Category: Latter-day Saint Scholarship/Apologetics

Some Thoughts Inspired by "Tabernacles of Clay"

6/6/2021

Last year, Taylor Petrey published a book called Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Mormonism and it became popular and got flattering reviews. I saw no critical reviews and no response from the Church's self-appointed apologetics organizations, but I recognized from the book's impact that they couldn't just ignore it like they did Moroni and the Swastika. I reached out to Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship - even before I lost respect for FAIR, Interpreter was the organization I trusted most to do an intellectually honest job - and said they ought to put someone on it. On August 23, Steve Densley responded that "a reviewer has been working on 'Tabernacles of Clay.' Apparently, he has found that there is so much to say about that book that we will likely be publishing a number of reviews that address the book in sections. It sounds like we should have the first part ready for publication within the next few weeks." So I waited a few weeks, then a few more weeks, then a few more weeks, and then I concluded that they had found it too difficult and given up.

On March 5 of this year, they published the first and so far only review from Gregory L. Smith. It's very long and has 504 footnotes. Brother Smith spends most of it documenting Dr. Petrey's misuse of sources in the first two chapters. "So serious are these problems that," he writes, "on one level, it is astonishing that this work would be published by a university press. Granted, the book’s ideological agenda and subject matter is popular in some quarters,4 and such works have their place — if they are honest with themselves and their readers about what they are.5 But what Tabernacles offers is not good history. Tabernacles of Clay is a good argument for the necessity of review by experts in both the theology and history of the Church of Jesus Christ when academic presses do 'Mormon' studies. Experts in queer and gender theory might find it compelling; anyone familiar with the religious sources ought to know better." He isn't wrong. Nonetheless, the sources themselves are so interesting that I still wanted to read the book with this caution in mind. So I did.

For this post I will focus only on part of his conclusion that I wanted to share because it stuck with me:

One can expect further pressures on LDS institutions and culture as they continue to swim within a broader environment that is still moving away from so-called traditional values. Resisting these trends, church leaders have expressed dim prospects for any considered change on teachings regarding same-sex marriage.22 At the same time, these teachings are producing an increasing strain on church members, especially younger members who have grown up in a world that is more open and accepting of nonnormative identities and relationships. When recently surveyed, 60 percent of regularly attending millennial Mormons (eighteen to twenty-six years old) and 53 percent of older millennial Mormons (twenty-seven to thirty-nine years old) believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society. Latter-day Saint support is growing rapidly in all age groups. In 2016, overall Mormon support for this statement was at 48 percent, double what it was just ten years before. Among Mormon millennials who have left the church, they cite “LGBT issues” as the third most important reason they disaffiliated. The generation gap is massive on this issue and has only grown, despite persistent LDS messaging from the top.23

Besides same-sex marriage, the male-only priesthood also seems particularly burdensome in the contemporary LDS church. The exclusion of women from ordination to the priesthood remains one of the most powerful ways that Mormons mark sexual difference in embodied practices. Once, this sharp division of roles would have mimicked broader social divisions of labor between public and domestic, leaders and followers, and the rational and emotional. Today, the church’s policy looks increasingly anachronistic and is more easily recognized as a product of a particular time in American culture in which gender hierarchy defined gender roles. A recent survey shows that 61 percent of Mormon millennials agree that “women do not have enough say in the LDS church” and that 59 percent are “troubled that women don’t hold the priesthood.”24 The gendered division of responsibilities between men and women in the church no longer reflects the time in which such divisions were created but is a social anomaly that must justify itself to many younger members in the face of its strangeness. Today, modern Mormons have become accustomed to women professors and male elementary school teachers, female doctors and male nurses, women heads of state, and women business executives. There is no doubt that there remain barriers, prejudices, and setbacks in these various fields, and there are still significant inequities that drive some skewed outcomes in labor and wealth. But the notion that men and women can share power in the market, education, and government is the new norm and has been for decades. The fact that a woman may be a chief financial officer for a company but may not be entrusted to count LDS tithing donations in her local congregation on the basis of not being ordained to the priesthood highlights the strangeness in Mormon practice for many younger generations.

The burden of the tradition here is particularly weighty. As the broader social barriers separating male and female roles dissipate, the reasons for such divisions are increasingly opaque. Even church leaders have a hard time articulating them. Amid the 2014 controversy between an activist organization called “Ordain Women” and LDS church headquarters, LDS Public Affairs director Michael Otterson wrote a letter to a handful of Mormon-themed blogs. These influential blogs had been hubs for engaged, vociferous debates about the merits of women’s ordination at the time. Otterson wrote by way of justification, “I suppose we do not know all the reasons why Christ did not ordain women as apostles, either in the New Testament or the Book of Mormon, or when the Church was restored in modern times. We only know that he did not, that his leaders today regard this as a doctrinal issue that cannot be compromised, and that agitation from a few Church members is hindering the broader and more productive conversation about the voice, value and visibility of women in the Church that has been going on for years.”25 The comment was revealing in that it not only emphasized that women can never be ordained, grounding that decision in questionable precedent, but also expressed a lack of understanding of whether there were any reasons for the precedent at all.26 Is tradition the evidence of an unchanging “doctrine,” or a reflection of the cultures in which these traditions were developed? Otterson’s articulation looked familiar when compared to the discourse surrounding the exclusion of black men from the priesthood. At that time, a similar debate raged over whether the doctrine was a product of its cultural milieu or a reflection of an unchangeable divine order, and church leaders had regularly claimed ignorance before and after it was changed about why the policy and doctrines had been instituted in the first place.

For Mormonism to accommodate same-sex marriage or include women in the priesthood, the tradition would need to change its stance on norms that define gender and sexual difference—norms that have already proven to be historically contingent. While anti-homosexuality and gender divisions seemed normal to a generation of church leaders who by and large took them for granted, to younger generations who are raised in a new cultural context, those ideas appear anachronistic at best and immoral at worst.

No lies detected. I saw Lynne Thigpen portray a police chief on the game show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" before I was old enough to know what police were, so it never in my life would have occurred to me that women (or black people) shouldn't be police chiefs. For example.

The ban on female ordination is not, strictly speaking, analogous to the ban on ordination of males of African descent. Black men and women before 1978 were also denied the temple ordinances necessary for eternal families and exaltation, and were said to be under a curse because of things they did before they were born. (On the other hand, black men before 1978 could serve in Sunday school presidencies, which don't require priesthood, but women still can't. Figure that one out.) I actually agree with the logic that people don't have to be the same to be equal, and as long as everyone in the Church is eligible for the same eternal blessings, their role or position in the earthly organization doesn't matter. The President of the Church is no greater than someone who's given a useless made-up calling to make them feel included. So I consider priesthood ordination a far less important issue than whether women are treated as equal partners in marriage and whether they can pursue careers outside the home without men like my bishop calling them to repentance. I'm totally agnostic on whether it should happen at all.

Nonetheless, I have little patience anymore for the reasons people make up to explain why women aren't ordained, reasons that are usually patronizing to women, demeaning to men, or both. And if you go back a few decades, the reasons just become even more blatantly sexist and that should be quite a red flag about how made up they are altogether. Rodney Turner's 1972 book Woman and the Priesthood taught that, notwithstanding "[w]e believe men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression", women are punished for Eve's transgression to this day. Nowadays we've made the different-but-equal paradigm work by changing the definition of "preside" and disregarding the statements well into the 1970s (or in the temple until 2019) that unambiguously assigned men to a position of authority over their wives. Anyway, I'm not an activist for women's ordination but I do enjoy annoying people by pointing out the inadequacy of the reasons they make up to justify the lack thereof. Michael Otterson was honest enough to cite the one and only actual known reason: precedent.

And while I'm on the subject,

God may, in fact, have some legitimate reason for this division of labor. Even that wouldn't necessarily preclude it from changing in the future. I don't believe for a moment that women's anatomical or mental differences make them intrinsically, eternally, and divinely incompatible with priesthood ordination. I find the notion absurd. I don't predict, as such, a change to this policy within my lifetime, and yet I won't be the slightest bit surprised if it happens either. There have already been several adjustments to the scope and visibility of women's role in the Church within the last decade, largely in response to Ordain Women and other internal feminist movements (copied from my Brief History of Women in the Church of Jesus Christ):

October 6, 2012 - President Thomas S. Monson lowers the minimum age of missionary service for women from 21 to 19.

April 3, 2013 - The Church announces, "The role of sister training leader has been created as more female missionaries serve in missions around the world. Sister training leaders will be responsible for the training and welfare of female missionaries assigned to them and will be members of and participate in, the new mission leadership council."

April 6, 2013 - At the close of the Saturday morning session, Primary general presidency first counselor Jean A. Stevens becomes the first woman to pray in General Conference.

October 5, 2013 - For the first time, the priesthood session is broadcast on the Church's website as all other General Conference sessions have been for years. Having been denied tickets by spokeswoman Ruth Todd, members of Ordain Women wait in the standby line and are turned away at the door one by one.

April 5, 2014 - For this and subsequent General Conferences, the female auxiliary presidencies (Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary) are relocated to sit in the middle of the First Quorum of the Seventy in the Conference Center, a far more visible position directly behind the pulpit.

April 2014 - The annually updated General Authorities chart (which previously included only men) is expanded to also include General Officers, including the Relief Society general presidency, the Young Women general presidency, the Primary general presidency, the Sunday School general presidency, and the Young Men general presidency.

November 14, 2014 - A policy change allows divorced women and mothers of young children to have or retain jobs as seminary and institute teachers. A memo notes, "This change makes it possible for families to decide what best meets their needs as it relates to mothers working while raising children. This policy is consistent with other church departments."

August 18, 2015 - A woman is appointed to each of three formerly all-male leadership councils - Relief Society general president Linda K. Burton to the Priesthood and Family Executive Council, Young Women general president Bonnie L. Oscarson to the Missionary Executive Council, and Primary general president Rosemary M. Wixom to the Temple and Family History Executive Council.

December 20, 2018 - Updated missionary dress and grooming guidelines allow sister missionaries to wear slacks during most weekly activities, though they "should continue to wear dresses or skirts when attending the temple and during Sunday worship services, leadership and zone conferences, baptismal services, and missionary training center devotionals".

January 2, 2019 - The initiatory is changed so that women are no longer anointed to be queens and priestesses "unto your husband". The endowment ceremony is changed so that women no longer covenant to "hearken to the counsel of your husband as he hearkens to the counsel of the Father", and no longer veil their faces during the prayer circle. The ceremony now speaks of "Adam and Eve" instead of "Adam" throughout while Adam refers to "we" instead of "I". The husband-wife sealing is changed so that the woman "receives" her husband just as he "receives" her, but the husband now covenants to "preside with gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned".

January 17, 2019 - The Church News begins announcing the call of "new mission presidents and companions [wives]" instead of just the mission presidents, though the wives had already been included in pictures and bios alongside their husbands.

January 24, 2019 - The First Presidency states in a letter, "Veiling an endowed woman's face prior to burial is optional. This may be done if the sister expressed such a desire while she was living. In cases where the wishes of the deceased sister on this matter are not known, her family should be consulted."

March 1, 2019 - One of a few policy changes allows mothers with dependent children to serve as temple ordinance workers. The First Presidency notes, "Members should review their circumstances and avoid placing undue burdens on themselves or their families as they consider these service opportunities."

October 2, 2019 - A policy change allows baptized women and children to serve as witnesses at baptisms, and endowed women to serve as witnesses at temple sealings.

January 2020 - The Church implements its new Children and Youth program for members aged 8-18 and cuts its 109-year-old relationship with the Boy Scouts of America. In the process it also ends the longstanding budget disparity between the Young Men and Young Women programs.

March 11, 2021 - The First Presidency creates the new position of international area organization adviser outside the United States and Canada, to be filled by women representing the Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary alongside area authority Seventies.

Would anyone be so naïve as to think that the changes will stop there? Would anyone be so silly as to insist that they know where the changes will stop? Why am I even asking these questions? Of course they would and they will.

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Six Black Men React to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

16/5/2021

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One of the best-kept secrets on my website is the most comprehensive history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and black people ever compiled. The only reason it's a secret is that Google hates me. For the better part of a decade I've gathered more information than any normal person needs or wants to know. Unfortunately, because the Church for a majority of its history has been led and primarily composed of white people, a majority of the available sources are also from white people. I relish every opportunity to hear from black Latter-day Saints in their own words. Rarer still, and possibly even more interesting, are opportunities to hear from black people who were never members of the Church but had something to say about it. I want to draw attention here to four such interesting sources. In the full compilation, I try to let sources speak for themselves as much as possible and only interject historical context and/or bias when I think it's necessary. But here on my blog, where my standards of scholarly rigor drop from almost nonexistent to nonexistent, I'll indulge myself in a whitesplaining commentary on each one.

1873
James Williams
"Bigamy"
Excerpt from Fugitive Slave in the Gold Rush

"Let me give the reader a few items on Bigamy. They say bigamy is a wrong and a curse to the land. So say I, but I noticed, during my visit to Salt Lake, that it is one of the handsomest cities in the United States, with beautiful streams of clear water running through the streets. And Brigham allowed a man to have as many wives as he was able to take care of, but he must be able to take care of them. There were no whiskey-mills, no dance-houses, and no gambling-houses, and no houses of ill-repute. Let us see the difference. Since Americans have been there, there are dance-houses, whiskey-mills, gambling-houses, and houses of ill repute. Let me ask the reader a question: How is it that in the United States men run away with other men's wives, married men keeping three or four different women, outside of the family circle, and no notice taken of that? Which is the best law, to allow a man to marry a number of women and be able to take care of them, or allow a man to marry one and be not able to take care of her, and running away with several, and no notice of it? Then I am not an advocate of these doctrines, but I only say that we, some of the colored people, who are possessed of little learning, take notice of these matters. Look at Salt Lake four years ago, and look at it to-day, and you will see the difference. I say Brigham is an old man, and I say that we should let him alone during his lifetime."

Whitesplaining Commentary

Not much to say about this one. It's just kind of funny. I wish Williams had written more about us, but I don't think he stayed in Utah very long. Go bigamy or go home, eh?

1913
Booker T. Washington
Letter to the New York Age, the Self-Proclaimed "Leading Negro Newspaper"

"For a long while I have been anxious to get right into the midst of the Mormons to see what kind of people they are, what they look like, what they are doing, and in what respect they are succeeding. I have been spending two of the busiest days that I have ever spent in my life in the very midst of these people. They have been mighty interesting days, and I have seen some mighty interesting people. The leaders of the Mormon church from President Smith down have gone out of their way to show me kindnesses and to make my trip here successful.

