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"This, perhaps, is a natural reaction on the part of a farming community towards the hunter-gatherer lifestyle." Where "This" refers to the characterization of Native American's as tricky in the BoM.
I've deleted it primarily because it is an unsourced statement but also its not particularly relevant and reflects the opinion of an author.
I for one would like to see a stamp put on this article. I find its current contents notably biased and past renditions to likewise have problems. Obviously this is a politically charged issue that causes many to take sides instead of reporting facts. There is a desire by one group to protect practices despite obvious questions that should be raised and another group attempting to report practices and opinions as official positions and doctrine. Adjoining to either of these extremes and producing wikiarticles/edits along those lines is misleading. This is not a neutral article and there is too much conjecture. -- 206.196.172.2 12:16, 17 May 2006
The current title is just fine. See the page history for how it became what it did. -Visorstuff 22:47, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
When there is a need for separating a block of text
The blockquote command will indent both margins when needed instead of the left margin only as the colon does.
This is useful for (as the name says) inserting blocks of quoted (and cited) text. |
<blockquote> The '''blockquote''' command will indent both margins when needed instead of the left margin only as the colon does. </blockquote>
Wikipedia:How to edit a page ErinHowarth 05:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
There's a flag at the top of the article requesting that the article be wikified. The tag has been there for more than a month now. Does anyone here know what it means exactly? The article looks like a wiki article to me. Any guess what it is that needs doing? -ErinHowarth 06:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I deleted the following paragraph because it does not seem relevant.
As slaves in the new America began converting to Christianity, their Christian owners adopted interpretations of the Word of God that justified the practices of the time. State legislatures also took action. North Carolina made it illegal to teach slaves in 1740, Georgia in 1770, Missouri in 1817, Virginia in 1819, Mississippi in 1823, Louisiana in 1830, and Alabama in 1832. Other laws were enacted in Delaware and Florida to punish slaves for congregating. At the same time, several states prevented Negroes from working at jobs requiring a "knowledge of letters". Churches were giving in to the pressures of the law and the wrath of wealthy slave owners by backing away from actively proselytizing Negroes. Abolitionists and proslavery activists alike focused their respective arguments on the Bible as tensions mounted during the great religious revival in the south between 1829 and 1835. (James O. Buswell III, Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture , 1964, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. pp. 37-45)
I just don't see how giving the years that several states out-lawed the teaching of blacks has any impact on blacks and Mormonism. If there is a connection that I'm not seeing then the author needs to draw it more clearly.ErinHowarth
I remain unconvinced that (1) laws prohibiting the education of blacks, (2) the mission to preach to Native Americans, or (3) the Mormons voting power are relevent to this discussion.--ErinHowarth 19:40, 16 July 2006 (UTC)When Joseph Smith declared Jackson County to be the land of Zion and gathering place for the members the new church, it had been illegal to educate or proselytize blacks in Missouri since 1817 (James O. Buswell III, Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture , 1964, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. pp. 37-45) As it became known that Mormons had begun preaching to the local Native Americans, the suspicions of Missouri citizens were raised that the large numbers of voting Mormons would threaten their policies on people of color.
I'm scratching my head over the renaming of this article to Negroes and Mormonism by User:Conrad Devonshire, with the comment that it was a "more apporpriate title". How could that possibly be true? COGDEN 04:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I've collected some quotes on this question, which I've posted to http://www.allaboutmormons.com/racism.php. I'd like to include that page as an external link, but I wanted to get permission from the community first. Thanks.
The article is really too long. I think one of the least painful things that should be trimmed out is Official Declaration 2. Of course it is a very important part of this topic, but it is not necessary to quote the entire text in this article, when it is so easy to link to at any one of several sources. -ErinHowarth
Although more painful, I think another possible edit might be to remove the section titled "Revelation or policy." Certainly, the debate over whether the priesthood ban was a matter of revelation or a matter of policy is an important one, but the title of this article is Blacks and Mormonism, which suggests a social and historical discussion. The section about the debate between revelation or policy is really a theological discussion. I suggest this article be divided in two: Blacks and Mormonism will discuss the relationship between those two groups, and another article, perhaps titled: The Priesthood Ban, would discuss the myriad theological issues regarding this policy (or revelation). Comments -ErinHowarth 06:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I have deleted the following paragraphs for the reasons noted:
The church always allowed black membership in all its congregations. The priesthood ban typically applied to men of black African descent regardless of skin color (white Afrikaaners and Armenian Egyptians, for example, were not under this ban), although it occasionally applied to other races or lineages (including some Caucasians). Dark-skinned South Pacific Islanders were ordained to the priesthood, for example, while light-skinned Africans were not. Native Americans were always eligible for priesthood ordination, despite having dark skin.
