Mormons: why are people born with dark skin?

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This is the first time I’d heard this reasoning. I have been wondering how the Mormon Church got away from the Mark of Cain story.
They switched to the story that Blacks were less valiant in a pre-existence.
 
And your presentation is not terribly objective, not to mention your complete lack of attributions (except for the census which actually shows that there were FEWER slaves in Utah than the number I stated)

Joseph Smith ran on an ABOLITIONIST ticket. that wasn’t a terribly popular stand in Illinois, or Missouri. Here is a copy of "General Smith’s Views’ which represented his platform. He ran on the idea of, among other things: freeing the slaves by 1860 (or ‘now’); disbanding penitentiaries and making crime punishable by ‘community service’ unless it is for murder; limiting the size of congress, lowering congressional paychecks, advocating a tariff and lowering all other taxes, expanding the idea of freedom of speech and religion.

You can see the whole thing here:

tinyurl.com/afj769

In the following pamphlet announced by his nominating committee, the only thing he changed was a call for a national bank. Abolition of slavery was still a vital “plank” of his platform.

When figuring out what a candidate is "running on,’ you can generally trust the literature HE publishes. To do otherwise is like, well…claiming that Obama ran on a rightwing conservative ticket. that might make the Democrats who are having problems with him right now feel better, but it’s not exactly true, is it?
Diana, he may have ran as an abolitionist, he courted both parties, making trades. The Mormon block vote for political favors. JS did what JS did for his own purposes. I doubt he gave a rats behind about slavery.

Nauvoo Politics
 
Diana, he may have ran as an abolitionist, he courted both parties, making trades. The Mormon block vote for political favors. JS did what JS did for his own purposes. I doubt he gave a rats behind about slavery.

Nauvoo Politics
Dang, Rebecca…

Where in this article (which is accurate, by the way) do you see ANYTHING that talks about JS’ platform for his presidential campaign?

YES, the Mormons tried to affect local politics. They weren’t too good at it, but they tried. That has nothing to do with the PLATFORM THAT JS RAN ON!!!

Nor, please notice, did the Mormons address the issue of SLAVERY, one way or the other, in all those political moves.
 
Diana, just a hint, Rebecca is a “Utah” Mormon who is now a Catholic ~ she may be able to trace her genealogy back to a “Pioneer”. That’s not only common in California (I have experience in that!) it’s WAY COMMON in Utah. This may not be a good road for you to go down… I’m just sayin’ …
 
I thought the Apostles were Jews.
😃 And so was Jesus. They all had a good understanding of Jewish history.
And none of the earliest Mormons were Natives, so how could they pretend to understand Native history??
 
Diana, just a hint, Rebecca is a “Utah” Mormon who is now a Catholic ~ she may be able to trace her genealogy back to a “Pioneer”. That’s not only common in California (I have experience in that!) it’s WAY COMMON in Utah. This may not be a good road for you to go down… I’m just sayin’ …
I am aware of Rebecca’s claims. To place against them, here is a short genealogy from me: I was born in southern Idaho, the child of Mormon parents, the grandchild of 3 Mormon grandparents, (and one Masonic atheist) the great grandchild of six Mormon great grandparents, all of whom were polygamous; some of those great grandparents were instrumental in Utah history, though I can’t claim to be a relative of BY (that’s almost hard to do!) . One of my great-grandmothers was raised by Lorenzo Snow. If you go to Logan, Utah, you will find that I belong to the ‘founding family’. Which doesn’t mean much except that I get first pick of roles at the Martin Harris pageant, provided I can sing well and dance a little.

I’m also a direct descendant of John and Abigail Adams, some Mayflower folk, Davey Crocket’s brother and William the Conqueror’s bastard cousin. (which is how the family joke about being able to trace our line back to Adam came from…European royalty liked to fiddle with their genealogies that way, even for the ones who were born on the wrong side of both blankets.)

Now that we have that cleared up, I think that my bona-fides about “Mormonhood” stand up quite well to hers. In addition, I’m still a Mormon. She is not, and has a vested interest in disproving and discrediting the religion she left.

I have no interest in proving Catholics wrong. I have no interest in proving us RIGHT–that’s not something I can do, anyway. Read my stuff; all I do here is correct information about what we believe, not whether what we believe is correct.

But you believe what you want.
 
😃 And so was Jesus. They all had a good understanding of Jewish history.
And none of the earliest Mormons were Natives, so how could they pretend to understand Native history??
How can you?

I mean, really, how can you? I understand that you are part native American…but do you live with that group on tribal lands? Have you been trained in the oral traditions of your ancestors? Do you speak the language, honor their traditions, dance their dances, live their lives?

Do you know any more about their history, in other words, than anybody can learn who is NOT shaman trained?