"I am not going to discuss the Mormon religion as I am not a theologian; I shall have to leave that to others. I am always interested in studying and observing people regardless of their religion. One of the Mormon bishops called to see me and from him I got some mighty interesting information that ought to prove of value to our race.

"In speaking of the Mormons, my readers must remember that it was only sixty-six years ago that, led by Brigham Young, 150 people came into this country when it was a wilderness. They traveled in ox carts over a thousand miles from the Missouri River. The Mormon church itself was organized in New York State only eighty-four years ago. From 150 people, hardy pioneers who entered Utah sixty-six years ago, the number has grown year by year until in Utah there are now over three hundred thousand Mormons, and they have certainly made the desert blossom as a rose. I have never been among a more intelligent, healthy, clean, progressive, moral set of people than these people are. All through Utah they have turned the desert into gardens and orchards. Wherever one finds a Mormon colony there he finds evidence of hard work and wealth.

"The Mormon leaders here told me in detail about the policy that they pursued when they first came here, and here is a great lesson for our people in the South and throughout this country. From the first the Mormons consistently and persistently pursued the policy of having their people get hold of land, to settle on the soil and become farmers. They knew that if they once got possession of the soil and taught their people how to become successful farmers that they would be laying the foundation so secure that they could not be disturbed. Several of the leaders told me that when they first came into this country that there was great temptation to exploit the gold, silver and copper mines, but they would not let their people do this, but held them to the soil. It is only within the last few years that the Mormons have begun to get wealth out of the mineral resources of the country, notwithstanding they have known all along that this wealth existed. Now that they are in possession of the soil and have taught their people how to become successful farmers they say they can afford to go into mining.

"There are two parallels between the Negro and the Mormons. First, as my readers already know, the Mormons were most inhumanly persecuted almost from the first organization of their church. This was especially true in Missouri and Illinois. Hundreds of their followers were put to death. The courts gave them little protection. The mob that either killed or wounded the Mormons was seldom, if ever, punished. They were an easy mark for any inhuman brute who wanted to either kill or wound them. Joseph Smith himself, the founder of the church, was murdered in Illinois. But out of this inhuman and unjust treatment grew the strength of these people. The more they were punished the more determined they became to succeed. Without opposition and injustice, I question whether the Mormon church could now be in its present flourishing condition. They were deprived of their property as well as their lives in their early years, but the more they were persecuted the closer they banded themselves together and the more determined they were to succeed. Persecutions advertised this little sect to the world. The result was that through persecution their numbers increased instead of being diminished.

"The second parallel between the Mormon and the Negro is this. These people, I am sure, have been misrepresented before the world. I have learned by experience and observation that it is never safe to pass final judgment upon a people until one has had an opportunity to get into the real life of these people. The Negro is suffering to-day just as the Mormons are suffering and have suffered, because people from the outside have advertised the worst in connection with Mormon life and they seldom called attention to the best in connection with the life of the Mormons. And then I have learned, too, that no person outside a race or outside a group of people can ever really know that race or that group of people until he gets into their homes and has a chance to observe their men and women and their children, has a chance to partake of their hospitality and get into their inner life. There are many people to-day who consider themselves wise on the condition of the Negro, who are really afraid to go into a Negro home, who never go into a Negro church or Sunday School, who have never met the colored people in any social circle; hence such people know little about the moral standards and activities of the colored people. The same, I am convinced, is true regarding the Mormons. The people who speak in the most disrespectful terms of these people are the ones who know the least about them.

"I am convinced that the Mormons are not an immoral people. No immoral people could have such strong, fine bodies as these people, nor such alert and vigorous minds as they. It has been my privilege to address schools and universities in nearly every part of America, and I say without hesitation that I have never addressed a college anywhere where the students were more alert, more responsive, more intelligent than is true of the students in these Mormon colleges. I was hardly prepared for the over-generous and rapturous reception that was given me at the State University [University of Utah], the students of which for the most part are Mormons, and I had the same experience in addressing the private schools and other institutions conducted by Mormons.

"I met, for example, one of the daughters of Joseph H. [sic] Smith, the successor to Brigham Young and now the head of the church. I was told that she was one of forty-nine children, but she was an intelligent, modest, fine young woman with a strong body and an alert mind. I was told that the other forty-eight children were just as healthy and strong and alert as she. Just how many wives Joseph H. Smith has or had I do not know. I am not going into the subject of plural wives, but I am simply stating facts and giving my impressions.

"These Mormons have first class schools of every character, and they are pushing the matter of technical and industrial education to a stronger degree than we are in the South among the colored people. In fact, time and time again I was told that they learned their methods for the most part from Hampton, Tuskegee and similar institutions. I was nearly taken off my feet when I went into a class in the university and the teacher showed me a large piece of pasteboard, with the pictures of our students at Tuskegee at work in the various industrial departments. They said they were taking this as their model.

"The Mormons have recently begun a systematic effort to give their young people training in gymnastics with a view of strengthening their bodies. Here again the colored people, especially in the schools of the South, can learn a great lesson. Everywhere in our colored schools we ought to have systematic and constant training in gymnastics.

"There are about a thousand colored people in Salt Lake City, and they are above the average in intelligence and in other respects. The colored women especially strike me as exceptionally intelligent, more so, I think, than the men. They have here an Art and Music Club which I had the privilege of addressing, composed of very intelligent women. They have two good churches with very intelligent ministers. The main weakness in the life of the colored people in this city, as in some others I have gone to, grows out of the fact that instead of having a commercial organization to promote business and industrial interests of the colored people they have a club house for which I am told they pay a rental of $150 a month, where the men are encouraged to drink and gamble. It seems that they cannot throw away their money fast enough, but in order to help it along they rent a house for $150 a month for the purpose of helping them to dispose with [sic] their money faster. I have spoken to them plainly about this mistake, and I believe that a change for the better will take place. I met several colored men who have accumulated a respectable fortune and who are in good business enterprises.

"I think it will interest my readers to know that there are colored Mormons in Utah. I met several of these. Many of them came here in the old days, in fact Brigham Young brought colored people with him in this country, and they or their descendants have remained. Of course in the old days plural wives were not prohibited by law, but I have made careful inquiry and could find no case where a colored man ever had more than one wife. It seems to have been the custom in the old days that a man could not take a second or third or fourth wife without the consent of his first wife, and I was told that no colored woman in Utah would ever give her consent for her husband to take a second wife.

"I met one colored man [Samuel Chambers] who came out here in the early days who is now 82 years of age. He is a staunch Mormon, and neither the Baptist church nor the Methodist church can get hold of him. He came here from Mississippi. He is a fine looking old fellow, a kind of colored Brigham Young. He has a farm worth $25,000, and lives in the midst of a Mormon colored colony of which he is the leader. I am told that the Mormon church treats the colored people well. I will, in my next letter, discuss the Mormons further, and call attention to their creed, and so forth."

Whitesplaining Commentary

Washington raises such a good point here. The Latter-day Saints and the black community had so much to learn from each other. The Saints knew what it was like to be persecuted, so they should have been the most natural allies in the world for black people. But they usually weren't. I don't doubt that the mutual affection between them and Washington during his visit was genuine, but it didn't change their racist beliefs and it didn't lead to the kind of lasting camaraderie or support that one might expect in an alternate timeline where people are wiser and less crappy. On the other hand, in 2020 a well-intentioned but monstrously insensitive post on BYU-Idaho's Performing and Visual Arts Facebook page described in maudlin detail how "my people" (the Saints) were treated so horribly but became so awesome and accomplished so much, and concluded, "Why am I telling you this? Because I know however oppressed you feel, no matter if your skin color, religion, background or heritage,.......YOU CAN RISE ABOVE. You can take your situation and either drown in it or use it.

"God took my people ...who were hated, despised, and ridiculed and abused, And through these trials, He humbled them, and taught them love, patience, and kindness.

"My people although given some of the worst treatments known to any religious group learned to forgive and heal. Truly following the path of our Savior to forgive those who offend us."

After people, including both of BYU-Idaho's black students, understandably got kind of pissed off, the post was deleted and the university refused to talk about it. I'm 99% sure Elder Quentin L. Cook had this post in mind when he said in his speech at BYU-Not-Idaho two months later, "Before reviewing some of the discrimination Church members have experienced, let me be clear that this discrimination is not comparable to the devastating personal impact and societal consequences of slavery." I mean, hello, people of African descent have been systematically oppressed since the early 1400s when Portugal decided to circumvent Islamic slave traders by getting all its slaves from West Africa**. Latter-day Saints haven't even existed for a third of that time.

*This is a joke. I don't know the actual number of black students at BYU-Idaho. I don't think I'm far off, though.

**Yes, slavery (which has existed pretty much forever and for most of that time had nothing to do with skin color) created prejudice against black people, not the other way around, though I wouldn't call it "racism" as such because the modern bogus social construct of "race" was invented much later by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in the late 1700s. His ideas were completely wrong, but he actually believed that black people were intellectually equal to white people, unlike everyone else who used his ideas to assert the opposite of that.

1926
Wallace Thurman
"Quoth Brigham Young: This is the Place"
Essay in the Series "These 'Colored' United States" in The Messenger, a Black Literary Magazine

"I am fully aware of what Brigham Young had in mind when he uttered the above enthusiastic statement, yet try tho I may the most enthusiastic thing that I can find to say about my home state and its capital city is that it invariably furnishes me with material for conversation. It does not matter to whom I am talking, whether it be Jew or Gentile, black or white, Baptist or Episcopalian, thief or minister, when the conversation begins to lag I can always casually introduce the fact that I was born in Utah, and immediately become the centre of attraction, nonchalantly answering the resultant barrage of questions. I find that I can even play this trick on the same group of persons more than once, for it seems as if they never tire of asking - Do Mormons still have more than one wife? - Do they look different from other people? - How many wives did Brigham Young have? - Are there any Negro Mormons? - Can one really stay afloat in the Great Salt Lake without sinking? - and thus they continue ad infinitum, and I might also add - ad nauseam. Nevertheless it is amusing at times, and, as I say, it is for this reason alone that Utah has one warm spot in my rather chilled heart, for whenever I stop to remember the many dull hours I spent there, and the many dull people I spent them with, even that aforementioned warm spot automatically begins to grow cold.

"Utah was a wilderness composed of ore laden mountains, fertile valleys, and desert wastes frequented only by trappers and Indians when the Mormons, an outlaw religious sect believing in and practising polygamy, settled there. These Mormons had treked [sic] over half of the continent in search of a spot where they could found a settlement, earn their livelihood from the soil, and indulge in their religious peculiarities unmolested by their pernicious brethren in God who insisted that they practise other religious peculiarities. They had been run out of Illinois, they had been run out of Missouri and Kansas and they had forged their way over miles of Nebraska prairie land, miles of Wyoming sage brush hills, and miles of mountain trails before they finally stood on a peak overlooking the beautiful Salt Lake valley, surrounded by the Wasatch range of the Rocky Mountains, and cheered when their intrepid leader, Brigham Young, shouted: This is the place!

"Once they had found this suitable site the Mormons, under expert leadership, founded their mundane Zion, named their townsite Salt Lake City after the great inland sea nearby, christened the crooked river than [sic] ran around the city's outskirts - the Jordon, [sic] cultivated the rich farm lands, carried on a profitable trade with the Indians, began to raise stock, and started the construction of their sacrosanct religious temple and tabernacle, which stand today as monuments to their super-achievement.

"Things hummed in the new town. Cattle carts lumbered down rocky mountain trails carrying the big stones that were being used in building the temple. Gold rushers, bound for the coast, stopped and sometimes stayed if they felt like braving the arrogant hostility of the Mormon fathers. Square blocks of land were apportioned off to the various churchmen, who energetically erected primitive homes for themselves and their wives. The great tithing square on the site where the renowned Hotel Utah now stands teemed with people pouriing in from the surrounding countryside to pay their tithes, while the public watering ground, where the Salt Lake City and county building was later built, was crowded with overland wagon trains, and Mormon visitors from nearby settlements, for Zion had soon overflowed and mushroom towns appeared overnight in the immediate vicinity. Zion flourished, Zion grew wealthy, and Zion grew more holy per se.

"However, all mundane paradises seem subject to an invasion by the devils [sic] forces, and the Mormon Zion was no exception, for the devil's forces soon came in the persons of non-Mormons, derisively called Gentiles. Like most gold seekers of their day (and are gold seekers ever any different?) they wanted only the chance to garner gold - damn how they got it or how they suffered meanwhile. So Zion was invaded, and Zion soon succumbed to a wave of prosperity, progress and prostitution, and the transcontinental railroad, which had its east-west junction near Ogden, was the most telling blow dealt by the Gentiles.

"The result was pitiful. Thousands of easterners came pouring in to see whether or not these Mormons really had horns, and finding that they were not so endowed by nature decided to stay and break down the Mormon wall around the natural wealth of the state. The Mormons put up a brave battle while Brigham Young lived, but after his death there was a complete debacle. Utah was finally forced to come into the Union, and for coming in she had to abolish polygamy, and lose her individuality, for from that day on Utah was just another state, peopled by a horde of typical American booboisie with their bourgeoisie overloads, [sic] and today Utah is a good example of what Americanization and its attendant spores can accomplish.

"I have as yet made no mention of the Negro, and this article is supposed to fit into a series called - 'These Colored United States.' For the moment I wish to quibble, and assert that there are no Colored United States, id est, no state in the Union where the Negro has been an individual or vital factor. As George S. Schuyler is so fond of saying, all Aframericans are merely lampblack whites steeped in American culture (?) and standardization. When it comes to such localities as Harlem, the south side black belt of Chicago, the Central Avenue district of Los Angeles, the Seventh Street district in Oakland, the North 24th Street district in Omaha, the Vine Street district in Kansas City, the Beale Street district in Memphis, and similar districts in Atlanta, Charleston, New Orleans, Houston, El Paso, Richmond, Birmingham, et cetera one might write of these as colored cities, for it is there that the Aframerican spirit manifests itself, achieving a certain individuality that is distinguishable from that achieved in similar white districts despite all the fervent protests of Brother Schuyler to the contrary. What I am leading to is this, that to write of 'These Colored United States' is to be trying to visualize a phantom, for in state lots the Negro, save in such southern localities where the population is greater than the white and even in these one can only pick out certain communities to dissect, is a negative factor contributing nothing politically, historically, or economically. He only contributes sociological problems.

"The above paragraph is rather rash, and perhaps I should temper it somewhat, and confine myself to the north eastern and north western states, for I am not so sure that the Negro has not made some contribution at least economically in the southern states, but neither am I so sure that this has not been swallowed up beyond the point of recognition by the whites who most certainly hold the power. And now I find justification for having such a series of articles even if they are rather far-fetched, for Negroes need to be told of past achievements and present strivings. They need this trite reminder to stir them, and to urge them on to greater achievements. They must develop a race pride, and so they must be told of what they and their foreparents have achieved. I am sorry then that I have to write of the Utah Negro, for there has been and is certainly nothing about him to inspire anyone to do anything save perhaps drink gin with gusto, and develop new technique for the contravention of virginity.