This statement merely serves to define the nature of the priesthood ban, again. It should not be necessary to define the nature of the ban more than once in this article.
A relatively modern Prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, taught that, after accepting the Gospel, dark-skinned people would gradually be made white, a process that would take place over a significant number of generations. It has been upheld by Mormon apologists as a meaningful relationship between "lighter skin" and "good character" and "God's approval" or "pure in spirit", and seeks to vindicate the racial belief that a lighter skinned individual inherently exhibits a better character or that their lighter skin is a reflection of God's blessing. After visiting a mission site in South America, he said in his General Conference Report of October, 1960 (quite a number of years before he became the president of the church), which was published in Improvement Era, December 1960, pp 922-923:
I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today.... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl--sixteen--sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents--on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather... These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.
Kimball's use of the phrase "white and delightsome" refers to a Book of Mormon prophecy regarding the future status of the Lamanite people, generally accepted by Latter-day Saints as the ancestors of modern American Indians. It is unclear whether he meant for this change to apply to blacks or other groups. (For a Mormon apologetic examination of this issue, see the SHIELDS web site.)
President Kimballs statements are very interesting, but the scope of this article is limited to Blacks and Mormonism. A seperate article on Native Americans and Mormonism would be very interesting.
Other church leaders have stated that the priesthood would be given to blacks after the blood of Israel flowed in the veins of all peoples of the earth.
This fact would be interesting if it were part of a real paragraph, but standing alone it is not. Generally, references to church leaders" should be avoided. I don't think it would be too difficult to find an actual quote to attribute to an actual leader. Bruce R. McConkie comes to mind for this one.
According to his ex-Mormon grandson Steve Benson, Ezra Taft Benson, who succeeded Kimball as President of the Church, was a noted racist [3]. However, while acting as President of the Church, he did not make a single remark that could be accurately construed as racist; on the contrary, while prophet he publicly affirmed his love for all of God's children, "of every color, creed and political persuasion."
Steve Benson's opinion on his father's racial attitudes is really not relevant to this article. Ezra Taft Benson's racial attitudes might be relevant, but "nothing" is offered here, literally: "he did not make one single remark."
I added a tag to the top of the article to draw attention to the use of weasel words. One example: the references to the disavowal are not clear on who it is calling for the church to disavow previously taught doctrines regarding blacks. --ErinHowarth 23:08, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The following statements have been removed until "some leaders" and the "some who call" can be identified.
The article is currently 47K long. The article is also exclusively about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its treatment of blacks. While the most widely known, it is not the only church in the LDS movement. There is nothing about the Community of Christ (formerly RLDS) which probably ordained blacks earlier. From the statements from Warren Jeffs (that were released to the public by a third party), I suspect that the FLDS church doesn't even ordain blacks now days. (Do they even have any black members?) I propose the following structure:
What do others think about this structure? Val42 16:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the structure should generally be as suggested by Val42, in that there is a separate section about Mormon theology and policy regarding Blacks during the life of Joseph Smith, followed by a per-denomination discussion. The LDS section, which will undoubtedly be the largest by far, might be split off as a separate article (with an abbreviated summary here), and it might follow the general outline suggested by ErinHowarth. The split-off article could be called Blacks and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which currently redirects here). COGDEN 07:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
The entire section entitled Dark skin as a curse is about verses in the Book of Mormon. I am not aware of anyone using verses from the Book of Mormon to justify the priesthood ban. Although it is interesting information, in the interest of brevity and clarity, I recommend that the entire section be struck. Opinions?--ErinHowarth 23:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't most if not all of this article be in Blacks and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? It seems that this articles only difference is the inclusion of splinter groups, which could be the meat of this article, and have a link to the main LDS article. I also think this and the LDS article should read like a history lesson. No judgments, no POV. Simply a history of blacks role in the church and church policy, with some explanation of why, but noting that the why is speculative as there is no official doctrine on the why. Start with Joseph Smith, and end with the baptism of Gladys Knight. I also think right at the start, you need to point out that blacks were always welcome to baptism. Many people do not understand the difference between priesthood office and membership. Bytebear 07:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
So what should the differences between the LDS church perspective and the LDS movement perspective be? Bytebear 05:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
I've attempted a major re-write of the page with three goals
There are still lots to do:
Does anyone know this denominations teaching on the topic?