Of course, if you are that deeply trained in native American history and culture, the fact that you are a Catholic might cause some problems…
 
Gosh Diana, I can join the DAR too, if I want to, and am related to the Secretary of the Continental Congress as well as the guy who wrote the stuff that was the foundation of “The Waltons”. That wasn’t the point. 🤷
 
Gosh Diana, I can join the DAR too, if I want to, and am related to the Secretary of the Continental Congress as well as the guy who wrote the stuff that was the foundation of “The Waltons”. That wasn’t the point. 🤷
Yeah, it was…and it wasn’t about YOUR ancestry, anyway.

You were presenting Rebecca’s ancestry and history as a Utah daughter of Mormons as if that trumped anything I might write. So–I just let you know that my history is also of Utah/Idaho Mormon roots, and thus her ancestral claim to knowledge does not trump mine. We will have to go by, y’know, actual facts, information and willingness to do the research.

As to the rest of it, I was just adding extras to show how silly it was to bring it up in the first place. Our ancestors give us what they were, and we have a right to be proud of our heritage, but it is WE who have to do the work NOW–they can’t do it for us.

So, John Adams, William the Conqueror’s bastard cousin, John and Priscilla Alden, Davey Crocket’s brother and Butch Cassidy all rolled up together can’t do my research or my arguing for me…

But if you are going to pull the ancestor card, as you did, you have to be prepared that someone else’s might trump it…especially if that ‘someone else’ is a MORMON, for heaven’s sake!!! 😉 To Rebecca’s credit, she hasn’t done that. Much.
 
Diana, I posted an incomplete post before. That’s my fault. What’s not accurate in your previous post is this statement:
Read my stuff; all I do here is correct information about what we believe, not whether what we believe is correct.
Everyone has an agenda, so do you. Not everything you post even agrees with other Mormons about what Mormons believe. So, at the very least, the accurate statement would be that what you post is what you believe Mormon’s believe.
 
Diana, I posted an incomplete post before. That’s my fault. What’s not accurate in your previous post is this statement:

Everyone has an agenda, so do you. Not everything you post even agrees with other Mormons about what Mormons believe. So, at the very least, the accurate statement would be that what you post is what you believe Mormon’s believe.
No. What I post is what is TAUGHT as core doctrine. I differentiate that from ‘the extra stuff.’ I’m quite certain that some Mormon some where believes all sorts of strange stuff, just as Catholics believe different things.

For instance, you will not see me telling you that Mormons teach evolution or biblical creationism, or anything in between; the official church position is that…God created Man in His own Image…but not HOW.

In other words, no position on that.

For instance, the CORE DOCTRINE of the church is that Mary was a virgin at Christ’s birth. Period. Do some Mormons believe otherwise? Some did, some do, but that is NOT doctrine.

I’m very careful about that, actually. AT least I try to be.
 
This is the first time I’d heard this reasoning. I have been wondering how the Mormon Church got away from the Mark of Cain story.
That’s one theory–not all THAT widely held. The truth is…we don’t know.

It could be that. It could simply be that Mormons, having brought racist views into the church, took that long to finally be ready to accept the idea. I hate that thought, but it’s also possible.

We. Do. Not. Know.

All we DO know is that there was a revelation that the priesthood would be extended to all worthy male members of the church. It was a day of great joy for me, and for every other Mormon I know.
 
No. What I post is what is TAUGHT as core doctrine. I differentiate that from ‘the extra stuff.’ I’m quite certain that some Mormon some where believes all sorts of strange stuff, just as Catholics believe different things.

For instance, you will not see me telling you that Mormons teach evolution or biblical creationism, or anything in between; the official church position is that…God created Man in His own Image…but not HOW.

In other words, no position on that.

For instance, the CORE DOCTRINE of the church is that Mary was a virgin at Christ’s birth. Period. Do some Mormons believe otherwise? Some did, some do, but that is NOT doctrine.

I’m very careful about that, actually. AT least I try to be.
That’s all very nice until someone else comes along and starts stating something diametrically opposite that they learned in seminary or in some Sunday School Class, etc.

Of course you get the benefit of the doubt that you’re at least trying to correct error but the fact remains that there are a variety of opinions about certain parts of “core doctrine”. At this point there’s been no satisfactory explanation of the differences between what has been previously taught, and that people clearly remember, and what is taught now. The only explanation we get is “that’s not doctrine”. It makes it very difficult to discern what doctrine IS and what it IS NOT when it keeps changing.

This thread is a perfect example. A returned missionary, very active Mormon told me what he was taught about the Mormons and their beliefs about people born with dark skin. Now something totally different is taught. What changed?
 
Diana, just a hint, Rebecca is a “Utah” Mormon who is now a Catholic ~ she may be able to trace her genealogy back to a “Pioneer”. That’s not only common in California (I have experience in that!) it’s WAY COMMON in Utah. This may not be a good road for you to go down… I’m just sayin’ …
haha, yeah, I’m related to a lot of people in UT…all those wives and children. My husband sees people and declares them relatives, because they look like relatives.

They lived in Nauvoo and crossed the plains yada yada yada, singing pioneer songs as the walked and walked and walked and walked and walked.
 
