By Sandra Tanner

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. . . for the seed of Cain were black and had not place among them.
(Pearl of Great Price, Moses 7:22)

“We have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren,” wrote Spencer W. Kimball in the announcement of June 8, 1978, when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lifted the ban on blacks holding their priesthood, now published as Official Declaration 2 in the Doctrine and Covenants. According to KSL.com, on Friday, June 1, 2018, the LDS Church will hold a celebration of the 40th anniversary of granting priesthood to blacks. Along with a message from the First Presidency of the LDS Church, two famous black singers, Gladys Knight and Alex Boyé will be included in the event. Ms. Knight joined Mormonism in 1997 and Mr. Boyé has sung with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.¹

While the 1978 change was hailed as a great event, the practice and doctrine behind the racial restriction continues to trouble LDS members. In a 2011 survey of former LDS members it was found that the third greatest issue leading to their loss of faith was the doctrine of blacks and priesthood. The top two problems were polygamy/polyandry and Book of Abraham issues.²

Even though two or three blacks had been baptized and ordained to the priesthood during the lifetime of Joseph Smith this did not grant them access to the secret LDS temple rituals, thus barring them from the Mormon goal of eternal marriage and advancement to godhood.

Elijah Abel

The most well-known black to hold the priesthood during Smith’s lifetime was Elijah Abel, a Seventy, who moved to Utah territory with the pioneers. LDS historian Andrew Jenson made note of Abel’s ordination:

Abel, Elijah, the only colored man who is known to have been ordained to the priesthood . . . was ordained an elder March 3, 1836, and a seventy April 4, 1841, an exception having been made in his case with regard to the general rule of the church in relation to colored people.³

Even though Elijah Abel was allowed to retain his priesthood and go on a mission after the Mormons came to Utah, he was not allowed to participate in the temple endowments. Historian Armand Mauss commented on the priesthood ban:

It was periodically reconsidered after Brigham Young’s death in 1877, usually in response to a petition from a black member or sympathizer. The first of these reconsiderations occurred as early as 1879, when Young’s successor, John Taylor, responded to a petition from Elijah Abel (the sole surviving black member to have received the priesthood) that he be admitted to the sacred temple rites of the church. Taylor’s consultations turned up a claim by two prominent local church leaders that in the mid-1830s they had heard Joseph Smith declare that Negroes could not be given the priesthood and that Abel was supposed to have been stripped of it before Smith died.

Taylor himself, though a contemporary of these witnesses and a close associate of Smith, could recall no such instruction. . . . After that, each hearing and reconsideration by the church leadership simply brought another confirmation of the policy, so that by about 1920 there was an accumulation of precedents from previous leaders, as well as a rapidly receding institutional memory about the historical origins of the policy.⁴

Abel’s requests for temple ordinances were repeatedly denied. He died in 1884 and was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. In 2002 a new headstone was placed on Elijah Abel’s grave.

When it was finally ready, Apostle M. Russell Ballard was asked to “dedicate the new headstone.” The Salt Lake Tribune reported on the event:

Abel was born a slave in Maryland in 1808. At 23, he fled to Canada and obtained free papers. A year later, he moved to Ohio and met Joseph Smith . . . Abel joined in 1832, and Smith ordained him into the priesthood four years later. . . .

Abel and his family joined the Mormon odyssey to Salt Lake City in 1852, among fewer than 100 black pioneers, and he helped construct the Salt Lake Temple.

That same year, however, new church leader Young prohibited blacks from joining the faith’s all-male lay priesthood, a rule that would stand until Church President Spencer Kimball’s 1978 revelation. . . . The reason Young and other church leaders cited (and continued to cite for 126 years) was the Bible-based belief that blacks were descendants of the wicked Cain. . . . Young also sent Abel on several missions in his later years. When Abel petitioned Young’s successor, John Taylor, for his temple endowment, it was denied.⁵

Curiously, Abel’s son Enoch and grandson Elijah were also ordained to the priesthood in Logan, Utah, in the early 1900s.⁶

While Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith was aware that Elijah Abel had been ordained to the LDS priesthood he maintained that it was invalid. In a letter dated April 10, 1963, he wrote:

According to the doctrine of the church, the Negro, because of some condition of unfaithfulness in the spirit—or pre-existence, was not valiant and hence was not denied the mortal probation, but was denied the blessing of the Priesthood. . . . It is true that elders of the church laid hands on a Negro and blessed him “apparently” with the Priesthood, but they could not give that which the Lord had denied. It is true that Elijah Abel was so “ordained.” This was however before the matter had been submitted to the Prophet Joseph Smith.⁷