It's a vague reference, but my guess is that as a fundamentalist group, they uphold Brigham Young's position, and that Richard Kunz is the name of the "Caucasian-looking man who had African ancestry." I'm sure there is an interesting story there. This article describes a legal battle between his first wife and his plural wives centering on the fact that he did not leave her children his inheritance, but it doesn't mention the issue of race. -ErinHowarth 00:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)"In the 1990s members of the AUB discovered within their congregation, a Caucasian-looking man who had African ancestry had been ordained to the priesthood. A controversy ensued, which resulted in the release of Richard Kunz from his position as a President in the AUB’s Council of Seventy."
I added the tag because I felt the article lacked the essential disinterest an article must possess. The author(s) seem to take for granted the historical beliefs of the LDS as being true, none of which can, nor have, been, to this date at least, scientifically verified. After all, the encyclopedia traces its roots to the enlightenment, the scientific, rational questioning of all previously "held-for-granted" beliefs.
Currently, the tag is not within policy. All tags must be specifically explained on the discussion page. The explanation should be explicit enough so that the correction can easily be measured. So far the ANON has said nothing that can be measured or corrected. She/he has stated an opinion that up to now is unsupported. Either meet the demands of policy or remove the tag. Storm Rider (talk) 07:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
From the article: "When the Mormons migrated to Missouri they encountered the pro-slavery sentiments of their neighbors. Initially, Joseph Smith, Jr. supported the laws regarding slaves and slaveholders as a matter of peace and order, but eventually rejected the institution and supported its abolishment.[citation needed]"
Origen (circa 185-c. 254): “For the Egyptians are prone to a degenerate life and quickly sink to every slavery of the vices. Look at the origin of the race and you will discover that their father Cham, who had laughed at his father’s nakedness, deserved a judgment of this kind, that his son Chanaan should be a servant to his brothers, in which case the condition of bondage would prove the wickedness of his conduct. Not without merit, therefore, does the discolored posterity imitate the ignobility of the race [Non ergo immerito ignobilitatem decolor posteritas imitatur].” Homilies on Genesis 16.1
“Mar Ephrem the Syrian said: When Noah awoke and was told what Canaan did. . .Noah said, ‘Cursed be Canaan and may God make his face black,’ and immediately the face of Canaan changed; so did of his father Ham, and their white faces became black and dark and their color changed.” Paul de Lagarde, Materialien zur Kritik und Geschichte des Pentateuchs (Leipzig, 1867), part II
St. Jerome: “Chus in Hebrew means Ethiopian, that is, black and dark, one who has a soul as black as his body.” (The Homilies of Saint Jerome, vol. 1, trans. Marie Liguori Ewald, Homily 3, 28).
The Eastern Christian work, the Cave of Treasures (4th century), explicitly connects slavery with dark-skinned people: “When Noah awoke. . .he cursed him and said: ‘Cursed be Ham and may he be slave to his brothers’. . .and he became a slave, he and his lineage, namely the Egyptians, the Abyssinians, and the Indians. Indeed, Ham lost all sense of shame and he became black and was called shameless all the days of his life, forever.” La caverne des trésors: version Géorgienne, ed. Ciala Kourcikidzé, trans. Jean-Pierre Mahé, Corpus scriptorium Christianorum orientalium 526-27, Scriptores Iberici 23-24 (Louvain, 1992-93), ch. 21, 38-39 (translation).
St. Ennodius (474-521): “Keep your chastity constant. Don’t let the body of a black girl soil yours, nor lie with her for her Hell-black face.” Epistulae 7.21
John Philoponus, Greek Christian philosopher (6th century): “The Scythians and Ethiopians are distinguished from each other by black and white color, or by long and snubbed nose, or by slave and master, by ruler and ruled,” and again, “The Ethiopian and Scythian. . .one is black, the other white; similarly slave and master.” A. Sanda, Oposcula Monophysitica Johannes Philoponi (Beirut, 1930), pp. 66,96 (Sanda’s Latin translation).
Ishodad of Merv (Syrian Christian bishop of Hedhatha, 9th century): When Noah cursed Canaan, “instantly, by the force of the curse. . .his face and entire body became black [ukmotha]. This is the black color which has persisted in his descendents.” C. Van Den Eynde, Corpus scriptorium Christianorum orientalium 156, Scriptores Syri 75 (Louvain, 1955), p. 139.