"There is little difference between the few Negroes in Utah and their middle class white brethren. The only difference is one of color, and those Aframericans who have been in the state longest have done everything in their power to abolish even this difference. Miscegenation was the common thing for years, and until a state law was passed prohibiting intermarriage the clerks at the county court house were kept busy signing up fair ladies with dusky men. Then when the prohibitive law was passed the roads to Wyoming and Montana were crowded until those commonwealths also passed anti-miscegenation laws. What is more it reached such proportions that even as late as 1915 there was in Salt Lake a club catering only to Negro men and white women, and, when I was last there, which was a year ago, there were three super-bawdy houses that I knew of, where white ladies of joy with itching palms cavorted for the pleasure of black men only.

"This situation was of course not peculiar to Utah alone. It was also true of most western states, and the 'Manassa' group of the middle-west was far more notorious than any like group Utah has produced. However, this happened only because the population of Utah was considerably less than that of some of her sister states. Statistics will readily prove, I believe, that comparatively speaking the intermixing of races was as great or greater in Utah than in any other western state.

"But to get to another point - there were two Negroes [Isaac and Jane Manning James] in the first overland Mormon train, a man and his wife (he had only one, for Mormons did not believe that a Negro could enter into Heaven as an angel, and that since because of Ham's sin he was to be deprived of full privileges in Heaven, he was not entitled to enjoy the full privileges of a good Mormon on earth), who were servitors to Brigham Young. A little later other vagabond souls, eager to escape the terrors of both the pre and post civil war south, drifted in and remained if they found employment. Then still others were caught in the contemporary westward drift of American population, and entered into the 'Bee' state as gamblers, gold-seekers, prostitutes, and home servants. And later, during the ascendancy of the Gentile regime, there was quite an influx of Pullman car porters, dining car men, hotel waiters plus more pimps and prostitutes. This population was for the most part transient, but a few of them accidently [sic] during drunken moments or temporary physical ecstasy settled there and commenced the raising of families, which families are now members of the Utah Negroes' haute monde [high society].

"Until the war had inspired the northern migration of southern colored people there were few of what is known as respectable Negroes in the whole state. These strived hard to cling together, and they generally did except upon the matter of religion, which I might boldly add herein, has done more to keep the American Negro at variance with himself than any other agency. Some folks were Methodists, some were Baptists. Then some Methodists would turn Baptists, and some Baptists would turn Methodists. Moreover some Methodists and some Baptists would grow discontented and there would be rumors of a split, and most time these rumors would develop into actualities. At the present time there are three Negro churches in Salt Lake City, which has a population of about 1,800 colored people. Only about 500 of these are of the church going variety, and imagine their strength divided as they are between to Baptist and one Methodist Churches.

"Salt Lake City and Ogden have the largest Negro communities, and of these two Salt Lake has the greater population, but one would never believe this after walking thru the streets of the two cities, for one can walk for hours in Salt Lake without meeting a colored person, while in Ogden one will meet any number in the downtown district. This is due to the fact that the Negro population of Salt Lake has not become centralized, and there is no Negro ghetto, while in Ogden almost the entire Negro population is centered around the railroad yards and depot, because almost the entire Negro population of Ogden is engaged in fleecing the transient railroad porters and dining car waiters out of as much money as possible while these men are in the town. The only other place in Utah where there is an appreciable colored settlement is at Sunnyside, in the southern part of the state, where some two or three hundred men are employed in the coke ovens.

"In the glorious state of Utah there are no representative Negro institutions of note save the deluxe gambling clubs, and whore houses in Salt Lake and Ogden. The churches are pitiful and impotent. There are no Negro professional men. There are no Negro publications, not even a church bulletin. There are no Negro business houses. Theare are no Negro stores. There are no Negro policemen, no Negro firemen, no Negro politicians, save some petty bondsmen. There are a few Negro mail carriers, and the only Negro mail clerk in the state passes for Spanish or something else that he isn't in order to keep his position and not be forced to become a pack laden carrier. Most of the Negroes in the state are employed on the railroad as porters and dining car waiters, or else in the local railroad shops, or else earn their livelihood as janitors, hotel waiters, and red caps, thereby enabling themselves to buy property and become representative bourgeoisie.

"Negroes are rigorously segregated in theaters, public amusement parks, soda fountains, and eating places. This too seems to be a result of the post world war migration of southern Negroes to the north which was accompanied by a post world war wave of Kluxism and bigotry. The earlier Negro settlers experienced little of these things. They were welcome in any of the public places, but as the Negro population grew, and as the Gentile population grew so did prejudice and racial discrimination until now the only thing that distinguishes Utah from Georgia is that it does not have jim-crow cars. Last year there was even a lynching - the second in the history of the state.

"Add to this the general dullness and asininity of the place and the people, and you will understand why a writer (who was also born in Utah) in a recent issue of the American Mercury declared that there was not an artist in the entire state, and that if one was to stay there he would soon be liable to incarceration in the insane asylum at Provo, or else buried in one of the numerous Latter Day Saint cemeteries. I was there for a short time last summer, and sought to buy my regular quote of reading matter. I asked for a New Republic at every down town newsstand in Salt Lake City, and out of ten stands only one had ever heard of it. I made equally vain searches for The Nation, The Living Age, The Bookman, The Mercury, and The Saturday Review of Literature. At the only stand that had ever heard of these publications the proprietor advised me to pay him in advance and he would order them for me as he did for a few other of his customers who were crazy enough to read such junk. He capped it all by enquiring whether or not I was a Bolshevist.

"Thus is Utah burdened with dull and unprogressive Mormons, with more dull and speciously progressive Gentiles, with still more dull and not even speciously progressive Negroes. Everyone in the state seems to be more or less of a vegetable, self satisfied and complacent. Yet I suppose that Utah is no worse than some of its nearby neighboring states, which being the case the fates were not so unkind after all - I might have been born in Texas, or Georgia, or Tennessee, or Nevada, or Idaho."

Whitesplaining Commentary

I love Thurman's deadpan snarker sense of humor and his contempt for everyone. If I had been around in 1926 and been fortunate enough not to be racist, I bet we would have gotten along great. It's interesting and a little sad, however, that he reserves his harshest words for black people even though he is one. Looks like internalized racism to me. In his book How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi insists that it is possible for a black person to be racist against black people. (Candace Owens, anyone?) As a teenager, he blamed the black community for all of its own problems, disregarding the external effects of generations of systemic racism, and that seems to be what Thurman is doing here as well.

He also describes a fact that I've just recently learned: throughout history, the United States has not followed an automatic or consistent trajectory from "more racist" to "less racist". The Founding Fathers (despite often being slave owners themselves) deliberately set the stage for slavery to be phased out in a couple generations, but then that didn't happen because the southern states became more economically dependent on slavery and consequently more racist. After the Civil War, it was actually fashionable for a while to advocate for black equality, but then the southern states pushed back with Jim Crow laws and the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was constitutional. And Thurman here mentions "the post world war migration of southern Negroes to the north which was accompanied by a post world war wave of Kluxism and bigotry" in Utah and presumably elsewhere (and, interestingly, correlates it with "the Gentile population [growing]"). I'm sure these fluctuations have continued. From my limited perspective, it seems to me that the United States is more racist today than it was twenty years ago. I wonder why that might be.

Isaac and Jane Manning James weren't the first black people in Utah - that honor goes to three three slaves named Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, who were part of Brigham Young's advance party when he showed up and said "This is the place." It's interesting that, unlike Williams or Washington, Thurman hints at the priesthood/temple restriction (which did indeed prevent black people from practicing plural marriage even if the women would have consented to it) but doesn't bother to comment much on it. I have one item of correction - "enter[ing] into Heaven as an angel" is not actually a good thing in Latter-day Saint theology. I mean, it kind of is, but it's what you get if you don't qualify to be exalted in the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom because you didn't get sealed in an eternal opposite-sex marriage, and thus it means you are "deprived of full privileges in Heaven".

1963
Daily (or David) H. Oliver
Excerpts from A Negro on Mormonism

"With humility and sacred devotion, I hereby dedicate this humble effort to the cause of freedom for all people, everywhere, of whatever race, creed or color, and pray that it may serve as a little more fuel for the Torch of Liberty and increase its brilliance to the extent that all people may see its light....

"In medicine, the cause of a disease is first determined and then the proper remedy is prescribed for the cure. This same principle is true in the economic life of society.

"We all know that racial discrimination does exist in Utah as indicated above and the problem is to determine the cause of such and apply the appropriate remedy.

"It is not my purpose to antagonize any one or to jeopardize the campaign of our candidates, God forbid, yet I do feel that the racial problem should be approached forthrightly, at its source, in the spirit of humility, with malice towards none and charity for all.

"We all know that the major cause of discrimination against the Negro in Utah springs from a doctrine of the LDS Church which holds that the Negro is cursed and not entitled to the blessings of the Priesthood....

"Different from the general concept of race prejudice, Utah has one distinctly all its own, designed to nullify the Constitution of the United States, reverse the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, ignore the mandates of the Presidents of the United States, and degrade Negroes to a position of servitude and economic slavery by their religious doctrines....

"Because of the doctrines, already pointed out, and constant pressure from Church leaders, employment opportunities for Negroes in Utah are confined to menial labor and positions of servitude and, thus, they find themselves faced with greater difficulties in securing employment commensurate with their qualifications than Negroes in the deep South. Every Negro child with ambition and fortitude enough to prepare himself for a better and higher station in life has to leave his home State and go elsewhere to get employment commensurate with his qualifications....

"By reason of their numerical strength the Mormons elect most of the public officials, throughout the entire state, and here is where conflict begins. In most instances these elected public officials, conscious of the spirit concealed behind the walls of the Temple, adhere strictly to the doctrines of their church in the performance of their public duty and thereby refuse to employ or appoint any Negroes in any position of authority or trust....

"[I]t is claimed that the failure of the 35th session of the Utah Legislature to pass any Civil Rights legislation was due to hidden and behind the scenes opposition from the Mormon Church. Some of our ardent and staunch supporters insist that the Mormons have as much right to their religious beliefs as any, or all, other church groups, and, therefore, should not be censored for what they honestly believe. With this we agree, but we should keep in mind that there is a vast difference between the words 'believing' and 'doing'. As indicated by President Kennedy's Physical Fitness Program, every man has a right to believe in, and exercise his muscles by swinging his fists in the open air but his right ceases at the point where the other man's nose begins.... Any church has a right to believe what it will but it has no right to impose those beliefs on others against their will, and when those beliefs are detrimental to the welfare of others to the extent of infringing on their right to earn a decent living, such a church has no right to use the machinery of the state to enforce those beliefs."

Whitesplaining Commentary

This self-published book is now extremely rare, and the only copy I'm aware of is in the BYU Special Collections, and unfortunately I haven't made my way down there to read it, but excerpts are available in a few other sources like Wallace Turner's book The Mormon Establishment and Jerald and Sandra Tanner's booklet "Joseph Smith's Curse Upon the Negro". You can see here that society had changed to the point where the priesthood/temple restriction could no longer fly under the radar and had become a more pressing topic of discussion than polygamy. When I was younger and stupider, I whitesplained Oliver's perception of poor conditions for black people in Utah by pointing out that he himself had managed to become a lawyer, and that Booker T. Washington hadn't mentioned any similar complaints fifty years earlier. Of course, I now recognize the possibility that Utah was in fact more racist in 1963 than it had been fifty years earlier, and Wallace Thurman confirms that such a transition took place.

I trust Oliver's decription of these conditions, which is corroborated by other contemporary sources, but I still don't think he was correct in attributing them to the Church's teachings or policies (and certainly not to rumored "behind the scenes opposition"). Sociologist Armand Mauss did some work a few years later and found that "no systematic differences in secular race attitudes were to be seen either between Mormons and others, or between orthodox and unorthodox Mormons. In most of their responses, Mormons resembled the other 'moderate' denominations (such as Presbyterian, Congregational, Episcopalian), rather than the 'fundamentalists' or the sects. To be sure, Mormons did differ among themselves in the tendency to hold negative secular attitudes toward Negroes, but these differences were not so much between the orthodox and unorthodox, or the active and inactive, as they were between the educated and uneducated, the manual and the professional, the old and the young, or the rural and the urban (as in any denomination).... This accords with other studies which have found socio-economic status an important determinant of attitudes toward minorities."

Though the Church certainly could have been far more outspoken in their favor, I don't think it was to blame for Utah's apathy toward black people and civil rights. Stereotypes to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not the only, or even at times the most powerful, influence on its members' views. As evidence, I submit modern Utahn Latter-day Saints' politically driven and profoundly embarrassing response to the coronavirus pandemic. Their rabid individualism and disdain for doctors and scientists is the exact opposite of the Church's response. As even more relevant evidence, I submit that today the Church has officially partnered with the NAACP and called on its members to root out racism, yet most of these same peoples' politically driven response has been "What racism? I'm not racist and nobody I know is racist. White privilege isn't real. Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group. George Floyd was no saint." Wallace Thurman's observation that "Everyone in the state seems to be more or less of a vegetable" is just as true today as it was ninety-seven years ago.

1977
Elmer E. Wells
"Unjustifiable Denial of Priesthood to Black Mormons"
Article in Negro History Bulletin

"The Etyomological Roots of Mormon and Moroni

"The Book of Mormon covers the historical periods of 600 B.C. to 421 A.D. Moroni, the Negro angel, revealed to Joseph Smith in 1823 the existence of golden tablets upon which were written the sacred / secular account upon which the Book is based. Four years later, in 1827, Joseph Smith received the plates and translated the African writings inscribed upon them. After publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, the Black son of Mormon (Moroni) took the plates away.

"Upon what basis does this writer establish the African identification of Mormon? Of Moroni? Why is 'African' used to describe the writing contained on the plates? Read on.

"The Moors Head

"In looking at some of the major languages of the world, the selections Mormon and Moroni are found to be merely variations of the root Moor or Mor-. This is borne out in the many copies of family coats of arms (Rogers, Nature Knows No Color-Line, 1952 pp. 69 - 107). Other sources validate Roger's claims (Fox, Davies, Arthur Charles, 1904; Franklyn, Julian and John Tanner, 1969; Brooke- Little, J. P., 1973; Gough, Henry, 1967 and Hubert Allcock, 1962). The sources cited above speak with one voice regarding the art of heraldry (science of armory) or coats of arms.

