 Priesthood Revelation Process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The term “revelation” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a word with multiple interpretations. As a general term in the Church, it means that the Godhead has communicated something to someone – i.e., the Holy Spirit has communicated an impression or thought, an angel has visited with a message, a vision has occurred, etc. Then there are what some scholars have called dialogic revelations – written documents in the voice of the Lord, such as those found in the Doctrine and Covenants. This latter definition has led to some expectation that major communications from God will be presented in the form of a written document with words attributed to the Lord, but that has rarely been the case outside of Joseph Smith and John Taylor’s times as prophets. For example, Official Declaration 2 is a press release stating that a revelation occurred that made the priesthood available to all worthy men in the Church, and it stands as the primary written record of the revelation. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint blog From the Desk<\/em>, Matthew L. Harris discussed how the 1978 priesthood revelation<\/a> came about and why it was a process rather than a sudden stroke of inspiration. What follows here is a copost to the full interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Matthew L. Harris offered a brief explanation of the 1978 revelation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The priesthood revelation is one of the most significant events in the history of the Church. On June 9, 1978, President Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation stating that Black Latter-day Saints could now enjoy the full privileges of the Church. This included priesthood ordination for Black men and temple ordinances for Black couples and families.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Between 1852 and 1978, the ban had barred most Black men from the priesthood and most Black people from the temple ordinances of initiatory, endowment, and sealings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s helpful to know how revelation is approached in the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency in the 20th century Church to better understand the 1978 priesthood revelation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rarely have the Brethren described how institutional revelation works in such a clear and succinct manner as First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown. President Brown described it as a process, which nuances how the Church typically describes it. …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When a question arises today, we work over the details and come up with an idea. It is submitted to the First Presidency and Twelve, thrashed out, discussed and re-discussed until it seems right. Then, kneeling together in a circle in the temple, they seek divine guidance, and the president says, \u201cI feel to say this is the will of the Lord.\u201d That becomes a revelation. It is usually not thought necessary to publish or proclaim it as such, but this is the way it happens.<\/p>\nHugh B. Brown<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This apt description describes beautifully how the Revelation occurred when the Brethren lifted the ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over a period of many months, President Kimball \u201cthrashed [it] out\u201d with the apostles, prayed with them, then moved to overturn the ban as he felt directed by God. The culmination of this defining moment occurred on June 1, 1978, when the prophet reached a consensus with the Brethren.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is the process of the leading quorums seeking revelation in the Church today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some may ask, “why was a revelation necessary to end the policy?” Harris offered this explanation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With the exception of First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown, all of the Brethren believed that lifting the ban would require a Revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown claimed it was a policy, which meant for him that it could be lifted at President McKay\u2019s discretion. And while McKay himself also believed it was a policy, he claimed it would require consensus among the Brethren to overturn something so entrenched in church doctrine and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other Brethren\u2014led by Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Ezra Taft Benson, and others\u2014all proclaimed the ban a doctrine. They shared President McKay\u2019s belief that it would require a Revelation. This was both practical and moral for them, for a Revelation meant consensus, and consensus meant that the president couldn\u2019t do it unilaterally. … <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Doctrine and Covenants states that the Brethren need to be unified when they produce new doctrine or announce new policy changes for the Church. Achieving this, of course, is not always easy because the Brethren bring their own personalities, biases, and experiences when they are called into the Twelve. But the scriptures ensure that they will be unified when they announce something significant like the end of the priesthood and temple ban.