Eutychius, Alexandrian Melkite patriarch (d. 940): “Cursed be Ham and may he be a servant to his brothers… He himself and his descendants, who are the Egyptians, the Negroes, the Ethiopians and (it is said) the Barbari.” Patrologiae cursus completes…series Graeca, ed. J.P. Migne (Paris, 1857-66), Pococke’s (1658-59) translation of the Annales, 111.917B (sec. 41-43)
Ibn al-Tayyib (Arabic Christian scholar, Baghdad, d. 1043): “The curse of Noah affected the posterity of Canaan who were killed by Joshua son of Nun. At the moment of the curse, Canaan’s body became black and the blackness spread out among them.” Joannes C.J. Sanders, Commentaire sur la Genèse, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 274-275, Scriptores Arabici 24-25 (Louvain, 1967), 1:56 (text), 2:52-55 (translation).
Bar Hebraeus (Syrian Christian scholar, 1226-86): “‘And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and showed [it] to his two brothers.’ That is…that Canaan was cursed and not Ham, and with the very curse he became black and the blackness was transmitted to his descendents…. And he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan! A servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.’” Sprengling and Graham, Barhebraeus’ Scholia on the Old Testament, pp. 40-41, to Gen 9:22.
Gomes Eannes de Zurara (official royal chronicler of Portugal, 1453): “These blacks were Moors like the others, though their slaves, in accordance with ancient custom, which I believe to have been because of the curse which, after the Deluge, Noah laid upon his son Cain [read: Cham], cursing him in this way: that his race should be subject to all the other races of the world.” C.R. Beazley and E. Prestage, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea in the Hakluyt 1st series, no. 95 (London, 1896), 1:54.
Francisco de la Cruz (Dominican, 1575): “The blacks are justly captives by just sentence of God for the sins of their fathers, and that in sign thereof God gave them that color.” Bartolomé de Las Casas in History (DeKalb, Ill., 1971), p. 417. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.3.10.2 (talk) 18:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Ephrem the Syrian (306-378): “Abel was bright as the light, / but the murderer (Cain) was dark as the darkness.” Tryggve Kronholm, Motifs from Genesis 1-11, pp. 135-42.
Ambrose: “The meaning of Ethiopia in Latin is ‘lowly and vile (abiecta et vilis).’ What is more lowly, what is more like Ethiopia, than our bodies, blackened, too, by the darkness of sin?” De Paradiso, 3.16
Augustine: “A gouty doctor of [Carthage], when he had given in his name for baptism, and had been prohibited the day before his baptism from being baptized that year, by black woolly-haired boys who appeared to him in his dreams, and whom he understood to be devils, and when, though they trod on his feet, and inflicted the acutest pain he had ever yet experienced, he refused to obey them, but overcame them, and would not defer being washed in the laver of regeneration, was relieved in the very act of baptism, not only of the extraordinary pain he was tortured with, but also of the disease itself, so that, though he lived a long time afterwards, he never suffered from gout.” The City of God, 22.8
Didymus the Blind (313-398): The Devil is black “because he fell from the splendor, virtue, and spiritual whiteness which only those who have been whitened by God can possess.” “Those who fall beneath the stroke of God’s sword are the Ethiopians, because they all share in the malice and sin of the Devil, from whose blackness they take their name.” Sur Zacharie 4.312
In an Eastern Christian (Armenian) Adam-book (5th or 6th century) it is written: “And the Lord was wroth with Cain. . . He beat Cain’s face with hail, which blackened like coal, and thus he remained with a black face.” The History of Abel and Cain, 10, in Lipscomb, The Armenian Apocryphal Adam Literature, pp. 145, 250 (text) and 160, 271 (translation).
The Kebra Nagast (6-7th century), the Christian Ethiopian national epic, has the queen of Ethiopia speak to King Solomon concerning their son: “Thy son whom thou hast begotten, who springeth from an alien people into which God hath not commanded you to marry, that is to say, from an Ethiopian woman, who is not of thy color, and is not akin to thy country, and who is, moreover, black.” E.A.W. Budge, The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek, p.102.