"The only people who needed 'arms' were the gentry. Those who were worth recognizing in battle or who were invited to tournaments and who needed a seal. Arms, therefore, were tools of the nobility. They were assertains of descendancy. In short, they proudly displayed one's family history.

"A common figure in heraldic art is the Moors head; depicted as Black, wooly-haired, broad nosed and thick lipped. In contemporary jargon, this translates into Negro's head or Black family crest. Meaning, of course, that the surname associated with the shield (along with the figures) established the 'Negroness' of the family.

"Black families of nobility, then, existed within many major nationalities. Mormon is simply one of these family surnames which prove beyond a doubt that Mormon refers to Black family roots.

"McRitchie said that 'families with the name Moor, Moore, Morris, Morrison, and other derivatives of Moor had Moors as their ancestors' (Rogers, ibid).

"Throughout antiquity and as late as 1900, Moor was synonymous with Negro. Blackamoor is translated as 'black as a moor'.

"Blacks (Africans) brought into England were baptized into the church and given the surname Moor or: More, Moore, Moryen, Morrow, Murray, Blackamoor.

"The Roman 'Maurus' occurs in the European languages as: Moor, Mor, Mohr, Morian and Morien (Rogers, 1952).

"In this writer's opinion, Moroni (Mormon's son) is simply a variation of these examples.

"The English Morison means son of the Moor (ibid). On page 83 of Nature Knows No Color-Line, 'Moorman' appears on a French coat of arms accompanied by a Black wooly-haired thick-lipped life form. Another such depiction which closely resembles Mormon and Moroni is: Morini (ibid, p. 84).

"It must be understood by the reader that Moor in antiquity - through the 1800s referred to race as well as religion. The only time the word was used in reference to religion was to show contrast, e.g., Moor vs Christian (i.e., Estevanico the Black/negro/moor). In further support of the foregoing: African Moors (that is un-mixed Negro) ruled Spain for 200 years (1285 - 1485 A.D.). Further: African Moors first entered Spain in 711 A.D. These were indigenous, or 'pure' African. It wasn't until 12 years later (723) that Asian Moors entered what then was referred to as Iberia.

"Mormon then, is to be translated the same as would be Moorman = Black or Negro man; or as Morison = son of the Moor or Negro. The only difference being one vowel (a/o).

"Oweing to the common error of time, this writer submits that Mormon or Moor- man most likely originated as Moormon or Moorman; Morini, quite conceivably, is a mere extraction of Moro (black) with the ending -ni serving no etymological pur- pose but perhaps to embellish the root Mor....

"The Golden Plates

"According to tradition, the Book of Mormon was translated from language written upon golden plates by Joseph Smith. This sacred record written upon the golden plates was in an African language. This African language was translated by Joseph Smith with the help of two interpreters Urim and Thummin. It remains in character then, for two African 'fathers' (Mormon & Moroni) to deliver the sacred scripture written in an African language. How is 'an African language' justified? Read on.

"The inscriptions on the plates were written in hieroglyphics, which is nothing less than a European name for the language used by the early Black Africans. The Blacks never referred to the characters as hieroglyphics. English translators did.

"It happened in this way. 'The ancient Egyptians were African and spoke an African language' (Budge, 1895).

"The Greek Herodotus described the 'Egyptians' of Africa as: black, wooly- haired, flat nosed and thick lipped (ben-Jochannan, 1970).

"Xenophanes (570 B.C.) was the first Greek to describe them in that way, but he was followed in kind by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

"The sacred golden plates given to Joseph Smith, then, contained the language of an ancient Black African people.

"These indigenous Africans spoke a language called Coptic. Copts were descendants of the original inhabitants of Egypt who were un-mixed African (sometimes referred to as Ethiopian). Their language is directly descendant from the ancient Egyptian (African) language.

"Indigenous African priests (erroneously called 'Egyptian') had to be proficient in the 'magical language' of the sciences, math, logic, astrology, etc. This 'magical language' was their language- written using various characters and symbols to portray thought. Europeans (Greeks) erroneously called the unknown language hieroglyphics. They (Greeks) took the Coptic word 'Gyptios' and made it into Aigyptios (meaning black, puffy-lipped, wooly haired, etc.) which was further corrupted into Egyptios or Egyptian.

"The term, Egyptios, was used to referto the indigenous inhabitants of Africa BEFORE the Arab conquest.

"This African language was the language contained upon the plates which were translated by Joseph Smith.

"From Smith's translations, we now have the famous Book of Mormon.

"It stands to reason, of course, that a Black Man (Moroni) would write and speak in his indigenous African language. Smith, in essence, received the Mormon's sacred prophecy, commandments and revelation from a Black angel; who was the son of a Black man (descendant from a Black land in Africa) - written in a Black African language.

"Origin of Nephites

"Mormon, not wanting his 'records' to fall into the hands of the Lamanites, made them out of the plates of Nephi and hid them on the hill Cumorah (see Book of Mormon). These were the golden plates given to Moroni who in turn gave them to Joseph Smith.

"Mormon was descendant from the Nephites. Nephi or Lehi led his family out of Canaan, land of the descendants of Ham, to America. Moroni was the last in the line of the Nephites. Did the Nephites reside in the land populated by the descendants of Ham? Read on.

"The Book of Mormon is in error in calling the area from which Nephi departed to America Israel or Jerusalem. Israel is of recent vintage. At the time Nephi left for America, the land had been known as Canaan. Canaan was a son of Ham.

"The primary reason why Black of African descent are denied Mormon priesthood is rooted in the so-called 'curse of Ham.' Yet, Nephi, through whom the Mormons trace their ancestry, resided in the land populated by the son of Ham. Observe the chart below.

"The sons of Ham were: Cush, Phut, Misraim and Canaan. Some biblical scholars speculate that Misraim is the ancestor of the Egyptians and Canaan is the ancestor of the Ethiopians or Africans. A moot point. Both Misraim and Canaan are sons of Ham.

"If Moroni translated the sacred records from the Egyptian, then Mormons have to recognize that one version traces the Egyptian back to Noah's Black son, Ham; Ham being Misraims [sic] and Canaan's father.

"From this writer's standpoint, Nephi left Africa for America from the land of Canaan; Canaan being also the son of Ham. This writer also speculates that the hill Cumorah, where Joseph Smith obtained the plates, is merely a dedication to one of Ham's other sons, Cush; Cush = Cushmorah or Cumorah.

"Recent Discovery I

"In the February 1977 edition of the Readers Digest was published an article, 'Who Really Discovered America' by Thomas Fleming, Harvard scholar. Of interest is Fleming's reference to a people who came to America about the same time the ancestors of the Mormons (Nephites) were supposed to have arrived. Fleming states that when these people died, they left their written testimony buried under mounds of earth. Although much of Fleming's work is based upon the work done by a Harvard marine biologist, Barry Fell, the coincidence is nevertheless fascinating.

"Thomas Fleming speculates that Europeans lived in America as early as 800 B.C. According to Barry Fell, inscriptions in a buried mound near Davenport Iowa (1874) were written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Punic and Libyan.

"Egyptian hieroglyphics have already been established as being of African origin in this writing. Libya was one of the names used to describe all of Black Africa. Libyan script, then, would have to refer to Black African writings, not European. Too often white researchers allow their latent racism to cloud their so-called scientific work. Has Libya ever been in Europe?

"The Lord's Prayer was found to be written in Egyptian hieroglyphics also as reported in this same article. Could these early travelers and the ancestors of Mormon have been one and the same? If they were, they wrote in the language of the indigenous Africans.

"Another language referred to is that of the African Libyans. Whether hieroglyphic or Libyan, the roots are both Black African. And if these travelers were indeed the relatives of Nephi, it is but one more piece of evidence oweing to the Black ancestry of Mormon and his son, Moroni.

"Recent Discovery II

"In a March issue of Jet Magazine under the Book section, a Black author/anthropologist, I. Van Sertima, of Rutgers University, stated that Black Egyptians came to the Gulf of Mexico area as early as 700 B.C.

"Sertima has published his discoveries in his book, They Came Before Columbus (Random House). Since explorers of 'New Worlds' tend to travel extensively, it is not inconceivable that these same Black Egyptians were the same party discussed by Fleming and Fell. Of particular interest in these 'recent' discoveries, is the coincidence of dating. Give or take a hundred years or two, references to the Nephites landing in America coincide with the probable dates established by contemporary writers/scientists in their references to early African explorers.

"If this be so, then it lends additional support to the Black African ancestry of the people who now embrace the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.

"Other Relative Data

"When Joseph Smith migrated west and founded Salt Lake City, Utah, July 23 [sic], 1847, a Pioneer Monument was erected. Names of 'Negroes' appear to this day on the plaque gracing the monument. They are: Green Flack [sic], of North Carolina, Hark Lay of Mississippi and Oscar Crosby (Rogers, Africa's Gift to America). Doesn't it seem somewhat hypocritical to have the names of Blacks placed upon this monument while denying them access to the Mormon priesthood? Another Black, Abel Burns, was the trusted servant and friend of Joseph Smith prior to and during his journey west.

"How Can Blacks be Denied the Priesthood?

"According to Mormon tradition, American Blacks will someday be given the right to become Mormon priests. The 'curse' does not apply, however to Blacks of the South Pacific.

"Did not Blacks from the South Pacific come originally from Africa? Affirmative.

"Is it really likely that Blacks (Egyptians) writing in an African language (hieroglyphics) in the Mormon Book of Abraham would actually deny themselves from the Mormon priesthood when the very names of Mormon and Moroni refer to Black people? Not likely.

"The Hypocrisy

"Each year some estimated 25,000 Blacks who physically do not resemble 'Blacks of African Descent' cross over the color line. In other words, they pass for white. How many of these are currently occupying positions in the Mormon priesthood?

"Thousands upon thousands of white men and women (including children) were driven into slavery along with their Black counterparts in America (Rogers, Sex and Race Vol. II pp. 208 - 213). Some were bought and sold outright, some kidnapped and some were simply denied proof of their white ancestry, and documentation of this fact exists in many valid resources. The point is this: how many 'whites' are unknowingly 'Negros of African descent' in the U.S. Today - since here one drop of 'Negro' blood makes one a full-fledged Negro? How many of 'these' have become Mormon priests?

"Conclusion

"Irregardless of the facts contained herein, can a church really claim to be practicing Christian ethics while denying the priesthood to Blacks? How does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints explain the dichotomy between their works and their word relative to the following from the Book of Mormon: 3 Nephi, 18:22 'And behold ye shall meet together oft; and ye shall not forbid any man from coming unto you when ye shall meet together, but suffer them that they may come into you and forbid them not.'

"In 1972, there were 240 Black Mormons in the area of Salt Lake City (Time, Oct. 23, 1972 under Religion). They believe that the Mormon Church is the true church. In light of the evidence contained in this thesis, the weight upon the 240 may soon be lifted."

Whitesplaining Commentary

The portion I omitted was just more mor- etymology from various languages, which I found unnecessary and a bit tedious.

I assumed, of course, that this was a work of satire - if he really believed the Book of Mormon was historically true, he should have already been a member of the Church, priesthood restriction notwithstanding - but after visiting his six websites, Blackscifisoulman.com, blackscifisoulman.net, blackscifisoulbrother.com, blackscifisoulbrother.net, blackscifisoul.net, and black-scifi-soul.com, which share an identical layout and disorienting design scheme of red, black, and green stripes, but each contain a different selection of poems, I'm not sure. If it is satire, the amount of research and thought put into it is incredible. But it's perplexing that with all this research and thought he made a couple of basic factual errors. The Latter-day Saint pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, which has been a statewide holiday since then, and Joseph Smith was not among them because he had been dead for three years. Also, Nephites have never been regarded as "the ancestors of the Mormons". As Wells himself wrote earlier and then apparently forgot, "Moroni was the last in the line of the Nephites."

Anyway, I looked up this article after I saw it cited in J. B. Haws' book The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception as one of the few examples of continued criticism of the priesthood and temple ban in the years just prior to its repeal. By that time, the era of gung-ho civil rights advocacy and protesting had fizzled out, the Church's and BYU's PR efforts to explain that they weren't really racist had been very successful, and most critics of the policy had given up and moved on. I looked up this article expecting a run-of-the-mill plea for equality, and instead found something more wonderfully bizarre and creative than I could have imagined. It deserves to be a lot less obscure than it is. I think there's some legitimate value in an ethnic or racial group claiming Mormon and Moroni as their own, even in a tongue-in-cheek manner with dubious scholarship, sort of like how people paint Jesus as Caucasian or African when he was neither of those things, and every culture produces beautifully diverse nativity scenes that they know perfectly well aren't accurate depictions of stables in first-century Bethlehem.

2012
Obery Hendricks
"Mitt Romney and the Curse of Blackness"
Opinion Piece in the Huffington Post

"When it comes to others’ choice of religions, I’m pretty much a live-and-let-live guy. In fact, I don’t believe in religious litmus tests of any kind. Frankly, I think they are self-righteous and insulting. Yet I must admit that there is something about Mitt Romney’s religion that I find deeply troubling, particularly in light of the possibility that he could become the next president of this nation. What concerns me is this: the Book of Mormon, the book that Mitt Romney and all Mormons embrace as divinely revealed scripture that is more sacred, more true, and more inerrant than any other holy book on earth, declares that black people are cursed. That’s right. Cursed. And not only accursed, but lazy and aesthetically ugly to boot.

"I’m not talking about ascribed racism such as we see in Christianity, in which racist meanings are attributed to certain verses of the Bible that actually contain no such meanings, as with the Gen. 9:25 cursing of Canaan (not Ham!) which, though used as 'proof' of black wickedness and inferiority, in actuality has nothing to do with race.

"And no, I’m not talking about a single ambiguous, cherry-picked verse, either. I’d much rather that were the case. The sad truth is that the Book of Morman says it explicitly and in numerous passages: black people are cursed by God and our dark skin is the evidence of our accursedness. Here are a few examples:

"And the Lord had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them (2 Nephi 5:21).

"And I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark and loathsome and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations (1 Nephi 12:23).

"O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God. (Jacob 3:8).

"And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men (Alma 3: 6).

"It would have been infinitely more righteous if Mormons had relegated the sentiments of these verses to the scriptural sidelines of their faith, but the historical record tells us otherwise. Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, repeatedly ordered his Church to uphold all slavery laws. Although Smith had a change of heart toward the end of his life, his successor, Brigham Young, did not. Young instituted social and ecclesiastical segregation as the Church’s official policies, thus excluding people of black African descent from priesthood ordination and full participation in temple ceremonies, regardless of their actual skin color. Moreover, Brigham Young, whom Mormons revere almost equally with Smith, proved to the end of his life to be a brutal white supremacist who fervently supported the continued enslavement of African Americans; he was so convinced of black accursedness that he declared that if any Mormon had sex with a person of color, 'the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot.'

