Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormonism 101/Chapter 16

Chapter 15: The Temple

A FAIR Analysis of: Criticism of Mormonism/Books A work by author: Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson

Chapter 17: Joseph Smith

Index of Claims made in Chapter 16: Lamanites, Seed of Cain, and Polygamy

Their views do not move us toward the solution or definition of problems that public debate is for. Instead, they deal with the phony and the titillating and the shocking, and raise once again questions that were decided long ago.
—Tom Braden, "I Was the Target of a Hate Campaign," LOOK (October 22, 1963), 60.

Claim

• As they begin this chapter, the authors tip their hand with an improperly referenced thirty-nine-year-old quote from a popular magazine of the day that would be almost impossible for the average reader to find:

I would not want you to believe that we bear any animosity toward the Negro. "Darkies" are wonderful people, and they have their place in our church.

President Joseph Fielding Smith Look magazine, 22 October 1963, 79 [sic]

Response

• In response to their shockingly polemical treatment of a serious and critical issue facing all religions, we display to the reader what the authors do not—the official stance of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• We will then peruse LOOK magazine and its article titled "A Memo From A Mormon," from which the authors cherry-picked their opening salvo.
• Next, we will discuss the double standard that anti-Mormons apply to the LDS Church while nervously whistling past the graveyard of their own troubled religious history.
• Last, it is time to ask a question of those who continue to pit racial groups against one another in the name of Christ. Are they guilty of engaging in a subtle but virulent racism by reducing the black race to nothing more than a convenient brickbat in their polemical assaults on other Christians?
• For a detailed response, see: Blacks and the priesthood/Double standard

Claim

• The authors claim that the "dark-skinned" Lamanites wiped out the "white-skinned" Nephites at the battle of Hill Cumorah.

Response

• For a detailed response, see: Lamanites/Curse

Claim

• In 1981 the Church changed "a white and a delightsome people" to "a pure and a delightsome people."

Response

• For a detailed response, see: Book of Mormon/Textual changes/"white" changed to "pure"

Claim

• The authors claim that Joseph Smith said that intermarriage with the Lamanites would produce a "white and delightsome posterity."

Author's source(s)

• Smith n2

Response

• For a detailed response, see: Polygamy/Lamanites to become "white and delightsome" through polygamous marriage

Claim

• The authors quote Brigham Young,

You may inquire of the intelligent of the world whether they can tell why the aborigines of this country are dark, loathsome, ignorant, and sunken into the depths of degradation...When the Lord has a people, he makes covenants with them and gives unto them promises: then, if they transgress his law, change his ordinances, and break the covenants he has made with them, he will put a mark upon them, as in the case of the Lamanites and other portions of the house of Israel; but by-and-by they will become a white and delightsome people.25

Response

• Here is the full quote, with the sentence that the authors removed highlighted:

You may inquire of the intelligent of the world whether they can tell why the aborigines of this country are dark, loathsome, ignorant, and sunken into the depths of degradation; and they cannot tell. I can tell you in a few words: They are the seed of Joseph, and belong to the household of God; and he will afflict them in this world, and save every one of them hereafter, even though they previously go into hell. When the Lord has a people, he makes covenants with them and gives unto them promises: then, if they transgress his law, change his ordinances, and break the covenants he has made with them, he will put a mark upon them, as in the case of the Lamanites and other portions of the house of Israel; but by-and-by they will become a white and delightsome people.25

• Why is this missing sentence so important that it had to be removed by McKeever and Johnson? This was said in an era in which there was active debate in the scientific and Christian community as to whether all races came from a common ancestor, an argument that was ultimately settled by Darwinism. This sentence leaps out as a declaration that Native Americans are not just descended from Adam and Eve--they are from the favored seed of Joseph.
• Thus, the authors' attempt to use Brigham Young's racist-sounding but unfortunately typical nineteenth-century verbiage as an indictment against the modern Church brings up the question of their intellectual integrity. We have learned from sad experience that when anti-Mormon writers use ellipses, it is most likely not because the information is irrelevant but because there is something which must be removed to keep the picture uniformly bleak and, well, titillating.

Claim

• The authors claim that Brigham Young taught that unrighteousness would "result in a black skin."

Author's source(s)

• n6

Response

Claim

• The authors claim that LDS believe that one's behavior in the preexistence determines race.

Author's source(s)

• n8

n9 n10 Response

• For a detailed response, see: Blacks and the priesthood/Repudiated ideas and Blacks and the priesthood/The "curse of Cain" and "curse of Ham"

Claim

• The authors provide a list of racist statements made by past Church leaders.

Author's source(s)

• n8 - n24

Response

• One statement alone, given by Bruce R. McConkie to Church seminary and institute teachers shortly after the 1978 revelation granting priesthood to all races, answers each and every objectionable statement or action that the authors can dredge up from bygone eras:

There are statements in our literature by the early brethren which we have interpreted to mean that the Negroes would not receive the priesthood in mortality. I have said the same things… All I can say to that is that it is time disbelieving people repented and got in line and believed in a living, modern prophet. Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever 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 our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had 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 any more. It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year [1978]. It is a new day and a new arrangement, and the Lord has now given the revelation that sheds light out into the world on this subject. As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them. We now do what meridian Israel did when the Lord said the gospel should go to the gentiles. We forget all the statements that limited the gospel to the house of Israel, and we start going to the gentiles.5