Scriptural Racism

While Joseph Smith did not officially deny priesthood to blacks, his new scriptures laid the groundwork for the later racial position of the church. His Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price reflected the common view of race in America at that time: White people were the enlightened ones, bringing the message of salvation to the dark heathens of the land. The main storyline of the Book of Mormon covers approximately 600 BC to 421 AD, with the righteous, white Nephites continually battling the wicked, dark Lamanites. Historian Newell G. Bringhurst observed:

Smith’s account of these ancient Americans incorporated racist concepts of nonwhite racial inferiority as contrasted with white racial superiority. Mormon racism was particularly evident in those Book of Mormon passages outlining the conflicts and divisions plaguing the Nephite nation.⁸

Bringhurst continues,

Moreover, Laman, Lemuel, and their followers were cursed with a “skin of blackness” by “the Lord God” (2 Ne. 5:21-24). Thereafter they were known as Lamanites, “a dark, and loathsome, and filthy people full of idleness and all manner of abomination” (1 Ne. 12:23).

Yet the Book of Mormon held out the promise that when those Lamanites embraced the gospel “their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites” (3 Nephi 2:15).

Apostle Harold B. Lee explained:

Their dark skin was a curse put upon them because of their transgression, which in a day to come in their descendants will be lifted and they will become white and delightsome as they accept the Gospel and turn to the Lord.⁹

Joseph Smith’s racial views also appear in the Book of Moses and Book of Abraham, part of the Pearl of Great Price.¹⁰ The Book of Moses relates that “the seed of Cain were black and had not place among them” (Moses 7:22), and the Book of Abraham refers to “Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood” (Abraham 1:27).

This teaching was soon embraced by the leaders of the LDS Church. Apostle John Taylor, who went on to become the third president of the church, wrote in 1845:

The descendants of Ham, besides a black skin which has ever been a curse that has followed an apostate of the holy priesthood, as well as a black heart, have been servants to both Shem and Japheth, and the abolitionists are trying to make void the curse of God, but it will require more power than man possesses to counteract the decrees of eternal wisdom.¹¹

After the Mormons migrated to what became Utah territory, on February 5, 1852, Brigham Young made denial of priesthood to blacks a rule of the church:

If there never was a prophet or apostle of Jesus Christ spoke it before, I tell you, this people that are commonly called Negroes are the children of old Cain. I know they are. I know that they cannot bear rule in the priesthood, for the curse on them was to remain upon them, until the residue of the posterity of Michael and his wife receive the blessings, . . .¹²

This same teaching was repeated by Brigham Young in 1859:

Cain slew his brother . . . and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. . . . How long is that race [blacks] to endure the dreadful curse that is upon them? That curse will remain upon them, and they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof. Until the last ones of the residue of Adam’s children are brought up to that favourable position, the children of Cain cannot receive the first ordinances of the Priesthood. They were the first that were cursed, and they will be the last from whom the curse will be removed.¹³

Sealed as a Servant to Joseph Smith

Jane Manning James, a black convert, is an example of how firm the church leaders were about denying temple ordinances to blacks. She claimed that while living with the Joseph Smith family in the 1843 time frame the Smiths had offered to have her sealed to them as part of their family,¹⁴ but not understanding what that meant, she declined. Years later, living in Utah as a faithful LDS member, she longed for an eternal family and repeatedly requested to be sealed to her husband and children but the leaders refused.

Jane then approached the leaders about being sealed to Joseph Smith, as Emma had suggested. The leaders finally offered to seal her “as a Servitor for eternity to the Prophet Joseph Smith.”¹⁵ According to the journal of Joseph Christenson, recorder in the Salt Lake temple, the ceremony was done on May 18, 1894:

“Aunt Jane,” a negress, was sealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith as a servitor for all eternity.¹⁶

However, Jane was not allowed to attend the ceremony. Historian Max Mueller noted:

The Salt Lake Temple records indicate that James herself was not permitted to participate in her own circumscribed sealing. Instead, famed suffragist and Relief Society leader Bathsheba W. Smith served as James’s proxy during the ceremony, an unusual occurrence because proxies were employed almost exclusively for dead participants. President Joseph F. Smith stood in for his uncle. He also officiated the ceremony, declaring the “Negro Woman” Jane Elizabeth Manning James would be a “Servitor to Joseph Smith . . . and to his household for all eternity.”¹⁷