"The Book of Mormon’s teaching of the accursedness and, therefore, the inferiority of blacks - if blacks are cursed, then by definition they are inferior to the divinely acceptable whites - was reaffirmed by numerous Mormon leaders for a century and a half. As late as 1969, even after the Civil Rights Movement had dismantled de jure segregation throughout the land, David O. McKay, then president and 'living prophet' of Mormonism, still publicly justified its segregationist policies by declaring that 'the seeming discrimination by the Church toward the Negro... goes back into the beginning with God.'

"Now, some will argue that I should dismiss the codified racism of the Book of Mormon as the unfortunate folklore of a bygone era because of the 1978 revelation by Spencer W. Kimball, the Church's president and 'living prophet' at that time, that after a century and a half black males were finally un-accursed enough to fully participate in Mormonism’s priesthood and sacred temple ceremonies. However, even if we ignore the suspiciously coincidental timing of this 'revelation' (it conveniently appeared when the Church’s federal tax-exempt status was imperiled by its racial policies), an attentive reading reveals that Kimball’s proclamation did not in any way address the question of whether or not the Church still considered the Book of Mormon's assertions of black inferiority to be divinely authorized. In fact, the specific contents of Kimball’s revelation were never made public. Nor has the Church ever disavowed the Book’s white supremacist passages or the past racist practices and pronouncements of its leaders.

"What makes this all the more problematic for me is that at no time has Mitt Romney ever publicly indicated that he seriously questioned the divine inspiration of the Book of Mormon’s teachings about race, much less that he has repudiated them. It is true that in a 2008 [sic, 2007] Meet the Press interview with the late Tim Russert, Romney did vigorously assert his belief in equal rights for all Americans in every facet of life. As part of that narrative, he cited his parents' 'tireless' advocacy for blacks' civil rights, including the dramatic exit of his father, Michigan Governor George Romney, from the 1964 Republican convention as a protest against nominee Barry Goldwater’s racial politics. He also shared that he wept when he learned of Spencer Kimball’s aforementioned revelation. Yet from Romney’s remarks it is not clear whether he wept for joy because Mormonism was eschewing its segregationist policies or if he wept from relief that the announcement promised to quiet the public outrage that those policies were causing. And significantly, while he recited his parents’ efforts to confront racial injustice, Mitt Romney pointed to no such activities of his own.

"But let me be clear: this is not a 'gotcha' political ploy. In all honesty, I am neither saying nor implying in the slightest that Mitt Romney is a racist. I simply do not know that to be the case. Nor do I mean to overlook the racial progress that the Mormon Church has made in the last several decades. What I do mean to say is 1) that Americans of goodwill owe it to ourselves not to turn a blind eye to the possible implications of the white supremacist legacy of candidate Romney’s religious tradition, no matter how noble our intentions; and 2) that Mitt Romney himself owes it to America to address the issue. Why? Because Romney was tutored into adulthood by a holy book that declares that all Americans like me are cursed by God. And he is not only a believer; he has served as a leader in his faith. This is indeed a crucial point for consideration because, as this nation has seen time and time again, the inevitable consequence of America’s policy-makers considering people of color as inferior to whites is that blacks' social and material interests have also been considered inferior - and quite often treated that way.

"I admit that this question of religion and racism is quite complicated and I don't claim to have all the answers. But I do know that recognizing the equal rights of black Americans under the law, while of paramount importance, is not the same as recognizing our intellectual capabilities and moral character as inherently equal to whites. And I am aware of one thing more: that when Tim Russert invited Romney to repudiate his Church's racist legacy on Meet the Press, Romney refused.

"That is why, Mr. Romney, as an American citizen whose president you seek to become, I must insist that you honestly and forthrightly attest to me and all Americans of goodwill that you actually can be my president, too, fully and completely. You can accomplish this by publicly disavowing the portions of your holy book that so sorely denigrate the humanity of me, my loved ones and all people of black African descent.

"It is incumbent that you do this, candidate Romney, for the sake of all Americans."

Whitesplaining Commentary

Obviously the Church has plenty of racism in its history, but the very core of Hendricks' thesis here is wrong. The Book of Mormon says nothing about black people of African descent. The people cursed with a "skin of blackness" in the book are ancestors of indigenous Americans. This presents its own separate and somewhat tangential issue. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of course most members and leaders took this skin color change literally, but a closer reading of the text and an understanding of Hebrew idioms suggests that it's metaphorical, and the Church as an institution has quietly moved toward that interpretation with changes to scripture headings and footnotes and the revision to this year's Come Follow Me manual. And even with that being the case I'm willing to concede that the book's authors were more than likely prejudiced against the Lamanites and that this comes through in the text in the form of unfair generalizations and stereotypes. But even if we assume for the sake of argument that these verses are downright racist, black people of African descent are not the ones who should be offended by them.

In all my research over the better part of a decade, I have not found one instance of a church leader citing or extrapolating from the Book of Mormon to explain the separate and distinct "curse" on black people of African descent (though one clueless missionary did so in 1964). They relied instead on verses from the Books of Genesis and Abraham that only work that way if you start with the assumption of the curse and then look for an explanation. The Lamanite curse and the African "curse" were also entirely different in nature. The Book of Mormon teaches that the Lamanites are a remnant of the House of Israel, are freed from the curse whenever they repent and are baptized, and will eventually convert to the Church en masse. Consequently white Latter-day Saints took quite an interest in the salvation of Native Americans and didn't, on the whole, harbor a great deal of prejudice against them. This is entirely different in tone from the assertion that the African race was to be denied priesthood and temple blessings indefinitely because they were less valiant in a previous life, whether they joined the Church or not.

Most criticisms against the Church come down to quibbles about context, paradigms and interpretation of various facts, allowing critics to protest that they're "just telling the truth", so it blows my mind how many people repeat the objectively false and virtually baseless ex-Mormon fantasy that "the Church’s federal tax-exempt status was imperiled by its racial policies". So far as I've been able to find out, this claim first appeared ten years after the priesthood revelation, coming from a former member of the Church in a newspaper article about the revelation's tenth anniversary. He cited no source for his lie, and most people regurgitating it continue to cite no source, though occasionally someone cites one sentence from a 1987 book claiming that when Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status for forbidding interracial dating and marriage, "Rex Lee, who had been sworn in as Solicitor General seven months before, had once represented the Mormon church when it faced a problem like Bob Jones's and, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, he had taken himself off the case." Wow, that sounds definitive. So what was this alleged other case where he represented the Mormon church, hmm? I'll wait.

Despite these egregious errors that kind of ruin it, Hendricks' piece raises legitimate questions. The scrutiny brought to the Church's past racism by a Latter-day Saint running for president against a black incumbent encouraged it to disavow said racism instead of ignoring it and hoping it would go away on its own. The next month, outrage and embarrassment over quotes from BYU professor Randy Bott in a Washington Post article about "The Genesis of a church's stand on race" compelled the Church to immediately issue not one, but two statements disavowing the past racist explanations given for the priesthood and temple ban (a move they resisted in the mid-to-late nineties when a couple of black members advocated for it). In late 2013, the "Race and the Priesthood" essay that would become part of the seminary and institute curricula went far more in-depth and repeated the disavowal. This essay would have happened anyway, since it was part of a larger series of essays geared toward greater transparency and accuracy in controversial areas of church history and doctrine, but Romney's campaign controversy demonstrated that there was a greater need for it than leaders previously supposed.

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The Saga of John Dehlin and Madeline Liebreich Being Racist

1/5/2021

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John Dehlin, host of the Mormon Stories podcast, is a career apostate - that is to say, one who makes his living trying to deconvert people from his former religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His views and goals have been all over the place. In 2010, when I had my own faith crisis, one of the first resources I found was "Stay LDS/Mormon", a website he founded. But by 2015 he was excommunicated for publicly arguing against the Church's core truth claims - or as he and his followers called it, "asking questions".

Of course, he fought tooth and nail against being excommunicated because it would reduce his credibility with believing Latter-day Saints, and it has. So now he doesn't even bother trying to obfuscate his true agenda. From observations and one brief personal interaction where he actually blocked me on Facebook for asking a question (He posted something that purported to be from an anonymous source working at church headquarters, I asked why we should trust this source, and he blocked me), I believe him to be a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite. Recent events have somewhat bolstered this impression. On April 18, the StoneXVI podcast released a video called "The End of John Dehlin." Whether that is the case remains to be seen, but it's certainly gotten his attention.

The video was originally made by Kwaku El back in December. As you may recall, Kwaku is not my favorite person either because I don't appreciate the huge dance parties he hosted at the height of the pandemic or the tasteless videos he made for FairMormon, but I support him in this particular endeavor. The video claims that when some Deznat cultist made a meme about John and Jeremy Runnells getting murdered by a baseball bat that represented Kwaku's show, John lied about being afraid for his life and he lied about calling the police. The video also highlights his hypocrisy in not batting an eyelash when one of his podcast interviewees, a very unhinged apostate named Mike Norton who films temple ceremonies and posts them on YouTube, threatened violence if he ever sees Apostle Dallin H. Oaks in public. The video also documents allegations of financial mismanagement and discrimination against women in his "non-profit" organization, and sexual assault against one former employee.

John Dehlin responded by addressing none of the allegations, but instead republishing a laughably vague and evasive statement from December that basically says "I'm not going to explain anything, but trust me, I'm right and they're wrong." He explained, "I used to feel the urgency to respond publicly to the smears, but such responses are usually unwise, since my public responses then help to advertise the smears, which literally never stop. If I were to respond to every smear it would become a full time job, it would drain me of all my emotional energy, and I would never create anything meaningful. Responses also reward those who lie/smear with the attention they crave." I mean, if someone accused me of sexual assault I would definitely not just sit there and take it, but you do you, man.

My favorite part of the video, though, is a clip from a Zoom conversation he had last year with Los Angeles attorney Madeline B. Liebreich, Esq. They were talking about Kwaku and how stupid he must be to convert to a church with so much racism in its history, and as liberals with a superiority complex sometimes do, they thoughtlessly put their own racism on display.

John Dehlin: "Super weird, and I don't mean to attack anyone, but like, that an educated person of color who's a teen or in their early twenties, in 2018 or 2017 or whenever Kwaku converted, with the internet, can you imagine an intelligent person of color ever deciding to join Mormonism? Like isn't that, like I don't wanna be mean or insulting, but isn't that story in and of itself kind of... mind-blowing? That's like some serious internalized hatred, self-hatred, because like, how in the world can Mormonism not be racist, like - I'm racist!"

Madeline B. Liebreich, Esq.: "He doesn't speak like many black people do. He has like a very English venacular, he doesn't have like a black dialect. So he speaks like a proper white person raised in Utah. So he's the perfect figure for Mormonism, because he basically seems like a white person with dark skin; the way he talks, the things he likes, the way he dresses, so... yeah."

Yikes.

Because the full video is half an hour long, and because I wanted some of the attention for myself, I isolated this clip and reuploaded it. The first comment was "When is Kwaku going to come out of the closet?" I deleted it for being spam, but I wish I had held onto it as a demonstration that liberals with a superiority complex have no problem doubling down on racism with a bit of casual homophobia. In fairness, Madeline's remarks here are ten times worse than John's, and very disturbing to hear from someone in the legal profession. There are many racist idiots in the Church - I see them in Deseret News comment sections every week - but what she did here was project her own racial biases and stereotypes onto countless people she's never met to make herself feel superior to those dumb Mormons. I shared this quote from her on an Instagram photo where she was pretending to respect Kwaku. She blocked me within an hour.

By the way, if you're saying "But I'm sure this clip was taken out of context" - you're probably right. Let's see what context could possibly make these words less racist. Oh, that's odd. John Dehlin seems to have quietly deleted the original video as soon as StoneXVI shared this clip. So much for that hypothesis.

On April 27, Donald Trump's three black supporters discussed the clip on their podcast "You Ain't Black" (obviously named for Biden's infamous quote asserting that black people need to vote a certain way because of their skin color). They laughed in disbelief at how racist it is. While I don't share their politics, I fully support their mission of calling out the hypocrisy of liberals with a superiority complex.

John Dehlin's first response was to block the producers of "You Ain't Black" on social media, but it didn't take him long to realize how screwed he was. The next day, looking a bit haggard, he stopped ignoring/covering up this scandal and posted an apology for setting himself up as an authority on what beliefs intelligent people of color should or shouldn't find credible.

"I shouldn't have said it, and it was wrong. The truth is I don't even believe that..." Then why did you say it, John?

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Memes + Latter-day Saint Apologetics

28/3/2021

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Ironically - wait, no, that's not it. What am I trying to say? Oh yes. Coincidentally, which does not mean the same thing as ironically, last weekend I posted about an assignment I wrote about memes I had made, and then a few days later I was looking through the hard drive from my computer that died in 2014 (not to be confused with my computer that died in 2013, my computer that died in 2015, my computer that died in 2019, and my computer that died a couple weeks ago) and found a couple more that I had forgotten about. Well, there was this one, which I hadn't forgotten about as such but which wouldn't have been the best choice for a secular college assignment even if it had come to mind at the time.

I've probably shared that here before. You know, I was just so frustrated with all the people I saw regurgitating that talking point who weren't scientists, didn't know anything about DNA except how to spell it, and made no attempt to acknowledge or engage with anything already written on this subject by people far more educated than them about why DNA testing can neither confirm or disprove the book's claims. That was before the Church's website had its own essay on "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies". A year or two ago, I was in this Christian evolutionist group on Facebook where some guy who may or may not have been an actual scientist said that the missionaries had shared it with him, and because of his a priori assumption that my religion is ridiculous, he was sure it must be misleading and would somebody please refute it for him? In the time that I observed the thread, nobody attempted to do so, but people did helpfully provide additional unrelated reasons why my religion is ridiculous.

And then there were a couple I had forgotten about. In late May and early June, I chatted with a girl I met in the Facebook group "The Awesome Mormons' Secret Society of Awesomeness", which constituted an embarrassing proportion of my social life for years. I still interact to several people from that group more than almost anyone I went to school with. This girl isn't one of them. But I chatted with her for a while, and she sent me a bunch of pictures of herself which were also in a folder on the hard drive. I don't remember how that got started. I'm pretty sure I didn't ever say "Please send me pictures of yourself." But she did, and I praised her beauty and I think that's why she kept doing it until she got tired of me. In a couple instances, I turned her pictures into memes and sent them back to her.

Smoother than the chunky peanut butter on your chunky peanut butter toast, that's me. But speaking of the genetic plausibility of the Book of Mormon, the foremost Latter-day Saint apologetics organization FairMormon has changed its name back to FAIR. Now, though, instead of "Foundation for Apologetics Information and Research" it stands for "Faithful Answers, Informed Response". This is because most normal people don't know what apologetics is and wonder what they're apologizing for.