• Last and most important, the defining scripture that is binding on Latter-day Saints says, "he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile."6
• For a detailed response, see: Blacks and the priesthood

Claim

• The authors misrepresent a quote from Joseph Smith. They only tell the reader of this portion: "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species and put them on a national equalization."30

Response

• Yet, Joseph Smith had preceded this remark by saying:

They came into the world slaves, mentally and physically. Change their situation with the whites, and they would be like them. They have souls, and are subjects of salvation. Go into Cincinnati or any city, and find an educated negro, who rides in his carriage, and you will see a man who has risen by the powers of his own mind to his exalted state of respectability. The slaves in Washington are more refined than many in high places, and the black boys will take the shine off many of those they brush and wait on.31

• If the authors are seeking to truly inform and educate the reader concerning Mormonism, why would they not want to disclose this part of Joseph's thinking? In fact, why would they not want to elaborate on Joseph's revolutionary solution for abolishing slavery? Instead of commenting on the revulsion of Mormon leaders towards the widely accepted standard of abuse and cruelty, they choose only to make known the rather common thinking of the day that demanded races remain separate.

Claim

• The authors leave out a portion of a sermon that again stands out favorably from the Christian practice of the day. The authors give the following portion of one of Brigham's fiery sermons condemning politicians. They offer the reader no background from which they can understand the rhetoric from the leader of a persecuted group watching their security threatened one more time when they are put in the middle of pro-slavery supporters and abolitionists:

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.26

Response

• Here is the portion of the sermon that the authors neglect to show the reader, however:

If the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.27

• Compare this to the views of the founder of American evangelicalism, George Whitefield, who "urged kinder treatment of slaves, but noted that cruelty can have the positive effect of heightening 'the sense of their natural misery,' thereby increasing receptivity to the Christian message."28 Or the stories of "Christian slaveholders, including clergymen, 'brutalizing their slaves' which 'abound in the narratives of former slaves.'"29

Polygamy Today

249

Use of LDS Scripture

Summary

Racism has become one of the most strident and damaging accusations that can be leveled in our society, and as such has become a useful weapon for those who wish to harm an organization or individual. As Southern Baptists know, "Few chapters in American religious history prove as embarrassing as the response of the American churches to the issue of race."39 Thus, McKeever and Johnson appeal to an audience that is ignorant of the abysmal history of most of Christianity's dealings on race issues. They are obviously hoping their target audience will not notice that Latter-day Saints have always had integrated churches while other Protestant churches struggle with the residual division brought about by their own prolonged discrimination or outright expulsion of black members. Emerson and Smith assess the problem in the following manner:

Our examination of a variety of data and consideration of a variety of levels of social influence suggest that many race issues that white evangelicals want to see solved are generated in part by the way they themselves do religion, interpret their world, and live their own lives. These factors range from the ways evangelicals and others organize into internally similar congregations, and the segregation and inequality such congregations help produce; to theologically rooted evangelical cultural tools, which tend to (1) minimize and individualize the race problem, (2) assign blame to blacks themselves for racial inequality, (3) obscure inequality as part of racial division, and (4) suggest unidimensional solutions to racial division.40

LDS are, of course, not immune from the same human foibles. We, like all Christians, might wish that we had played a larger role in correcting social injustices. We must all look at our past and learn from it. But for the here and now, the LDS do have a decided advantage in our centralized leadership and our historical practice of maintaining congregations based on geographical boundaries rather than personal preference or race. Our members have never traveled past a white or black church to get to their own. We cannot fire ministers who do not succumb to the wishes of a congregation to remain racially segregated. Yet, we join all concerned followers of Christ in acknowledging that we have work ahead of us in putting aside differences accumulated through centuries of misunderstanding and intolerance.

We offer McKeever and Johnson a hand of fellowship in the hope that all religious traditions can combine their wisdom, understanding and love to unify mankind instead of divide. I hope McKeever and Johnson will desist in their racially divisive campaign against other religions. I challenge them to focus their talents on the important question of pastor Gregory E. Thomas as he says, "we must again note that a predominant pattern of church life for black churches has been that of racial separation. The question remains: why?"41

Endnotes

25 Brigham Young, "Re-Organization of the High Council, Etc.," Journal of Discourses, reported by G.D. Watt 8 October 1859, Vol. 7 (London: Latter-Day Saint's Book Depot, 1860), 336, partially quoted in McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101, 235.

26 Brigham Young, "The Persecutions of the Saints, Etc.," Journal of Discourses, reported by G.D. Watt 8 March 1863, Vol. 10 (London: Latter-Day Saint's Book Depot, 1865), 110, quoted in McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101, 241.

27 Brigham Young, "The Persecutions of the Saints, Etc.," 111.

28 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 26.

29 Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 167.

30 Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vol. 5 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1978), 217-218, as quoted in McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101, 238.

31 Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vol. 5, 217.

32 2 Nephi 5:21, quoted in McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101, 234.

33 Daniel 12:10.

34 Job 30:26, 30.

35 Joel 2:6.

36 Psalms 51:7.

37 Frederick K.C. Price, Race Religion and Racism: A Bold Encounter With Division in the Church (Los Angeles: Faith One Publishing, 1999), 149.

38 Wood, The Arrogance of Faith, 88, emphasis added.

39 Manis, "'Dying From the Neck Up'," 33.

40 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 170.

41 Thomas, "Black and Baptist in the Bay State," 75.