Black people and Mormonism

From the mid-1800s until 1978, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) had a policy which prevented most men of black African descent from being ordained to the church's lay priesthood. This resulted in these members being unable to participate in some temple ordinances. Though the church had an open membership policy for all races, relatively few black people who joined the church retained active membership, despite reassurance that the ban would one day be lifted when "all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the priesthood and the keys thereof". Historically, Mormon attitudes about race were generally close to those of other Americans. Accordingly, before the civil rights movement, the LDS Church's policy went largely unnoticed and unchallenged. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the church was criticized by civil rights advocates and religious groups, and in 1969 several church leaders voted to rescind the policy, but the vote was not unanimous among the members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, so the policy stood. In 1978, the First Presidency and the Twelve, led by Spencer W. Kimball, declared they had received a revelation instructing them to reverse the racial restriction policy. The change seems to have been prompted at least in part by problems facing mixed race converts in Brazil. Today, the church opposes racism in any form and has no racial discrimination policy. In 1997, there were approximately 500,000 black members of the LDS Church, accounting for about five percent of the total membership; most black members live in Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Before 1847: During the early years of the Latter Day Saint movement, black people were admitted to the church, and there was no record of a racial policy on denying priesthood, since at least two black men became priests, Elijah Abel and Walker Lewis. When the Latter Day Saints migrated to Missouri, they encountered the pro-slavery sentiments of their neighbors. Joseph Smith upheld the laws regarding slaves and slaveholders, but remained abolitionist in his actions and doctrines. Beginning in 1842, after he had moved to free-state Illinois, Smith made known his increasingly strong anti-slavery position. In 1842, he began studying some abolitionist literature, and stated, "It makes my blood boil within me to reflect upon the injustice, cruelty, and oppression of the rulers of the people. When will these things cease to be, and the Constitution and the laws again bear rule?" In 1844, Smith wrote his views as a candidate for President of the United States. The anti-slavery plank of his platform called for a gradual end to slavery by the year 1850. His plan called for the government to buy the freedom of slaves using money from the sale of public lands. Racial discrimination policy under Brigham Young: After Smith's death in 1844, Brigham Young became president of the main body of the church and led the Mormon pioneers to what would become the Utah Territory. Like many Americans at the time, Young (who was also the territorial governor) promoted discriminatory views about black people. On January 16, 1852, Young made a pronouncement to the Utah Territorial Legislature, stating that "any man having one drop of the seed of Cain ... in him cannot hold the priesthood and if no other Prophet ever spake it before I will say it now in the name of Jesus Christ I know it is true and others know it." A similar statement by Young was recorded on February 13, 1849. The statement—which refers to the Curse of Cain—was given in response to a question asking about the African's chances for redemption. Young responded, "The Lord had cursed Cain's seed with blackness and prohibited them the Priesthood." William McCary: Some researchers have suggested that the actions of William McCary in Winter Quarters, Nebraska led to Brigham Young's decision to adopt the priesthood ban in the LDS Church. McCary was a half–African American convert who, after his baptism and ordination to the priesthood, began to claim to be a prophet and the possessor of other supernatural gifts. He was excommunicated for apostasy in March 1847 and expelled from Winter Quarters. After his excommunication, McCary began attracting Latter Day Saint followers and instituted plural marriage among his group, and he had himself sealed to several white wives. McCary's behavior angered many of the Latter Day Saints in Winter Quarters. Researchers have stated that his marriages to his white wives "played an important role in pushing the Mormon leadership into an anti-Black position" and may have prompted Young to institute the priesthood and temple ban on black people. A statement from Young to McCary in March 1847 suggested that race had nothing to do with priesthood eligibility, but the earliest known statement about the priesthood restriction from any Mormon leader (including the implication that skin color might be relevant) was made by apostle Parley P. Pratt a month after McCary was expelled from Winter Quarters. Speaking of McCary, Pratt stated that he "was a black man with the blood of Ham in him which lineage was cursed as regards the priesthood". Young's views: While Brigham Young opposed slavery, he was at least willing to tolerate it temporarily. Young subscribed to what was a common American view at the time: that black people were naturally inferior. Young attributed this to a divine curse placed on the lineage of Cain, and interpreted it to mean that Africans and their descendents could not be ordained to the priesthood. However, he rejected the teachings of contemporary Mormons including Orson Pratt, that Africans were cursed because they had been less valiant in a pre-mortal life. Young also stated that curse would one day be lifted and that black people would be able to receive the priesthood post-mortally. In the Journal of Discourses, Brigham Young said: "You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind . . . Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, p. 290). "In our first settlement in Missouri, it was said by our enemies that we intended to tamper with the slaves, not that we had any idea of the kind, for such a thing never entered our minds. We knew that the children of Ham were to be the "servant of servants," and no power under heaven could hinder it, so long as the Lord would permit them to welter under the curse and those were known to be our religious views concerning them," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 172). "Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 110).