Scholar Jessie L. Embry explained that a special ceremony was created for the occasion:

. . . the First Presidency “decided she might be adopted into the family of Joseph Smith as a servant, which was done, a special ceremony having been prepared for the purpose.” The minutes of the Council of Twelve Apostles continued, “But Aunt Jane was not satisfied with this, and as a mark of dissatisfaction she applied again after this for sealing blessings, but of course in vain.”¹⁸

However, Jane continued to request sealing to her husband and children. Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of the LDS Church, mentioned Jane in his journal for October 16, 1894:

We had Meeting with several individuals among the rest Black Jane wanted to know if I would not let her have her Endowments in the Temple. This I Could not do as it was against the Law of God. As Cain killed Abel All the seed of Cain would have to wait for Redemption untill all the seed that Abel would have had that may Come through other men Can be redeemed.¹⁹

Jane died in 1908 without ever being sealed to any of her family. One wonders how the LDS leaders can argue that the ban on black participation in priesthood and temple rites was not considered doctrine, or ordained of God? The continual denial of temple sealing to Jane, yet offering her a special temple sealing of servitude, came directly from the LDS leadership, whose decisions are assumed to represent God’s will.

There is a certain irony to the fact that a painting of Jane Manning James, who pleaded for years to be sealed to her family, now hangs in both the Payson, Utah, temple and Johannesburg, South Africa temple. It is titled “Thou Didst Hear Me,” painted by Elspeth Young. Dana Dodini reported:

Young’s other painting in the temple, “Thou Didst Hear Me,” is a reproduction giclée. The original oil painting of “Thou Didst Hear Me” was acquired by the LDS Church and currently hangs in the Johannesburg, South Africa temple.

The model is a young woman native to Ghana, Africa, and is the granddaughter of the first member of the church in that area. Elspeth used the same model for a painting of early church pioneer Jane Elizabeth Manning, a faithful friend of Joseph Smith, entitled “Till We Meet Again” which currently hangs in the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City.²⁰

The Twentieth Century

The ban on blacks continued into the next century. Writing in 1935 Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, who later became the tenth president of the LDS Church, gave this explanation of the curse on Cain:

Not only was Cain called upon to suffer [for killing Abel], but because of his wickedness he became the father of an inferior race. A curse was placed upon him and that curse has been continued through his lineage and must do so while time endures. Millions of souls have come into this world cursed with a black skin and have been denied the privilege of Priesthood and the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel. These are the descendants of Cain. Moreover, they have been made to feel their inferiority and have been separated from the rest of mankind from the beginning. Enoch saw the people of Canaan, descendants of Cain, and he says, “and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people.” [Moses 7:8]²¹

The LDS First Presidency issued an official statement on the issue of race on August 17, 1949:

The attitude of the Church with reference to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time. . . .

The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the premortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these Spirits take on mortality . . . Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes. — The First Presidency²²

In the wake of the civil rights movement political pressure was mounting for the LDS Church to change its racial restrictions. In 1967 N. Eldon Tanner, a member of the First Presidency of the LDS Church, was very emphatic that blacks could not receive the priesthood. In an interview he stated:

“The church has no intention of changing its doctrine on the Negro,” N. Eldon Tanner, counselor to the First Presidency told SEATTLE during his recent visit here. “Throughout the history of the original Christian church, the Negro never held the priesthood. There’s really nothing we can do to change this. It’s a law of God.”²³

Such statements identifying blacks with the curse of Cain, or denying blacks the priesthood because it was the law of God, were typical in Mormonism prior to 1978.²⁴

No Missionaries to Blacks

While there was no restriction on blacks joining the LDS Church, there was no direct effort to evangelize them either. Apostle Bruce McConkie, writing in 1958, declared:

Negroes in this life are denied the priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty. The gospel message of salvation is not carried affirmatively to them . . . Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned . . .²⁵

Just prior to the change on ordaining blacks, William E. Berrett, Vice Administrator of the Brigham Young University, wrote: “. . . no direct efforts have been made to proselyte among them.”²⁶

However, the Bible tells Christians to offer salvation and baptism to all mankind, regardless of race. Jesus said “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). In the book of Acts, Philip was commanded to preach the gospel to an Ethiopian (a black) who was then baptized (Acts 8:26-39). Nothing is said about the Ethiopian being restricted in his service to God.