President Scott Gordon noted, "At this time of name changing, we have also done some reflection and subsequent course adjustment.... This means avoiding personal attacks or derogatory language." You may remember that once upon a December I wrote a post blasting their CES Letter videos, which were full of personal attacks or derogatory language, and their subsequent doubling down against the backlash by disabling comments, banning dissenters from their Facebook page, and issuing a damage control statement. I acknowledge that my blog has also had its share of personal attacks or derogatory language, but I think it's fair (pun intended) to hold the foremost Latter-day Saint apologetics organization to a higher standard. I'm sure it did far more damage than me by making itself and the Church look bad. President Gordon's statement makes no mention of the videos, which FAIR has now quietly removed. It hasn't yet apologized for banning me from its Facebook page for criticizing them, but that's okay, I know people are busy. I'll wait.

Although FAIR has lost my respect, it did me a lot of good in the past and I hope it does more good for people in the future. And I don't share or understand some Saints' blanket condemnation of apologetics. Of course it isn't science or straightforward scholarship because it works backward and looks for evidence to fit an assumed conclusion, but that's okay sometimes. It can be done well or it can be done poorly. Trying to prove a religion by such means would be dishonest - but demonstrating plausible grounds for the religion, acknowledging that faith ultimately lies outside the scope of empirical evidence and reason but showing that it is nonetheless compatible with them, is necessary and desirable. In the example above, good apologetics assert (correctly) that DNA testing, because of its limitations and the unknown variables and shifting populations and genocides over a couple thousand years, can tell us little or nothing about the Book of Mormon. Bad apologetics, which also exist, assert that DNA testing proves Native Americans in the Midwest are direct descendants of Israelites.

Another purpose of apologetics is to respond to criticisms of the religion which may be objectively wrong or may just be founded on interpretations that are up for debate. If the critics are right about everything and the apologists are wrong about everything, as those Saints who disdain all apologetics seem to imply, then the Church has virtually no redeeming value and why are they still in it? Of course, I doubt they really belief this logical conclusion of their contempt. I think they have more in common with one Salt Lake Tribune commenter who posed the rhetorical question, "Why does the truth need apologists?" And I get the straightforward assumption embedded in his question. Why can't the truth speak for itself? Why does it need to be explained and defended so much? But his assumption is erroneous. The truth is, anything confusing and/or controversial needs apologists. Even science needs apologists. For example:

Critic: Vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue.
Apologist: No, they don't. Several vaccines are developed in cells grown from cells taken from two fetuses that were aborted for unrelated reasons in the 1960s, but refusing to save millions of lives with the vaccines won't un-abort them.

Critic: Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that systems will lose energy and go from order to disorder, not the other way around.
Apologist: No, it doesn't. The second law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems. The Earth is not a closed system because it constantly receives more energy from the sun. Your logic would preclude ordinary water droplets from forming into intricate snowflakes.

I am not a scientist, but I am a science apologist. I don't pretend to have credentials or do groundbreaking research in my own right but I do have enough expertise in a few areas to explain misconceptions or misrepresentations of people who don't. For that reason, I have no regrets about my time spent in a major that wasn't English. And apologists like me are needed. A field of science is not less true because people may not understand some aspects of it, or because they may choose to fixate on anomalies and as-yet unsolved mysteries to delegitimize the entire thing. Granted, the actual scientists can do the apologetics themselves too, but I imagine they get even more freaking tired of it than I do and would like to get back to doing actual work like saving us from this pandemic.

Quote of the day, from the chat of Dialogue's Zoom Sunday school this morning: "Darius [Gray] is sharing the real Easter message right here: the resurrection means that Christ wins over the worst that the most powerful men in the world can do. The resurrection is a holy middle finger to oppression and death. It is the destiny of the restored church to overcome racism"

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Snapshots of Changing Latter-day Saint Teachings on Women

14/2/2021

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This post was inspired by my recent feminist awakening and Craig Harline's presentation "What Happened to My Bell-Bottoms? How Things That Were Never Going to Change Have Sometimes Changed Anyway, And How Studying History Can Help Us Make Sense of It All".

The Judeo-Christian God is clearly not big on instigating immediate social change. The Law of Moses was a substantial improvement on the more punitive Code of Hammurabi, but looks absolutely barbaric by today's standards in most countries. In biblical times, slavery was as ubiquitous and crucial to the economy as wheeled vehicles are today, and instead of condemning it altogether, God was just like, "Be nice to your slaves." So Christians defended slavery as a divinely sanctioned institution for hundreds of years but eventually decided it was an obvious unthinkable evil and how could we have ever thought otherwise? When Jesus showed up, He upgraded the Law of Moses and taught principles for self-improvement and eternal life, but disappointed the Jews waiting for a Messiah by declining to do anything about the oppression and atrocities of the Roman government.

And then there are the Apostle Paul's comments about women. He clearly assigned women an inferior position to their husbands, but he did tell men to be nice and love their wives. Maybe he was just speaking his own sexist opinions, as many assume, but I'm willing to consider that maybe it was legitimately good, even inspired advice for the time and maybe it improved women's lives - and yet even then, it's inadequate for the twenty-first century and doesn't need to be defended as if it were written yesterday.

A Muslim couple came and spoke to a class I was in once. Among other things, they said that when Islam began, it was very progressive for the time on women's rights. The problem, they said, is when adherents stick with that origin and refuse to make any further progress. I like that thought and I think it also applies to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was ironically more feminist in the nineteenth century than the twentieth, perhaps as much because of as in spite of polygamy. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend that the Church's teachings on gender roles have never changed, or feel compelled to defend wrong or at least obsolete attitudes and ideas as the Lord's will. With that in mind, I want to look at a couple of things that have changed and may need to continue to change. I should note that to my knowledge, the majority of Latter-day Saint women, and certainly the majority I've talked to personally about feminist stuff, feel happy with and empowered by their status in the Church, and I'm not trying to say they're wrong to feel that way or convince them not to feel that way. But I do think they deserve more.

In the nineteenth century, the Utah territory gave women the right to vote before anywhere else in the United States except Wyoming (until the federal government, in the process of persecuting the Church over polygamy, took it away). Throughout most of the country, men argued that women didn't need to vote because they would just vote the same as their husbands or because they had "moral authority" as a counterpart to men's actual authority. The idea that women don't need the same rights and privileges as men because they're special has, unfortunately, polluted our own rhetoric within the Church whenever someone wonders why they can't be ordained to priesthood offices, but at least we let them vote. And it was much easier for women to obtain a divorce in Utah than the rest of the country. And Brigham Young encouraged them to get jobs outside the home - more on that later. Martha Hughes Cannon took that advice to heart, becoming a physician and later defeating her own husband to become the first female state senator in the United States. She famously said, "A plural wife is not half as much a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month."

Certainly it was still a patriarchal religion and you could point out plenty of misogyny in the nineteenth-century Church as in the nineteenth-century everywhere else, but all things considered I think it did pretty good. The Victorian gender roles associated with it today largely settled in after it abandoned polygamy and tried to prove to everyone else that it subscribed to traditional American values like Victorian gender roles.

On Women in Marriage
1973

For convenience, let's jump all the way to 1973. The February 1973 Ensign carried an article called "Strengthening the Patriarchal Order in the Home". The what now? Brent A. Barlow explained. He was a BYU professor (now retired), so not a member of the church hierarchy, but clearly his ideas weren't entirely foreign or revolutionary or he wouldn't have been allowed to print them in the Church's magazine. To start off, he noted some findings "that in one area of America, only one marriage in five was male-dominant, one was female-dominant, and the remaining three were democratic, with decision making, dominance, and deference either mutually or alternately shared. If the results and statistics of this particular study are representative of American marriages, it would mean that (1) for every male-dominant marriage in the United States, there is a female-dominant marriage, and (2) the female has equal or superior power in many contemporary American marriages. While the statistics may be questioned, the trend seems evident."

So already the implication is pretty obvious: the proper form of marriage is, in his own words, "male-dominated". And in fairness, he quoted some other people to back himself up. He quoted Dr. Edward J. Rydman, who warned in part, "The shift from the authoritarian to a more equalitarian family has profoundly affected the position of the head of the family as women have entered the economic marketplace in ever-increasing numbers and especially as even larger numbers of mothers take their place in offices, assembly lines, and other occupations and professions" and "As woman challenges the authority of man, so youth challenges the authority of the family and all other related social institutions." He quoted the Apostle Paul and the Book of Genesis. He quoted President Joseph F. Smith, who said in part, "The patriarchal order is of divine origin and will continue throughout time and eternity. There is, then, a particular reason why men, women and children should understand this order and this authority in the households of the people of God, and seek to make it what God intended it to be, a qualification and preparation for the highest exaltation of his children."

At this point I ask, if it "will continue throughout time and eternity", how come I've been in the Church for twenty-seven years and literally never heard of it until less than three weeks ago when I watched an interview with historian Taylor Petrie talking about how you never hear about it anymore? Okay, maybe someone was talking about it when I was a baby and I just don't remember. We'll say twenty-two years to be safe. But still. Okay, so maybe the patriarchal order of marriage is still in effect, but we don't use that particular terminology because it will upset the feminists.

Dr. Barlow explained why a democratic or "equalitarian" marriage just won't work: "Imagine, for example, the confusion that would result if two bishops were appointed over your particular ward and the first one got up in sacrament meeting and announced that the following Sunday the sacrament meeting would be held one hour earlier. While he was making his announcement, suppose the second bishop stood up and expressed his desire that the sacrament meeting be held at the original time. With two people presiding, would democratic principles work? Suppose you had two stake presidents, two elders quorum presidents, two Sunday School presidents, two Primary and Relief Society presidents presiding over each of the priesthood quorums, groups, and auxiliaries. How would the Church function? Would 'law and order' prevail? Similarly, should two people preside over each other in a marriage, particularly when one holds the priesthood and has been divinely designated to preside?"

Fun fact: Young Single Adult wards, such as I've been a part of since I was eighteen, often temporarily shrink and consolidate during Christmas break and summer vacation when college students go home. If memory serves correctly, at one time I've had as many as four bishops sitting on the stand in sacrament meeting. I know I've had three. And do you want to know how they surmounted this insurmountable problem? Wait, make sure you sit down for this. It's going to blow your freaking mind. Are you ready? Okay. Ahem. The bishops took turns running church meetings and activities. I'll wait a moment for you to pick your jaw up off the floor.

Of course, Dr. Barlow also quoted plenty of scriptures to explain that just because the man is in charge doesn't mean he gets to be a dick about it (paraphrased). He needs to love and respect his wife. Great. This article still makes me want to throw up. He noted toward the end, "By understanding the patriarchal order of marriage, a young Latter-day Saint man will be selective in choosing a wife who understands the manner in which he is to preside during their marriage. Conversely, a young Latter-day Saint woman will be more selective in choosing a husband who will preside without 'unrighteous dominion.'" Eh... I think I'd rather choose a wife who won't expect me to be her father, but thanks for the advice.

1976-7

I couldn't help but note the contrast when, a few days after the above article, I read about Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington's marriage with Grace Fort Arrington in his diary. He was writing lengthy recollections of various aspects of his life for his biographer to use. Though unshakable in his faith, he was a raging liberal compared to the rest of the church hierarchy at the time because of his intellectual perspectives, willingness to call out bull---- when he saw it, and radical philosophy of being honest about church history instead of only sharing the warm fuzzy parts. He's exactly the kind of guy I admire and want to emulate. So how did this closet apostate incorporate the "patriarchal order of marriage" into his life before, during and after Dr. Barlow's article?

On October 31, 1976, he wrote in his diary, "Let me begin by saying that at every stage of our marriage she has been an integral part of it.... We have taken all our vacations together, have made all our decisions as a team; have talked over every important matter that pertains to either or both of us. I do not think it could be said that ours was anything but a cooperative family in which each of us played an equal role in the decision-making process. Neither dominated the other.

"A second comment is that Grace has and has had a strong personality and character. She has not allwed me to dominate things; she has not 'given in;' she has not been submissive. She stands up for what she believes and has not been hesitant to make decisions in my absence or acquiescence.

"Once she decided to love me, she has been completely loyal, just as, I hope, I have been completely loyal to her. Because we are both sure of the respect and love and admiration of the other, we have not feared to tease, to jest, to speak up, to speak down. We have felt perfectly secure in our position."

Grace confirmed this account in an excerpt from her 1977 memoir I'm Glad My House Burned Down: The Personal Story of Grace Fort Arrington which was also included in her husband's diary: "Whenever decisions were to be made that in any way affected our lives, Leonard always talked over with me the alternative possibilities, and we discussed them thoroughly before any decision was made as to what he would or should do. He wanted me to be in on the decision, and he always respected my judgment and feelings. He has always kept me fully informed about our financial condition and we have always had a joint bank account. He has never been concerned about how much I spent, and I have reciprocated this trust by trying to be a thrifty housewife. I can't imagine life without Leonard."

Sounds ghastly. No wonder their three children became rebellious delinquents and died of drug overdoses in their early twenties. Oh wait, that didn't happen.

1982

So how did the patriarchal order of marriage hold up almost a decade later? In September 1982, the Ensign carried another article on "Marriage and the Patriarchal Order", this one by Elder Dean L. Larsen of the Presidency of the Seventy. Though his position as an author was more authoritative than Dr. Barlow's, his approach was less so, opening with a disclaimer: "These comments on the importance of the patriarchal order in marriage represent my personal views. They are expressed in the hope that they will be helpful to those who are married or who are contemplating marriage." This article doesn't hold up for me either, but it is light-years better than the previous one and Elder Larsen seems like a lot more likeable guy, so I won't spend too much time dissecting it. I will, however, quote a noteworthy excerpt in full:

"We often associate the patriarchal order with the times of Abraham and the Old Testament patriarchs. Perhaps it is inevitable, therefore, that we think of some of the conditions of the patriarchal order as being similar to those that are described in the Old Testament record, particularly as these things relate to relationships between men and women - husbands and wives. One cannot read this record without receiving the impression that women of that time generally played a very submissive and secondary role. They are infrequently mentioned as individuals and personalities and are often not even included in the census of the people. A superficial reading of the Old Testament account can easily leave one with the feeling that women were the property of men, consigned simply to do the bidding of their husbands and masters. There was much about the culture and the customs of ancient Israel that contributed to this general impression, and occasionally we encounter men of our own time who have allowed their knowledge of those ancient customs to influence their view of the patriarchal order.

