Jane Manning James: Latter-day Saint and servant

In the spirit of Black History Month, I want to give a quick biographical sketch of Jane Manning James, an early black convert to Mormonism. Jane joined the LDS Church in 1843 at the age of 21. That year, she and eight other black Mormons walked 800 miles to Nauvoo, where the bulk of the church was then located.

For their time, early Mormons were actually quite progressive on the matter of race. Joseph Smith, for example, ordained several black males to the priesthood (the black priesthood ban wasn’t fully articulated or enforced until Brigham Young became president). Many early Saints also had abolitionist sympathies, and the fear that Mormons wanted to free slaves is partly why the church was driven out of Missouri. And when Smith ran for president of the United States in 1844, he campaigned on a platform of abolition. Appreciating this context, it’s not hard to see how these black members might have felt welcome among the Saints.

When Jane arrived in Nauvoo, she was directed to Joseph Smith’s Mansion House. There, they were shown extraordinary hospitality, and Jane even lived with Smith for some time. Shortly before Joseph Smith was murdered in 1844, Emma Smith extended an invitation to Jane to be sealed to the Smith family as an adopted daughter. Flattered, but unsure what exactly the offer meant, she declined—a decision that would prove to be a life-long regret. More about that soon.

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The LDS Church removes racial BoM chapter headings

From the Salt Lake Tribune today:

The LDS Church has made subtle—but significant—changes to chapter headings in its online version of the faith’s signature scripture, The Book of Mormon, toning down some earlier racial allusions.

The words “skin of blackness” were removed from the introductory italicized summary in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5, in describing the “curse” God put on disbelieving Lamanites.

Deeper into the volume, in Mormon, Chapter 5, the heading changes from calling Lamanites “a dark, filthy, and loathsome people” to “because of their unbelief, the Lamanites will be scattered, and the Spirit will cease to strive with them.”

This isn’t the first change to the Book of Mormon. There have been thousands of changes, most of them minor, since its first publication in 1830. In 1981, a verse claiming that repentant Lamanites will become “white and delightsome” was changed to “pure and delightsome” (which is actually what the phrase was in the 1840 edition).  And more recently, the church edited the introduction to the Book of Mormon to read that Native Americans are “among the principal ancestors” of the Lamanites instead of being “the principal ancestors.”

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Ex-general authority George P. Lee dies

Former LDS General Authority George P. Lee passed away today in Provo at the age of 67.

You’re probably wondering “Who’s that?” and “Why should I care?” In 1975, George P. Lee was called by Spencer W. Kimball to be a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. This is significant, because Lee was the first (and only) Native American general authority. In 1989, Lee was excommunicated for “apostasy and other conduct unbecoming a member of the Church.” This too is significant, because Lee was the first general authority to be excommunicated since 1943, when Apostle Richard R. Lyman was excommunicated for practicing polygamy.

Lee’s “unbecoming conduct” refers to his attempted molestation of a 12-year-old girl. But of more interest to me–from a Mormon studies perspective—is the charge of apostasy. Lee was upset that President Ezra Taft Benson was phasing out the LDS Church’s Indian Placement Program.

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Book of Mormon Historicity: LDS Beliefs and Their Implications

I recently graduated from Utah State University (woo!) with bachelors in both political science and sociology. For my sociology capstone course, I had to complete a thesis paper.  As the title of this post suggests, I chose to write about Mormonism (surprise, surprise). The paper’s abstract should give you a better idea of my research questions and findings:

This paper explores what Mormons believe about the Book of Mormon and its historicity, and the implications those beliefs have—primarily for Latin and Native American members of the LDS Church. I conducted a 10-question survey of 115 Mormons. My survey yielded several findings, including the following: most Mormons understand the Book of Mormon to be an actual history of and by ancient American peoples; racial beliefs about Book of Mormon peoples and their supposed descendants remain pervasive among some Mormons; and Hispanic members are more sensitive to issues of racism within the LDS Church.

I have been meaning to publish my research, but it isn’t easy distilling an entire thesis paper into a blog post. So I have instead just uploaded the paper as a .doc file on here.

Book of Mormon paper

If you’d prefer not to read a 29-page paper, you can download this PowerPoint presentation.

Book of Mormon presentation

Any feedback is appreciated, but please be forgiving in your assessment. Despite having all semester to work on my thesis, I—in typical Jon fashion—procrastinated and the quality of the paper and presentation suffered for it. Still, I hope you find my research interesting.