No Intermarriage

Since the Mormons viewed black skin as evidence of God’s curse, they were opposed to racial intermarriage. In 1845 Joseph Smith declared, “Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization.”²⁷

In 1863 Brigham Young declared that those who engaged in intermarriage were worthy of death:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.²⁸

Intermarriage with a black person was seen as bringing the priesthood curse on their posterity. In 1954 Apostle Mark E. Peterson instructed:

The reason that one would lose his blessings by marrying a Negro is due to the restriction placed upon them. “No person having the least particle of Negro blood can hold the Priesthood” (Brigham Young). It does not matter if they are one-sixth Negro or one-hundred and sixth, the curse of no Priesthood is the same. If an individual who is entitled to the Priesthood marries a Negro, the Lord has decreed that only spirits who are not eligible for the Priesthood will come to that marriage as children. To intermarry with a Negro is to forfeit a “Nation of Priesthood holders”. . .²⁹

Apostle Bruce R. McConkie advised against intermarriage in the 1979 edition of his book, Mormon Doctrine:

However, in a broad general sense, caste systems have their root and origin in the gospel itself, and when they operate according to the divine decree, the resultant restrictions and segregation are right and proper and have the approval of the Lord. To illustrate: Cain, Ham, and the whole negro race have been cursed with a black skin, the mark of Cain, so they can be identified as a caste apart, a people with whom the other descendants of Adam should not intermarry.³⁰

Segregated Blood?

The LDS fear of having even one drop of black blood led to the policy of segregating blood in Utah hospitals under the control of the LDS Church. Lester Bush, an LDS historian, quoted an early statement of the LDS First Presidency regarding the problem of “negro blood”:

By 1907 the First Presidency and Quorum had . . . ruled that “no one known to have in his veins negro blood, (it matters not how remote a degree) can either have the priesthood in any degree or the blessings of the Temple of God; no matter how otherwise worthy he may be.”³¹

Given the statements of past LDS leaders against having “one drop” of black blood in their veins, it is no surprise that Mormons extended this to segregating the blood supply in their hospitals. While this practice was common in the past, the U.S. military ended its policy of segregating blood on the basis of race in 1949. The American Red Cross continued to segregate blood until the 1960s. The hospitals under LDS control segregated blood on the basis of race until the 1970s. Writing in 1978, reporters David Briscoe and George Buck explained:

For all too many Mormons, the figurative role that “blood” plays in Mormon doctrine in denoting ancestry, has been all too literal. Less than two weeks after the Priesthood announcement, Consolidated Blood Services for the intermountain region announced its first agreement ever to handle blood bank services for a group of hospitals with previous LDS connections, including LDS Hospital, Primary Children’s and Cottonwood Hospitals in Salt Lake City; McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden and Utah Valley Hospital in Provo. At one time in the past, hospitals administered by the LDS Church kept separate the blood donated by blacks and whites. Although this has not been the case for several years, some patients who have expressed concern about receiving blood from black donors have been reassured it would not happen—as if the policy were still in effect.³²

Pre-Earth Life and Race

To better understand the Mormon attitude concerning blacks, a person must first be aware of their doctrine of pre-mortal life. While standard Christianity views man’s origin in the womb, such as Psalm 139:13, Mormonism teaches that we have eternal existence as “intelligences” and were born to Heavenly Father and Mother in a pre-mortal existence. Joseph Smith taught that man is the same species as God and is his direct offspring, raised to maturity prior to being sent to earth as an infant. Preaching at the funeral of an early Mormon, Joseph Smith stated:

First, God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves, that is the great secret . . . I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined that God was God from all eternity . . . God himself; the Father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did . . . The mind of man is as immortal as God himself. I know that my testimony is true, . . . their spirits existed co-equal with God . . . God never did have power to create the spirit of man at all.³³

The LDS Church teaches that God was once a mortal on some other world. He and his wife were faithful on that earth, died, were resurrected and eventually advanced to godhood. Their spirit children, who were literally born to them in that heavenly realm, were later sent to an earth to obtain a mortal body and possibly advance as their heavenly parents did before them. However, some of God’s progeny were less faithful during their “first estate” and thus did not merit as favorable a birth into mortality as others.