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In this case, the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency sought to find unity under the Spirit’s guidance as a form of revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reaching that type of consensus, however, was difficult. There were hard-liners in the Quorum of the Twelve like Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Mark E. Peterson, and Ezra Taft Benson who viewed the teachings that were used to support the ban as unchangeable doctrine. An investigative report by Elder Adam S. Bennion of the Quorum of the Twelve in 1954 outlined in detail that the historical and scriptural basis of the ban were shaky at best, which may have convinced President David O. McKay that the ban was a policy (not a doctrine) and thus could (and probably should) end. McKay was never able to win over the hardliners and the ban was not lifted during his presidency. The Bennion report did, however, plant a seed with Spencer W. Kimball that led him to proactively work to end the ban:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He [Spencer W. Kimball] once said the ban \u201cmay have been a possible error,\u201d and he supported President Brown\u2019s attempt to ordain a Black man to the priesthood in 1969\u2014about four years before he became the church president. He also asked several close friends and advisers about what they thought about lifting the ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, it was on his mind and during the early stages of his presidency he began asking hard questions to his colleagues to help them see the wisdom of lifting it. … <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major claims of Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality<\/em> is that President Kimball sought to overturn the ban the moment he became the prophet in 1973.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spencer W. Kimball had long felt uneasy about the ban. The prophet witnessed the pain it caused Black Latter-day Saints in South America and elsewhere when they asked to serve church missions or marry in the temple, so he knew how the policy had affected them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It took time and effort to win consensus among the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency that was necessary to end the ban. President Kimball put in the required effort:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When he realized he could not achieve a consensus to lift the ban he sent one of the biggest hold-outs, Elder Mark E. Petersen, to Ecuador on a church assignment. The other hold-out, Elder Delbert L. Stapley, was in the hospital gravely ill. (He would die two months after the Revelation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only other hold-out on the day of the Revelation was Elder Ezra Taft Benson. He wanted to \u201ctable\u201d the discussion, but President Kimball overrode him and insisted that the Brethren talk about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the president knew that he needed Elder Benson\u2019s support, so he called on Elder McConkie and others for assistance. As I note in\u00a0Second Class Saints<\/em>, President Kimball \u201cwon over\u201d Elder McConkie in the spring of 1977 and then enlisted his support to convince Elder Benson that it was time to lift the ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t just Elder McConkie that Kimball won over in the weeks and months leading up to the ban. He also met privately with each of the Brethren to seek their input about ordaining Black men to the priesthood. He listened patiently as they expressed their concerns, and he gently persuaded them that it was time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

President Kimball had worked with Elder McConkie for some time, since he saw him as one of the hard-liners that least inclined (but most important) to sway. This included sending him on repeated assignments to Brazil to observe the effects ban in a society with a lot of interracial mixing (and where they were building a temple). He followed that up with questions to guide Elder McConkie to the conclusion that they should end the ban. Elder Peterson and Elder Stapley were surprised that the rest of the quorums were united in their decision, but were willing to sustain them in that unity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saints 4<\/a> came up in the interview as well, with Matthew L. Harris responding to a question about how the story might be told in the official institutional history of the Church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It will definitely be a challenge to address all of the nuance in a smaller word count, but I\u2019m hopeful sources like Second Class Saints<\/em> will prompt the authors to treat the revelation like the process that it was rather than an event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, the \u201cevent\u201d of the 1978 priesthood revelation follows the traditional account in which the Brethren showed up at the Temple on June 1, 1978, prayed, felt inspired to lift the ban, then triumphantly removed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But looking only at the event obscures what actually happened. The priesthood revelation was a decade-long process in which President Kimball felt inspired to lift the ban the moment he became the president. But he had to secure buy-in from the rest of the Brethren first. He wanted unity to enact the momentous policy and doctrinal change, rather than risk the fractures that occurred in the aftermath of the 1890 plural marriage manifesto. It took him five years to convince the Brethren to lift the ban. …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, my hope would be that \u201cSaints 4\u201d will engage the new evidence rather than adhere to traditional narratives that don\u2019t align with the historical record.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We’ll have to see how the history comes out in the end, whenever it is published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on the 1978 priesthood revelation<\/a> and the process that it entailed, head on over to read the full interview with Matthew L. Harris at the Latter-day Saint blog From the Desk<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The term “revelation” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a word with multiple interpretations, as can be seen in the process that led to the 1978 priesthood revelation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2890,2903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-desk","category-race-and-the-priesthood"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47583"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47587,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47583\/revisions\/47587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}