Study claims link between religion and racism

I’ve written a great deal about Mormon racism—probably too much. But, needless to say, Mormonism has no monopoly on racial prejudice. To wit:

A meta-analysis of 55 independent studies carried out in the United States with more than 20,000 mostly Christian participants has found that members of religious congregations tend to harbor prejudiced views of other races.

In general, the more devout the community, the greater the racism, according to the authors of the analysis, led by Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC College and the USC Marshall School of Business. The study appears in the February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review.

“Religious groups distinguish between believers and non-believers and moral people and immoral ones,” Wood said. “So perhaps it’s no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them — blacks and minorities.”

Most of the studies reviewed by Wood’s team focused on Christians because Christianity is the most common religion in the United States.

Her analysis found significantly less racism among people without strong religious beliefs.

You can read more of the report here. I agree with much of the study’s analysis, but its conclusions would’ve been strengthened had confounding factors like education and geographical region been controlled for.

In commemoration of MLK, Jr. Day

As we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy, it’s important to appreciate just how hard-fought this holiday was.

Shortly after King’s assassination, Democratic Representative John Conyers introduced a bill to make King’s birthday a national holiday. One might assume that this was an easy affirmative vote, and the bill quickly cleared both houses of Congress. But, in fact, the legislation wasn’t even considered until over a decade later! And when considered in the 1979 session and again in 1980, it was defeated—with Republican Senators John McCain and Jesse Helms leading the opposition.

Finally, in 1983, the bill passed with an overwhelming majority and in spite of President Reagan’s threatened veto. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day still faced some hurdles, however.

Some states refused to honor the holiday. Utah held out the longest, failing to recognize the holiday from 1986 to 2000. Instead, Utah only observed “Human Rights Day.” That euphemism still remains popular in Utah and Idaho.

Utah’s reluctance to honor King was undoubtedly influenced by the state’s dominant religion: Mormonism. Many LDS authorities were vehemently opposed to the civil rights movement.*

Perhaps the most prominent LDS voice against what he called the “so-called civil rights movement” was Ezra Taft Benson. Benson served as president of the LDS Church at the time when Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a federal holiday. And while he never publicly denounced the holiday, he nonetheless helped shape Utah’s negative perception of King. Of King, and just a year after his assassination, Benson wrote, “the kindest thing that could be said about Martin Luther King is that he was an effective Communist tool. Personally, I think he was more than that.” The view that the civil rights movement and its leaders were a front for some communist agenda was a constant theme of Benson’s; he once even espoused it in General Conference.

Benson was widely known for his conservative politics–both in and outside the church. For his views on civil rights and communism, he won praise from the far-right John Birch Society and was even considered as a running-mate for segregationist third-party candidates Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.

I’m glad that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day triumphed over politics and prejudice. King—or rather, what he represented—is worth honoring. His message, though, has been neutered in recent decades (ironically, because of the federal holiday that bears his name). Most remember him only as a slain civil rights leader, but he was more than that. And to appropriately honor his legacy, we must first understand it.

Benson and the Republican in Congress weren’t entirely wrong about King: he was a radical. While no communist, King was a critic of capitalism and a champion of the poor—advocating things like affordable housing and health care. His economic views also informed his opposition to the Vietnam War, which he felt was an aggressive act of colonialism. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” he said.

America has made significant (though insufficient) strides toward racial tolerance since the civil rights movement. Prescient though he was, I don’t think King could have predicted the election of a black president. But with our continued occupation of Iraq, escalating involvement in Afghanistan, and the inaccessibility of health care for millions of Americans, much of King’s dream is still unrealized.

So let’s recommit ourselves to that dream today and work to see it realized in this new year.

*In a 1947 letter to USU sociology professor Lowry Nelson, the First Presidency called interracial marriages “most repugnant” and “contrary to Church doctrine.” Apostles Bruce R. McConkie and Mark E. Petersen not only defended the church’s black priesthood ban, but went further in arguing for segregation more generally. McConkie wrote that blacks were a “spiritually inferior” race who were consigned to be “a caste apart.” And Peterson told an audience at BYU that “the Lord segregated the Negro” and asked, “who is man to change that segregation?”

Is Mormon the new black?

Some excerpts from yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune:

LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks on Tuesday likened the post-Proposition 8 backlash against Mormons to the persecution blacks endured during the civil-rights struggle.

Now Oaks faces a backlash himself.

Last year, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints urged its followers to donate money and time to pass Prop 8, the successful ballot measure that eliminated the right of same-sex couples to wed in California. Afterward, protests, including several near LDS temples, erupted along with boycotts of business owners who donated to Prop 8 and even some vandalism of LDS meetinghouses.