Alvin R. Dyer, assistant to the Twelve Apostles and later ordained an apostle, spoke on racial issues and man’s pre-earth life to the Norwegian Mission gathering in Oslo, Norway, on March 18, 1961. In this talk he said:

I want to talk to you a little bit now about something that is not missionary work, and what I say is not to be given to your investigators by any matter of means. . . . Why is it that you are white and not colored: Have you ever asked yourself that question? Who had anything to do with your being born into the Church and not born a Chinese or a Hindu, or a Negro? Is God such an unjust person that He would make you white and free and make a Negro cursed under the cursing of Cain that he could not hold the Priesthood of God? . . . Those who have been cursed in the pre-existence were born through this lineage of Ham. . . . Why is a Negro a Negro? . . . The reason that spirits are born into Negro bodies is because those spirits rejected the Priesthood of God in the pre-existence. This is the reason why you have Negroes upon the earth.

You will observe that when Cain was influenced by the power of Lucifer to follow him and to fall down and worship him in the beginning, it was then that . . . Cain rejected the counsel of God. He rejected again the Priesthood as his forebearers had done in the pre-existence. Therefore, the curse of the pre-existence was made institute through the loins of Cain. Consequently, you have the beginning of the race of men and women into which would be born those in the pre-existence who had rejected the Priesthood of God. . . . Ham reinstated the curse of the pre-existence when he rejected the Priesthood of Noah, and in consequence of that he preserved the curse on the earth. Therefore, the Negroes to be born thereafter, or those who were to become Negroes, were to be born through the loins of Ham.³⁴

In a letter dated April 10, 1963, Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith explained that one is born black due to his “unfaithfulness” in the spirit world:

According to the doctrine of the church, the Negro, because of some condition of unfaithfulness in the spirit—or pre-existence, was not valiant and hence was not denied the mortal probation, but was denied the blessings of the Priesthood.³⁵

To counter the many past statements of LDS leaders relating to pre-mortal performance determining race, the church posted a Gospel Topics essay online, “Race and Priesthood,” which states:

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; . . .³⁶

Yet their leaders continue to speak of those who have been blessed according to their pre-mortal life. As recently as 2008 Terry Ball, then the Dean of Religious Education at BYU, taught that our place on earth was assigned according to our performance in the spirit world:

Have you ever wondered why you were born where and when you were born? Why were you not born 500 years ago in some primitive aboriginal culture in some isolated corner of the world? Is the timing and placing of our birth capricious? For Latter-day Saints, the answer is no. Fundamental to our faith is the understanding that before we came to this earth we lived in a premortal existence with a loving Heavenly Father. We further understand that in that premortal state we had agency and that we grew and developed as we used that agency. Some, as Abraham learned, became noble and great ones (see Abraham 3:22-23). We believe that when it came time for us to experience mortality, a loving Heavenly Father, who knows each of us well, sent us to earth at the time and in the place and in circumstances that would best help us reach our divine potential . . .³⁷

While Terry Ball appealed to Abraham 3:22-23 to support the LDS idea of the “noble and great ones” being chosen for future places of honor on earth, he failed to mention the earlier passages that speak of Pharaoh, being from “the loins of Ham,” which “preserved the curse in the land” and that because of that lineage “he could not have the right of Priesthood” (Abraham 1:21-27). It isn’t enough for the LDS leaders to simply say they reject all forms of racism and yet retain racist doctrines in their scriptures.

Patriarchal Blessings Declare Lineage

The LDS Gospel Topics essay suggests two common explanations as to why blacks were denied priesthood:

The curse of Cain was often put forward as justification for the priesthood and temple restrictions. Around the turn of the century, another explanation gained currency: blacks were said to have been less than fully valiant in the premortal battle against Lucifer and, as a consequence, were restricted from priesthood and temple blessings.³⁸

While the current Gospel Topics statement rejects this concept, it has been the common view in LDS circles for decades. Valiant spirits were born white, non-valiant spirits were born black. Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith wrote in 1954:

There were no neutrals in the war in heaven. All took sides either with Christ or with Satan. Every man had his agency there, and men receive rewards here based upon their actions there, just as they will receive rewards hereafter for deeds done in the body. The Negro, evidently, is receiving the reward he merits.³⁹

In his book, The Way to Perfection, Joseph Fielding Smith equated race with pre-earth merit:

Is it not a reasonable belief that the Lord would select the choice spirits to come through the better grades of nations? Moreover, is it not reasonable to believe that less worthy spirits would come through less favored lineage? Does this not account in very large part for the various grades of color and degree of intelligence we find in the earth?⁴⁰

Since the days of Joseph Smith, Mormons have received “Patriarchal Blessings,” a sort of guide for your life and declaration of your linage. Blessings usually make mention, among other things, of your pre-mortal life, your faithfulness and being valiant, all of which determine your lineage. In my February 10, 1955, blessing I [Sandra Tanner] was told:

You have royal blood in your veins for you are a descendant of Father Abraham. You come from the house of Joseph the favorite son of Jacob who was sold into Egypt and from the loins of Ephraim. . . . You were valiant in your first estate [pre-mortal life] and the Lord has rewarded you for it. You struggled valiantly that we might have our free agency and the Lord held you in reserve to come forth at this late time to the home of goodly parents.⁴¹

Mormons today are still being told they were valiant in the spirit world. In a 2005 Patriarchal blessing a white woman in Utah was told:

You are one of his faithful, devoted, and noble spirits, and He is pleased with the way you are conducting your life. . . . You lived with Him in the pre-mortal world and there you became a faithful and valiant spirit.⁴²

If one teaches that some are granted a favorable birth due to pre-mortal performance then it stands to reason that some are given unfavorable births due to lack of performance. Mormonism will never be completely free of racism as long as it continues to teach that your pre-earth conduct determines your lineage and quality of your birth.

Folklore or Doctrine

Today the LDS Church seems to be categorizing the teachings of past prophets on racial issues as “folklore.” In an article commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of lifting the ban on blacks, Sheldon F. Child, of the Council of Seventies, explained to a reporter:

“We have to keep in mind that it’s folklore and not doctrine,” Elder Child said. “It’s never been recorded as such. Many opinions, personal opinions, were spoken. I’m just so grateful for this [1978] revelation,” he said, adding he can recall exactly where he was and what he was doing when he heard the news 30 years ago.⁴³

If the leaders’ sermons on race were merely “folklore,” why did it require a revelation to change the practice? Why did President Spencer W. Kimball need to plead “long and earnestly” for God to give priesthood to blacks? This certainly makes it look like the brethren believed God was the one withholding priesthood.

Despite the lifting of the priesthood ban in 1978, the LDS church was still left with years of sermons denigrating blacks. LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie counseled:

There are statements in our literature by the early Brethren which we have interpreted to mean that the Negroes would not receive the priesthood in mortality. I have said the same things, and people write me letters and say, “You said such and such, and how is it now that we do such and such?” And all I can say to that is that 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 whomsoever 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.⁴⁴

But if the leaders’ earlier sermons relating to the “curse of Cain” and the ban on blacks holding the priesthood were simply due to “limited understanding” how are the LDS faithful to have confidence in their leaders’ sermons today? The leaders were certainly claiming that their sermons on race were doctrine and the will of God at the time.

Peggy Fletcher Stack, reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune, observed:

Latter-day Saints everywhere recognized the move [in 1978] as a game-changing milestone. It opened the door for wider proselytizing in Africa and other continents with black populations, and allowed Mormonism to woo potential believers in far-flung regions previously off-limits because of the priesthood prohibition.

Yet dropping the ban did not—indeed could not— eliminate all racism in the church.

LDS leaders offered no apology nor, at the time, any in-depth analysis of the reasons for the exclusionary policy. Justifications, including the notion that blacks were descendants of a biblical bad guy, Cain, or that they were less valiant in a premortal existence, continued to be taught and touted by members. Statements dismissing or denigrating blacks offered by previous Mormon authorities remained in print and often were embraced by believers long after the ban’s demise.

Racial strife—including slurs and denigrating remarks —still “lifts its ugly head . . . even right here among us,” President Gordon B. Hinckley preached in a 2006 LDS General Conference address. “. . . I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ.”⁴⁵

Lifting the ban, as Peggy Stack pointed out, has opened the door for LDS missionaries in areas of darker-skinned people. There are now 578,310 members of the LDS Church in Africa and 1,155,764 in Asia.

Matthew Bowman, professor at Henderson State University, reported:

Today about one in 10 converts to Mormonism are black, but surveys report that only about 1 to 3 percent of Mormons in the United States are African-American.⁴⁶

In 2013 the LDS Church attempted to provide answers for the lifting of the priesthood ban with an essay in their Gospel Topics series entitled “Race and Priesthood.” But instead of giving a clear explanation of their doctrine on race or a denunciation of Brigham Young and other past prophets’ statements on race, they tried to rationalize their earlier racism as no worse than that of others in the nation. The essay states:

The Church was established in 1830, during an era of great racial division in the United States. At the time, many people of African descent lived in slavery, and racial distinctions and prejudice were not just common but customary among white Americans. Those realities, though unfamiliar and disturbing today, influenced all aspects of people’s lives, including their religion. Many Christian churches of that era, for instance, were segregated along racial lines.⁴⁷

While the above statement is true it fails to explain why Mormonism lagged so far behind the rest of the United States in granting equal status to blacks. Despite the wide-spread acceptance of racism during that time, many Christians were actually preaching against it in the 1800s. By the time the LDS Church opened its priesthood to blacks in 1978 they were embarrassingly behind the times.