The Vienna Genesis (11-12th century) shows black skin as the externalized sign of internal sin: some of Adam’s offspring “completely lost their beautiful coloring; they became black and disgusting, and unlike any people. . . [They] displayed on their bodies what the forebears had earned by their misdeeds. As the fathers had been inwardly, so the children were outwardly.” John B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, 1981), p. 93.
The Irish Saltair na Rann (The Versified Psalter, AD 988), records Gabriel announcing to Adam: “Dark rough senseless Cain is going to kill Abel.” D. Greene and F. Kelly, The Irish Adam and Eve Story from Saltair Na Rann (Dublin, 1976), 1:91, lines 1959-1960.
A medieval Armenian apocryphal work, The History of the Creation and Transgression of Adam 27 says of Eve: “Even though she had been stripped of the heavenly light, she was nonetheless beautiful, for her flesh was dazzling white like a pearl because she was newly created.” William Lipscomb, The Armenian Apocryphal Adam Literature, pp. 112 and 122. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.129.100.43 (talk) 17:16, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
In the interests of improving Wikipedia, and especially this article, Im adding a POV tag to help stimulate some improvement to this article. The criteria that we need to meet to make this article neutral are:
Noleander (talk) 14:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
It is my understanding that the whole (or most of) controversy with Blacks and the priesthood began with Brigham Young being infuriated with the interracial marriage of Walker Lewis's son. Shouldn't that get a mention in here somewhere? If it wasn't for that event, IMHO, this entire issue would not really exist, not even for the other Latter Day Saint movement denominations. Please correct my understanding of the history if I am incorrect. If not, perhaps a "Walker Lewis" section?--Descartes1979 (talk) 20:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I removed the words "/and or seemingly racist". We're talking about if they made racist statements. Wikipedia acknowledged that. Someone attempt to soften that was inappropriate bias. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.228.240.57 (talk) 14:22, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I want all racists out of wikipedia
The result of the move request was: Rename as suggested -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 11:46, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Blacks and the Latter Day Saint movement → Black people and the Latter Day Saint movement — The term 'blacks' is offensive to many, and should be replaced with the far more accepted 'black people'. This brings it in line with such articles as Black people and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was changed some time ago. Little grape (talk) 09:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I noticed some editors recently made some good-faith edits to add material into the article. Please note that the article is organized by chronological period (and, toward the bottom, by branch of Mormonism). So, if the new content is organized by religious text, that has to be fit into the chronological sections in a sensible way (by date of publication?); or perhaps create an entirely new group of sections at the bottom of the article: one section per text (but before doing that, make sure that the new content does not fit sensibly into one of the chronological sections... for instance, the "New York" section contains a discussion of the Book of Mormon). --Noleander (talk) 13:33, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
There are a couple of problems with the Fundamentalist section: (1) it is not written in encyclopedic prose (instead is just just some quotes); (2) the quotes are not well-sourced. The source for the quotes is [6] but it is just a web page (not a book, or academic source) and the web page is missing some key information: when did Jeffs say this? Who recorded it? What was the context of the speech? WP material needs better sources. If these bigoted viewpoints are so central to the Fundmntl church, there should be other, more reliable sources that convey the same information. --Noleander (talk) 23:05, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Please see the discussion here about reogranizing the existing articles about Black people and Mormonism, including this article. COGDEN 23:59, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
There is some material here about blacks in non-Mormon Latter Day Saint denominations, which is no longer relevant to the re-titled article. This material does not really coherently belong in the same article anyway. I place it here in case we need further reference, or we want to move it to denominational articles. COGDEN 19:01, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
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Latter Day Saint movement denominations[edit]After the death of Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1844, the movement underwent what is referred to as a succession crisis, when it split into several groups, leading eventually to dozens of separate denominations. Each of these denominations has treated the issue of race, and specifically the idea of a black race, differently. Below is a summary of how several denominations have dealt with these issues. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints[edit]After the death of Joseph Smith Jr., the Prophet Brigham Young Sr.taught that “Negroes” were black due to the mark of Cain, which also meant that they were Canaanites and were under the curse of Ham. For this reason, most black people of African descent—along with a smaller number of non-black people that the Church also deemed to be Canaanites—were ineligible to be ordained to the Priesthood. They were also barred from participating in the Endowment and celestial marriage, but were allowed to enter the church’s temples to perform baptism for the dead.