"Recently I was visited in my office by a young woman at whose forthcoming temple marriage I had been invited to officiate. She was distraught and tearful and disclosed that she had some serious questions about whether she should go ahead with the marriage. As we discussed the reasons for these questions, the young prospective bride told me of a conversation she had had the previous evening with her fiancé. In a fashion uncharacteristic of their relationship, he had, at the insistence of his father, he said, laid down the law and the conditions that would have to prevail in their marriage. He was to be the unquestioned authority. His word would be law. She was to be willing to submit to his rule. It was important, he said, that she understand these conditions which would now be imposed on her by covenant in the temple ceremony.

"It was interesting to me that this young man, who had won the hand and the heart of his sweetheart through a loving and gentle courtship, now was constrained to impose a strict dominion upon her. In so doing he was appealing to his misunderstanding of the patriarchal order, for there could hardly have been a greater distortion or misrepresentation of the actual conditions that must prevail within that order.

"One whose view of the husband-wife relationship is based upon prevailing customs and culture of the Old Testament people is capable of creating much unhappiness for himself, his wife, and his family. To qualify his view, he should give careful consideration to the counsel of prophetic leaders who have taken pains to instruct us correctly in these matters."

Here's where I think we as a people have long made a substantial error. Elder Larsen clearly recognized that the Old Testament version of the principle was inadequate, and even that the 1973 version of the principle was inadequate, yet insisted that the principle itself was good. I think that if a principle looks sexist and can easily be misunderstood or warped to be sexist, the most obvious explanation is that it's just sexist. And in that case, we should recognize it as such and reject it instead of splitting hairs about why it's not really sexist. The most obvious explanation isn't always correct. Maybe Elder Larsen was right and I'm wrong. But the superficial similarity between this ideal of marriage and the subjugation of women to men in virtually every culture in history is a bit too much for me to accept as coincidence.

Now here's a fun fact. If you type "patriarchal order of marriage" into a standard search engine, these two Ensign articles about it will be among the top results, if not the top results as they are for me. If you type "patriarchal order of marriage" into the Church website search engine, they won't even show up. I'm sure this is intentional. I'm sure people behind the scenes made a conscious decision to distance the Church from this teaching that "will continue throughout time and eternity". I do agree that because these articles appeared in the magazine they need to be on the website for the sake of honesty, but not in such a way as to actually influence people's marriages. I think they should just include a disclaimer on each explaining that the contents do not accurately represent the current teachings of the Church. But such a blunt acknowledgement that the Church's teachings have changed would make a few heads explode.

While the phrase "patriarchal order of marriage" was not used, the teaching was, as Elder Larsen hinted, codified into temple rituals during the time of these articles (and up until a couple years ago). In the initiatory, women were anointed to become queens and priestesses unto their husbands. In the endowment, they covenanted to obey the law of their husbands, until 1990 when they started covenanting to obey the law of the Lord, and to hearken to the counsel of their husbands, as their husband hearkened unto the counsel of the Father, which means essentially the same thing but upset the feminists a little bit less. There was no reciprocal promise of men to their wives. They made all their covenants directly with God. In fairness, the covenants were contingent on men being righteous and obedient themselves and could not reasonably be used to justify abuse. And in fairness, the majority of women (but not all) either just didn't care or explained it to themselves in a way that made sense to them. But it still. I see no reason why I should be responsible for a grown woman's salvation, or why she should mediate her relationship with God through me.

1995

On September 23, 1995, in response to ongoing court battles over same-sex marriage in Hawaii, President Gordon B. Hinckley announced "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", which summarized the Church's beliefs on gender, marriage, children and so on. Since then it has been quoted perhaps more often than any other uncanonized document. One paragraph reads in part, "By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed."

This paragraph has caused some heartache, but it's actually a lot more vague and flexible than most other statements that have been made on the division of gender roles, so I can live with it. Taylor Petrie, the guy who introduced me to the "patriarchal order of marriage" (are you sick of that phrase yet?) in the first place, points to it as codifying an awkward transitional stage between that model and the current model that enshrines heterosexuality instead of patriarchy as the heart of the marriage doctrine. Fathers "preside", yet fathers and mothers are "equal partners". That makes no sense unless you assume creative definitions for "preside" and "equal partners" - and even if one argues that the Church uses such definitions, this document is addressed to the world, so they need to be explained and they aren't. If one person has authority over another, however benevolent, they are not equal partners. But even if they are, the entire point of Dr. Barlow's 1973 article was that fathers and mothers should not be equal partners, so the teaching on marriage has changed.

I wonder how these roles are even expected to continue into the next life, as seems implied by the huge emphasis on eternal heterosexual Latter-day Saint temple marriage. Heavenly Father, according to Latter-day Saint theology, has a wife, and is the model for us to aspire to. But what does Heavenly Mother, a literal goddess with co-ownership of everything in the universe, need Her husband to provide Her with? What does She need to be protected from? Right, according to some people we don't talk much about Her because Heavenly Father wants to protect Her from saying mean things about Her. That makes no sense. That would be like if I protected my wife by making her stay home 24/7 with no internet access, but I still told people she existed so they could still say mean things about her if they really wanted to. Or it would be like if we had ten kids, and maybe one or two of them would be rude to her, so she preferred to cut off all contact with all of them. Ridiculous. On the flip side, am I really expected to believe that Heavenly Father is lacking in any quality or skill like nurturing, or lacks the time to do it, and needs a wife to complement Him in that regard? So these roles seem kind of short-sighted to me.

We as a people also frequently ignore the reality that no two men are the same and no two women are the same. No generalization about men's personalities or women's brains holds true 100% of the time, so I'm not sure what are supposed to be the crucial eternal traits of each gender. When I was in LDSSA years ago, the institute teachers rotated through to give us weekly lessons, and one gave a lesson on women and the priesthood. I don't remember anything else he said, but I remember he didn't bring up the fallacious "priesthood = motherhood" equivalency, and he said, "We have these stereotypes in the Church of 'Men are like this and women are like this,' and sometimes they're true and often they're not." Such rare candor made quite an impression on me. Or as Codex told Tinkerballa in "The Guild", "You have the maternal instincts of a wood chipper."

The Family Proclamation is published under the endorsement of the two highest governing bodies of the Church, but nobody knows who actually wrote it. We do know that women weren't consulted. Relief Society general presidency first counselor Chieko Okazaki, another raging liberal remembered and loved for her words of comfort to people who felt marginalized in the Church, said in an interview with Gregory Prince for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought ten years later, "I’m on several community boards, and sometimes I’m the only woman there or one of two or three women. I’m on the YWCA advisory board; I’m on the advisory board for the University of Utah Graduate School of Social Work; and I’m on the Belle Spafford Chair board. If I got the message that I was supposed to just sit there and listen to the men, I’d quit that board. I’d say, 'What am I here for?' I speak up a lot in all of these board meetings.

"In contrast, in 1995 when 'The Family: A Proclamation to the World' was written, the Relief Society presidency was asked to come to a meeting. We did, and they read this proclamation. It was all finished. The only question was whether they should present it at the priesthood meeting or at the Relief Society meeting. It didn’t matter to me where it was presented. What I wanted to know was, 'How come we weren’t consulted?'"

Gregory Prince: "You didn't even know it was in the works?"

Chieko Okazaki: "No. They just asked us which meeting to present it in, and we said, 'Whatever President Hinckley decides is fine with us.' He decided to do it at the Relief Society meeting. The apostle who was our liaison said, 'Isn’t it wonderful that he made the choice to present it at the Relief Society meeting?' Well, that was fine, but as I read it I thought that we could have made a few changes in it.

"Sometimes I think they get so busy that they forget that we are there. It’s different from the time when Belle Spafford was president of the Relief Society. She was her own boss, as I read her life. And so was Florence Jacobsen. There’s a great deal of difference now."

2004

In his April 2004 General Conference talk "Fatherhood, an Eternal Calling", Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said, "Remember, brethren, that in your role as leader in the family, your wife is your companion. As President Gordon B. Hinckley has taught: 'In this Church the man neither walks ahead of his wife nor behind his wife but at her side. They are coequals.' Since the beginning, God has instructed mankind that marriage should unite husband and wife together in unity. Therefore, there is not a president and vice president in a family. We have co-presidents working together eternally for the good of their family. They are united together in word, in deed, and in action as they lead, guide, and direct their family unit. They are on equal footing. They plan and organize the affairs of the family jointly and unanimously as they move forward."

The particular word choice of "co-presidents" was removed from the printed version, but the assertion that "there is not a president and vice president in a family" remained so I don't see what difference that makes. Anyway, the whole idea is that they're equal. He of course quoted from the Family Proclamation and asserted in this same talk that the father is the leader and head of his family, but from this description I'm left to wonder what that even means if everything is, in fact, done "jointly and unanimously" with his wife, including "lead[ing], guid[ing], and direct[ing]". The father is the leader, but the mother leads just as much as he does, but she's not the leader. And he doesn't walk ahead of her, even though that's what "leading" means. I just don't get it.

The co-president business is interesting too. One reason this particular quote caught my attention is that Elder Perry's model of co-presidents in a marriage flatly contradicts Dr. Barlow's rhetorical argument that "two stake presidents, two elders quorum presidents, two Sunday School presidents, two Primary and Relief Society presidents" cannot coexist. And notice anything familiar about the word "president"? I'll give you a hint - cover the last two letters. Yes, a president is, etymologically, one who presides. (I'll grant that some presidents do little more than play golf, say stupid things on Twitter, and incite armed insurrections by spreading lies, but that's not normal.) If the wife is a co-president, then by definition just as much as the husband does. And even if we ditch that particular word, the fact remains that in Elder Perry's model he isn't the president and she the vice president, so I don't see what difference that makes.

I don't say this to mock Elder Perry or anyone else who preaches such laudable ideals which I agree with. But it sure looks to me like we as a people are trying really hard to mesh patriarchy and egalitarianism together and pretend they aren't mutually incompatible, instead of disavowing the former. We quietly discontinued using some of the words that were used in the 1970s or earlier, and kept using others but decided they mean different things than the sexist things they obviously meant to the people who used them before. And we pretend that these principles haven't changed and will continue to not change for eternity. If that were true, the Church wouldn't need to hide older articles on the topic of marriage from its search engine, and it wouldn't have removed all remaining overt patriarchal language from the temple rituals in 2019. I don't think there's intentional dishonesty here from people at any level, but I think we're kidding ourselves and I think it's the wrong approach.

On Women Working Outside the Home
1869

According to the Journal of Discourses, on July 18, 1869 President Brigham Young said, "As I have often told my sisters in the Female Relief societies, we have sisters here who, if they had the privilege of studying, would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. We believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic [medicine], or become good book-keepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation. These, and many more things of equal utility are incorporated in our religion, and we believe in and try to practice them.”

I'm not suggesting that President Young was an out-and-out feminist - he said some sexist things like "A woman is the dirtiest creature, dirtier than a man" - but he also said things like this, so let's give him credit where it's due. His attitude toward women's employment may have been facilitated by polygamy. I know there were instances of women taking turns looking after the children while their sister-wives went to college back east. But even at its peak, only 20-30% of Latter-day Saint families actually practiced polygamy, and President Young was certainly aware of that when he made his remarks.

Strangely, most of this quote was reprinted in the New Era (the magazine for teenagers) in October 1974 in an article titled "'She Shall Be Praised': Latter-day Prophets Speak to Women", less than two years after Dr. Barlow lamented in another church magazine that women working outside the home were destroying the family unit. And the Church at this time was emphatically more on board with Dr. Barlow's attitude than President Young's. Leonard J. Arrington wrote in his diary on January 23, "Carol Lynn [Pearson] left with me a copy of her original unexpurgated draft of Mormon women of the 1870s which is due to appear in the February issue of the Ensign. A number of things in this were removed by editors of the Ensign for publication purposes. By and large they consisted of items which would seem to encourage women to leave the home and enter professional or business careers." This would have been in the same issue as Dr. Barlow's article (though Sister Pearson's article ended up postponed indefinitely because of her controversial support for the Equal Rights Amendment) and that would have been funny. So how did Brigham Young's quote slip past the New Era editors? Did someone get fired?

1977-1987

At a fireside in San Antonio, Texas on December 3, 1977, President Spencer W. Kimball said, "[Y]ou are to become a career woman in the greatest career on earth - that of homemaker, wife, and mother. It was never intended by the Lord that married women should compete with men in employment. They have a far greater and more important service to render....

"The husband is expected to support his family and only in an emergency should a wife secure outside employment. Her place is in the home, to build the home into a heaven of delight.

"Numerous divorces can be traced directly to the day when the wife left the home and went out into the world into employment. Two incomes raise the standard of living beyond its norm. Two spouses working prevent the complete and proper home life, break into the family prayers, create an independence which is not cooperative, causes distortion, limits the family and frustrates the children already born....

“I beg of you, you who could and should be bearing and rearing a family: Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the café.

"No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother - cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one’s precious husband and children.

"Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and unembarrassed help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously wait.

"When you have fully complemented your husband in home life and borne the children, growing up full of faith, integrity, responsibility and goodness, then you have achieved your accomplishments supreme, without peer, and you will be the envy through time and eternity.”

On February 22, 1987, in a fireside at BYU entitled "To the Mothers in Zion", his successor President Ezra Taft Benson said, "Now, my dear mothers, knowing of your divine role to bear and rear children and bring them back to Him, how will you accomplish this in the Lord's way? I say the Lord's way, because it is different from the world's way.

"The Lord clearly defined the roles of mothers and fathers in providing for and rearing a righteous posterity. In the beginning, Adam - not Eve - was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's calling is in the home, not in the market place.

"Again, in the Doctrine and Covenants, we read: 'Women have claim on their husbands for their maintenance, until their husbands are taken' (D&C 83:2). This is the divine right of a wife and mother. She cares for and nourishes her children at home. Her husband earns the living for the family, which makes this nourishing possible. With that claim on their husbands for their financial support, the counsel of the Church has always been for mothers to spend their full time in the home in rearing and caring for their children.

"We realize also that some of our choice sisters are widowed and divorced and that others find themselves in unusual circumstances where, out of necessity, they are required to work for a period of time. But these instances are the exception, not the rule.

"In a home where there is an able-bodied husband, he is expected to be the breadwinner. Sometimes we hear of husbands who, because of economic conditions, have lost their jobs and expect their wives to go out of the home and work even though the husband is still capable of providing for his family. In these cases, we urge the husband to do all in his power to allow his wife to remain in the home caring for the children while he continues to provide for his family the best he can, even though the job be is able secure may not be ideal and family budgeting will have to be tighter.

"Our beloved prophet Spencer W. Kimball had much to say about the role of mothers in the home and their callings and responsibilities. I am impressed tonight to share with you some of his inspired pronouncements. I fear that much of his counsel has gone unheeded, and families have suffered because of it. But I stand this evening as a second witness to the truthfulness of what President Spencer W. Kimball said. He spoke as a true prophet of God."