If the LDS Church is truly led by prophetic wisdom why wasn’t the policy changed before the civil rights movement of the mid-1900s instead of years after? In contrast to this, Joseph Smith’s son, as president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ, opened the door to black ordination during Brigham Young’s lifetime. Christian scholar Robert Bowman observed:

It is ironic that during Brigham Young’s tenure as president of the LDS Church, his main rival as the true prophetic successor to Joseph Smith went in a completely different direction on the issue of blacks and the priesthood. In 1865 Joseph Smith III (the son of Joseph Smith Jr.), the first president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, issued a revelation calling for the ordination of men “of every race” to the priesthood. Yet according to the Utah-based LDS Church, Joseph Smith III was not a prophet at all. How is it that an uninspired or false prophet could see the wisdom in 1865 of inviting people of all races to share fully in the ministries of the restored Church, but Brigham Young, supposedly the true prophet, could not? Indeed, how is it that it took the Mormon Church 113 years after Joseph Smith III to come around to the same conclusion?⁴⁸

Author John G. Turner, writing in the New York Times, observed:

White Christians of many denominational stripes used repugnant language to justify slavery and the inferiority of black people. . . . Most Protestant denominations, however, gradually apologized for their past racism. In contrast, while Mormon leaders generically criticize past and present racism, they carefully avoid any specific criticism of past presidents and apostles, careful not to disrupt traditional reverence for the church’s prophets.⁴⁹

Joel Groat, of the Institute of Religious Research, compiled the following after comparing the past LDS statements on race with the current Gospel Topics essay:

• For about 125 years the Mormon prophets and apostles taught these ideas not as “theories” but as doctrines originating in divine revelation, given in Scripture and reaffirmed by the living prophets from Brigham Young to David O. McKay as commandments from God. All Latter-day Saints were expected to view them as such.
• During that time they simultaneously affirmed: “Neither the President of the Church, nor the First Presidency, nor the united voice of the First Presidency and the Twelve will ever lead the Saints astray or send forth counsel to the world that is contrary to the mind and will of the Lord.” This reinforced the fact that their racist policies came directly from God.
• However when faced with the embarrassing and damaging racist implications of views still being taught in the LDS Church over 30 years after the ban was lifted, current LDS leaders provided the following explanation on the official church website in 2013.
  1. None of the prior teachings related to race and the priesthood were doctrines of the church; they were simply theories.
  2. These ideas originated not with God but with Brigham Young, who was influenced by the social and cultural ideas of his time.
  3. They as a church were officially disavowing these theories as raciest and wrong.⁵⁰

It seems the Mormons want it both ways, past prophets and apostles were true representatives of God, but at the same time many of their sermons were racist and “folklore.”

While we applaud the LDS Church’s efforts to remove racism from its teachings, one wonders if it can truly succeed as long as the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price, with their racist teachings, are embraced as the word of God? We are reminded of Paul’s instructions to the Galatians:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
(Galatians 3:28)

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Footnotes:

1. “LDS Church to welcome Gladys Knight, Alex Boyé for celebration of blacks and the priesthood,” KSL.com, May 2, 2018. ↩︎
2. “Understanding Mormon Disbelief,” p. 9, (PDF). ↩︎
3. Andrew Jenson, L.D.S. Biographical Encyclopedia, vol. 3, (1901-1936), p. 577. ↩︎
4. Armand Mauss, All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 215-216. ↩︎
5. Salt Lake Tribune, (September 28, 2002): pp. C1, C8. ↩︎
6. Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Curse of Cain? Racism in the Mormon Church (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 2004), p. 39. ↩︎
7. Letter from Joseph Fielding Smith to Joseph H. Henderson, April 10, 1963; photo of letter in Curse of Cain? Appendix C. ↩︎
8. Newell G. Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2018), p. 2. ↩︎
9. Harold B. Lee, Decisions for Successful Living, (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 1973), p. 167. ↩︎
10. For a fuller list of LDS scriptures relating to race, see Racial Statements in LDS Scripture. ↩︎
11. John Taylor, ed., Times and Seasons, vol. 6, p. 857. ↩︎
12. Brigham Young Address to Legislature—Feb. 5, 1852. ↩︎
13. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, pp. 290-291. ↩︎
14. “The Autobiography of Jane Manning James.” ↩︎
15. D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), p. 795. ↩︎
16. Journal of Joseph Christenson, microfilm in LDS Church Historical Library. ↩︎
17. Max Perry Mueller, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2017), p. 151. See also The Development of LDS Temple Worship: 1846-2000, Devery S. Anderson, ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2011), p. 97. ↩︎
18. Jessie L. Embry, Black Saints in a White Church (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), pp. 40-41. ↩︎
19. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1833-1898, vol. 9, typescript, edited by Scott G. Kenney (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1985), p. 322. ↩︎
20. Daily Universe, “Local artist celebrates pioneers through art in Payson Temple,” by Dana Dodini, June 5, 2015. ↩︎
21. Joseph Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection (Genealogical Society of Utah, 1935), pp. 101-102. ↩︎
22. “LDS Church First Presidency Statement on the Question of Blacks Within the Church,” August 17, 1949, as quoted in Saints, Slaves, and Blacks, p. 226. ↩︎
23. Seattle Magazine, (December 1967): p. 60. ↩︎
24. Tanner, Curse of Cain?, pp. 24-36. ↩︎
25. Bruce McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), p. 477; changed in later editions. ↩︎
26. John J. Stewart, Mormonism and the Negro, supplement by William E. Berrett (Horizon, 1978), part 2, p. 65 [part 2, p. 5 of original 1960 pamphlet.] ↩︎
27. Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church, vol. 5, (January 2, 1845), pp. 217-218. ↩︎
28. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 110. ↩︎
29. Mark E. Peterson, “Race Problems—As They Affect the Church,” Address given at the Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level, delivered at BYU, August 27, 1954. (Reproduced in Mormons and Negroes [Jerald and Sandra Tanner, 1970]). ↩︎
30. Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979), p. 114. ↩︎
31. Lester Bush, “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 38. ↩︎
32. David Briscoe and George Buck, “Black Friday,” Utah Holiday, (July 1978): pp. 39-40 ↩︎
33. Times and Seasons, vol. 5, pp. 613-615; also in History of the Church, vol. 6, pp. 302-312. ↩︎
34. Alvin R. Dyer, “For What Purpose,” talk in Oslo, Norway, March 18, 1961, typed copy in our files. Part of this talk is quoted in The Church and the Negro, by John L. Lund, 1967, p. 97, also reproduced in The Negro in Mormon Theology (Jerald and Sandra Tanner, 1967). ↩︎
35. Letter to Joseph H. Henderson from Joseph Fielding Smith, April 10, 1963. Photo of letter in Curse of Cain? Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Appendix A. ↩︎
36. “Race and the Priesthood,” Gospel Topics Essays, churchofjesuschrist.org. ↩︎
37. Terry Ball, “To Confirm and Inform: A Blessing of Higher Education,” speech given at BYU (March 11, 2008). ↩︎
38. “Race and the Priesthood.” ↩︎
39. Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954), vol. 1, pp. 65-66. ↩︎
40. Joseph Fielding Smith, Way to Perfection, p. 48. ↩︎
41. “LDS Patriarchal Blessings” by Sandra Tanner. ↩︎
42. Patriarchal Blessing, H. M. Palmer, February 27, 2005. ↩︎
43. “LDS Marking 30-Year Milestone,” Deseret News, June 7, 2008. ↩︎
44. “All are Alike Unto God,” Bruce R. McConkie, Aug. 18, 1978. ↩︎
45. Peggy Fletcher Stack, “39 years later, priesthood ban is history, but racism within Mormon ranks isn’t, black members say,” Salt Lake Tribune, (June 9, 2017). ↩︎
46. Matthew Bowman, “Global Spread of Mormonism,” in Los Angeles Times, (May 29, 2018). ↩︎
47. “Race and the Priesthood.” ↩︎
48. “Race and the Priesthood: Analysis of the New Mormon Statement,” Robert M. Bowman Jr., February 27, 2014. ↩︎
49. John G. Turner, “Why Race is Still a Problem for Mormons,” in New York Times (Aug. 18, 2012). ↩︎
50. Joel B. Groat, “Exploring Mormon Racism: The All-Are-Justified-the-Same Approach,” mrm.org. ↩︎

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