Posted by:
schrodingerscat
(
)
Date: February 22, 2021 12:21AM
I'm a bit surprised by this admission by the MORmON Crutch PR Department, which is apparently finally resigned to the fact that their so-called "PRofits" and founders may have been fallible after all, and maybe just a wee bit racist....
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/02/18/latest-mormon-land-was/"The best explanation for the now-discarded policy that prevented Black members from entering the priesthood or temples for more than a century may also be the simplest.
It was an earthly mistake, not a heavenly mandate.
So argues historian Jonathan Stapley in a recent By Common Consent blog post.
“It is worth noting that just 20 years ago, the idea that the ban was mistaken was outside normative belief in the church,” Stapley writes. “Several things have changed in the intervening years, and now many prominent voices among the Saints express belief in a mistaken restriction.”
For starters, the church has repeatedly and emphatically disavowed past explanations — such as black skin being a sign of “divine disfavor, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life.”
In addition, top Latter-day Saint authorities themselves have acknowledged that their predecessors, at times, “simply made mistakes” — from apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf in a 2013 General Conference address to Russell M. Nelson in his 2018 debut news conference as church president in which he asked members to “give your leaders a little leeway to make mistakes.”
Stapley disputes various scriptural references that members sometimes use to justify the 1852-1978 priesthood ban as a divine decree, saying that they “perpetuate damage to the Body of Christ, and contribute to a loss of faith among our people.”
“If you are going to assert a belief that the temple and priesthood restriction was the will of the Lord, you must also assert, per recent directives, that church leaders were simultaneously completely wrong about it and taught false and damaging ideas to the church for generations,” he writes. “Such a position necessarily undermines the confidence in the church’s ecclesiastical governance — the reason for a belief that the restriction was God’s will in the first place.”
Instead, Stapley urges reluctant members to acknowledge the error.
“I recognize that many people in the church grew up being taught that God directed the temple and priesthood restriction, he concludes. “Changing beliefs can be hard. I believe that in this case it is worth it. I believe that changing here not only prevents damage to faith, it increases faith.”