Posted by:
severedpuppetstrings
(
)
Date: January 16, 2019 12:19PM
For me straws were being pulled in a manner of months.
I probably noted this many of times, but it started by a fateful conversation as I was visiting another ward. An elderly lady that was giving me a ride home was telling me about the church's history and how black people were unable to receive the priesthood, but what a beautiful day in 1978 when the "ban" was lifted, and how everyone wept and rejoiced.
I had no knowledge of the ban, as I was born in 1982, and was baptized in 2004. I did not have internet back then to do research on TSCC. Plus it looked so good on the surface, and there was the (false) promises that my life would get better once I was in.
Boy, was I naive!
Anyway, the immediate question that popped into my head was if "heavenly father" loved his children without conditions, then why would he keep something such as the preisthood and temple blessings from them just because of their skin colour? I would do research and what I found shocked and broke me. That's when I found out about Brigham Young's racist rhetoric, and then came across books such as "Mormon Doctrine" "Journal of Discourses," "Mormonism and the Negro" and the "Way to Perfection." I knew that if I read those books, there would be no turning back. After learning these things, I guess it shouldn't surprise me. Being an African-American, I do experience racism quite often, but the majority of racism that I had experienced was in that church.
Another straw that was pulled was polygamy. I'd learn a little bit about it in YSA institute, but nothing really in depth. I was told things like, "Well, there were a lot of widows and not a lot of single men, so the married men married the widows to make sure they were taken care of." there's that theory, but two fourteen-year-told girls were married off to Joseph Smith. What "taking care of" did those girls need? I was a huge turn off to learn that TSCC lied about polygamy, and tried to hide their racist history to make themselves look perfect.
The final straw was a lesson taught in single adult FHE. My (former) home teacher, and single adult representative at the time, decided at the last minute to change his lesson to a lesson on 1 Nephi 13. I tried not to get uncomfortable and tried to convince myself that there may be a reason why he wanted to teach from that particular chapter, maybe I had been misunderstanding it for a long time. Turns out, I wasn't. That chapter had some racism (and I would then learn down the line that "pure and delightsome" was changed from "white and delightsome"). And I had a hard time believing that the mormon god had hand-picked Christopher Columbus to "discover" America (when it was actually the Caribbean he "discovered" or rather, stumbled upon). What's done is done, and many of us are all here in this country, but did the mormon god condone the rape of young Indigenous girls, and to have those girls as young as ten being sold off as sex slaves? (I shit you not, it's in his journals. Look it up if you don't believe me.) And yet, we have an LDS book by Clark Hinckley (any relation to Gordon B. Hinckley, I don't know) celebrating this asshole. Yes, the formation of America has an ugly history, and we may have come a long way (with quite a ways to go), but I had a hard time believing that the mormon god was okay with things as such taking place. My shelf would break after that.
And after that, I would learn more about the skeletons that TSCC has in their closet.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2019 10:49AM by severedpuppetstrings.