[1] While this policy existed for over a century, it was always with the promise that "the time will come when [black men] will have the privilege of all [white men] have the privilege of and more."[2] In 1978, church leaders said they had received a revelation that this long-promised time had come, and the Priesthood was offered to black men. All women, black and white, remain ineligible to receive the priesthood. For critics, the fact that Blacks were not allowed into the priesthood until 1978 supports the on-going argument of racism within the Church. In 1981, a verse that used "white and delightsome" to describe the reward of dark-skinned people if they repented was changed to read, "pure and delightsome." Additional accusations of the Church's underlying policy of racism occurred in December of 2010, when the Church made changes to chapter headings in its online version of The Book of Mormon. In 2 Nephi, Chapter 5, the original wording was: "Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites are cursed, receive a skin of blackness, and become a scourge unto the Nephites." The phrase, "skin of blackness" is removed in the re-write and becomes: "Because of their unbelief, the Laminites are cut off from the presence of the Lord, are cursed, and become a scourge unto the Nephites." The second rewrite appears in Mormon, Chapter 5 that used to state, "The Lamanites shall be a dark, filthy, and loathsome people . . ." The new version deletes the label of "dark, filthy, and loathsome" and now reads, "Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites will be scattered, and the Spirit will cease to strive with them." These on-going changes to The Book of Mormon are seen by critics to support the impression of racist rhetoric in The Book of Mormon and the Church's attempts to obliterate that impression. [3] Community of Christ[edit]The Community of Christ accepts the doctrine of human worth or the "worth of all persons", and states that "God loves each of us equally and unconditionally. All persons have great worth and should be respected as creations of God with basic human rights. The willingness to love and accept others is essential to faithfulness to the gospel of Christ."[4] A revelation given through Joseph Smith III on May 4, 1865, specifically addressed the ordination of black men. It was added to the Community of Christ edition of the Doctrine and Covenants as Section 116. Although the official policy was in full support of the ordination of black persons, Community of Christ was not always free from regional discrepancies, and the prejudices of the prevailing culture. Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints[edit]In 2005, the Intelligence Report published the following statements made by Warren Jeffs, President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)[edit]In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), James Strang presided over general conference resolutions to allow African-Americans to hold the high priesthood by 1849. This was consistent with Joseph Smith’s known ordination of a black man named Elijah Abel to the high priesthood office of Seventy in 1836. The Book of Mormon says that “black and white” are all invited and “all are alike to God.” There were two significant Black elders in the church under James Strang while he was alive, namely Samuel Chambers and Samuel Walker.[6] Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite)[edit]The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite) has advocated full racial integration throughout all aspects of the church since its organization in 1862. In 1905, the church suspended an elder for opposing the full integration of all races.[7] Historian Dale Morgan wrote in 1949: "An interesting feature of the Church's doctrine is that it discriminates in no way against ... members of other racial groups, who are fully admitted to all the privileges of the priesthood. It has taken a strong stand for human rights, and was, for example, uncompromisingly against the Ku Klux Klan during that organization's period of ascendancy after the First World War."[8] At a time when racial segregation or discrimination was commonplace in most institutions in America, two of the most prominent leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite) were African American. Apostle John Penn, a member of the Quorum of Twelve from 1910 to 1955, conducted missionary work among many Italian Americans, and was often referred to as "The Italian's Doctor".[7] Matthew Miller, an evangelist ordained in 1937, traveled throughout Canada and established missions to Native Americans.[7] |
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The current position of the LDS is to comment that the church 'was against slavery', but two FACTS contradict this:
a) Utah (first 'Deseret') had the option of entering the U.S. as a "Slave" or non-slave territory. Historians tell us that this choice was presented as a means to not upset the 'balance' between other states & territories. Utah, headed by Brigham Young 'Prophet of the Most High God', chose to enter as a Slave Territory. b) Mormons brought negro slaves with them from the East to Deseret/Utah. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy Noir Private Eye (talk • contribs)
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The verse D&C 101:79 was put in this article to imply that the early Church was against slavery. It reads: "Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another." This is in reference to economic bondage, not chattel slavery. (see "The Mormon Church and Blacks" A Documentary History" e-book location 457 of 6260, Lester E. Bush Jr., "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine," 56; Lester E. Bush Jr., "A Commentary on Stephen G. Taggart's Mormonism's Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins," in Bush and Mauss, "Neither White nor Black," 34) The subject of section 101 and further sections make clear that this is the case, and how it was understood by early Saints. See also D&C 104:83-84 which makes clear that this is the case. See also D&C 134:12 Epachamo (talk) 15:47, 18 October 2020 (UTC)