Posts Tagged ‘ Priesthood ban ’

Human brains naturally use locations in space and time to make sense of events. Why should we expect eternal spirits to follow that protocol? The question has always bothered me. What follows is speculation about a different way of looking at the relationship between the physical and the spiritual than the Restoration faiths adopted in [...]

The LDS Church has produced an update to the scriptures, following 8 years of work by historians on the Joseph Smith Papers Project.  You may have heard about some of the changes, as our own Andrew S was the one that alerted me, but By Common Consent has some fantastic posts on the subject as [...]

I wanted to start a new series on the book Mormon Doctrine, by Bruce R. McConkie.  Some have referred to this book (no longer being published) as “Bruce’s Doctrine.”  In Greg Prince’s biography of David O. McKay,  Prince cited a study by some general authorities that the book had over 1000 errors.  The first edition of [...]

The past General Conference marks the 34th anniversary of the ratification of Official Declaration 2, removing any restrictions on priesthood with regards to race.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been reading the Lengthen Your Stride: Working Draft.  Chapter 22 provides more information than is available in Lengthen Your Stride by Edward Kimball. [...]

A recent Huffington Post article discussed the difficulty the Mormon church has in making an official apology for the Priesthood Ban, and according to the article, the reason is not racism.  This will come as no surprise to most Mormons who are not racist but hesitate to completely throw revered prophets and church leaders under [...]

Elder McConkie has been much maligned in the bloggernacle for his book Mormon Doctrine, which has often been cited as “Bruce’s Doctrine”, or known to have many errors (even by me.)  However, many often fail to mention Elder McConkie’s contributions to Mormonism: he put together much of the Bible Dictionary (of which few people complain), as [...]

Sunstone began on Wednesday, but unfortunately, I could only attend Friday. I thought I would give some impressions of the Friday sessions. Todd Compton started off the day with the polygamist ancestry of Mitt Romney. It was interesting to see that Parley P. Pratt is the great-great grandfather of Mitt Romney. Parley’s fourth wife, Mary [...]

Following up with the conversation on whether the timing of the 1978 revelation was correct, Brad Kramer and Marguerite Driessen disagreed on the necessity of whether the LDS Church should repent for the previous restrictions on black church members.  You might be surprised at their stances.  Here’s more of their conversation on whether an institution [...]

As we come upon the 34th anniversary of the lifting of the priesthood/temple ban, I thought it would be interesting to discuss whether 1978 was the “right year”.  The priesthood and temple ban was lifted in a 1978 revelation given to President Spencer W. Kimball and the Twelve Apostles.  With Civil Rights being a big [...]

On February 25, Scott Gordon president of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) sent out a newsletter to subscribers noting that February is Black History Month.  Gordon explained why black history matters, and explained 3 myths about the ban.  Just 3 days later, Professor Randy Bott created a stir when he tried to [...]

There has been a lot of discussion recently about some comments made by Professor Bott at BYU.  For me, seeing the discussions on race has been interesting, but I’d already resolved the issue for myself, much like Andrew S talked about in his recent post.  To me, it was basically just institutionalism of the racism [...]

BYU professor Randy Bott’s attempts to justify the black priesthood ban have incited outrage. But what will any of that accomplish?

Since today is MLK day, I thought it might be nice to talk about the first Black Mormon leader.  In his book on The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations, Mark Staker spends a surprising amount of time discussing the first Black Mormon Convert–a former slave known as Black Pete, and notes that he [...]

In a previous post, I documented Early Black Mormons, and gave a brief history of some of them.  William McCary is a little-known black Mormon from the early days of the church.  He was ordained an Elder by Apostle Orson Hyde in October 1846 and was known as the “black prophet.”  McCary claimed to be part-Indian, [...]

Alma Allred wrote a chapter in the book titled Black and Mormon.  On page 37, he states: I don’t believe that LDS scripture allows for a restriction against blacks’ holding the priesthood.  Nor do I think that LDS theology can reasonably maintain that today’s blacks are descendants of Cain or that ancient intermarriage with Canaanites perpetuated [...]