Posted by:
schrodingerscat
(
)
Date: March 04, 2023 12:54PM
https://on.soundcloud.com/t2FKZY2JvVtKWZPaAInteresting interview with Paul Revee, head of Mormon studies at the University of Utah and author of Deseret Book published, “Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood,”
In 1833, a leading Latter-day Saint, William W. Phelps, published a column under the headline “Free People of Color,” making it clear that, since its founding three years earlier, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints exercised no racial barriers.
Black members were not only welcome in the fledgling faith but also eligible for all of its rites and privileges.
It was a stance that did not sit well with many Missourians at the time and with the racist views scarring much of America in those pre-Civil War days. It’s also a position that did not last inside the church itself.
The faith’s second prophet-president, Brigham Young, eventually departed from the ways of founder Joseph Smith and instituted a ban barring Black Latter-day Saints from priesthood ordinations and temple ordinances.
That prohibition endured for nearly 130 years, a racist stain that the global faith and its members grapple with to this day.
In his new book, “Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood,” from church-owned Deseret Book, W. Paul Reeve, head of Mormon studies at the University of Utah, relies on historical records and scriptural passages to examine how and why the Utah-based church shifted from an inclusive approach on race to a restricted one and, ultimately, back to its original universalist theology.
In this week’s show, Reeve, who flatly states that he doesn’t believe the former priesthood/temple ban was of “divine origin,” discusses the faith’s evolution on this sensitive topic and the challenges that still lie ahead.“
How do you root out racism if you don’t understand it’s roots?
How do you Abandon actions and attitudes of racism, when Mormon scriptures are full of racist views. That didn’t come from Brigham Young, or God, it was a common 19th C racist myth used to dehumanize blacks to justify enslaving them and Indians to justify genocide and stealing their land. Yes Brigham Young was a racist pig, but so were the 130yrs worth of so-called ‘Prophets’ who continued his racist policies, in clear violation of Christs main commandment to love our fellow men as ourselves. And they are still racist for not rooting out the racism from Mormon scriptures.