And from an Associated Press article:

“[The analogy] may be offensive to some — maybe because it hadn’t occurred to them that they were putting themselves in the same category as people we deplore from that bygone era,” [Oaks] said.

Oaks qualified his comparison somewhat by acknowledging that the intimidation of Mormons in the wake of Prop 8 has not been “as serious as what happened in the South.” Still, I find it offensive. Comparisons to things like the civil rights movements should not be trotted out casually. Absent a strong parallel, such comparisons cheapen those events. And in today’s gay rights debate, neither the LGBT community nor especially the LDS Church (with its own history of racism ) should tie their plight to that of blacks.

What do you think? Was Oaks’ analogy appropriate?

Why I Don’t Believe: Racism in Mormon History and Doctrine

* This is the third installment in my “Why I Don’t Believe” series.

Historical and doctrinal racism in the LDS Church has been a subject of my study for years. It also figured prominently in why I left Mormonism.

I could write at length on this issue (and have), but I don’t want to deter people from reading this. My previous posts have been tedious enough. So I will try (and probably fail) to keep my commentary to a minimum and instead let church leaders’ words speak for themselves.

For the purposes of this post, all I ask is that you consider the following statements and whether they are befitting of men of God.

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. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Volume 10, page 110)

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…[Negroes] should be the “servant of servants;” and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree. How long is that race to endure the dreadful curse that is upon them? That curse will remain upon them, and they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses Volume 7, pages 290-291)

And after the flood we are told that the curse that had been pronounced upon Cain was continued through Ham’s wife, as he had married a wife of that seed. And why did it pass through the flood? because it was necessary that the devil should have a representation upon the earth as well as God;… (John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, Volume 22, page 304)

Not only was Cain called upon to suffer, but because of his wickedness he became the father of an inferior race. A curse placed upon him and that curse has been continued through his lineage and must do so while time endures. (Joseph Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection, pages 101)

There is a reason why one man is born black and with other disadvantages, while another is born white with great advantages. The reason is that we once had an estate before we came here, and were obedient, more or less, to the laws that were given us there. Those who were faithful in all things there received greater blessings here, and those who were not faithful received less. (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, page 61)

Negroes in this life are denied the Priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty. (Book of Abraham 1:20-27.) The gospel message of salvation is not carried affirmatively to them…Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, particularly the priesthood and the temple blessings that flow there from, but this inequality is not of man’s origin. It is the Lord’s doing, is based on his eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of Spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate. (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1966, pages 527-528)

The negro is an unfortunate man. He has been given a black skin….But that is as nothing compared with that greater handicap that he is not permitted to receive the Priesthood and the ordinances of the temple, necessary to prepare men and women to enter into and enjoy a fulness of glory in the celestial kingdom…What is the reason for this condition, we ask, and I find it to my satisfaction to think that as spirit children of our Eternal Father they were not valiant in the fight. (George F. Richards, General Conference Report, April 1939)

Now we are generous with the Negro. We are willing that the Negro have the highest kind of education. I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world. But let them enjoy these things among themselves. I think the Lord segregated the Negro and who is man to change that segregation?…If [the] Negro is faithful all his days, he can and will enter the celestial kingdom. He will go there as a servant, but he will get celestial glory. (Mark E. Peterson, Race Problems As They Affect The Church, BYU address, 1954)

In 1947, Dr. Lowry Nelson, a faithful Mormon and sociology professor at Utah State Agricultural College (now USU), wrote the First Presidency a letter that challenged the LDS Church’s teachings and policies toward blacks. He wrote, in part: “The attitude of the Church in regard to the Negro makes me very sad. I do not believe God is a racist.”

In an official letter, signed by all three members, the First Presidency responded:

From the days of the Prophet Joseph Smith even until now, it is has been the doctrine of the Church, never questioned by any of the Church leaders, that the Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel.

Furthermore, your ideas, as we understand them, appear to contemplate the intermarriage of the Negro and White races, a concept which has heretofore been most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs till now…We are not unmindful of the fact that there is a growing tendency…toward the breaking down of race barriers in the matter of intermarriage between whites and blacks, but it does not have the sanction of the Church and is contrary to Church doctrine.

Two years later, the First Presidency again reiterated the church’s position:

The attitude of the Church with reference to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time…The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the premortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality…Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes.

