#and when church leaders refuse to admit that those beliefs are wrong and harmful and instead try to bury them or work around them

[handshakewdeath]

anyone else having a hard time feeling any sort of sincerity in idkhow's (read as: exclusively dallon) portrayal of gender and use of dark imagery through the lens of "dallon is an active member of the mormon church and takes his kids to mormon church services"

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

I’ve been seeing (and sharing) some things about certain prophets and scriptures and such. So I’m going to share my unsolicited opinion about this. I’ll preface by saying that I’m not Black and don’t pretend to know the full extent of the harm from the racism in the Church. I’m coming at this from what I’ve heard and learned and studied; if I say something inaccurate, please let me know!

 I’ll make it as organized as I can. It’s gonna be long so it’ll be under the cut.

First of all, I know that we’re told to listen to the prophet’s voice. D&C 21:4-5 says:

Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed to all of [Joseph Smith’s] words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;

For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.

(Brackets added by me).

This says that we need to heed the voices of the leaders of the Church because they’re mouthpieces of the Lord. It also says that we need to have patience and faith. To me, this means that sometimes they’ll say things we disagree with. This is often looked at as “oh you need to pray and learn to be okay with the doctrine”, which is the case sometimes! But sometimes, to me, this also means “you need to pray and figure things out for yourself, keeping the faith when your leaders decide to spread their opinions instead of or alongside doctrine”. It’s odd to me that we say that our leaders are imperfect but then refuse to truly admit when a previous leader (you know the one, though there were plenty more) were, in a word, wrong. Brigham Young was an imperfect person who supported slavery and took away Black mens’ rights to hold the priesthood. He did some awful things! And guess what? He was wrong. Ezra Taft Benson said that Martin Luther King was a communist. Guess what? He was wrong. Saying that someone was a prophet and brought forth doctrine and saying that they had wrong/harmful opinions are not mutually exclusive. We readily criticize Joseph Smith for being bad at money but we have a hard time criticizing Brigham Young for being racist and pro-slavery. Honestly, I consider Young to be worse in that regard, so I’m not sure why we’ve refused to acknowledge it for so long. A couple other people who are held up as religious leaders who did the Lord’s work include:

-Martin Luther, who was antisemitic for a large part of his life and died holding those views.

-Paul, who was sexist. (I’m not going to get into the debate about whether or not the verses in question were actually his words because I’m not very knowledgeable on the topic, but they are attributed to him as of when I’m writing this so that’s what I’m going with).

Paul is well loved and respected by Christians, at least from what I’ve seen. Martin Luther was a crucial part of the Reformation. We say that those views are outdated and harmful despite the fact that those men were “a product of their time”. In the secular sphere, we say this about Confederate generals and slaveholders. We recognize the culture they grew up around but critique their views anyway because we know better now. On top of that, cultures are never monolithic, so not everyone’s going to have the same views. Heck, Martin Luther wasn’t antisemitic at first. “Their time” included people who weren’t sexist or racist or antisemitic or any other bad “-ist”. Their time period isn’t an excuse.

So why are we allowing it to be an excuse with our leaders? Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Lord’s Church in the latter-days, was anti-slavery! He appointed Black men to the priesthood! Some examples: Elijah Abel was the first Black man to be called to the Seventy. He went on three missions. He was ordained to the priesthood! Joseph T. Ball was a branch president! He was also ordained to the priesthood. I said it earlier and I’ll say it again: Brigham Young took the blessings of holding the priesthood away from Black men. This goes directly against what Joseph Smith, one of the first to hold the priesthood in the Restored Church, did. And this stance was held up by other racist leaders until 1978.

Our leaders through the years have claimed to have been praying for an answer about this, and I’m sure they were, but they didn’t receive the go-ahead to lift the ban. I commonly hear people justifying this by saying that such a radical stance would have killed the Church because the world wasn’t ready for it. But there were plenty of anti-slavery churches who actively helped and protected slaves and free Black people at that time and afterwards. So to me, the logic doesn’t add up, and it’s never sat right with me.