He quoted extensively from President Kimball's fireside address, which is why I link these two talks together. I could include dozens more quotes along these lines, but this blog post has gotten longer than I intended already. Many such quotes are compiled in the chapter "Mothers' Employment Outside the Home" in the current Eternal Marriage Student Manual. President Benson's talk was distributed as a pamphlet, but the pamphlet is now out of print and the talk is not available from official church sources in any form. Now, of course, just because Brigham Young told women to do one thing and later prophets told them to do something else doesn't mean one or the others were wrong. Circumstances change, and prophetic instructions can also change. If you go to President Benson's talk on YouTube, you can read a couple comments by women testifying that following his counsel blessed their lives. I won't reprint them here because, again, length.

I do have to question, though - do we no longer "believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies", as Brigham Young taught? How could "enlarg[ing] their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large" be part of "the design of their creation" in 1869 but not in 1977 or 1987? If "it was never intended by the Lord that married women should compete with men in employment", why did the Lord give women the same breadth and depth of intellects, talents, and ambitions as men? Intellects, talents, and ambitions which are in no way prerequisites to "cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one’s precious husband and children"? Some women want to be full-time homemakers, and there's nothing wrong with that. But plenty of others feel a natural yearning to pursue other paths in life. Are they wrong to feel that way? I don't and can't believe that they are. Again, the coincidental similarity of divine gender roles to historical subjugation of women is too much for me to swallow. It's completely one-sided. Men aren't the ones being asked to shelve their natural ambitions to fit into a certain role. They never are.

In "Prophet's Talk Prompts Examination of Role of Women", well worth reading in its entirety, the March 1987 edition of Sunstone chronicled a cross-section of the varied and often polarized responses to President Benson's talk. I'll just requote the final quoted paragraph from the keynote address at the BYU Women's Conference by university president Jeffrey R. Holland's wife Patricia: "Obviously the Lord has created us with different personalities, as well as differing degrees of energy, interest, health, talent, and opportunity. So long as we are committed to righteousness and living a life of faithful devotion, we should celebrate these divine differences, knowing they are a gift from God. We must not feel so frightened; we must not be so threatened and insecure; we must not need to find exact replicas of ourselves in order to feel validated as a woman of worth. There are many things over which we can be divided, but one thing is needful for our unity - the empathy and compassion of the living Son of God."

1995

As noted in the previous section, "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" assigns men the primary responsibility for providing for the family and women the primary responsibility for nurturing the children. Though the obvious spirit of the document is in line with quotes that tell women not to work outside the home, it doesn't state that outright and remains open to a fair amount of individual interpretation and adaptation.

2010

Neylan McBaine is a moderate Latter-day Saint feminist who doesn't push for any doctrinal changes or women's ordination, but seeks changes within the existing church structure to increase women's role and visibility. In an LDS Living interview published September 19, 2020, she reflected on her work as a brand strategist for the Church's "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign: "Yeah, I was really grateful to have that experience at Boncom [Bonneville Communications] and it kind of fell into my lap. I got a call I think the day Mormon.org launched, from one of their brand strategists and he said, 'You know, we're here brainstorming a new campaign for the Church and we're a bunch of dudes sitting around a table and we're trying to figure out how to talk to everybody, not just other dudes.' So, he was familiar with The Mormon Women Project and reached out to me because of that. Ironically, he wasn't familiar with the fact that I had just spent seven years in Silicon Valley doing digital marketing and brand strategy. So, I went in with I think more thorough qualifications than they might have expected initially, which was great...

"So it was absolutely essential for growth that we shed some of that, some of those cultural trappings. And it was a painful transition and the transition is still happening. I remember one of my first days at Boncom after we had launched some of the early video portraits, our managing director sat us down and read us a letter that had been written by a man to us generally, that said, 'My wife has been on the couch in the depression for the last couple of days because the Church's fancy PR agency is showing a woman who has pursued a career, whereas my wife gave up her education and her pursuit so that she could raise a family the way the prophet told her to. And now, you know, you're telling her that she didn't have to do that, she didn't have to make that sacrifice.' And real anger and real confusion. And, you know, I got that, I got that. One of the things that prompted me to start the MWP was this tension that I felt growing up between my mom being a woman who did not have a temple marriage, a single mother who [had a] professional, international career being held up in all the Church videos and singing for President Hinckley's birthday parties, and I was on the fireside circuit, right? And got to meet several of the apostles, which was wonderful for my personal testimony - and again, back to the sort of sense of myself as a woman in the Church. But I did recognize the hypocrisy of that, especially in the 1980's and 90's, when we were not very far from President Benson's call to women to stay home. And so I think women in the Church have always kind of suffered from that tension and the 'I'm a Mormon' campaign and things like the Mormon Women Project have been efforts to alleviate that tension, and to say, again, that balance between what is a cultural practice or what is obedience to a particular cultural expectation or a narrowly prescribed role versus all the rest of life, right? And all these other things that we can do as women, and all the other ways to write our scripts. And I think it's been a really important pendulum swing for all of us who are trying to live in the modern world and still recognize our eternal identities."

Though the "women's place is in the home" rhetoric has far from disappeared, and old quotes are still readily available on the Church's website, it's been a lot quieter in the last two or three decades. The vagueness and flexibility of the Family Proclamation marked a severe tonal shift. Not by coincidence, the "have as many kids as possible" rhetoric and the "birth control is evil" rhetoric have been dialed way back too. There are a couple of obvious reasons for this: a. if a talk like President Benson's were given today, at least half of millennial and Gen Z members would leave the Church, and b. modern economic realities have made it impossible for most couples to support a family on one income. What earlier prophets called exceptional circumstances are now the norm. In my case, God specifically told me to a teacher, which He knows as well as I do is the most underpaid profession in the country, so until I'm on the bestseller list it's all but inevitable that my wife will work outside the home and He has nobody to blame for that but Himself.

The older rhetoric has never been repudiated. It was, however, flatly contradicted and/or superseded by the "I'm a Mormon" campaign showing off women with successful careers outside the home. Of course these women would have been allowed to have careers outside the home at any point in church history, judgment and gossip from their ward members notwithstanding, but holding them up to the world as public examples of Morm- er, Latter-day Saints in good standing was something else altogether. It sent a clear and deliberate message to curious outsiders and prospective converts that the Church considers women with careers outside the home perfectly normal and acceptable, not an unfortunate emergency measure. Was this message an honest one? It wouldn't have been twenty years earlier.

2021

I'm sorry, I promise I'm going to wrap this up soon but I can't help remarking on one more thing before I do. I recently posted in the Facebook group "Doctrine, History and Culture of the Church of Jesus Christ" a question about whether the Church's teachings against women working outside the home were correct and if so, why they're no longer emphasized. Predictably, I got dozens of responses from all over the spectrum, including some scanned pages from BYU professor Rodney Turner's 1972 book Woman and the Priesthood that make Brent A. Barlow look like Gloria Steinem. ("The political and social emancipation of women is due more to their growing economic independence than to any other single factor. In this respect they are not unlike children who, finding themselves gainfully employed, promptly demand greater freedom of action than they previously enjoyed." Really, Dr. Turner? Really? Also, his argument that the business world is bad for men's health and thus even worse for poor delicate women's health is actually an argument against capitalism, but that's none of my business.) Aside from that aside, I'll just focus on one response from Okorie Odege of Ohafia, Nigeria that really struck me.

"1 And it came to pass that after I, the Lord God, had driven them out, that Adam began to till the earth, and to have dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, as I the Lord had commanded him. And Eve, also, his wife, did labor with him. (Moses 5:1)
Therefore,
That teaching is not scriptural, if it has ever been taught. When I newly joined the Church about 25 years ago some members used to tell me that the Church teaches that wives should not work, but since then I haven't encountered such teaching."

Brother Odege quoted the same verse that President Benson alluded to, but included a part that the latter might have missed: "And Eve, also, his wife, did labor with him." In doing so he presented a perspective I'd never heard before. Him being in Nigeria was also significant. Although Nigerians have expressed interest in the Church since 1946, it's only been officially established there since late 1978, after priesthood ordination and temple ordinances were reopened to people of black African descent. The Church is still young there, and growth has been exponential, so it's got a huge proportion of first and second generation members. Not like Utah where a whole toxic culture has evolved around members who can trace their heritage in the Church back to the 18somethings. And most Nigerians, like most Africans, don't bring a lot of intellectual concerns into their faith. For example, while many African-Americans are deeply troubled by the aforementioned priesthood ban and why it happened, Africans tend to have the attitude that it doesn't matter because it's over now. And Nigeria is hardly the worst country in the world with regard to women's rights, but it's not among the most progressive by a long shot either.

These are generalizations, but accurate ones nonetheless. So what I'm getting at here is that if a convert in Nigeria comes by the conclusion that "That teaching is not scriptural, if it has ever been taught" - and in all likelihood comes by it honestly and objectively, not out of an a priori desire to mold teachings to feminist ideals or current secular notions of equality, and not by simply rejecting things that don't rub him the right way - I think that says a lot about what the Church is actually promulgating as it spreads around the world. Speaking of which, European and Canadian members don't have a problem with bikinis or socialism. But that's a topic for another day.

Conclusion (Yes, Finally)

I don't know how to make sense of this mess I've presented, but to give it some semblance of cohesiveness I'll go back to my original thesis with yet another example. Another temple ritual was changed in 2019, but in this case I'm not bothered by the previous form and don't feel like the change undermines anything significant. In this case I think I understand. Originally, during the husband-wife sealing ceremony, the woman "gave" herself to the man, and he "received" her. This ceremony was written/revealed in a culture where women were traditionally given to their husbands by their fathers. They went from being their father's property to being their husband's property, which is why to this day most married women exchange their father's last name for their husband's last name, which is why I will strongly discourage my wife from doing so, but of course I won't forbid her because that would defeat the purpose of feminism. This legal and social status is reflected in the language of Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 as it outlines the principle of eternal marriage, where I find the objectification of women far more disturbing than the polygamy per se. But it's like the Bible's approach to slavery.

In the sealing ceremony, however, women instead gave themselves. In that way it emphasized their autonomy and empowered them. And nowadays the culture of marriage is different, and while the nature of the sealing covenant has not changed, the language has been made more egalitarian. It probably wouldn't have hurt to do that a little sooner, but whatever. We can look at this of an example of a principle or a practice or a teaching that represented a step forward and served a purpose for a time, but eventually became inadequate. At this time it was replaced with something better instead of being defended as the Lord's eternal will. This process has ample scriptural precedent, it fits snugly into the concept of a "true and living church" founded on continuing revelation "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little", and I think we as a people should stop resisting it so often and doing mental gymnastics to pretend it doesn't happen or doesn't need to keep happening. We don't need to construct a false paradigm where our religion is simpler, more perfect, and more consistent than it actually is.

ADDENDUM 3/25: I just stumbled upon this in the notes of a blog post by Emily Belanger and thought it only fair to pass along. "I took a course from Brent Barlow (one of the linked authors above) in the early 2000’s. For what it’s worth, he candidly admitted that he had previously been mistaken in his belief that the husband made all final decisions in the marriage. He even chastised male students who refused to marry a woman who wanted to work outside the home."

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Talking to Myself in Public

Some Thoughts Inspired by "Tabernacles of Clay"

Six Black Men React to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

1873
James Williams
"Bigamy"
Excerpt from Fugitive Slave in the Gold Rush

Whitesplaining Commentary

1913
Booker T. Washington
Letter to the New York Age, the Self-Proclaimed "Leading Negro Newspaper"

Whitesplaining Commentary

1926
Wallace Thurman
"Quoth Brigham Young: This is the Place"
Essay in the Series "These 'Colored' United States" in The Messenger, a Black Literary Magazine

Whitesplaining Commentary

1963
Daily (or David) H. Oliver
Excerpts from A Negro on Mormonism

Whitesplaining Commentary

1977
Elmer E. Wells
"Unjustifiable Denial of Priesthood to Black Mormons"
Article in Negro History Bulletin

Whitesplaining Commentary

2012
Obery Hendricks
"Mitt Romney and the Curse of Blackness"
Opinion Piece in the Huffington Post

Whitesplaining Commentary

The Saga of John Dehlin and Madeline Liebreich Being Racist

Memes + Latter-day Saint Apologetics

Snapshots of Changing Latter-day Saint Teachings on Women

On Women in Marriage
1973

1976-7

1982

1995

2004

On Women Working Outside the Home
1869

1977-1987

1995

2010

2021

Conclusion (Yes, Finally)

About the Author

Archives

Categories

Talking to Myself in Public

Some Thoughts Inspired by "Tabernacles of Clay"

Six Black Men React to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

1873James Williams"Bigamy"Excerpt from Fugitive Slave in the Gold Rush

Whitesplaining Commentary

1913Booker T. WashingtonLetter to the New York Age, the Self-Proclaimed "Leading Negro Newspaper"

Whitesplaining Commentary

1926Wallace Thurman"Quoth Brigham Young: This is the Place"Essay in the Series "These 'Colored' United States" in The Messenger, a Black Literary Magazine

Whitesplaining Commentary

1963Daily (or David) H. OliverExcerpts from A Negro on Mormonism

Whitesplaining Commentary

1977​Elmer E. Wells"Unjustifiable Denial of Priesthood to Black Mormons"Article in Negro History Bulletin

Whitesplaining Commentary

2012Obery Hendricks"Mitt Romney and the Curse of Blackness"Opinion Piece in the Huffington Post​

Whitesplaining Commentary

The Saga of John Dehlin and Madeline Liebreich Being Racist

Memes + Latter-day Saint Apologetics

Snapshots of Changing Latter-day Saint Teachings on Women

On Women in Marriage​1973

1976-7

1982

1995

2004

On Women Working Outside the Home1869

1977-1987

1995

2010

2021

Conclusion (Yes, Finally)

About the Author

Archives

Categories

1873
James Williams
"Bigamy"
Excerpt from Fugitive Slave in the Gold Rush

1913
Booker T. Washington
Letter to the New York Age, the Self-Proclaimed "Leading Negro Newspaper"

1926
Wallace Thurman
"Quoth Brigham Young: This is the Place"
Essay in the Series "These 'Colored' United States" in The Messenger, a Black Literary Magazine

1963
Daily (or David) H. Oliver
Excerpts from A Negro on Mormonism

1977
Elmer E. Wells
"Unjustifiable Denial of Priesthood to Black Mormons"
Article in Negro History Bulletin

2012
Obery Hendricks
"Mitt Romney and the Curse of Blackness"
Opinion Piece in the Huffington Post

On Women in Marriage
1973

On Women Working Outside the Home
1869