Another case study in church racism is Ezra Taft Benson. Benson was a vehement opponent of the civil rights movement and allied himself with fringe, far-right groups like the John Birch Society. His politics would sometimes seep into his conference talks. In one such talk, Benson dismissed the “so-called civil rights movement” as little more than a Communist front.

We must not place the blame upon Negroes. They are merely the unfortunate group that has been selected by professional Communist agitators to be used as the primary source of cannon fodder. [The civil rights movement's] planning, direction, and leadership come from the Communists, and most of those are white men who fully intend to destroy America by spilling Negro blood, rather than their own. (Ezra Taft Benson, General Conference Report, October 1967)

Benson was so convinced of this conspiracy theory that he even wrote the foreword to the book, The Black Hammer: A Study of Black Power, Red Influence, and White Alternatives.

Many Mormons are aware of their church leaders’ prejudices and yet it doesn’t trouble their testimonies. Their understanding is that prophets are men and thus fallible. They are, as we all are, products of their time and don’t always speak in their capacity as mouthpieces of the Lord. I find this rationalization of church racism unsatisfying, however. The statements above are not mere musings—they are doctrinal pronouncements from respected church authorities. Church leaders claimed divine sanction for their bigoted views. All of the statements included here were taught as doctrine and expressed over the pulpit and published in church publications.

I see at least two other shortcomings to the “prophets are men” explanation. First, God cannot allow his prophets to lead the church astray. And yet, that’s exactly what church leaders did for many decades on doctrines concerning race. Second, while I don’t demand perfection of prophets, I do expect of them something better than racism. Matthew 7:16 says, “By their fruits, ye shall know them.” And few fruits are more rotten than racism.

Racism in the LDS Church isn’t restricted to church leaders’ statements over the years, either. It is also readily apparent in the LDS canon. The Book of Mormon, for example, teaches that God marked the Lamanites (the alleged ancestors of today’s Native Americans) with dark skin to segregate them from the righteous Nephites.

And [God] 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)

When the Lamanites were righteous, the curse was removed and their skin would again be white.

And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites; And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites… (3 Nephi 2:14-15).

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)

With little exception, church leaders believed and taught that a literal change of skin color would occur in Native Americans who were repentant or converted to Mormonism. Spencer W. Kimball, as recently as 1960, held this view as evidenced by his observations of the Lamanite adoption program.

The day of the Lamanites in nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome…The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation…There was the doctor in a Utah city who for two years had had an Indian boy in his home who stated that he was some shades lighter than the younger brother just coming into the program from the reservation. These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. (Spencer W. Kimball; The Improvement Era, Dec. 1960, page 923)

Just as converts would become “white and delightsome,” Brigham Young believed the opposite to be true as well—that apostates would “become gray-haired, wrinkled, and black, just like the Devil” (Journal of Discourse, vol. 5, p. 332). Starting with Young and lasting until only a few decades ago, the devil was even referred to as having black skin in the LDS temple endowment ceremony. (“A Kinder, Gentler Mormonism: Moving Beyond The Violence Of Our Past,” by Keith E. Norman, Sunstone, August 1990, page 10)

In light of all the above, some Mormons concede that the church did indeed preach racist doctrines. They stress, though, that the church follows a “living prophet” who can receive revelations that supersede previous ones. This view was most famously articulated by Bruce R. McConkie shortly after the lifting of the black priesthood ban in 1978:

Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.

We get our truth and light line upon line and precept upon precept…We have now added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don’t matter anymore. (Bruce R. McConkie, All Are Alike Unto God, pages 1-2)

This view of continuing revelation is too abusive, too elastic, and terribly convenient. New revelations can expound upon existing doctrines, but they shouldn’t outright contradict them. Revelations must generally conform to what has already been revealed. President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote, “If what has been said is in conflict with what the Lord has revealed, we can set it aside.”

And while the church has rescinded the black priesthood ban, it has never officially repudiated or apologized for those racist teachings that justified the ban for over a century. Those offensive racial themes in the Book of Mormon also remain. So absent a total recognition and disavowal of its doctrinal racism, I simply cannot forget and forgive as McConkie would have me do.

Please understand that I am not claiming that Mormons are racist. I’m not even arguing that the LDS Church has been uniquely or unusually racist. In fact, some of Joseph Smith’s views on race were progressive for his time (he opposed slavery), and one can cherry-pick from the Book of Mormon verses that suggest racial tolerance. Rather, I think that Mormonism’s history of racism reveals the LDS Church to be an all too human institution. Not an evil or racist institution, mind you—just an uninspired one.