But here’s the thing: we know that the Restoration is a process. We know that we learn and grow “line by line, precept by precept” as we are willing to apply what we are taught. You can pray for whatever you want, but if you’re not truly open to the answer you won’t get it. I’m sure many of us have had those times where we say that we’re open to whatever the answer is but we aren’t yet; I know I have. I, personally, think that that’s what happened. The apostles and prophets weren’t truly ready. And guess what it took? It took them realizing that a community of Saints in Brazil (if I remember correctly) who wouldn’t be able to go into the temple being built in their area raised money to build it anyway. 

In a similar vein, we know that some of the teachings used to justify those views are false.

-”Mark of Cain”: used to say that Black people were unworthy of temple covenants because they’re descendants of Cain. This is false and dehumanizing.

-”Valor in Heaven”: this is the belief that people who aren’t white are that way because they were “less than faithful” during the war in heaven. This is false. A lot of things have grey areas, but I feel like this is pretty straight forward: either you ended up on the Savior’s side in the pre-existence or you didn’t. Everyone reading this in a physical body ended up on the Savior’s side. I, personally, don’t think Heavenly Father would quantify it, either. Is someone who joined the Church later in life any less qualified for the Celestial Kingdom? What about someone who doesn’t accept the gospel until the afterlife, but gets all of the saving ordinances by proxy? Do they get stuck in a Kingdom lower than what they actually should get? “Valor in Heaven” flies in the face of our teachings and is dehumanizing.

-The Lamanites’ curse: this was a specific situation that applied to a specific group of people. Quick note: I’m wrestling with these verses myself, but this is where I’m at with them right now. This is definitely “gospel according to Jean” territory, partly because I’m not sure how often recent leaders have discussed it: we’ve been avoiding the topic all together for a while now.

It didn’t make their culture monolithic. Both they and the Nephites went through phases of righteousness and unrighteousness. The main issue was that the Nephites (who started out righteous) were actively being killed by the Lamanites. The curse was a way to tell them apart, yes, but it would have been the same whether it was “the Lamanites will have blonde hair” or “the Nephites will be dark” (to use the terminology in the Book of Mormon). Also, what does Jacob tell the Nephites in Jacob 3? One, to “revile against them no more because of the darkness of their skins” (verse 9) and two, that they were more righteous than the Nephites were at that time. Jacob gives a couple reasons for this: firstly, they loved their wives and didn’t cheat on them or participate in polygamy that wasn’t given the go-ahead by the Lord (this is what the Nephites were doing). Secondly, the hatred they felt towards the Nephites was passed down by their fathers. Their fathers were Laman and Lemuel, who actively tried to murder their brothers and even their father, and taught their children to do the same to their cousins. The Lamanites hated the Nephites because they were taught that Nephi stole the brass plates (which held genealogy and doctrine) and tried to take the right to rule from his older brothers. I, at least, can understand the logic of that, even if it’s not really what happened according to the Book of Mormon. They were acting on what they knew. It was a lasting blood feud between family, not “oh one group is Not White so they’re bad”. This, besides the fact that the Lehites hailed from Jerusalem. So, Middle Eastern. Also, “filthiness”, from what I can tell, was used as another way to say “unrighteousness”. It’s not that they were literally “dirtier”, as I think many people take it to mean.

When one group was righteous and the other one wasn’t, the righteous group sent missionaries to the other. We use it to justify racism and slavery. There’s also the fact that sometimes the scriptures say that the Lord caused something to happen when really it was more that He let it happen. He didn’t actually harden the Pharaoh’s heart, He just didn’t violate the Pharaoh’s agency to un-harden it. I wonder if the “curse” was something similar.

So all that to say: we should absolutely hold Brigham Young, Ezra Taft Benson, and the others accountable for the harm they did. They were human! And humans are never just good. It’s okay to say “we recognize that these men furthered the Restoration, but they also did and said awful things that are not acceptable.” That’s not disrespecting their roles as prophets, seers, and revelators, it’s ensuring that we don’t conflate their opinions with doctrine. Is it so hard to apologize? To not ignore the pain this caused? But until us and our leaders both start actively working to undo the racism inherent in the system, we’re not going to get anywhere.