I am aware of Rebecca’s claims. To place against them, here is a short genealogy from me: I was born in southern Idaho, the child of Mormon parents, the grandchild of 3 Mormon grandparents, (and one Masonic atheist) the great grandchild of six Mormon great grandparents, all of whom were polygamous; some of those great grandparents were instrumental in Utah history, though I can’t claim to be a relative of BY (that’s almost hard to do!) . One of my great-grandmothers was raised by Lorenzo Snow. If you go to Logan, Utah, you will find that I belong to the ‘founding family’. Which doesn’t mean much except that I get first pick of roles at the Martin Harris pageant, provided I can sing well and dance a little.

I’m also a direct descendant of John and Abigail Adams, some Mayflower folk, Davey Crocket’s brother and William the Conqueror’s bastard cousin. (which is how the family joke about being able to trace our line back to Adam came from…European royalty liked to fiddle with their genealogies that way, even for the ones who were born on the wrong side of both blankets.)

Now that we have that cleared up, I think that my bona-fides about “Mormonhood” stand up quite well to hers. In addition, I’m still a Mormon. She is not, and has a vested interest in disproving and discrediting the religion she left.

I have no interest in proving Catholics wrong. I have no interest in proving us RIGHT–that’s not something I can do, anyway. Read my stuff; all I do here is correct information about what we believe, not whether what we believe is correct.

But you believe what you want.
We might be kin.
 
Dang, Rebecca…

Where in this article (which is accurate, by the way) do you see ANYTHING that talks about JS’ platform for his presidential campaign?

YES, the Mormons tried to affect local politics. They weren’t too good at it, but they tried. That has nothing to do with the PLATFORM THAT JS RAN ON!!!

Nor, please notice, did the Mormons address the issue of SLAVERY, one way or the other, in all those political moves.
Darling Diana you assert that JS was an abolitionist. Which, maybe just as much as Mitt Romney is pro-life. ie, they both switch positions so often you don’t what they truly represent.

JS flipped flopped, today abolitionist, tomorrow not. As I said, whatever he had to say or do to get what he wanted.

What I showed you is his previous positions, that changed with the wind.
 
That’s one theory–not all THAT widely held. The truth is…we don’t know.

It could be that. It could simply be that Mormons, having brought racist views into the church, took that long to finally be ready to accept the idea. I hate that thought, but it’s also possible.

We. Do. Not. Know.

All we DO know is that there was a revelation that the priesthood would be extended to all worthy male members of the church. It was a day of great joy for me, and for every other Mormon I know.
So Mormons believed that dark skinned people were born with the Mark of Cain and that is why they could not be priests. Then in 1978, an ontological change took place among the dark skin people and they no longer had the Mark of Cain. And no one knows how it happened.
 
We might be kin.
That’s not unlikely. A number of years ago I assisted the local Stake produce “Promised Valley”. The production was dedicated to the pioneer forebears of the cast and crew. All the names were collected and the relationship to the pioneer in question established, with all the names published in the program. In the process a number of similarities were discovered. As a result, 3rd and 4th cousins were introduced to eachother as being related for the first time, and that was just within that small group. Had the study been extended to the entire Stake, no doubt more unknown relationships would have been discovered.

Most of us know our 1st cousins. Some know their 2nd cousins. It is rare to even know who 3rd and 4th cousins ARE, much less have any sort of relationship with them. Knowing who more distant relatives are is even more unlikely. I personally know one pair of 3rd cousins, mostly due to our mothers being as close as 1st cousins in their youth. I don’t even know the names of any other 3rd cousins and there have to be dozens of them. So I wasn’t surprised at the results of the “Promised Valley” discovery.

So you 2 may very well be cousins. 🙂
 
So you 2 may very well be cousins. 🙂
When I was a kid, my parents took me to a family reunion. It was for those descended from my greatX5 grandfather and his 5 wives. When we arrived, we wrote our names on the name tags that say, “hello, my name is”. Under our names we wrote which wife we were descended from. I met lots of cousins that day.

I was into genealogy for a while. I wanted to see where I really came from, as my family focuses on pioneers, pioneers and nothing but pioneers. I had all this going on at ancestry.com. I had numerous emails from “cousins”. One of those cousins told me that the third sister (of the three this grandfather married) did not want to marry, and stormed off when asked and wouldn’t talk to her sisters (the 2 already married to my gx5granfather). So the story this guy told me is that she was sitting on her porch, and this gx5grandfather rode up on his horse, said something to the effect of, ‘are you ready to marry me yet?’ she said yes, got on his horse, and there you have it, wife #3.

Besides being descended from this particular polygamist family, the parents were polygamist and their sibling were polygamist, so it amounts to about 4 or so surnames, and voila! I am related to every Mormon in UT.

Why I think Diana and I might me “cousins” are her links to Logan. That greatX5 grandfather of mine got around. Brigham Young sent him here there and everywhere. He was one of the founders of Logan, but my ancestors didn’t stay there. This guy died, leaving 5 widows and a boat load of minor children. The children were dispersed to various relatives. My ancestors wound up in central Utah. But hey, the current governor of UT is yet another one of those cousins of mine, from the central UT connection.
 
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